Page 180

He glances back at me then, and I understand at once that this isn’t grief for grief’s sake. It’s a warning.

“You, James, and Alex must leave. The rest stay behind. Even Taskill isn’t fit to follow. I do not think love a paltry thing, but I know too well what it is to leave danger within reach of it.”

His eyes hold mine, dark and steady.

“There are cruelties a man chooses, and cruelties he only recognises too late. Sometimes a man’s first duty to the woman he loves is not to keep her close. Sometimes it is to make certain she can survive him.”

For a moment the wind eases, leaving only the crash of the sea below and the faint light of the house behind us—small, warm, and so far from where we stand that the cold bites sharper for the thoughts of who wait inside it.

I understand him. Even if Ellen and Róisín come to resent us, I’d sooner see them safe and furious than bloodied in the path of something they can’t protect themselves from. They’re too close to sisters in my heart for me to wish otherwise.

The waves hurl so violently against the rocks that I flinch at the crack. Mannie doesn’t so much as blink.

A bit of shale skids from beneath my boot and disappears soundlessly before the sea claims it, and I decide there’s no use skirting around it any longer.

“I think I’m being led toward my death.”

I almost laugh at myself for saying it aloud. The words sound too plain for the thoughts living in me. In my dreams, I feel death waiting for me at the end of every road worth taking.

He says nothing.

“Well? Are you going to tell me I’m being dramatic, or have the gods granted me the rare privilege of being right?”

At that, one corner of his mouth moves, though there’s no mirth in it.

“You are rarely wrong when you sense danger, Robert.”

“That isn’t the comfort you think it is.”

“No,” he says. “I imagine it is not, but I think your instincts are telling you more than you know.”

The wind shifts, carrying salt and wet stone, and my marked hand gives a low, unwelcome throb even though the lines have faded from view.

I fold my arms against the cold. “There’s more you’ve not said.”

In the dark, his eyes still catch some strange light, though there’s nothing but moonlight for them to catch.

“There is.”

“About the oath.”

“Among other things.”

“And you chose not to share it with the room.”

“I did.”

“Why?”

His gaze stays on me long enough that irritation rises sharp and quick in my chest.

“If you mean to test whether I can bear an answer, you may save yourself the trouble. Whatever it is, I’d rather have the truth of it than be coddled with half a mercy.”

“I know,” he says softly. “That is why I did not tell the others.”

That takes some of the heat out of me, though not much.

He turns fully then, and all the easy edges leave him.