“She offered me forgiveness once, even though, she said, she knew I did not want or need it. Could you please tell her I ask for her forgiveness now, even though she has already given it?” As he watched, Robin changed into the horse again. “After all, what would we have if we didn’t have forgiveness?”
Morgan rubbed his eyes. “Good-bye, puck.”
“Good-bye, sorcerer.” The horse paused. “Despite all that came between us before, I say fare thee well.”
Forgiveness.
Forgiveness might be given, even if one has never asked for it.
Raising a hand, Morgan watched the horse gallop away. Soon the puck was lost in the distance.
Morgan still wasn’t done. He had a culling to do, and when he reached the Hounds’ encampment outside Shrewsbury, it was bitter, ugly work.
By the time he, Harrow, and a few trusted others had finished, he had cut the number of Hounds from nearly eighty down to just thirty-two. When the last of the murderers and the criminals had been killed, he went off by himself and vomited until he had nothing left in his stomach.
Forgiveness was hardest to give to oneself. Even when he knew the geas had compelled him to do things, he still remembered doing them. But nobody could walk that road of forgiveness for him. He would have to find his way by himself.
He disbanded the rest of the Hounds and sent them off to live their individual lives, and then, when he lifted his head from all the wrongs he had worked to set right, he saw nothing ahead of him. Nothing, but what he chose for himself.
I order you to go find joy wherever you may, with whomever you may—to find love, if you like, with someone clever, kind, and educated while you sightsee all the beauty in the world.
Oh, Sidonie, he thought, while the pain in his chest swelled to overflowing. How could you chain me and then just give me up?
He couldn’t do it.
He couldn’t just walk away, and his inability to do so had nothing to do with the geas and everything to do with what they had shared for such a brief time.
I order you to follow your heart and your best impulses.
So he did. He cast a spell of finding that had brought him across the country, to this private farmhouse by the moors. And when she saw him, what did she do?
She ran away, and kept running.
What the hell?
Had he injured her that badly?
Leaning his forehead against the door, he said, “I know you can hear me. I know just how good your hearing is now. Sidonie, please don’t run away anymore. We need to talk. I need to talk to you.”
He paused to listen, but nothing happened.
Well, something happened, but it didn’t seem to have any connection to him. He could hear her footsteps as she walked away. They went up a flight of stairs. She had retreated to the upper story.
Bewilderment mingled with pain. Her inexplicable behavior was unlike anything he had imagined when he’d thought about finding her. He had never felt at such a complete loss before.
He did the only thing he could think to do. He kept talking.
“Even though I want very badly to come in, I would never force open a door you closed on me,” he said. “But I need to talk to you, so I’ll wait here until you’re ready. It’s okay if it takes some time. I’ll be patient.”
A window overhead opened. As he looked up, Sidonie threw a paper airplane out. It sailed downward in loops until it nose-dived into the grass.
Walking over, he picked it up and unfolded it.
Scrawled across the blank page, she had written, Please leave. I’m afraid to talk to you. I’m scared something I might say will trigger the geas.
Ah. That.
Understanding illuminated everything.
Folding the paper with care, he tucked it into his pocket, turned, and sat on the porch stoop. Leaning his elbows on his knees, he looked over the acres of green pasture where a flock of sheep grazed.
“I love you,” he told Sidonie. “I think I fell in love with you during one of my visits to you in the prison. It was when you snuggled against my side. You said, ‘I can’t really trust you, can I?’ Yet you still put your head on my shoulder. Do you remember?”
Above him, she whispered, “Yes.”
The single, tentative word shot hope into him. Lacing his fingers together, he looked down at his hands and thought, Be easy. Don’t blow this.
“I thought, how could you possibly do that? How could you reach for me, when I tried to warn you away? But you didn’t have many choices down there, did you?”
She sighed. “I had that choice. Nobody compelled me to do it. I understood I wasn’t supposed to trust you, but I did anyway.”
“You were in an impossible situation,” he said. “They should never have done what they did to you.”
“They should never have done what they did to you either.” Her voice was soft and held so much sadness, he wanted fiercely to put his arms around her, but he couldn’t. “I shouldn’t have done what I did to you. I knew it, and I did it anyway. You were dead, and I-I couldn’t—”
Her words cut off abruptly. Hurting for her, he clenched his fists and waited, but she didn’t continue.
Bravery, he thought, was facing the impossible and saying, What’s next? Which was exactly what she had done.
“When I think of how you confronted Azrael, I’m speechless,” he told her. “And when I think of what you managed to win from the god of Death, I’m in awe. Here’s the thing, my love. If I had faced what you had faced—if I had seen you killed, I would have done exactly the same thing as you did. I would have done anything I had to do in order to keep you. Anything. I realized I would do that the first time we made love.”
“But the one thing he offered was the one thing I knew you couldn’t accept,” she whispered. “I took it anyway, because I needed to know you were somewhere in the world, even if you weren’t with me.”
The pain in those simple, whispered words was so clear, his eyes dampened. What a desperate choice she’d faced.
“I’m here to ask for your forgiveness,” he said.
“You? What do I have to forgive you for?”
Leaning forward, he put his head in his hands. “When I awakened, and you told me what you’d done, I reacted badly.”
There was a small silence. “Well, for God’s sake, you had your reasons. You had died.” Her voice broke, but she picked up again quickly. “Died and then woken up again to discover you were still under the geas. I’d say you get a pass for reacting badly to that, Morgan.”
He chuckled as he wiped his eyes. “Okay, but I still hurt you, and I can’t take that back. I wish I could.” Standing, he stepped back from the house to look up at her. She had crossed her arms as she leaned on the windowsill, and she looked so vulnerable and beautiful at once, he wanted to claw his way up the side of the house to her. “I’m sorry it took me a few weeks to work through it. I had a lot of baggage I needed to clear out of the way, and a lot of years of struggling against the geas. Those years taught me I wasn’t supposed to trust anyone who held me in their control, but I trust you anyway.”
Her gaze flared wide, and her expression came to life, but not with the kind of emotion he had hoped so much to see. “You—trust me?” she repeated bitterly. “How could you be so stupid? I don’t trust me!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
It took a second for that to sink in. He demanded, “Why not?”
“When I saw you walking down the street toward me earlier, the first thing I wanted to do was order you to stay!” she shouted. “That’s why I ran! That dumb god never should have offered it to me. You can’t trust me with the geas. But I also don’t ever want to see you look at me the way you did back in the great hall.”
“Please believe me, if I could take that back, I would.” Frustration gnawed at him. She still kept her distance. She still wouldn’t walk down to open the door for him.
But she had opened a window.
Striding away, he turned back to the house and took a running leap at the window. As he grabbed hold of the windowsill, she stumbled back. Quickly, he hauled himself inside. When he straightened, she sat on the edge of a bed, staring at him, both hands clapped over her mouth.