Chapter 12

The Bright

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R obert moved his mouth up the furrow of her spine, taking his time to kiss every inch of it. He had meant it to tease her gently awake so that she might kiss him back and take him in her arms again. But if it did not cause her to wake and respond, then it allowed him to savor the taste of her naked skin at his leisure. By the time his lips reached the nape of her neck, he decided he was not sure which he wanted more. They were equally delightful prospects and he really only cared that she was here in his bed.

In spite of the cold, he'd pulled the bed curtains open just enough to let in the sun. It was too irresistible, to make love to her in the daylight and to watch it touch her nakedness while she slept next to him. It was in daylight that he had always known her, had always pictured her during their years apart.

She came awake with a soft little sigh and pushed herself against him, comfortable and inviting, her bottom pressed against his erection. It banished all the idle thoughts from his mind and set off an animal hunger. His teeth against her neck, her hand coming up to the back of his head to hold him there, the wetness that was between her legs when his fingers parted her flesh – it was feeling and not thought, nothing but raw sensation. He took her from behind, her gasps and moans fueling his movements until they both collapsed together, limp and sweaty limbs entwined in the sunlight. All of him ached with the familiarity of it, the delicious delight.

Eventually she turned over beneath him, sighed, and declared herself desperately thirsty.

"Is strange the servants have not come," he noted, eyeing the window where the light streamed through. "It is well past the hour to break fast."

"I have told them they must not disturb us unless we call them. Last night, I thought if..." Her smile dimmed a little, as though she was loathe to introduce even the idea of uncertainty. "But first I told them to leave drink and some small refreshment. There will be that, at least, in the outer room."

"Then it is for me to bring it here, for you have sworn that you will not leave my bed," was his happy reply as he pulled himself up on his elbows to hover over her. "And I shall hold you to it, cariad." He kissed her deeply.

"You may hold me any way you like," she answered, smiling against his lips.

He indulged in one more kiss before dashing out to find the tray. The air was cold so he was quick, but still there was something lost when he returned to her. It was the first bit of awareness, the first recognition that they could not go on as though the world had fallen away. She was looking at the little window of opaque glass, an echo of sadness in those great gray eyes. Daylight had its drawbacks.

"If we must reckon with reality, let it not be on an empty stomach," he said, and set the tray on the small table beside the bed. He poured sweet water from the jug into a cup and as he handed it to her, she held out one of the stuffed wastel breads from the platter. She tucked her feet under her and drank. He sat in front of her in the same pose, their knees touching, and broke the bread in half. There were bits of apple in it, and he held out half to her.

She took it, but did not eat. Instead she pulled a blanket across her shoulders, another across her bare legs, then drank and watched him eat. Finally she set the cup aside and looked down at the bread.

"It shames me that I have thought little, and spoken even less, of the lordship that will be yours, what best to do with the lands and for the people..." Her fingers were now pinching off bits of the bread, rolling it between her fingers restlessly. "And verily, they will be your lands and your people – yours to rule as you see fit and as your king commands it. Nor would I want ever to dictate or interfere."

He tried and failed to suppress his grin. "But?"

She looked up, those heavy lashes sweeping in a way that drew all his attention, the answering quirk of her lips unmistakable before she pressed them together. "But I have considered such improvements to Dinwen as I think are not amiss, which will make it a fit place to live until the castle that Edward commands is built. I would...if you will not object, I would know where towns will be chartered, so to have some say in their placement if it is possible."

"I am not such a vain fool that I must pretend a superior wisdom in this matter," he said easily. "They will be our lands, and our people. Not mine alone."

He was gratified to see her relax at this, and take a bite of the bread before laying out her thoughts. Indeed it seemed to release a floodgate of words and ideas, her speech gathering momentum so that she often forgot her mouth was full as she detailed her plans. She seemed to be thinking it through for the first time, ideas sprouting forth and feeding off each other, her brow furrowed in thoughtfulness as she flicked a look up to him from time to time, asking, "Would that not be too soon?" or "Unless you would prefer to invest elsewhere?" or "Is that right? Is there aught I have forgotten to consider in my haste?"

It was a joy to watch her come alive with it. For the first time since their shared youth, she did not carefully choose her words. He thought he might like to stay here and listen to her unguarded talk and eat bread until he became fat and old. And happy. Terribly, terribly happy.

