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Ellen cuts in. “Robert’s right.”

She looks around the room, meeting each face in turn. “There’s bravery here, and strength, and more nobility than in the bastards who now sit in seats of power in either Celtic nation. I ken yer hearts. Not one of you would seek power for cruelty or gain. If this oath is to be sworn, let it be sworn by those in this room, with the courage to bear it and the honour to keep it.”

Her words hit me deep, and before I can think better of it, I slide an arm around her, pull her into my side, and kiss the breath from her.

The second I let her go, colour rushes into her cheeks. For all the strength in her voice a moment before, she looks almost embarrassed now.

I bend close, my hand still at her waist. “I love you,” I whisper, for her alone.

That is all the time we get before Mannie’s voice turns the room solemn again.

“The tablet answered most strongly to four,” he says. “What must be done next belongs first to those called by it. We have to find the second half of the tablet and connect it to the first.”

Róisín speaks first. “What d’ya mean, belongs to them?”

Mannie looks at her then, and his face gentles. “I mean that the road ahead is not one I can ask of you and Ellen.”

“Ask?” Alex repeats. “You just said it belongs to us.”

“It does.”

Róisín’s hand tightens harder about her wrist. “Ye’re talking as if they have to leave us behind.”

He doesn’t answer, which is answer enough.

My whole body goes tight. “Nae. No’ happenin’.”

I look at Ellen then, and her eyes have filled now. She’s still holding herself upright with a kind of furious grace, as if she can’t let anything break her open in front of the rest of us.

“You cannae ask this of us.” I spit, voice roughened, not with anger but with the effort of holding it steady.

Mannie’s eyes come back to mine.

“You are partially correct, James. I cannot force this on you. The decision rests in the hands of each of you and sacrifices you are being asked to make.”

I hadn’t expected that response at all.

I think of our bed upstairs, still carrying the warmth of us. I think of Ellen with her hair undone across my arm, her body slack from pleasure. I think of all the little ordinary nothings I had already begun, stupidly, greedily, to count on. Morning bread broken together every day. Her laughter filling the hallways. The simple, ruinous comfort of reaching for her in the night and finding her there.

It’s a dreadful thing, really, how quickly a man may find himself standing between one vow and another, and know that keeping one may cost him the other.

Ellen’s voice cuts through my thoughts. “If we agree to this,” she says, “is there truly no path by which Róisín and I could follow?”

“I am afraid that would be a great risk to you,” he says. “I cannot lie and say that you will remain safe. You and Róisín will not be afforded the same... let’s call them abilities, as everyone else.”

Combat. The word falls clean and merciless into the middle of us.

And I feel, with a clarity that makes me almost sick, that Mannie himself has put out his hand and asked me what sort of man I am.

Ellen turns fully toward me and closes in on the little space between us. Her face is pale, her eyes bright with tears she hasn’t let fall yet, but there’s nothing uncertain in her when she reaches for my hands. Her fingers are cold. Her hold is iron.

“Hear me now, James Sinclair.” Though her voice trembles once, it doesn’t fail. “If this is what’s asked of you, of us, I willnae be the thing that keeps you from it.”

“Ellen,” I begin, but she tightens her hold on me and gives the smallest shake of her head.

“No. Let me finish.” Her eyes hold mine, full of hurt and certainty. “I didnae marry a man to keep him beside me at the cost of what he is. If this oath is true, and if ye’re called to it, then you must answer. You cannae betray yer own heart for love of me.”

The room blurs from my own unshed tears.