He was a fool.
That was all. A fool, and he should leave as soon as possible, so as not to torment himself any further, not to keep pining away like a bawling bull-calf for a woman he had no right to love, no right even to look at. If it weren't for that blasted boat still being a useless shell he'd leave as soon as this storm cleared. He had put them off, the repairs - though he had never admitted, even to himself, that he had delayed them deliberately to avoid the possibility of leaving, despite her cryptic warnings.
But there was no point in wasting another moment of his life on this island. He could, of course, be of use. He owed her that much; he could take her warning to the Sons of Don, to that blasted prince she was so fond of and then, having fulfilled his obligation and paid his debt, he could excise her from his thoughts, until she were a mere memory, no weightier than any other.
Geraint tossed another chunk of dry turf on the fire with a grunt. It had been so much easier when he'd had no one to care for but himself. He could find that again; that carefree wandering, untethered, unconcerned, going along with whatever way the wind blew him. Only perhaps not to sea again; that treacherous thing that had lured him here, trapped him, surrounded him...enraptured him.
Now it mocked him. It would never stop reminding him of her. He would never go near it again.
The wind shrieked outside, tore at the thatched roof. He laughed out loud, bitterly. All that work. What for? Perhaps after he was gone she could find some homeless fisherman to move back in to this place...no, she wouldn't. This was her cove; she came here to be alone. He had disrupted her solitude; she would be happier, too, maybe, when he'd left. She could use this hut, then, to take shelter if it rained, until his improvements failed, fell apart from neglect. Unwittingly, and not for the first time, an image of her sitting here, before the fire, burned into his mind's eye. Sharing his bread. Listening, rapt, to his stories. Smiling that wry smile. Laughing her surprised laugh. The firelight, glittering in her hair, reflecting, golden, in her eyes, gilding her skin.
Stop. He pulled his mind back from its inevitable trajectory, the dangerous visions that filled his dreams and robbed him of sleep. Torture, exquisite torture — another thing he would be free of without the constant threat of her presence.
Thunder crashed, close and startling; no, it wasn't thunder; it was his own door; someone was pounding on it. Geraint leaped up in alarm. A voice cried, faint over the wind and rain, familiar; his heart pounded at his throat as he flew to the door and threw it open, all his anger forgotten.
Angharad stood in the doorway. She was pale, breathless, and drenched; the hem of her gown was in muddy tatters, shoes ragged, hair unbound and streaming; but it was her eyes – wild, flashing desperate, dangerous fire – that drove all the rules from his mind; he grabbed her by the shoulders and pulled her inside, out of the storm.
"Are you mad? What were you thinking, coming out in this?" Fear made him rougher than he intended; he pushed her onto his wicker stool and wrapped a blanket over her shoulders, reaching for a branch to stoke up the fire. She grabbed his arm and made an impatient gesture toward the hearth; the flames leapt up, roaring, throwing heat and light into the room. Geraint, arrested, dropped the branch, cursing his own uselessness under his breath.
Angharad threw off the blanket. "I'm not cold," she said, in a voice that made him blanch.
"You're shivering."
"I'm not—,"
"You're soaked." Geraint looked away from her, his throat tight; she had no cloak or wrap of any kind and the sodden cling of her garments left little to the imagination. He heard her sigh.
"It doesn't bother me, you know." She murmured something incomprehensible, and when he turned to look at her again she was as dry as he was, the last beads of moisture sparkling like jewels set in the fiery waves of her hair.
He took a breath, measured and slow. "You could have been killed out there. The lightning—how did Tan even—"
"I walked," she interrupted, and he gaped, staring at her.
"You what?"
Angharad stared back, unrepentant. Her face had lost its pallor; instead she looked flushed, but it may have been only the firelight. Her goddess mien was upon her, in the tilt of her head and the flash of her eyes. "Actually, I ran. Go ahead," she challenged him. "Say it. I'm reckless and foolish."
"Reckless, yes," he allowed. "Not foolish. I suppose you have a reason."
"I do." She stood up, paced the small room in agitation, stopped before the hearth, her arms wrapped across her chest protectively. "I just...oh, Geraint, I've just..." She clamped both hands to her face, as though she had only just realized something horrifying. "I've just fought with my mother." Her eyes widened. "I've fought with my mother."