When she began to ask about the vineyards and the money to be made from the wine – how much he expected and what must go back into the French estate to best increase its yield – he dragged himself out of his happy stupor to answer her. He estimated barrels of wine, the cost of transport, and at her suggestion the price he might pay for his own ships. "I will have my steward send copies of the ledgers," he said finally, knowing she had an itch that would only go away when she could see every fact laid before her.

"I will satisfy myself that your steward is honest," she said, straightening her spine a little. "But though I would learn enough that I am not entirely ignorant, I would not take the management of it from you. It is the Welsh lands that are to be made England that I would concern myself with, as much as you think it good and proper."

"I will gladly heed your counsel in the matter of those lands and those people." He would not have thought it needed saying, but she had the air of someone who was determined to stake a claim. "Already have I said that I am not such a vain fool, Eluned. You understand these matters more deeply, just as I better understand the French lands."

A smile spread across her face, a lively delight that she buried in the cup from which she drank. She swallowed and looked up at him with a more sober expression. How like her, to forgo the use of her smile, her eyes – all the feminine wiles that might easily dazzle a man, make him agree to anything. She never used them, at least not with him. She never had, and he wondered if she even knew the power she possessed.

"The towns, I think," she was saying. "If we can but influence their number and where they are placed...Know you yet how far west it will reach?"

"Simon will know," he said, busying himself with pouring more drink for them both. "He can say what boundaries are considered, and where Edward is thinking to build castles and towns."

Something must have shown in his face at the mention of Simon. As he pulled his blanket up further to cover his shoulders, he felt her touch on his knee, gentle and uncertain.

"Have you argued with your brother?" She said it almost teasingly, but when he met her eyes she took her hand from his knee. "You need not confide in me, Robert. Only please do not say that all is well when your disquiet is plain to me."

To think she believed he would not tell her of it, when he had longed for it from the moment it had happened.

"Never have I had a hope of deceiving you, nor even the desire. I am only reluctant to tell you of my own witlessness and pride." He curled his fingers around his cup, to have something solid to hold on to. "I have an uncommon talent for deceiving myself, I think."

He told her, then, of everything his brother had said and all that his father had done. He could not banish the near memory of Simon's unhappy face as he confessed the ruse, nor the specter of Kit's concern these many months and his wife's worry, their son's unjust treatment. All because he could not let go the habit of spiting his father. He did not try to put it into words, but trusted her to understand the breadth of his failings. He only said that he had not thought his father would strike so low a blow. "Beneath the bitterness, I believed there was some love between us. Nor did I even know I believed that, until I saw there was not."

"I do not defend your father," she said, and he knew she was choosing her words carefully, stepping lightly. "But do you not think he called it love for you that forced his hand? He wanted you here."

"He wanted the lands and titles, the rewards that a king might bestow on a de Lascaux. Advancement of the family name and fortunes, not love, was his concern."

"It is cold," she acknowledged, "and calculated, that he would search a way to make you reach for a power you would otherwise shun. But I know well what it is to wish a thing for a beloved child, and when that child refuses it – how easily reason is lost. It does not mean there is no love there."

"Would you do it?" he challenged. "For your son or your daughter, would you lie and deceive and imperil those they love best, only for a chance to force them to become what you want them to be?"

It almost alarmed him, the arrested look she gave him, the long, long pause before she answered. There seemed a thousand things that passed through her eyes, yet they were still and calm, looking steady in his. "No," she said at last. "No. I would do that and more to protect them, if I must, but never to change their desires. I might plead and cajole, and beg they will not forget how well I love them."

"And if you pleaded for years and still they never heeded you, haps you would not care so much for them." He shook his head, dismissing that. It made him feel like a sulky child to complain of it, and it did not distress him as much as his brother's part in it. "It is Simon who deserved better of me."

The telltale pinch appeared in her lip. "It is Simon who will profit most from this scheme. Is no wonder he agreed to it."

"Nay, Eluned." He reached out a finger to touch her tight mouth. "In faith I had only to open my eyes to him even once, to see that he...well, to see him at all. But I saw only what I wanted to see, and paid him too little regard."

She pressed his hand against her face, turned her lips to kiss his palm and said, "It is my failing too, husband. I have dwelled overlong on my own troubles when I had only to observe him, and consider the matter, to guess a little of their scheming. I am well practiced at finding deceit, when I care to watch for it."

A faint sound came from the outer room, so tentative that he would have dismissed it as imagination if Eluned did not turn her attention there. She called out and, with a quick glance to him for approval, told the girl to enter the bedroom.

