Naamah's Blessing - Jacqueline Carey [203]
It was Jehanne who pulled away, genuine anguish in her voice. “Raphael, I cannot stay!”
His hands fell to his sides, turning to fists. “You break my heart,” he said in a low tone. “Over and over.”
“We break each other’s hearts,” Jehanne said quietly. “But we mend them, too. And someday, we may all understand Naamah’s blessing. Now I must go.”
“Don’t —”
Now, Moirin. Jehanne’s thoughts spilled through mine, still tinged with anguish. Please!
I released the twilight.
Just like that, Jehanne’s presence was gone, extinguished like a candle. I dropped to one knee at the suddenness of it, drawing a ragged breath, my head hanging low. My lungs were my own again. My hands, splayed on the floor of Raphael’s bedchamber, were mine—shapely enough, but scratched and callused with the ordeals of travel, my skin golden-brown once more.
“Moirin.”
I looked up at Raphael.
His face was stony, and I knew without another word spoken that he hated me more than ever for having borne witness to this encounter.
“I will keep my oath,” he said. “As I expect you to keep yours. Will you be in the Temple of the Ancestors at dawn on the morrow?”
I nodded.
“Good. Now get out of my sight.”
SEVENTY-ONE
Outside the palace, it was later than I had reckoned. Time moved differently in the spirit world, and it seemed the presence of Jehanne’s spirit had altered the flow of time in the twilight, too.
I returned to the temple of the Maidens of the Sun, thinking to take a moment to collect my thoughts before the sacred fire. A lone figure knelt before the firepit, tending to the coals. She glanced up at my approach.
“Machasu,” I said in greeting. “You do not sleep?”
She shook her head. “I was thinking of Cusi. I, too, wanted to spend the night in prayer.” In a graceful, reverent gesture, she stirred the coals. Low flames flickered. “I did not think you were coming here tonight, lady.”
I knelt beside her. “Nor did I.”
“Is all well?” she asked.
My diadh-anam burned steadily in my breast, calling to Bao’s in the distance, no longer in danger of being extinguished on the morrow. Jehanne had kept her promise. She had found a way to free me from my conflicting oaths. Whatever else happened come dawn, I would not be cast out of the presence of the Maghuin Dhonn Herself for eternity because I honored one oath, and broke another. Bao would not die because there was no way out of the oaths that bound me.
For that, I was grateful.
And yet it did not remove the burden of choice from me. It only altered it. Now I could obey Raphael without losing my diadh-anam.
But I could still refuse him and be forsworn if it were the only way to keep him from attaining his goal.
“Lady?” Machasu prompted me.
“I do not know,” I said honestly. “But before I went to see Lord Pachacuti, Cusi told me all was well. She is closer to the matter than anyone. If anyone would know, it is her.”
“I think so, too.” Machasu stirred the coals again, then fed them a few sticks of firewood. “Do you think she is frightened?”
“A little, maybe,” I said. “But she has great faith.”
“Do you think it will hurt?” she asked.
I clenched my hand on the newly reopened wound. It hurt, but it had hurt a great deal more when Cusi had cut me with the dull-edged bronze dagger. And although I wanted to utter a soothing lie, it felt like blasphemy in this holy place. “Yes,” I said quietly. “I think it will hurt.”
“I think so, too,” Machasu repeated. “But it will be swift. And then the ancestors will welcome her into the highest heaven.”
I nodded. “So we pray.”
“Yes.”
My handmaiden fell silent, tending the fire. I gazed into the shifting embers and breathed the Five Styles, praying to the Maghuin Dhonn Herself to guide me. The great magician Berlik had broken his oath and been forgiven in the end, finding atonement