Song of the Fairy Queen (57 page)

Picking lightly through the feathers, Kyri found one that was loose, ready to drop. With a small tug, she pulled it free and handed it to the girl. Even as she did it, the small feather turned to crystal in her fingers.

“Keep that close,” Kyri said with a smile. “It’s protection against magic.”

The girl held the crystalline feather in both hands in wonder, for the prettiness of it, holding it up to the sunshine, smiling, enraptured by the glittering, shining thing.

Morgan clasped his hand around the one he wore on a silver chain around his neck, vaguely remembering the dark days in Haerold’s dungeon when they’d tried to take it off of him. It wouldn’t come off, nor would the chain be cut or broken. Even he couldn’t remove it. Protection against magic. What Fairy had given him his? He could almost remember.

Arthur hurried up, another man in tow behind him, that one slower, more considered.

“Morgan, this is Colton of Fairfield. Colton, this is the infamous, not so late, Lord High Marshal Morgan,” Arthur said.

Dismounting, Morgan shook the offered hand, liking the look of the man before him.

“Morgan is enough.”

Of slightly more than medium height, Colton was a handsome, barrel-chested man, his hair thick and dark, more dark hair spilling from inside his collar. Big and bluff. Honest, with a solid handshake.

Morgan smiled.

“Come, we’ve food and beds for everyone,” Colton said, gesturing.

With a groan, Gawain said, “A bed, a real bed.”

He hadn’t slept rough so often or so long in his entire life.

“You’re soft, boy,” Gordon said, shaking his head in mock dismay.

Gawain gave him a look. “As if you haven’t been complaining about your joints from the first night.”

“I have not,” Gordon protested, giving a look to Kyri.

She raised her eyebrow and nodded.

“Every morning,” she said wryly.

A bed, Morgan hadn’t slept in a bed since….

The pain moved through him more easily now although he knew it would never completely leave him.

“Come on, Colton,” Arthur said. “And this is Kyri of the Fair, as you can tell.”

“It’s a pleasure. You’ve made my daughter’s day,” Colton said, warmly. “Week, month, year…”

Laughing, Kyri said, “Then it’s made mine, as well. Especially if the beds aren’t just a rumor.”

He shook his head, “No, they’re real. Welcome to my home. Fair warning, my son is playing cook for us today. Most of the time it’s even edible.”

It was quite edible and convivial as well.

Again, for Morgan there were memories behind memories, of other occasions, of people laughing and talking. Angela peppered Kyri with questions. There had been other days like this somewhere…at Detrick’s camp? Somewhere else, trees towering high… It haunted him for some reason.

It was a good day, but now Morgan wanted answers…

Kyri staved off sleep for as long as she could, especially here where there were children at risk, so she stepped outside onto the veranda where the air was cooler to walk and to pace…. She’d also sensed Morgan’s increasing agitation, catching looks and glances from him she wasn’t certain how to read.

A voice from the darkness said, “We need to talk.”

She turned as Morgan stepped out of the shadows.

It said something about her own distraction that she hadn’t sensed him there.

There was something in his deep voice, though, that sent butterflies shivering through her. Taking a long slow breath, she sighed. She’d known this time would come. For Gawain it was a chance she’d had to take. With Morgan…?

Watching him carefully, she nodded and started to walk away from the house and those inside. Into the darkness, where it was safer and where her face and eyes couldn’t betray her.

“Detrick said you’ve been looking for me and the way he said it, he implied you’ve been looking for a long time,” he said.

“Since the day you disappeared,” she said evenly, steadily.

For a moment he stared. “Why?”

There were a thousand answers to that, all true, but she didn’t know which one he wanted, or needed. Or which one to give him.

“I knew that you were in trouble. I was coming to help. And then, you were gone. I couldn’t find you.”

Kyri remembered it, the sense that something was wrong. She took a breath.

The sense of wrongness had been bad, but when she couldn’t find him, she’d become frantic…. Her heart ached…

Morgan could hear something in her voice, a deep and abiding grief, fear and pain.

“I know you,” he said, bluntly.

“Yes,” she said.

“Then why don’t I remember you?” he demanded, “Except for odd bits and pieces that keep popping up in my memory.” He curled his hand around the talisman, held it up. “This is yours, isn’t it?”

“Actually,” Kyri said, “it’s yours, I gave it to you, but yes it came from me.”

“Why don’t I remember you?” he repeated.

The question was direct. She couldn’t lie and couldn’t avoid the answer.

She swallowed hard. “Because I …made you forget.”

Morgan stared at her, stunned. “You… Why?”

“To make me less important in your life,” she said quietly, turning away, walking restlessly.

He frowned, thinking about it, thinking it through and then he went after her.

