Page 59 of Broken Veil
What a ridiculous thing to say.Cadell’s inner voice was as cutting as his audible one.Of course you can. Do you think either Lachlan or I stopped loving Seren after she died? We both still love her; we simply love you too.
It was such an odd connection to realize that the three most important men in her life were all grieving her Shadowkin, a woman who looked exactly like her. A woman Carys had never known.
“I feel like a very poor replacement for Seren most of the time.” She whispered the admission, almost hoping Cadell hadn’t heard.
“That’s as ridiculous as saying that you cannot love two people at the same time.” Cadell stretched out his legs and crossed them at the ankles. “If anything, she was a shadow of you.”
“I know that is technically true, but it feels like she was more alive than me somehow. She was a warrior, a princess, a?—”
“She was exactly who she was raised to be,” Cadell said. “And yes, she was all those things, but she also…”
“What?”
I don’t want to be disloyal, Nêrys.
You could never.
She was sad. She was deeply lonely, and she never wanted anyone to know it.
Carys looked over her shoulder again, continuing the conversation in her mind.Why do you say that?
She knew that by marrying her, Lachlan was giving up the crown of Scotland, and she felt like he was sacrificing too much. She was angry that she didn’t like Eamer more. She never had a mother. She wanted to like her father’s wife, but she didn’t. She didn’t know how to relate to her. She had no true friends.
She had you.
Cadell nodded slowly. “Who is your best friend?”
She opened her mouth, then closed it.
“It is not me.” He smiled gently. “It should not be me. Our bond is far deeper than friendship and far more complex. Your best friends are Laura and Kiersten. And Seren had no one like that in her life.”
“She was a princess in a tower,” Carys whispered.
“No, she was a woman and a leader,” Cadell said. “And that can be very lonely in either world.”
Carys thought about her uncle, who would probably make her heir to the throne of Cymru if she showed even the slightest inclination for it.
“I never want to be a queen.”
“I know you do not.” Cadell lifted a massive hand and patted the top of Carys’s head. “Therefore, it is good that you love the blacksmith more than the prince.”
“I do.” She might have felt a sad kind of yearning for the simplicity of her love for Lachlan, when she was a teacher and he was a wandering musician in a small town by the sea. But Carys barely recognized that woman anymore. Her life was full of magic she had once only read about in books.
Godrik yanked open the door to the van, nearly shoving it off its hinges in his inadvertent enthusiasm. He held up a blue cup with a cartoon dog on it. “It is both frozen and bubbly. A wizard must have created this.”
Carys squinted. “Is that a slushy?”
Godrik waited for Naida to climb into the van, holding the door for her.
The fae’s eyes were round and bright; she was holding her own blue cup. “I have never seen a blue raspberry before, but they must be the sweetest berry in the Brightlands to be flavored in this way.”
It tookover five hours to drive from York to Scone, but Carys was hit with the most curious sense of homecoming when she saw the bright green roof of the Murrayshall Garden Center. She glanced to her right to see Duncan nearly grinning.
“Excited to be home?”
“Yes, it feels like it’s been a year since I’ve been back, not two months.” He reached over and took her hand. “Mary’ll be excited to see you. Andrew too. They’ve been itching for you to visit again since you left last year.”
“Really?”