It was one of her ladies who carried in a fresh jug of water and asked if they would have wine or ale, and if my lady would dress now and which gown she preferred. He watched in delight as Eluned lifted her chin and waved her hand in a gesture that transformed the blanket she wore into a robe befitting a queen.

"I would stay abed, Joan, and when you have brought enough refreshment for us to make our meal here, you may leave us until the morrow. If we have need of anything, I will find the servants."

The girl was trying her best not to gape in amazement. She nodded finally, and said as though it might change Eluned's mind, "Lord Morency has arrived at court, my lady, deep in the dark of night."

But Eluned showed no surprise at this. "Pray you will discover for me when he returns to Morency. He may carry such messages as I have to send, but I would know if he will remain here at Edward's side or if he stays only the night."

"Three days, my lady. I heard him tell Lord de Bohun, who did answer that the snow may keep many here longer when it comes."

"Does it snow?" Eluned asked, suppressing a yawn. She could not have slept more than an hour this morning.

Robert stirred. "I will study the sky a moment," he said, dropping a kiss on Eluned's head and reaching for his tunic.

Eluned's broad yawn followed him as he walked behind Joan to the outer room, where servants were bringing plates of food. Robert pulled the tapestry away from the window. There was only a dusting of snow on the ground and the air felt too icy cold for there to be snow today. In the sky he saw only sun and no gray clouds on the horizon.

When the servants withdrew, he filled a plate with bits of meat and cheese and bread and fruit, unsure of what she might want and so taking a bit of everything. He carried it into the bedroom, burning with curiosity to know why Ranulf of Morency had arrived in the dead of night – and why Eluned seemed already to know all about it.

But when he came to the bed he found that she had fallen asleep, curled on her side and burrowed into the covers. He held the plate under her nose and poked hopefully at her shoulder, but she did not wake. Thus thwarted from hearing whatever she might know, he stretched out beside her and smiled to think of her declaration that even the king's army would not drag her from his bed. They would be left undisturbed, by her orders, all this day and night.

It was enough to watch her sleep, the light of day shifting slowly with the hours over her face. Day and night, awake and asleep, she was his – just as he had longed for through all that glorious summer, and just as he had secretly imagined every day since. No longer was she but a cherished memory, nor a ghost he conjured, but a woman real and whole. With secrets in her heart and sorrow in her past. With lines in her forehead and glints of silver in her hair – and a birthmark on the right of her throat, not the left.

He did not love the memory any less. But he loved this more.

H e ate, and she slept . He hummed what he could remember of the Welsh air she had taught him when they were young, and she slept. He combed her hair through his fingers and braided it loosely, and still she slept. Finally in the late afternoon as the light was dwindling, after she had turned over and wrapped her arms around him and issued a deep sigh – and continued sleeping – he closed his eyes too.

When he woke it was full night and he found himself alone in the bed. There was only an instant of alarm before he realized she was there, in a circle of lamplight near the window. As the wild beating of his heart slowed, he saw that she had ink and pen. She was bent over the small table in deep concentration, her ink-splattered fingers carefully scratching words onto the parchment. She seemed to pause often, considering every new word before setting another down.

She noticed his wakefulness after a while, and her eyes lifted up to him. Such a simple thing, but it was filled with a sudden and breathtaking beauty. She had such lovely eyes, large and gray under heavy lashes that swept a graceful arc in the soft lamplight.

"It is for Gwenllian," she said, lifting the page. "I shall send it with her husband."

It seemed remarkably short, but he did not say so. Instead, he grinned and stretched and said, "Have you finished it? Then come back to bed, my love."

He could not say what was in her face as she looked back at him, for the briefest of moments, before lowering her eyes and saying, "I must wash the ink from my hands."

She set aside the parchment and reached for a small jar of oil that she spread over her fingertips, rubbing it in to loosen the ink before she wiped it off with a wet cloth. It was only because he watched so closely that he saw she spent too long at the task. Her hands did not shake, but they moved restlessly. He thought back to what her son William had said to him: there was something between herself, her daughter, and the king. And that things had changed between Eluned and her daughter, in a way that made Gwenllian uneasy and fearful.

Robert waited to see what Eluned would tell him freely, those restless hands of hers worrying at the ink under her fingernails. But her silence went on too long, so he broke it.

"You were not surprised to learn Morency is come." He watched as she twisted the cloth in her hands. "You left the hall in the midst of the revelries. Did you meet him?"

Her hands stopped. "Not by design," she said, and now he could not mistake the misgiving in her face. She dropped the cloth into a bowl that sat on the table next to her letter.