“You’re saying I was in love with you.”

Something moved in him at the thought…

“Yes,” she said, “and I with you.”

She let out a breath.

It was all pain now, her heart aching, the yearning nearly impossible for her to bear.

That didn’t make sense.

“I don’t understand,” Morgan said, “why would you do that?”

“For a thousand reasons,” Kyri said breathlessly, on a laugh that wasn’t laughter, the pain of it constant, as ceaseless as the sea, letting out a gusty sigh, “but most of all because there is only one you, one Morgan. As we’ve seen.”

She smiled into the darkness where he couldn’t see. Here in the darkness, the tears could fall and there was no one to notice.

The pain in her voice told Morgan the truth of it. It wrenched at him, to hear both the deep love and the terrible heartache in her voice. A sense of it echoed through him.

It still didn’t make sense.

Now the words flowed out of her as if a dam had broken.

“You were wearing yourself out, exhausted, trying to be everywhere at once. Trying to protect the Kingdom, keep Oryan safe, get the Marshals and the rebellion organized, even sending your Marshals to help my people. Trying, always trying to be everywhere at once. You were making mistakes you never would have made. It seemed as if you were always tired. Do you remember?”

He did, some of it and, faintly, moments of quiet peace and joy, contentment, warmth…

“I was part of that strain on you. Myself and my people, stretching you to your limits and beyond. It was too much.” She sighed. “So, I made you forget. And for a time afterward, it seemed to work. Then Jacob betrayed you, you disappeared and it all fell apart.”

None of this made any sense.

“Kyri,” he said, taking her arm and stopping her. “Tell me.”

“Morgan,” she said, struggling within and without. “Before Jacob, you were succeeding in holding back Haerold, yes?”

“Yes,” he said, thinking back. “I think so.”

“So does everyone else,” Kyri said. “But once you were gone, everything fell apart. Not even Oryan could hold it together, because he needed someone like you to be out in the field. And you were all that we had.”

“Are you saying you did this for the Kingdom?” he said.

She smiled sadly. “Yours and mine. I could say it and it would be a truth, but not all the truth. As I could say that I did it for my people and that would be a part of the truth, too. I wish that it were, because that would be nobler, but the truth is that I did it because I couldn’t bear to watch you killing yourself. And you were. Do you remember the days before my people left?”

“They’re a bit of a blur,” Morgan said, trying to take it in, “We were a little busy then.”

“Less busy, though, after, when you stopped needing to protect the Fairy, too,” she said.

“Yes,” he said slowly.

“Some of those memories are blurry because you were so tired, then,” she said, “so busy. Do you remember the visit to Jacob, the fight at the gates of Remagne when they recognized you?”

“It was sloppy,” he said frowning.

“You’re not sloppy,” she said. “You never were. But you were that night. You were tired. A sword got by you, scored your ribs,” she said. “You, who fought Hunters, getting marked by a gate guard...”

“How did you know…?” He frowned as it came to him. “You were there.”

Kyri nodded. “I Healed you and learned how exhausted you really were.”

With a gentle tug she pulled away from him.

“I knew how close we were to losing you to something you were too tired think about. It terrified me, knowing how exhausted you were.” Kyri fought tears. “Oryan’s Kingdom needed you, yes. Oryan needed you. Even my people needed you, fighting Haerold, because if the Kingdom fell to him completely, he would have turned on us next and he wouldn’t have been kind.”

She laughed a little. “I wish I could say that those were the reasons I did it and they were part of it, but the truth is I couldn’t bear to watch you die. And I was afraid that I would.”

Frowning, Morgan didn’t know what to feel, what to think….

“I want them back,” Morgan said. “I want those memories back.”

“Morgan…” Kyri said, softly, helplessly… “Forgive me.”

His jaw tightened. “I want them back.”

She took a breath.

“All right,” she said and walked slowly back to him.

Reaching up, she slid her fingers into his hair as she’d done a thousand times before.

Standing so close she was aware of the warmth of him, she caught the scent of his skin. Her body brushed his.

It was sweet torture.

“Forgive me, please, and Remember,” she whispered in his ear.

Magic, Kyri’s magic, warm and sweet, washed through him lightly.

And then she kissed him gently on the mouth, her lips soft, before releasing him to walk away into the darkness.

Leaving him with fluttering memories of her, like a thousand wings, from that first night when the Queen of the Fairy had dropped down onto the parapet in her thin, torn shift to help them escape. Her laughter ringing in the night… The first time they made love, her body slender, white and so lovely. Her odd wry way of finding the right thing to say to lighten things… A thousand memories… All of the things he’d loved about her poured through his mind. Her wings, opening to catch the light as his hand caressed the arch of one, the feathers as soft as silk beneath his hand…