He shook his head slowly, sadly. “I’m afraid there can be no party.”
“Why?”
“None of the others want to see you, Meara. They all know it’s your fault.”
“My fault? What is? What have I done?”
“You consort and conspire with witches.”
He turned, gripping her shoulders hard. Now the shadow moved over his face, had her heart leaping in fear.
“Conspire? Consort?”
“You plot and plan, having truck with devil’s spawn. You’ve lain with one, like a whore.”
“But . . .” Her head felt light, dizzy and confused. “No, no, you don’t understand.”
“More than you. They are damned, Meara, and you with them.”
“No.” Pleading, she laid her hands on his chest. Cold, cold like his hands. “You can’t say that. You can’t mean that.”
“I can say it. I do mean it. Why do you think I left? It was you, Meara. I left you. A selfish, evil trollop who lusts for power she can never have.”
“I’m not!” Shock, like a blow to the belly, staggered her back a step. “I don’t!”
“You shamed me so I couldn’t look upon your face.”
The sobs came now, then a gasp as the white rose in her hand began to bleed.
“That’s your own evil,” he said when she threw it to the ground. “Destroying all who love you. All who love you will bleed and wither. Or escape, as I did. I left you, shamed and sickened.
“Do you hear your mother weep?” he demanded. “She weeps and weeps to be saddled with a daughter who would choose the devil’s children over her own blood. You’re to blame.”
Tears ran down her cheeks—of shame, of guilt and grief. When she lowered her head, she saw the rose, sinking in a puddle of its own blood.
And rain, she realized, falling fast and hard.
Rain.
She swayed a little, heard the bird singing in the mulberry, and the fountain cheerfully splashing.
“Da . . .”
And the cry of a hawk tore through the air.
Connor, she thought. Connor.
“No. I’m not to blame.”
Drenched by the rain, freed by the cry of the hawk, she swung out with the shovel. Though she took him by surprise, he leaped back so it whooshed by his face.
A face no longer her father’s.
“Go to hell.” She swung again but the ground seemed to heave under her feet. As it did she swore something pierced her heart.
On her sharp cry of pain, Cabhan bared his teeth in a vicious smile. And he spilled into fog.
She managed a shaky step forward, then another. The ground continued to heave, the sky turned and turned over her head.