Naamah's Blessing - Jacqueline Carey [202]
He turned his back on her. “It is not enough.”
She smiled with regret. “Then I will ask you a lesser boon. Raphael, you must release Moirin from her oath.”
“No.”
“Moirin will lose her magic the moment she honors it,” Jehanne said simply. “And you will fail.”
Raphael turned back to her with a scowl. “What new lie is this?”
“No lie.” She shook her head. “I am not able to lie anymore. The oath Moirin swore to you is in conflict with another. She is Desirée’s oath-sworn protector. While you mean to take my daughter to wife and mold her spirit, Moirin cannot honor both oaths. Her diadh-anam will be extinguished.”
He raised his own brows. “And why, pray tell, would Moirin not tell me such a thing if it were true?”
With unrelenting honesty, Jehanne exposed my plan of last resort. “Because she is willing to make that sacrifice to prevent you from succeeding.”
Ah, gods! I would not have consented to this if I had known it was what she meant to do. I thought of banishing the twilight, but the damage was done.
Peace, Moirin. Jehanne’s voice poured through my thoughts once more. It is not finished.
Raphael frowned in thought. “You came here to sway me from my course, Jehanne. It makes no sense at all for you to warn me of such a pitfall.”
“I came here to offer you the truth,” she said calmly. “It is what I was meant to do. More than that, I cannot know.”
For a long moment, they gazed at one another, and a faint hope flickered in me that somehow, against all odds, Jehanne’s words had reached him. It died when Raphael shook his head. “No,” he said. “I do not trust Moirin to keep her word without her oath; and I do not entirely trust that this is not some trick of hers.”
“In your heart, you know better,” Jehanne murmured.
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “There is another way. Desirée, your daughter… what is the nature of the oath Moirin swore?”
“The Montrèvan Oath,” she said. “Moirin mac Fainche is sworn to regard Desirée’s interests as her own, to seek to defend her from every danger, and hold her happiness as a matter of sacred trust.”
“Elua have mercy! How did that come about?” Raphael muttered. “I can’t imagine the realm would approve.”
“Daniel willed it so,” she said. “He saw that Moirin was able to love the spark of my spirit that lived on in our daughter, as he himself was unable to do. Daniel trusted her to care for Desirée’s happiness. And in that, I do believe he chose wisely. Moirin has gone to great lengths in her effort to protect my daughter.”
Raphael bowed his head. Locks of tawny hair touched with silver in the twilight spilled over his brow, obscuring his gaze. “It’s why she came here, isn’t it? Searching for Thierry?”
“Yes.”
When he lifted his head, his eyes were wide and clear. “I will not do as you ask. I will not turn away from my course here, Jehanne. And I will not release Moirin from her oath. But…” His chest rose and fell as he took a deep breath. “I loved you, Jehanne. More than you knew. For the sake of all that has passed between us, I will do my best to love your daughter.” His mouth twisted. “Not as I threatened. Not as a bridegroom, but as one who might have been her father had matters been otherwise.”
Jehanne was silent.
“I will have the power to protect her,” Raphael said softly. “Gifts such as Moirin never dared dream of possessing, political power such as Thierry could never have hoped to wield. I will hold your daughter Desirée’s happiness as a matter of sacred trust. Everything I can do on her behalf, I will. I give you my oath. Does that not suffice to resolve the conflict?”
It did.
Raphael de Mereliot might turn the rest of the world upside down, raze empires in Terra Nova, but so long as he was pledged to protect Desirée’s happiness, my oath to do the same was no longer in conflict with my oath to aid him.
“Yes,” Jehanne whispered. “Ah, gods! Raphael…”
He closed the distance between them in a few