And a good few minutes yet from being capable of speech, he stroked her hair once with an effort and closed his eyes again. Because it was always so. The act of love a blind, convulsive reaching back into a falling dark. Every time. It took away his very name, the shape and movement of his bones; and between times he wondered if there would be a night when he would go so far that there was no returning.

Not this night, though. Soon he was able to smile at her, and then to give thanks and gentle words, and not without sincerity, for her sweetness ran deep, and he had needed badly to drink of such a thing. Slipping inside his arm, Marna laid her head on his shoulder beside his own bright hair, and, breathing deeply of her scent, Kevin let the exhaustion of two waking nights carry him to sleep.

He only had an hour, though, and so was vulnerable and unfocused when the presence of a third person in the room woke him. It was another girl, not Erron’s, and she was crying, her hair disordered about her shoulders.

“What is it, Tiene?” Marna asked sleepily.

“He sent me to you,” brown-haired Tiene sniffled, looking at Kevin.

“Who?” Kevin grunted, groping towards consciousness. “Diarmuid?”

“Oh, no. It was the other stranger, Pwyll.”

It took a moment.

“Paul! What did—what’s happened?”

His tone was evidently too sharp for already tender nerves. Tiene, casting a wide-eyed glance of reproach at him, sat down on the bed and started crying again. He shook her arm. “Tell me! What happened?”

“He left,” Tiene whispered, barely audible. “He came upstairs with me, but he left.”

Shaking his head, Kevin tried desperately to focus. “What? Did he… was he able to…?”

Tiene sniffed, wiping at the tears on her cheeks. “You mean to be with me? Yes, of course he was, but he took no pleasure at all, I could tell. It was all for me… and I am not, I gave him nothing, and… and…”

“And what, for God’s sake?”

“And so I cried,” Tiene said, as if it should have been obvious. “And when I cried, he walked out. And he sent me to find you. My lord.”

She had moved farther onto the bed, in part because Mania had made room. Tiene’s dark eyes were wide like a fawn’s; her robe had fallen open, and Kevin could see the start of her breast’s deep curve. Then he felt the light stirring of Mania’s hand along his thigh under the sheet. There was suddenly a pulsing in his head. He drew a deep breath.

And swung quickly out of bed. Cursing a hard-on, he kicked into his breeches and slipped on the loose-sleeved doublet Diarmuid had given him. Without bothering to button it, he left the room.