The queen dowager nudged her children to depart, but she stayed. Her eyes were a mix of compassion and distaste.
“Lady Deborah has suggested that Claire rule as protector of Ceredigion,” she said with a strained tone. “Better her than Kiskaddon, I say. I know the pain of losing a husband.” She looked to Claire with a mollifying smile before turning back to Ransom. “Did Jonny tell you anything . . . anything he didn’t want me to know?”
Ransom could hardly believe she was asking such a thing at such a time. But she’d always been selfish.
“Ransom kept many secrets,” Claire answered for him. “And he would never break his honor by divulging them. Not even to me.”
The queen dowager sniffed, nodded, and then left.
Ransom looked at his wife tenderly and mouthed the words thank you.
She brought his knuckles to her lips and kissed them. Another round of pain came, and he groaned in anguish, writhing again, hating to be a spectacle.
“She’s here! She’s here! Ransom’s mother is here!”
Lady Sibyl of the Heath came into the room, one arm clinging to Dearley, who had sent a knight to fetch her when the news had come. Her hair was streaked with gray and fading. Her grief-stricken face registered some relief.
“Mother,” Ransom whispered.
She knelt by his bedside, and her wrinkled hands cupped his fingers. “My boy. My dear boy,” she said, then bowed her head and wept.
“I love you, Mother,” Ransom said, trying to find the strength to squeeze her hand. But even that was too difficult. The pain was receding. He felt a blanket of peace settle on him.
“Ransom?” Claire asked pleadingly.
“I love you, Claire de Murrow,” he whispered next. It was his last breath.
“Is breá liom an iomarca duit, Ransom,” she whispered thickly, pressing a kiss to his lips as he died.
I love you too much.
Ransom looked down and saw his own bleeding face. He saw Claire sobbing against his chest, her groans and tears showing the depth of her loss. His children held hands, standing resolutely next to the bed. His daughter Sibyl’s lip trembled, and she swiped her little hand across her eyes. Dawson and Cecily also wiped away tears. Dearley helped Ransom’s mother to a chair to save her strength.
A tug pulled at Ransom’s spirit-self, like the coaxing of a stream. The room was full of the people he loved most. All of the kings he had served had died with only Ransom at their side. How different this was—to be so loved and cared for that they had all wanted to be with him despite the gruesome affliction caused by the deadly poison.
Gently, peacefully, the otherworldly current pulled him away. It swept him through the castle corridors, where he heard tinkling chimes coming from the various fountains. It sped him down the dock where he had, the day before, levered Jon-Landon’s body into the waters. Then he was flying over the river, the rush and noise of the falls growing louder and louder until the roar consumed everything, and he felt himself gliding beyond the falls—not plummeting into the water but soaring like a raven. He felt a freedom unlike anything he’d experienced before. It was freedom and love and contentment and bliss—all merged into one.
And then his consciousness, his spirit-self, plunged into the ocean, and he saw the burned and sunken ships of the Occitanian fleet. Deeper and deeper he went, witnessing marvels of the sea, of creatures he’d never known existed.
There was a city in the farthest depths, one that glowed like stars and the moon, and strangely, the waters parted, and he found himself, his spirit-self, walking up a beach toward a massive set of jutting, block-shaped cliffs rising from the ocean floor. A gap between the cliffs revealed the ancient city. He didn’t know if it was the ruins of Leoneyis or something even grander, but he marched up the shore, where he found a crowd had gathered to welcome him. He recognized the water sprite, the Ondine, that he’d seen along the shores near Glosstyr. She bowed her head to him and smiled in welcome.
Joy struck his soul like a bell when he saw the Elder King and Emiloh, hand in hand, smiling at him in pleasure, beckoning him to join them. He saw Bennett and Goff, their grins wide and handsome. Goff’s hand was resting on the shoulder of a young man, Drew, his son, who’d been murdered by Jon-Landon Argentine. Drew smiled and waved at Ransom in recognition. The feelings of joy swelled past the point of endurance. He didn’t understand how that was possible, when moments before he had departed his living family and borne witness to their grief and sadness. But this feeling, this reuniting with others, caused such an enormous swell of compassion and tenderness that it subsumed the other emotions for the moment. He heard cheers and clapping and recognized William Chappell, the knight he’d so admired as a young man, who’d died in that long-ago standoff with Lord DeVaux. And Bryon Kinghorn stood next to Ransom’s brother, Marcus, both greeting him with wide smiles. Gervase was there, beaming with pride and gesturing for him to come.
Ransom stood in the surf, seeing a strange glow around his body, a glow that matched all of theirs.
And then one of them strode toward him, Devon the Younger King, handsome as he had been in life, and the two embraced as the surf crashed around them but did not touch their beings.
“Welcome to the Deep Fathoms!” said his friend and king. “Come . . . join the feast! We’ve saved a place for you, Ransom!”
There is a legend that the Aos Sí have the power to raise the dead for one night a year. In the darkest night of midwinter, I tramped through the snow to a barrow mound I’d built outside of Glosstyr. I sang the song of the dead. I sang of my love for Ransom and my desire to see him, for just one night. I wept, and my tears burned the snow.
He did not come. Some legends are the withered hopes of the living.
When the spring arrived, things became new once more. The trees, which had appeared dead, came to life once again. We looked forward to returning to Connaught for a visit. I will want Sibyl to be queen there someday, and she will need to know her people and the ways of our land. She has an old soul inside her and a fondness for Lord Toole. She doesn’t believe in the Aos Sí. To be honest, I’m not sure I do anymore either. Sometimes legends are just that.
The boys could not be kept from Ceredigion if I ordered them bound with ropes and hung upside down. In one more year, they will become wards to other nobles, a practice that has gone on since the land was birthed from the sea, I suppose.
I miss Ransom. I miss his silence, the tenderness of his eyes, his gentle hands. I miss the love we made and the wars we fought. We had more feeling in our short years together than some couples have in a lifetime. I felt something powerful at Ransom’s funeral rite—a deep sense of rightness, as if the Fountain, if it is real after all, was pleased with him.
My father endured the loneliness after Mother’s death. I must learn to do the same.
A letter came today from Constance of Brythonica, inviting me to visit Ploemeur. There are things she feels she should tell me, things that might relieve any suspicions or worry I had about Ransom and her. She would like, if possible, and if the negotiations with Occitania go well, to return Josselin castle to my family as a rightful inheritance. Very gracious of her.
I believe that I shall acquiesce. I didn’t know Constance very well. But if she is anything like her name implies, perhaps we shall become friends after all.