Ciarán smiled. “You seem unusually ready to put words in my mouth,” he said.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “But it seems obvious what advice you would give me. You’ve devoted years of your life to the gods. If it weren’t for the fact that Conor is your brother and that you’d never challenge his authority, you would have been chief druid long ago. You are respected throughout Erin for your scholarship and your wisdom. You’re not going to counsel me to drop it all and run off to get married.”

“True, Sibeal, I would not do that. I rarely tell anyone what to do, least of all a fellow druid.”

I waited for him to say The answer lies within you, or There is learning even in loss.

“Sibeal,” he said, and I saw a look on his face that I had never seen before, a look of the most profound sadness, “I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone else. Not one day goes by, not one, when I do not mourn Niamh’s death. Not one hour passes when I do not wish my life had been different, and that I had not lost her a scant three years after I found her again. Every moment of the day she is in my thoughts, tossing her hair, glancing at me over her shoulder, dancing on the sward, cradling our child in her arms. If I could have her back I would quit the brotherhood without a second thought. She was the light of my life. She was the other part of me. We were young when we first saw each other, as you and Felix are, and from the first meeting of our eyes I was changed by her. We loved each other in the way you spoke of, with body and spirit, forever and always. Oh, Sibeal, I know exactly what the two of you are feeling. And I also know what it is to experience a lifetime of regret for a path not taken. Death robbed me of that path. I had no choice. But you are blessed, Sibeal. You do have a choice.”

I was so shaken by the passion of his words that I could hardly respond. “I’m sorry.” My voice was uneven. “And you lost Fainne, too. I saw my own daughter, Ciarán. I saw the three of us together, in a little house in the forest. Felix and me and a lovely child with eyes like mine. It hurt me to see her, and to know that it is my choice that she never be born. That feels so wrong. It goes against everything I know as a druid. It goes against the knowledge that all living things are sacred.”