Page 311 of The Daughters of Avalon
“As certain as I can be. Worst case, we pass by and travel on to Drakewich—another three or four hours thereabouts.”
“I don’t know if she can endure.” Marcella hitched her chin in Rhiannon’s direction. “We’ve been traveling endlessly.”
“She’s strong,” he said with a note of pride. “My guess is she may very well outlast both you and me.”
“Nay,” Marcella said. “You overestimate her. She’s vulnerable. After five years locked away with those manacles, I’m surprised she’s made it this far without so much as a complaint.” There was a note of admiration in the paladin’s voice, though Cael didn’t remark upon it. Finally, Marcella nodded, perhaps beginning to see the wisdom in his plan.
Not only would it circumvent the need to travel so far under open skies, but it might also further serve to confuse Morwen, because she would, no doubt, anticipate the distance they would travel since leaving Blackwood, and chances were that her birds would be circling that area, waiting.
Ultimately, she must already have discerned their intended destination, and that’s where she would concentrate her search efforts. Nobody could anticipate they would double back—for what reason?
He tossed the stick away, and Marcella leaned forward to brush at the dirt, erasing the proof of their stratagem. “Go on,” she said, following his gaze. “See to your wife. Far be it from me to keep you from your greatest desire.”
Besotted as he was, Cael didn’t need to be told twice.
He stood at once, brushing off his breeches as he considered the woman he was once involved with. It hadn’t lasted overlong, and though neither of them had any true love for the other, herealized Marcella’s feelings ran deeper than his. Alas, though, he had never anticipated that his heart would be free again, or that he could ever love anyone so deeply. He’d told her the truth all those years ago—that his heart belonged to Nesta. It simply was impossible to compel a heart to love anywhere but where it wished. He understood that Marcella must feel tormented by his change of heart, but he’d also never foreseen how Rhiannon’s presence in his life would affect him.
Like her mother, she was an irresistible force.
“I am sorry,” he said, after a moment.
“For what, Cael? For discovering that you are still capable of love?”
He stood silently, wishing for Marcella’s sake that he could deny it… but he could not. His one point of comfort was that he knew he was never Marcella’s true love either.
She peered up at him then, her green eyes soft with affection. “The heart must love who it loves,” she reasoned. “And I, too, have my own cross to bear.”
“Jack?” he said quietly, and when she nodded, he said, “It’s obvious.”
“Indeed,” she said. “Alas, though… I remember a time when my heart was so easily led as well.”
This, he realized, was not a reference to him at all, for their relations had been anything but simple, or easy. He knew who it was she was speaking of, and it wasn’t him, nor was it Jack. And this, too, was something they’d shared, because, though his love for Morwen wasn’t Eros, Morwen was a poppet master of the greatest degree, expertly pulling her strings. Terrible though she might be, she knew how to engender loyalty, and… yes, even affection. Those who followed her, followed her devotedly, knowing the venerable lady behind the veil. In her weakest moments she bled like everyone else, and Cael had once cared for her as well.
How could he not?
But then, again, love was not the proper word for what he’d felt for Morwen Pendragon. He’d never once shared her bed, nor, until recently, had she ever invited him.
There was only one woman he had ever truly loved, and not even Nesta had inspired in him the passion that his beautifuldewinebride could inspire.
Rhiannon was very much like her mother in some ways, but in every way that mattered, she was nothing like her at all.
During his time in this realm—at least this time around—the few times he’d fallen into another woman’s bed, it had been joyless and uninspiring. No other woman, save Rhiannon made his cock so hard that he walked around in a state of constant arousal, like some beardless youth with more seed than sense. Even now, he could think of little else but having her… undressing her, at long last, dragging her beneath him, and drinking from the font between her thighs.
Somehow he understood that what he now felt for Rhiannon—this wildly impassioned fire—Marcella had once felt for Morwen. They’d been friends before they were lovers, at a tender age when love must have seemed sweet and new—two gloriously pagan young women unashamed to explore. Some part of him envied her doughtiness, to love where she willed. He lingered a moment longer because he felt compelled to speak aloud what they both knew.
“In the end, she must be destroyed,” he said.
Marcella nodded gravely, averting her gaze. “I know,” she said, and a single tear slid down her cheek. “The only true question remains… who will be the one to do it?”
Chapter
Twenty-Five
Cael could barely concentrate on the business at hand for all his lusty thoughts of his wife. Therefore, he slipped away when he could, to find himself a quiet spot, thinking everyone would be better off if he could only reduce a bit of tension.
He couldn’t do much about their current circumstances, nor the travesty hanging over their heads, but there was something he could do to relieve a bit of stress—or, at the very least, settle the beast in his breeches.
Devil take him, he wanted naught more than to drag his new wife into these woods and consummate their vows at long last, but this was not the time for that.