Geraint checked a temptation toward feeling somewhat relieved; she looked too distressed; perhaps opposing one's mother was another thing forbidden on Llyr, all the more when one's mother was the queen. "Haven't you ever argued before?"
"Of course we have," she blurted out. "But not like this, not..." She broke off, staring through him at nothing, unnerving him, and then took a breath. "She says I must wed by the end of the summer."
The bottom of his chest seemed to drop away, plummeting heart and breath to some dark abyss. It took a long, painful moment to retrieve them. He opened his mouth to speak, shut it again, clenched his jaw; his voice strained through his gritted teeth like a thief through a locked gate. "Wed whom?"
Her eyes, full of forbidden, unspoken things, focused on his face. "I don't know," she gasped out, "I don't know. I must wed an enchanter. It is the law. And I don't..." Her voice broke again, and she did not finish the thought. "She is sending couriers to the mainland to draw out anyone eligible. I shall be forced to choose one...some man I have never met, never heard of until that moment." She covered her face and turned her back to him, as if afraid of what he might see, and Geraint clenched his fists in an agony of impotent fury. If rage alone could slay from a distance, every unsuspecting mage within a week's journey would have dropped dead in the moment.
He stood helpless, staring at her back, painfully silent - there was nothing he could say; nothing that would not give away everything, that would not cross every boundary he had so carefully and unwillingly maintained between them. Why had she come tonight to tell him this? It had always been her destiny, no matter how they had both ignored it; nothing had changed except its immediacy. Why come here now - just to torture him with the knowledge that it must be sooner rather than later? What on earth did she want him to do about it? He could make no claim to or for her, could not change the law; he was nothing to her. He should have left weeks ago, should have listened to that inner warning that staying would bring trouble upon them both. When had he grown so weak?
Angharad stood frozen, her shoulders stiff and curled over as though she were in physical pain; Geraint yearned to reach out to her, and hated the unknown man destined to do so with every fiber of his being, hated himself for not being more, for not being worthy of her. Thunder rumbled and the rain beat against the shutters and door, filling the void of their silence. After a long moment she turned back to him, lowering her hands, her face pale and drawn once more. "There is more," she muttered. "Does the name Achren mean anything to you?"
Icy spiders ran down his spine, but it was a relief to be able to answer something. "I am a collector of stories," he murmured, "but...there are those I would like to forget."
"How much do you know of her?"
"Enough to hope that the stories are false."
Angharad looked miserable. "Let us assume they are not. I can imagine little worse than the truths I know." She twisted her hands into her skirts. "My mother seeks an alliance with her."
Geraint stared, mute with dismay. She pressed her temples between her palms, her breath audible even above the wind shrieking outside. "It is madness, Geraint. It is death to this island, to all of us, and I cannot make her see it. It's as though she's lost all reason."
Her hands shook. He had never seen her afraid. "What can she possibly hope to accomplish?" he asked slowly.
"Protection. Defense. Information about the attack; direction on how to fight it." Angharad glared into the fire. "None hates Arawn so much as Achren. And despite what he did to her, she does still have a little power. I know Mother believes she would welcome an opportunity to break free of his chains and avenge herself upon him. Our combined strength could do it, perhaps, but...at what cost?" She shook her head. "She cannot be trusted. Even Mother knows that. Yet she risks all on this – even our friends." She looked at him, her face a heartbreaking mix of anger, fear, betrayal. "If the High King learns of this it will destroy our alliance with Prydain."
Geraint's heart sank again. "Then it really is madness."
Angharad, to his amazed alarm, suddenly choked on a sob. "I don't...I don't know what to do," she gasped. Her eyes were wide, frightened as a lost child's, brimming with tears; he could not bear it. Instinctively he reached for her trembling hands, pulling them from her face and clasping them tightly.
He might have wondered what to do next, but she saved him from it, the moment he touched her she tumbled heavily into him like a breaker against the cliffs; without thinking he dropped her hands to hold all of her instead.
