She loved Silvan more than life itself, though she rarely let him know that. There was something stuck in her craw, a thing she’d never make peace with. Silvan hadn’t given his first wife the binding Druid vows of mating. That had heartened her when he’d asked her to wed him, but in three and a half long years, he’d not offered them to her either. And so long as that distance was betwixt them, she would never be able to make completely free with her heart. She would always wonder why, always wonder how come he didn’t love her enough. A woman hated knowing she loved her man more deeply than he loved her.

Silvan was, as she’d expected, in his tower library, one hundred and three steps above the castle proper.

He was also, as she’d expected, downright broody.

“I brought ye cocoa,” she announced, placing the tray on a small table.

He glanced up and smiled at her, though with an utterly distracted air. For a change, there was no book on his lap. Nor was he seated at his desk, scribing away. Nay, he was in a chair near the open window and had been staring sightlessly out it.

“’Tis Dageus, is it no?” Nell drew a chair close to his and sipped at her cocoa. Silvan had long had a fondness for the costly chocolate drink, and during her pregnancy she’d developed a taste for it herself. “Why dinna ye tell me all about it, Silvan,” she encouraged gently. She knew what he was thinking, for she was worrying the same things. Dageus had always been her favorite of the Keltar lads, with his wild passionate heart and private pains. As she’d watched him grow, watched the world harden him, she’d prayed a special lass might someday come along for him, as Gwen had for Drustan. (Gwen who’d gotten the blethering binding vows from her husband!)

Silvan’s brown eyes sobered and he raked a hand through his snowy mane. “Och, Nellie, what am I to do? What I felt in him six moons past, before he left, is naught compared to what I now sense.”

“And there’s naught in the tomes ye’ve been searching that tells how to reimprison them?”

Silvan shook his head and exhaled dismally. “Not a blethering thing.”

“Have ye checked all the tomes?” she pressed. Since the day Dageus had left, Silvan had been a man fair obsessed, laboring from dawn till dusk on his studies, determined to find something to pass on to Drustan, where they’d both suspected Dageus had gone.

Silvan replied that he’d thoroughly searched both his tower library and the study belowstairs.

“Did ye check the chamber library?” Nell asked, frowning.

“I told you I checked the study.”

“I dinna say the study. I said the chamber library.”

“What are you talking about, Nellie?”

“The one beneath the study.”