Still, he smiled at her as he patted Bollocks’s curly topknot. “Here’s a joy of a dog.”
“He really is.”
“And soon to be far-famed in song and story. You can see much from this spot. The village and its bustle, the fields and the hills, the shadow of the mountains, all the while if you listen, there’s the drumbeat of the sea behind you. Your nan had this bench placed here before I was born. Many’s the time I sat here with your dad, thinking thoughts and finding the quiet.
“And there?”
He pointed, so she stepped closer.
“In that cottage there lived a girl I had a terrible yen for in my wild youth. Before Sinead, of course, for there’s a woman who put a lock on my heart that can’t be broken. But the yen was real enough while it lasted, and the memories of it harmless and sweet.”
“Where is she now, the girl?”
“Married a farmer, she did, and they had three children—no, four,I’m thinking. They’re in the midlands, and travel here to barter and trade. Come sit awhile. I wanted the air for a bit of time.”
She hesitated, but instinct told her he needed the company now as much as the air. And when he put a hand over hers after she sat beside him, she felt his heart and knew she was right.
“When your father and I were boys in the valley, I yearned for the Capital, this bustle. No farmer was I, not like Eian or my own da. Nor clever as my da with the building of things. There was music, of course. Ah, that was a thing that bonded me with Eian tight as a drumskin. And how I loved our times in the pubs, here and on the other side, playing. Me, Eian, Kavan, and Brian—brothers they were to me always. But I wanted the warrior’s life, that’s the truth of it. Raising a family with Sinead in the valley, that was precious, a time of joy, and peace as well. For a time.”
He turned to look at her. “Your ma made him happy. You should know that.”
“I do.” For a time, Breen thought.
“But you, little red rabbit, you were the beat of his heart, the light of his soul. When Odran had you… A lesser man might have gone mad, and let that madness and fear rule him. Eian was no lesser man, so he locked up that heart, used his mind, his power, his strength. As you did, barely more than a babe. As you did,” Flynn murmured.
“Your mother flew me home again, and Sinead rocked me and sang to me. I remember it all so clearly now, how they made me feel safe again after I’d been so afraid. When I first came back, Nan helped me see, in the fire, how my father fought that night, and how she fought. And… you, with your great wings and sword. You fought for me, for him, for Talamh.”
“A terrible, brutal night it was, but I yearned to be a warrior, and so would have died for you, for him, for Talamh. A choice I made. But I lived. We lost Kavan that night.”
“I know.”
“A brother to me. Then Brian fell, and then Eian. Their deaths, my brothers’, took pieces from me, as death should. But I lived, a warrior, a husband, a father—and grandfather as well—as the pieces deathtakes from you find a way to live without them. You honor their death by living and doing and standing.”
“I know you do.” She looked out, as he did. A rabbit, gray like her eyes, hopped its way over a field and to a row of cabbage to munch.
“I never lost someone close before. I thought my father had just left me behind.”
“Never he would. Never.”
“I know that now, and so I know you honor the death of ones you love by living and doing and standing.”
“I sit on the council and do what I can to be wise and true there. I fight what comes against us. Now, Breen, now I hold my wife, the wife of my boy, his brother, his sister, my own ma and da. Those arms must be strong for them because those pieces are lost inside them.
“But my boy, my child who came into my hands on his first breath, is gone. And the child waiting to be born will never know his father. His wife will never again feel his arms around her. His mother will never hear his voice again or look on his face.
“Those pieces are gone, and I don’t know how to live without them.”
She had no words, so simply put her arms around him. She couldn’t take his grief, no power could. But she let it come into her, the overwhelming pain of it, so at least it was shared.
“You’re a warrior,” she said at last. “A husband, a father, a grandfather. You’ll stand. All the pieces death took from you, the light of the lost fills them. Phelin’s light’s in you and always will be.”
Tears wanted to flow; she wouldn’t let them.
“I can feel his light in you. And my father’s.” She drew back enough to lay a hand on his heart, and with her eyes on his, pushed what she felt into him. “It’s so bright, even death can’t dim it.”
Flynn laid his head on her shoulder, sighed once. “He’d have been so proud of you.”
“His light’s in me, too.”