Page 283 of The Daughters of Avalon
“Did he love you?”
She seemed to think about it a moment, and then shook her head. “Nay,” she said. “I think not, although we were… affianced… for a short while.”
“You were?”
“Aye, we were,” said the paladin with a nod.
“What happened?”
Marcella lifted a brow. “Well… you could say…” She tilted her head as though to consider how best to say it. “He became… a different man.”
“He changed?”
Marcella nodded. “Oh, I’d say so. Very much.”
Rhiannon frowned, peering down at the vial in her hand, her throat suddenly too thick to speak.
Goddess only knew, she loved Cael so desperately, although apparently this meant something different to each of them—or did it? If their roles were reversed, would she, indeed, give up all that mattered to her… for Cael?
The answer was “nay.”
She would not.
Some things were bigger than both.
Rhiannon would no more sacrifice another of her sisters for Cael than he would give up whatever it was that Morwen promised him.
Only now, she considered that mayhap, it was not greed that drove him…
Perhaps he, too, fought for something greater—something for which he’d been willing to betray Morwen and perhaps even make an appeal to the Papal Guard.
“What is this?” Rhiannon inquired of the vial in her hand.
The witch-paladin smiled faintly. “Amaranth, with a bit of asafetida to drive away demons. Also, a pinch of bryony to amplify the strength of my brew.”
For many years, Rhiannon had encouraged Arwyn to pursue alchemy because hermagikwas so sorely lacking. Her sweet sister never took the art to heart. In fact, although alchemy wasn’t so powerful as the manipulation of theaether, it did have its merits. “Interesting,” she said, curiously, and lifted the vial to her nostrils, then said, “Pew!”
Marcella laughed.
“Do I also scent metals as well?”
“You have a good nose,” said Marcella, with approval, as she continued to administer the contents of her own vial. “’Tis brewed with a little copper dust, agate, malachite and amber—all to summon a guardian angel.”
“Angels?” Rhiannon asked, with surprise, as she began to move in the opposite direction as Marcella, carefully sprinkling the contents of her own vial.
Her sister Elspeth had oft claimed that wherevermagikdwelt, angels did not—only why that should be so, Rhiannon didn’t know, because there was nothing particularly sinister or unnatural about thehud, lest it be dark.
“In truth, I have never seen one,” Marcella confessed, with a rueful smile. “But it can’t hurt, can it?”
Rhiannon returned the smile. “We can use all the help we can get against my demon mother.”
“Ah, but she’s not a demon,” said Marcella pointedly, and something about her tone prompted Rhiannon to stop everything she was doing and tilt the paladin a curious look.
“What is she then?”
Marcella inhaled deeply and shook her head. There was a sadness in her expression that Rhiannon didn’t comprehend. “Not yet,” she said, only this time there was no enmity in her tone. “When Jaques returns, I’ll explain everything.”
“So, tell me… if you did not agree with Jack… what changed your mind?”
