“You’d have protected me as you do her. You’re a fine one, you are, Bollocks the Brave, Bollocks the True.”
When Breen came back, he cleansed the stain, from the poison, from the blood, then with Breen and the dog, mounted Cróga. With the body in Cróga’s claws, they flew up, flew high into Talamh, and high over it. Beyond the Troll camps and mines, and higher still to a stone-gray mountain rising from the edge of the sea.
She learned the Bitter Caves had earned their name because theair in them held as cold as winter and somehow hard so it seemed it would break at a blow like brittle glass.
In them, the high roof of the cave dripped with stalactites, their points as sharp as swords. The light Keegan brought ran red so it seemed blood washed across his face as he split the stone ground into a grave.
He placed Shana in himself. Then stood, searching, floundering.
“I can think of no words to say over her.”
“We’ll wish her the peace she couldn’t find in this life.”
“That’s kind of you. Aye, we’ll wish her that.”
Then he stepped back, gave Cróga the order. The flames shot out and took her to ashes.
Keegan took the salt, spreading it over them as he spoke.
“And here, what remains never to rise again, never to cause harm, never to spill blood. What was is gone, what’s left, ashes of the shell, stays here for all time.”
He closed the stone over the ashes and salt.
“Come, we’ll leave this place.”
But when they left the caves, he stood on the high ground. The mountain was stone and stark, but the world beneath it simply glorious.
“I could have stopped her another way. She was mad, laughing, dancing, and, oh gods, broken in all ways already. She told me enough so I know how they got her as far as they did. I could’ve stopped her, but she said things we need to know. And she said he didn’t want you dead, but, well…”
He shrugged with that. “But he’d promised her she’d have you as a slave once he was done with you. And she’d slit my mother’s throat—such a hate there for a woman who was never less than kind to her. I never saw it in her. And wouldn’t she bed my brother before she killed him. She’d cut off Morena’s wings.
“She meant it all, you see. She wanted it, the blood and killing, the burning, the fucking golden throne he promised her. She wanted all of that with all she’d become, and gods help me, with any left of what she’d been.
“But I could have stopped her another way.”
“You’re wrong, Keegan. I saw her. She didn’t have enough left of what she’d been to become one with the tree, so I saw her. If we’d come down the path and you hadn’t been there, she’d have died by my hand. I’d have made the choice, the only choice, Keegan, because of the ones she’d made.”
Though they’d yet to touch each other, not once, she turned to face him. “Banishment? You’re thinking you could have stopped her, bound her with power, and banished her. But she’d never have stopped. She couldn’t. And if Odran felt she was in any way useful, he’d have found a way to use her still.”
“The banishment, the Dark World, would have destroyed her in any case. She was so broken, and I saw that, knew that. It seemed too cruel, and the sword somehow kinder.”
“You’re right, and I’m sorry it had to be this way.”
“I’ll tell the council, here and in the Capital, the whole of it. It will go no further. You were right about her parents. Telling them would lift some weight from my shoulders only to lay it on theirs.”
He stepped back from her. “I don’t want to touch you here, not near the caves where so much dark is under the rock. This isn’t how I’d have welcomed you back home.”
“Then let’s leave the dark to the dark and go home.”
As they mounted Cróga with the dog between them, he turned and glanced at her. “The gardens need watering.”
“Really?”
He shrugged. “I’ll see to it.”
She waited until they flew, flew over the green and the brown and the blooms, then with the dog between them, leaned forward, to put her arms around him.
When they stood at the cottage, Cróga soaring back to Talamh, Bollocks rushing toward the bay, Keegan put his around her.