Robert sat up in the bed. She had put the lamp near the clouded window-glass, so that the light was reflected a little, and now she looked at the glow of light as she had looked at the stars. Like she could read the story of the world and all its workings there.

"William told me," he murmured, ignoring the almost imperceptible flinch at the mention of her son, "that so long as your secrets do not risk his rule of Ruardean, he need not know them. And so I will say to you now, Eluned: I care not what schemes and secrets you may hide, so long as they do not stand between us."

"And if it is the telling of it that will stand between us?" She pressed a finger to the surface of the table, and they both watched her fingertip turn white.

"You need not fear it," he said. "Eluned. Cariad." She did not look up. "There is naught you can say will kill my love for you."

She looked at him then and her face seemed younger than he had ever seen it, but with eyes older than he could imagine. He could see she wanted contradict him, and also saw her decide that it was futile. There was a sudden and absolute stillness in the room. The faintest wisp of dread began to rise in him, like smoke.

"Last night I left the hall and went to Roger Mortimer's room with the intent to kill him."

He felt the words fall with a thud inside him, and knew she said it plain and blunt only so he could not claim to mishear her. It left him too stunned and bewildered to do anything more than wait for further explanation. The color was high in her cheeks, a flush that had no place in a room that had seemed to him to become impossibly cold. When moments had passed and he did not reply or look away, she stood.

Her movement freed him from the dumb astonishment and set his mind to work. He knew her passion well, had savored the lingering taste of it on his tongue for eighteen long years. This was not passion, not a sudden and uncontrollable rage. All her distance for these many months, the careful watchfulness, the ice in her veins – she had been planning this.

"Why?" he finally asked, and it felt as though he had not used his voice in days.

"Why." Her eyes grew bright, the flush in her cheeks deepening. Here was the feeling that had lurked, hidden for all these months. "Because he betrayed Llewellyn, a foul trick that felled a kingdom. Because Wales is lost, Wales is no more, and he will be rewarded with the spoils." A look of bitterest disgust showed in her face as she looked down at the lamplight, fists tight at her sides. "Because the blood of my countrymen is on his hands, because he lusts after helpless servant girls, because he killed those Welsh boy princes, because I could not bear to think of him alive and well while my uncle is cold in the ground and everything I fought for, everything I loved–"

She pressed a hand hard to her mouth to stop her rising voice. Her breathing was ragged, her eyes wide, avoiding his. Finally she lowered her hand from her mouth, pulled the heavy robe tight around her, and spoke more calmly. "There is such a hate has lived in me, Robert. Of late I perceive it was but a seed planted many years ago, in that same moment I knew I could not have you. It has grown like a weed in a corner of my heart until it has overgrown all my spirit. Until I am become nothing but anger and despair."

He looked at her hands clutching the robe about her, the knuckles white. How different they were, that even in the first moment of their parting he had never thought to hate anyone except, perhaps a little, her husband. "I only drank too much, and fought at Kenilworth, and ran to France."

"How lucky for you," she said, "that you could choose whither you may come and go."

The thread of bitterness ran through her voice like a silver sparkling of river far at the bottom of a deep and empty gorge. It froze the tongue in his mouth, warned him off judging a lifetime of circumstance he could not even conceive. It would be easier by far to say nothing more about this.

But no, he must not be deterred. He had no illusions about the limitations of his own wit. There was more here than he would ever be able to guess. He could only force his benumbed mind to the most important things.

"Does Mortimer live still?"

"He does."

"Will Morency..." He had heard the rumors, the whispers about her daughter's husband. "Will your son-in-law kill him in your stead?"

She gave a choked laugh. "Nay, it was he who stopped me."

He put aside the crop of questions that sprang up at this remark. Mortimer's sins were only part of what drove her, he was sure. He thought and thought, made himself do what he should have done with his brother. He pulled his knees up, wrapped his arms about them and considered. He thought over everything William had said to him. The image of her on her knees before the king was burned into his memory.

"What was there between you and your daughter, and the king? More than just the marriage the king made and you did not approve?" She seemed frozen, staring without seeing at the outer edge of the circle of light, where it gleamed against the window. "Tell me, Eluned."

It was something in her quiet breathing that told him she had not expected this, and something in the way she would not look at him that said she was fighting against tears. He wished she would come to him, sit next to him on the bed, but she looked rooted to the spot. She took a long, slow, deep breath and wrapped her arms around herself.

