“Go on,” she said, and despite her best efforts her voice cracked.

“Very well.” Flannan took a mouthful of the mead; all the time his eyes were on her. “The monk who wrote this document tells how Lily came to St. Olcan’s in great distress, at night. How he and some other brethren accompanied her back to her home. There they found her parents, along with those of their retainers who had been home at the time, lying dead in their beds. Lily was distraught; incoherent. But in time she confided in this one monk, recounting a strange sequence of events leading up to that night. She had gone to the old tower . . .”

Geiléis sat silent, her back rigid, her mind working very fast indeed, as he told the tale. Lily and Ash, the tower, the rescue, the sweet time of hope—all too brief—and then the curse. Ash would become a monster; was already becoming one even as the fey woman spoke. Lily would have one chance to save him every fifty years; one chance to see him restored to human form and freed from the tower. She would live long enough to see it happen. She need not be alone—if she could find folk to serve her, they too would live on as long as she needed them. But Lily herself could not perform the task, the terrible task that would ensure Ash’s release. Geiléis winced as Flannan described that task; that she already knew its nature did not make it any easier to hear. The document stated, Flannan said, that this task must be performed by another woman, one who agreed willingly to help. The morning of Midsummer Eve was the only time the thorns would yield. While the curse remained unbroken, the small fey folk of the forest would be bound to tend to the monster, who would sleep the years away, all but the fiftieth summer and the summer before, when he would scream his pain every day from dawn till dusk. Lily must tell the story over and over, so she learned her lesson. The magic would ensure folk forgot. They would not notice that she stayed young. The small folk were bound to secrecy; should they attempt to tell the story to a passing stranger or indeed to someone in the local community, they would bring down a terrible sorrow on all their kind. For when Ash was imprisoned, so was their king; he was condemned to dwell within the thorny hedge until the curse was lifted. Each time they disobeyed the rule of silence, the barbs would pierce him harder.

And? Geiléis waited for the last part, the part that Blackthorn must not learn. The part that nobody else must learn.

“It is a terrible tale,” Flannan said. “And strange indeed. This Lily must have been an ancestor of yours.”

She could not speak. That was all? Brother Gwenneg had left out the final words of the curse? Could she dare to believe it?