Spellbinder
Page 93

“I don’t know,” he whispered.
She became something else. She wrapped chains around me, and freed me at the same time, and I grew outraged and left.
I left the best thing that has ever happened to me.
The thought ate at him in the night. Where had she gone? What was she doing? The news of her kidnapping had hit all the major newspapers and television channels. He scoured each story for clues, but there were none, just a professionally prepared news release in which she thanked her fans for respecting her privacy while she recovered from her ordeal.
He and the puck stood awkwardly together, in the middle of the sunlit clearing where the passageway shone clear and bright again.
Then Morgan turned to face Robin. “I am attempting to right a few of the wrongs I committed in Isabeau’s name. All the crossover passageways are now clear again. Your king has fallen under a spell of mine. I would be glad to reverse it, if they would let me.”
Robin laughed. “They would all, to a knight, die before they let you anywhere near Oberon. But I will pass on your regards and the message.”
Morgan nodded, unsurprised. “Modred is dead,” he told Robin. “Isabeau is alive and in hiding. I don’t know where. I did manage to wound her, and she no longer commands the Hounds. I do. Tell this to the Dark Court as well—I mean them no harm. I never did, and I will take no further action against them as long as they leave me and mine alone. I’m done, puck. Do you hear me? I wash my hands of the war between you and the Light Court.”
Robin smiled. “That was everything I had ever hoped for, sorcerer.” Then his smile died. “When you find her again, would you please tell her a thing from me?”
Morgan didn’t have to ask who Robin meant. He already knew. “What?”
“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.”