“You promised,” he said.

I could not look at him.

“There is no choice,” I said again, and this time tears began to spill, and I brushed them angrily away. This was helping neither of us. But I could see the long nights ahead for him, and I dared not look up to see the emptiness returning to his eyes.

There was silence, and he did not move, and after a while Finbar called from outside, “Sorcha! Are you ready?”

Simon’s hand grabbed for the knife, and quick as a flash mine shot out and caught him by the wrist.

“I cannot keep my promise,” I said shakily, “but I hold you to yours. Hold on for today; then let Father Brien help you. Finish the story the way I would have you do it. You owe me this, if no more. I trust you, Simon. Don’t fail me.”

I released his wrist and he took up the knife, raising it close to my face so that I was forced to look up. The cornflower-blue eyes gazed straight into mine, and there was a wildness in them that told me his nightmare was right there in front of him. His face was chalk white.

“Don’t leave me,” he whispered like a small child afraid of the dark.

“I must.” It was the hardest thing I had ever said.

“Sorcha!” Finbar called again.

There was a quick movement of the blade, and Simon held a long, curling strand of my hair in his fingers. With the other hand he offered me the knife, hilt first.

“Here,” he said. Then he turned his back on me, waiting. And I opened the door and went out into the rain.

The lady Oonagh. I felt her presence before ever I saw her. I sensed it in Finbar’s silence as we rode home under a thunderous sky. I knew it from the cold wind that whipped tree branches into prostrate surrender as we passed, from the churning turbulence of the lake waters, from the scream of a gull harried on its flight by needles of frozen sleet. I felt it in the heaviness of my own heart, every step of the way. She was there and her hand was on all of us. I knew there was danger. But this foreknowledge did nothing to prepare me.

Finbar deposited me in the courtyard and took himself off to the stables to tend to the horse, for this was a task the boys always did themselves. It was good to be home at last. I longed to slip away quietly to my own quarters, or to the kitchen—some hot water, a fire, and dry clothes were all I really wanted right then, and time on my own. But the doors were flung open and in an instant there I was in the great hall, my cloak dripping onto the floor and my boots leaving a trail of mud prints, and though my father was there, all I could see was her, the bride, the lady Oonagh.