"The king suspected my Welsh sympathies, and feared I would join the force of Ruardean with Llewellyn's army. He thought I meant to be a part of the rebellion. And so he married my daughter to his favorite, that it might constrain me from acting and that Ranulf might learn if I plotted against the English crown. It was clever, but I..." She pressed her lips together a moment, judging her words. "I had spent years in making plans for my daughter that had naught to do with marriage. She was betrothed to old Morency, did you know?"

He shook his head, at a loss for what other plans she might have had for the girl if not marriage, but content to know she would tell him.

"Old Morency – Aymer was his name. He was cruel to all, but especially to his wives. He had already outlived three, each younger and healthier than the last. I objected to the match, not least because Gwenllian was only a girl of ten. But Walter said an angel had visited his dreams to tell him she must be married to this man without delay. I could convince him only to marry her by proxy, to keep her from him as long as possible, until she was older." She looked up at him briefly, a quick and searching glance that asked him to remember how little she herself had liked being married young. "So he was her husband when he was murdered in his bed, and I made the claim that the lands which were her marriage portion should not go to Ranulf, who had killed him and who was named heir to Morency. There were details enough to keep the lawyers and clerics debating all those years and so long as it was in dispute, it was easy to claim she could not marry."

"And Walter?" he asked.

"He was in the Holy Land then, and cared for nothing but his visions. Already had I arranged that Gwenllian might be made to learn such defenses as may protect her." Now she lifted her chin in that old gesture, thrusting it out to dare the world to tell her she was wrong. "She learned the sword, and studied battle tactics, and in secret led the best men of Ruardean."

He could feel his mouth fall open slightly, his amazement too great to hide entirely. He only stared and held his breath to suppress the astonished laughter that threatened. If he laughed, she would think he mocked her. But it was only that it was so like Eluned, to come up with a scheme so bold and unexpected.

"Have I not said you dreamed you no small dreams?" He put a hand through his hair, and let himself smile a little in wonder. "Had she any skill at the sword?" he finally asked.

"More than even I dreamed possible," she answered with an unsuppressed pride.

He tried to imagine it, that little girl from his memories grown into such an improbable woman. And her mother, who fought to keep her unmarried, educate her as a man, all of it certainly in secrecy – what had it cost Eluned, to arrange and sustain it all? He would ask her, one day. But not today.

"What were these plans for her, then," he asked instead, "that were interrupted when the king insisted she marry? You ensured she had defenses enough against any man, even one as villainous as Ranulf."

She looked at him a long time, and he could not decide if her eyes asked for pity, or pitied him a little. "Edward was right, cariad," she said at last. "I planned a war against him, for the freedom of Wales. Llewellyn was to lead the country, and Gwenllian was to lead the army."

When Robert said nothing in response to this extraordinary statement, she turned her eyes back to the reflection of light in the window. "She used to dream of it, you know. There was another Gwenllian long ago, a legend who led an army against the Norman invasion. My Gwenllian wanted to be that. There was a time she spoke of little else. I had only meant her to learn defense, but then it became so much more. I should have seen..."

"Seen what?"

She shook her head a little, and a barely discernable crease appeared between her brows. "It was a youthful passion. There were other things too she wanted to learn, just as eagerly, but I did not let myself see it. It was my own misjudgment to think she would always want to lead the rebellion. When the moment came to act, she refused it. Though the king had her married by that time, still she might have declared for Wales. And so did I say it to her. Yet she refused."

He could hear, clear and distinct, the sting of betrayal in her words. It surprised him, after what she had seen in the last twelvemonth.

"You watched as the last Welsh rebel leader was torn to pieces," he said quietly. "Surely you must thank God that neither of you were part of such a plot."

"Never did I dream such a fate would meet those who fought against Edward. In my worst imaginings, she only died in battle."

She said it so simply. As her words settled in the room, his blood chilled by degrees.

"You have no illusions what war is," he said in disbelief, unable to hide how it appalled him. "You remember the carnage of Evesham, what they did to Montfort. Yet you would give your daughter to war?"

She turned her eyes to him in a hard stare. She looked him up and down, unclenched her jaw at last, and spoke in a thoughtful tone. "You condemn it."

"I do."

"Because I am a woman, or because she is?" Her head tilted a little to the side, her brows lifting in inquiry. "If I send my son to fight for his lands and his people, am I an abomination? For how many fathers have survived battle, only to throw their sons into the jaws of war?" She turned her face again to the window, and the lines in her forehead were etched in high relief. "Valor and honor. Unnatural and heartless. Choose which you call it and I will tell you the sex you describe."

