“There’s no need for you to travel. We have the vial, the cup, her own damning words. And the truth is, she won’t deny it, as she took pride in the attempt.”
“She did, didn’t she?” Breen murmured.
“Why did you drink the poison? Why did you risk it if you knew?”
“I nearly didn’t.” She rose to put the boots away. “Then I understood I needed to trust. You, Marg, the coven, the magicks, and the light. I had to trust what I felt inside me, that it was stronger than Yseult. And to believe in what I’ve become. So I made the choice.”
“I’d have stopped you, and that would’ve been wrong. Yet I’d do that again if I had the chance.”
“I can’t play whatever part I’m needed to play against Odran, for Talamh and the rest, if I don’t believe.”
“You’ve the right of it, and yet.”
“Are you saying I don’t need to go tomorrow because you think I’m safer here?”
“I’m not, no. And if you’re needed after all, I’ll send a falcon and expect you to come. She has a family, you know, Cait does, and someone who hoped to pledge to her. Now their hearts are broken. How he turned her, I’ll never know. I never know, for certain, how any of us can turn.”
He grieved, she thought. For the loss of one of his own, for what he needed to do to right that loss. “You’ll banish her, and that weighs on you.”
“Her sister, Janna, wore a warrior’s braid and came from the valley for the Battle of the Dark Portal. And gave her life there. Nowher family has lost two to Odran, and one bears responsibility for the death of her sister. How much did Janna tell Cait about patrols, strategies, plans, as one sister might talk to another? How much did Cait pass to Odran, and how much of that beat the path of her own sister’s death?”
He shook his head. “It won’t weigh so very much.”
But it would, she knew, whatever he said now.
“Will her family go to the Capital for the Judgment?”
“I gave them time to see and speak with her here before she was taken east. Aisling needs more time with our mother, and our mother needs more time with Aisling and the children. I’ll be obliged to stay in the Capital, at least till the turn of the year.”
“You have duties, Keegan. I understand them. Do you have to leave tonight?”
“I want tonight with you, what’s left of it. I want to lie with you.” He pulled off her sweater, tossed it aside. “I want to feel you under me, over me, around me.”
He scooped his hands through her hair. “I like it loose. I like there’s so much of it. I like when it goes a bit wild.”
She thought of how she’d once spent what seemed like hours straightening that wild, covering the red with brown because her mother had drilled into her that she needed to blend in. To just disappear.
Never again.
She boosted herself up, locked her legs around his waist. And took his mouth with hers.
“I want you over me, and under me. I want you inside me. The nights are still long.” She nipped at his throat. “We’ll take all the rest of it. We’ll take each other.”
Gripping his hair, she dragged his mouth back to hers.
Hunger cut deep, hunger for her all but took him to the ground. The taste of her, suddenly so potent, so strong, so rich, only widened the wound.
With a single desperate thought, he stripped her, then himself, and hot skin to hot skin, pressed her back against the wall. His fingers dug into her hips, but he gave no thought to bruises as he plungedinto her. Her gasps only fueled the fire burning in him as he drove deep, and deeper.
With his eyes on hers, he saw the gray darken, saw each shock of pleasure in them. Her legs, velvet chains, tightened around him, and her hips pumped strong.
She could only hold on while the air swirled hot around them. In the hearth, the simmering fire snapped into a blaze, and the blaze sent out a roar.
Every candle in the room shot into flame.
When she breathed, she breathed him. And what he was filled her, the power of it, the need, searing, exciting. Dangerous.
She gave herself to it, rushed to meet it, to take it all, sensation by electric sensation.