Naamah's Kiss - Jacqueline Carey [102]
"Such an eldritch little thing she was!" he marveled. "Such dark, wild eyes! I knew right away she must be of the Maghuin Dhonn. No one else mortal could have looked so uncanny in that place."
"Did it scare you?" I asked.
He shook his head. "It drew me."
"Why?"
"I don't know," he said softly. "Only that it did, and that Naamah smiled on it. You've a look of your mother, you know."
I smiled wryly. "Here they say I've a look of you."
"Both," my father acknowledged. "For I knew you in an instant."
It was true. I stole glances at him as we walked through the royal hunting grounds and I told him of my childhood and youth in Alba. After two weeks in the City of Elua, I was far more familiar with my own appearance than I'd ever been in my life. The line of his jaw and throat—I'd inherited those. His full, generous lips, too, although I was quite certain my smile didn't have the same calm beauty. I looked at our clasped hands. Like mine, his fingers were long and tapered. They squeezed mine in warm sympathy when I told him about Cillian.
We paused in a glade where he showed me a spring half-hidden beneath browning ferns. The water was cold and good. My father perched on a low, rocky ledge, his robes spilling around him.
"Is that why you left?" he asked. "Cillian's death?"
I touched the dying fronds with the tip of one finger. Already, the plants were half-asleep, dwindling into their roots. "No. Do you sense plants? What they're feeling?"
"Sense them?" He knit his brows. "How?"
"Like these." The brown fronds rustled when I stroked them. "They're going to sleep for the winter."
"I can see that they are," he said. "That's not what you mean, is it?"
"No." I blew a few dry spores from the back of my hand. "I thought mayhap it was a gift of Anael's line. You're of his lineage as well as Naamah's, are you not?"
My father looked surprised. "How did you know?"
"The priestess at the temple told me," I admitted. "But I've seen him in my thoughts, too. When I was little, I called him the man with the seedling."
"Naamah, too?"
I nodded. "The bright lady. The first time I saw her was the first time I remember Oengus coming to visit, and he and my mother went into the woods to make love."
"Oengus?" he inquired, then waved away the question. "No mind, that's not important. Is that why you came, then? Did the gods of Terre d'Ange call to you?"
"No." I shifted restlessly. "It's not that they didn't, but…" I decided to simply ask. "Do I have a destiny?"
My father blinked. "I imagine so."
"But you don't know what it is?" I pressed.
"It's not given to any of us to know our destinies," he said gently. "Is that why you left Alba?"
I sighed. "Aye. There's a sacred rite among my folk where the charge was laid upon me. I want to tell you about it. I do, truly. But I've never spoken of it to anyone save the Maghuin Dhonn."
"Then wait. If and when you're ready, I'm glad to listen." He smiled. "You might tell me of your adventures in the City. Folk are saying you've a miraculous gift for healing and you've stolen Raphael de Mereliot from the Queen."
I made a face. "Did he look stolen?"
"Not particularly."
Once I began talking, the story poured out of me. How Raphael's carriage had struck me in the street, how he'd taken me in and cared for me. How my diadh-anam had responded to him. How I'd let him use me as a pawn in his quarrel with the Queen; and then how we had combined my gift with his skill to save a man's life at the King's fete.
Even though I could see he had questions, my father listened without comment, letting the torrent flow. He didn't speak until I paused to draw breath.
"A complicated matter," he murmured.
"It gets worse," I said miserably. I told him how the King's Poet had convinced me to schedule an assignation at Cereus House, how I had gone and found Queen Jehanne there waiting for