This would not do. It could not be so. I would not allow myself the indulgence of such fantasies again. I would banish them from my mind. For my commitment was already made, if not formally until I spoke the words of my pledge, then most certainly in my inner heart. Who could deny the call of the gods? I had known my path since I was a child not much bigger than that little girl, my daughter who would never be born.

Later in the afternoon I left my sisters and returned to the infirmary, only to find that Ardal had gone out walking with Gull.

“They were heading toward the place of the boat burial,” Evan said. “I don’t imagine Ardal will get all the way there, even with support, but he insisted on trying.” I took my cloak back off the peg where I had hung it, intending to follow them. “They’re probably best on their own, Sibeal,” my brother-in-law said quietly. “Ardal’s had a long time of looking weak in front of you. That sort of thing is shaming for most men, especially when the woman is someone he cares about.”

“But—” I was stunned by this. Ardal had not seemed to mind my seeing his weakness in those early days, and he’d been ready enough to talk and to listen. But I could not discount Evan’s words. This was a man’s insight, something I would not have thought of myself. The treacherous image of earlier came back to me as I retreated to my chamber: that impossible future in which I was Ardal’s wife and the mother of his child. Just thinking of it, I could feel his arms around me, his fingers stroking my hair. All the sweet things he had said to me whispered through my mind, a gentle spring breeze across a harsh winter landscape. Inside me I felt something unfurl with tentative grace, reaching for the light.

I prayed. I sought wisdom in the voices of the gods. I murmured my way through passages of lore. I studied the charcoal runes I had marked on the walls that first day, before I knew Ardal existed. I watched the shadows lengthen.

Eventually they came in. I heard Gull’s voice, low and encouraging, and Ardal’s patchy response, a word, a pause, another word. Sitting behind the curtain that screened my chamber, I knew how tired he was.