“There, I have said it. I have told the truth. I want you to do the same, Sibeal, even if it breaks my heart. It hurts me to see you there, closed up within yourself, holding your feelings tight lest they disturb that druidic calm. If you think me presumptuous, if you think me misguided, tell me so. If you find my words offensive, shout at me, rail at me, strike me if you will. And if you can for a moment entertain that your future might follow a different path, one on which I might walk beside you, speak of that now. I challenge you, Sibeal. Or would you spend your whole life shut in and locked away, like the kernel of a nut that never ripens? You give much of yourself; you are full of compassion and wisdom. But if you never let that other self flourish, the one who weeps and rages and doubts, the one who once melted into my arms as if seared by the same flame as I, then you will not lead a full life, not even if you are the wisest and most devout druid in all of Erin. That is the opinion of this poet, scholar and fool who never learned how to keep his mouth shut. Please, Sibeal. Please let me hear what is in your heart.”

She gives a great, choking sob and folds her arms around me, and I gather her close.

“I’m sorry,” she says with her face against my breast. “Felix, I’m so sorry. I don’t see any way it can be. You speak as if this were easy for me, and it’s not. When I thought you were drowned, I . . . it was . . . I’ve never considered abandoning my vocation before. At that moment I was only a breath away from it.”

My heart is leaden. I hear in these words that she will not be diverted from her path. Yet her body tells me what her mind will not allow her to say, that mind so trained to control. I feel in her embrace that she wants me as I want her; that we are a perfect complement, two halves of one whole. Oh, Sibeal, let go. Let go for just a moment.

“The gods still need me,” she says. “There was Svala and the skin . . . I could not have spoken to her as I did without the gift the gods have granted me. How can I set their will aside for my own selfish ends?”

Selfish. It does not feel selfish to me, but absolutely right. Sibeal lifts her face to mine and I kiss her. Our first kiss, and likely our last. I taste salt tears and the aching delight of what might have been. And still, even now, I cannot keep silent. “Ask yourself this,” I say. “When your every breath is taken in reverence, why do your gods choose to punish you so?”