She looked up at the sky and took a ragged breath, fighting off tears. Fuss was whining faintly, pressing himself against her feet but looking at Gryff, confused. “I think me it would be a great sin, to take you from your people.”

“I care naught for sin or virtue.” He looked at Fuss sitting at her scuffed boots, and at the purse of nails on her belt, and how a strand of hair clung to her neck. “Gladly would I give my soul into the fires of hell if you would have me, even if only for a day.”

She made a choked sound, more tears than laughter. “And I would call you a fool to make such a poor trade.”

He was a fool. Only a fool would ever have let her go. Only a fool would stand here, wanting to touch her, seeing her tears, loving her even more because she thought of his people and of him, but never of herself – yet still he was as uncertain as a boy, because she did not say yes.

“Will you have me, Nan?”

She was very still. Her gaze passed over him, from the scar at his ear to his fine woolen tunic, his belt studded with gems and the ancient golden brooch that pinned his cloak.

“I would have my Welshman,” she answered, switching out of Welsh.

He heard the hope, the yearning for what they had been once – alone together and nameless as they wandered hidden paths – and shook his head. It could not be that again.

“You must take a prince,” he said. “Though the king may strip me of all titles and possession, it is a prince you would take as husband now. And if God grants that I am permitted to rule though I have defied my king, then I will rule, Nan. With you at my side as lady.”

The look she gave him was helpless, despairing. “I am no lady.” Her eyes dropped to her hands where they gripped the edges of her cloak, as though they had never done anything but scrub floors and peel turnips. “You’ve seen it yourself, what I come from. I could never be no great lady.”

He looked at the stubborn set of her mouth, the little frown that put a crease between her brows.

“Already are you greater than any lady I have ever known.” She made a scoffing sound, opening her mouth to dispute it, but he would not hear it. It angered him beyond reason, that she believed she was so small. “You think yourself insignificant, born to naught, and yet you are here. You are here, Nan, and why? You have said it is not yours to choose who will rule this place, but it is you who has ended the last threat to its prince. With your own hands. Already you have chosen.”