“I know what you need.”
She blinked at me. “Do you, now? What’s that?”
I adjusted myself on the cushion, trying to find a comfortable position before patting my chest. “Head here.”
Her smile left my heart singing as she snuggled closer. Could she hear it beneath her ear? Keelynn’s dark waves felt like silk between my fingers. She sniffled softly, and I could feel dampness soaking into my shirt, cleansing the darkness from my soul.
Tomorrow would bring more decisions and darkness.
But tonight, when my eyes fell closed, I let myself dream.
Of the woman in my arms, happy and smiling.
Of being free.
Of a future together that would never be.
29
I awoketo Keelynn trying to extricate herself from my arms, the loss of her heat like the splash of a winter wave. She refused to look at me as she adjusted her bodice and the hem of her skirts to cover her bare ankles.
“What’s wrong?” I asked.
She glanced over her shoulder. “Nothing.”
Nothing. Right. The pained wince told me differently. Although I’d wanted to stay awake and commit to memory each and every sleepy sigh that fell from her lips, I’d lost the battle with exhaustion as dawn peeped through the drawn curtains. My bones ached from the floor at my back and Keelynn using me as a mattress. Not that I was complaining.
“You don’t have to come with me today,” I told her, my heart breaking a little more. Last night, I had mentioned her joining me in Tearmann, never asking what she wanted. “I could bring you to Port Fear and back to Graystones.” She could return to her old life of fine dresses and balls. Safety and security.
Each second she took to consider left my stomach sinking lower. Eventually, she put me out of my misery. “I don’t want to go back there. I want to be with my sister.”
Nothing to do with me. Still, knowing she would be near left my black heart singing. “Right so. We can grab something from the kitchen and be on our way.”
Lorcan and Deirdre offered to make breakfast, but I wanted to get out of Gaul in case Keelynn changed her mind. Not that I wouldn’t bring her wherever she asked. I just didn’t want her to think too hard about where we were headed.
I met with the priest for the key to the portal in the basement of Gaul’s cathedral. The portal had been there first, the gray limestone cathedral erected on top centuries later. Each priest took over as a keeper of the portal when the previous keeper passed on. An arrangement I’d made with the original priest long ago.
Keelynn remained silent, lost in her own thoughts.
When she met the children we’d kidnapped on the other side, she was clearly intrigued but kept her questions to a minimum.
We traipsed through fallen leaves, twigs snapping beneath our boots on our way through a forest of pines, until we reached the line of onyx stones marking the hard line between my world and hers.
The start of the Black Forest was always the worst part. The magic here was so toxic, breathing the air felt like swallowing poison. Keelynn must have felt the malice as she shifted nervously and stared into the blackness.
Having agreed to pay the Queen’s death tax, I had permission to bring her safely across. But the moment the Queen killed me, our marriage would be over. That’s where we were headed anyway, but perhaps Keelynn wouldn’t mind staying married a little longer.
And the longer I had, the more I was convinced I could make her love me. Show her how I could be good. How I could lead my people.
Maybe she would find some happiness in Tearmann.
It was worth a shot. We’d have to be stealthy, stick to the enchanted path. Remain calm so our hearts didn’t give us away.
“I want you to listen carefully,” I said, locating my kohl in my bag, spreading the stinging goop across my eyes. Once it settled, the spells the Queen had cast to keep mortals out of her realm were as plain as the fear on my wife’s face. To Keelynn, the forest would have looked as black as Ruairi’s hair, but the Black Forest was actually the color of the many bones littering the ground.
“You need to follow in my footsteps,” I told her, heading for the shifting black path cutting through the rolling ground, “and remain completely silent. All right?”
Off the path, the earth was like quicksand. A step or two wouldn’t be fatal, but any more than that and the ground would swallow us and hold us prisoner until the Queen’s minions brought her to us.