Except...a man cannot hold the sea, or the sun, or the fire on the hearth, or that thing outside that was lashing and splitting the darkness into blinding splintering cracks, for that matter; and for a moment he knew nothing at all, blinded and deafened by forces he could not name. Buffeted, he nearly stumbled; somewhere in the assault he shrank to nothing but fierce determination to hold on. He could not feel her physical form at all, but she must be there, and if all he were was an anchoring pair of arms, then so he must be.
Slowly, the roaring in his ears faded to the - more familiar, though not exactly comforting - roaring of the storm outside. Thunder growled and firelight flickered and Angharad was there in his arms, solid and warm and flesh-and-blood, with her face buried in his shoulder and her hands clutching at his shirt. The erratic quaking of her ribs told him she was still fighting back tears.
Fearless Angharad, weeping. It seemed an offense against nature, one warranting the surge of hot, protective anger that flooded him. "What can I do?" he murmured. "Shall I travel to Caer Dathyl and warn the Sons of Don, as you planned? I could trade for a boat in Abernant, and be off as soon as I can."
"No," she said, muffled against his shoulder. "They can't know of this; they'll..." she broke off suddenly in another sob. "They'll never trust us again. Math might set himself against Mother, try to depose her. Gwydion will think... I can't..." She pounded a fist against his chest in anguish, groaning, "I can't be caught in the middle of this."
But she was. He knew it, and knew there was nothing to be done; his heart was bursting and wild thoughts turned themselves into words that tumbled from his lips before he could stop them. "Come away with me, then." He tightened his arms, turning until his cheek cradled the warm curve of her head and her hair shone before his eyes in blurred strands of golden fire. "If there is no way to stop this, then escape it; leave this and come with me."
She stilled suddenly as though holding her breath, and the mad, impossible words kept pouring out, desperate. "I can make us both disappear; I know how; I'll take you far from here and we can—"
Angharad stiffened; she raised her head suddenly and pushed away just enough to look him in the face. Her eyes blazed; her lips parted in a sharp inhale; she looked furious. He cut himself off, horrified by his foolishness. Idiot! What possessed him to—
But then she kissed him, full on the mouth, and thought fled entirely.
She hadn't planned on this.
Not even when she'd realized that her blind run had brought her to the cove, to his door, though she had not been surprised. She did not know why she had come here - only that it had seemed, somehow, the only place to go.
But this...this madness, no... this was not planned, not in words or even thoughts she would have admitted to anyone but herself. Yet something about it felt inevitable. Some thread of fate, woven into the pattern of her life the first time he had met her eyes with that bold azure gaze and laughed in the face of her authority.
Maybe it was fated. It would be easy to lay blame on forces beyond her control. Or perhaps it was a counterpoint, within her, to the glorious fury of that storm that was raging outside; or just...oh, maybe it was just rebellious impulse, and so what if it was; what else was there, now, when duty and reason and caution had left her with empty hands? For once, she might possess something good for no more complicated reason than just...wanting it. Wanting him. All of him, his simple joy and his careless freedom, the bright enthusiasm that washed over her in his presence, filling her up with everything she had not known she lacked. How had she lived before he came? How would she live when he had gone?
Too consumed by her own distress to heed anything else, she had barely realized what was happening, did not know he had touched her until she was in his arms, and had come back to herself with shock at how wildly strange it felt to be held by a man; it was almost frightening, this much strength and breadth and warmth. Strange and yet ...perfect. Comforting and yet unsettling; heart pounding, she had let herself stay there, on the edge, anticipatory of something unknown.
His words were strange, too: murmured rough, they broke into her mind, clumsy and desperate like too-eager pilgrims into a sacred space, bearing all their implications in shadowed arms. For an instant she wondered if he had really said them, and some fragment of her that still clung to the shreds of her self-control tried to be outraged. But it was a futile effort, buried beneath an onslaught of desperate desire, a tidal wave that crushed the thought impossible under a relentless flood of yes...please, yes.
It wasn't possible, but...but she could pretend it was, for a little while.