If he had been capable of finding words, he did not know what he might have flung at her. But he was speechless, his mind grasping for a way to articulate his outrage, and that saved him. In his silence there was only what she had said – valor and honor – and the resignation in her face as she seemed to wait for his protest.

But he could not protest. She was right. He was angry only because she was not wrong. He loved Kit's son dearly, could not think of the boy without a gentle pang in his heart, but when one day little Robin would ride off to fight in battle – and he would, of course – Robert would not condemn the father who sent him, or the king who ordered it. He would not even question it. Duty, honor, and glory. He could say to her that such was reserved for men alone and that women should be protected from it at all costs, but that would only invite disdain. She was Eluned, who scorned what the world expected of her and of her daughter, and who would say only a fool thought anyone could truly be protected from anything.

"It was doomed," he said, the only honest objection to be made. "You would send her to fight a war that could only end in defeat, and put her neck in a noose."

Nothing in her expression changed, but the blood drained from her face. She did not look at him.

"She said that very thing." A long moment of silence, a faint lift of her shoulder. "I say she doomed all hope by refusing to fight. We will never agree. But hear me: only two years before, Llewellyn moved against Edward and I did not aid him, nor commit Gwenllian to the fight. The time was not ripe, and it failed. There was only one perfect moment to strike, and it passed us by. That is what I see. My daughter will ever see it differently."

His eyes fell to the parchment where she had written her message to be carried to Gwenllian. "What message do you send to her?"

Eluned turned her face up to the ceiling, a deep breath and her eyes blinking back the tears he knew she did not wish to shed. "Only that she was right to send her husband to me. That her best-loved cousin spoke of his devotion to her in the hour of his death. That I will come to her soon, and hold her children in my arms. That I love her more than my own breath."

She did not move, blinking up at the ceiling, her swallow traveling the graceful length of her neck. Robert thought again as he watched her of what William had said, of everything she had told him. He had known she was bold, had loved her for it from the first. But he had never imagined her plotting rebellion, giving her daughter to war, planning to murder a man with her own hands for revenge. He remembered a pretty picture of a young lover lost. It was every bit as foolish as how he had thought of his brother all these years, and his father: as though they did not exist except as he remembered them, as though they did not live outside his imagination at all. What a blind fool, to think they remained unchanged and waiting, like puppets put in a box between performances.

Eluned looked again at the window, the reflection of light in the glass. She put a hand to it and watched the thin sheen of frost melt under her palm.

"I have told you that losing you was the making of me," she said. "And you see now, who I am become." She turned to face him, her hand falling to her side. "It was not only the lack of you at my side. It was the losing of you – the way I was made to choose and the way I have been made to live. It is not like water that is made ice, and can thaw to be what it was. It is like iron made into steel, and beaten into a new shape. It cannot be unmade."

Something stopped him from rising, going forward to embrace her. It rattled at the back of his head, the sort of troubling thought he had always disregarded in favor of his own more agreeable version of things. Now he let himself think it, and say it.

"It was only in service to your plans that you did consent to marry me."

She hesitated only a moment before she nodded, a slow and silent assent. "To bring me to court, where Mortimer was like to be. I thought you would be changed as I was, after so much time." She bit her lips together to still their trembling. "But I knew you would still be a good man. I knew that could never change."

It did not cut as deep as he expected, to know she had not married him out of affection. It was far more difficult to accept how far was this woman from the girl he had loved so long. All these things that had changed her... No, she could not be unmade.

No more could he stop loving her.

He held his hand out to her. When she stepped forward and took it, he said, "Only lately have I watched you sleep and thought how the memory of you is nothing to having you here, warm and living and real, in my bed."

She tightened her fingers around his. "She is not completely lost, the girl you loved. But I cannot promise, cariad, that I will ever be who I once was. I will try." Her smile was slight and sad and heartbreaking. "I miss her too."

He brought her hand to his lips and warmed her fingers with his breath. She stood before him as she was, with no apologies, no promises. She gave him the truth of herself, and he could only give her the same.

"The first thing ever you said to me was that it mattered less which belief I held, than that I believed in a thing enough to die for it. And I chose then, in the moment you said it, what I believed." He put his hand to her face, the same way he had touched her in the dark when he thought it would be the last time. "It is you I believe in, Eluned. Even when you do not. From that day to this one, and for all the days left to me, I believe in you."