When she kissed him Geraint froze; she felt his shock in the rigidity of his arms — the last reluctant protest of, perhaps, better judgement— before his control crumbled. She knew it would; he was already familiar, his response merely the outward expression of the hunger in every unguarded look she'd intercepted for weeks. And oh, it was a relief, finally, to set it free...
He kissed her ravenously, crushed her against him as though afraid she would melt away. Maybe she would anyway; it felt that way, that this liquid heat surging through her blood and between her bones in dizzying waves would consume her, leaving nothing but whatever he held fast. The rest would burn to ashes, and so she clung to him, to salvage whatever of herself would survive the refining.
Suddenly he broke away, gasped and tried to speak.
"You can't..."
She cut him off, swallowed his muted surprise.
Another break; he tried again. "Are you sure..."
"Don't talk." She almost laughed at the sound of her own voice, the outraged growl of a wolf threatened with having its dinner confiscated; mine, she thought, and laced her curled fingers through his hair like possessive claws, pulling him in. Oh, if sunlight had a taste, it was this ...this golden heat of his mouth, crowding out all the spaces where words would have formed and filling them willingly, a generosity that did nothing to satiate.
He had no further objections. Questions, perhaps; many questions that he managed to ask without speech, questions that his hands and his mouth and his body and breath asked for him. She denied him not a single, intoxicating answer. Even in his barely-checked urgency, he was as eloquent at this wordless, explorative story as he was at all the others she had grown to love, she as rapt and willing an audience. Nay, a participant; in this story she had as much to say to him, in the fevered touch of skin to skin, the breathless murmurs pushed from the throats of those whose lips had found worthier pursuits than turning them into words, this sinuous dance breaking past any notion of separation.
There came a moment when a sudden, deafening crash of thunder startled them both; a pause that forced a coherent acknowledgement of what was unfolding. Angharad caught her breath, vaguely noting that the flames in the hearth were blazing unnaturally bright and hot for a turf fire, and dampened them with a hasty mental jerk. The room was filled with light of a familiar golden cast; the Pelydryn, having ignited apparently of its own accord, had tumbled from its pocket and lay, among sundry other of their personal articles, somewhere at their feet, glowing like a fallen star.
Geraint seemed to notice neither; his gaze never left her; she felt him brace himself as a man might stand against a wind that sought to drag him away. "This should stop now," he whispered, his breath ragged against her neck, "if you don't—,"
She answered him decisively. Outside the gale tore at the shutters; thunder growled again: the voice of the storm, without and within. She heard it; welcomed it; it was breathtaking and beautiful in its unbridled power, exultant, a union of forces beyond control or conscious will.
Let it spend itself however it would.
"Come away with me," he whispered again, much later, into her hair.
She had no reserves left to stop the tear that trickled over her cheek, splashing to his bare shoulder. "I cannot." She read his discontent in his silence. "I cannot leave my place or my people, Geraint. I am not free as you are."
He pressed her hand to his chest until his heartbeat thumped against her palm. She felt his ribs rise as he sighed, "But I am free no longer. I am a willing prisoner of the Princess of Llyr, in thrall to her enchantments. It's an impressive-sounding predicament, isn't it?"
Angharad smiled in spite of herself. "I hope you feel you've been well-treated."
He laughed at this, a sudden surprised bark, and said, "I'm sorry. I shouldn't make so light of things..."
"No, please." She twisted upon the pallet where they lay, rose on her elbow to look him in the face. "Please, make light of everything you can. But for you I see nothing but darkness." She sighed, a long shuddering breath. "I am so tired of darkness."
She stared at the firelight edging his cheek and jaw, memorizing their angles, the golden play of it in his hair. His thumb traced an invisible line over her lips and chin. "If you cannot leave," he whispered, "then I will stay. No matter what happens."
Another tear spilled out; whether of gratitude or grief she did not know. She let him pull her back down next to him and buried her face in the warm hollow between his shoulder and ear. "You should not. Not for my sake." Her voice shook. "I must wed an enchanter, or watch my land be torn apart. It may happen anyway, no matter what I do. There is no future here for the two of us."
"Then why did you come here tonight?" His tone was curious, not accusatory.
She sighed. "I needed you."
"I will stay," he said, "for as long as you need me."
He held her, a long time, while she wept.