Valley of Silence (Circle Trilogy 3)

“Maybe you weren’t, from the time you died until the time I found you. But it’s no longer true. So if you give those damns, I’m saying to you I’m proud of what you’re doing. I’m saying I know it’s harder for you to do this thing than any of us.”

“Obviously, as demonstrated, killing vampires or humans isn’t difficult for me.”

“Do you think I don’t see how some of the servants melt away when you’re near? That I didn’t see Sinann rush to take her child, as if you might have snapped its neck as you did the assassin’s? These insults to you don’t go unnoticed.”

“Some aren’t insulted to be feared. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t,” he insisted when Hoyt’s face closed up. “This is a fingersnap of time for me. Less. When it’s done, unless I get a lucky stake through the heart, I’ll go my way.”

“I hope your way will bring you, from time to time, to see me and Glenna.”

“It may. I like to look at her.” Cian’s grin spread, slow and easy. “And who knows, she may eventually come to her senses and realize she chose the wrong brother. I’ve nothing but time.”

“She’s mad for me.” His tone easy again, Hoyt reached over, took Cian’s glass of whiskey and had a sip himself.

“Mad is what she’d have to be to put her lot in with you, but women are odd creatures. You’re fortunate in her, Hoyt, if I’ve failed to mention it before.”

“She’s the magic now.” He passed the glass back. “I’d have none that mattered without her. My world turned when she came into it. I wish you had…”

“That isn’t written in the book of fate for me. The poet’s may say love’s eternal, but I can tell you it’s a different matter when you’ve got eternity, and the woman doesn’t.”

“Have you ever loved a woman?”

Cian studied his whiskey again, and thought of the centuries. “Not in the way you mean. Not in the way you have with Glenna. But I’ve cared enough to know it’s not a choice I can make.”

“Love is a choice?”

“Everything is.” Cian tossed back the last of the whiskey, then set the empty glass aside. “Now, I choose to go to bed.”

“You chose to take that arrow for Moira today,” Hoyt said as Cian started for the door.

Cian stopped, and when he turned his eyes were wary. “I did.”

“I find that a very human sort of choice.”

“Do you?” And the words were a shrug. “I find it merely an impulsive—and painful—one.”

He slipped out to make his way to his own room on the northern side of the castle. Impulse, he thought again, and, he could admit to himself, an instant of raw fear. If he’d seen the arrow fly a second later, or moved with a fraction less speed, she’d be dead.

And in that instant of impulse and fear, he’d seen her dead. The arrow still quivering as it pierced her flesh, the blood spilling the life out of her onto her dark green gown and the hard gray stones.

He feared that, feared the end of her, where she would be beyond him. Where she would go to a place he couldn’t see or touch. Lilith would have taken one last thing from him with that arrow, one last thing he could never regain.

For he’d lied to his brother. He had loved a woman, despite his best—or worst—intentions, he loved the new-crowned queen of Geall.

Which was ridiculous, and impossible, and in time something he’d get over. A decade or two and he’d no longer remember the exact shade of those long gray eyes. That quiet scent she carried would no longer tease his senses. He’d forget the sound of her voice, the look of that slow, serious smile.

Such things faded, he reminded himself. You had only to allow it.

He stepped into his own room, closed and bolted the door.

The windows were covered, and no light was lit. Moira, he knew, had given very specific orders on how his housekeeping should be done. Just as she’d specifically chosen that room, a distance from the others, as it faced north.

Less sunlight, he mused. A considerate hostess.

He undressed in the dark, thought fleetingly of the music he liked to play before sleep, or on wakening. Music, he thought, that filled the silence.

But this time and place didn’t run to CD players, or cable radio or any damn thing of the sort.

Naked, he stretched out in bed. And in the absolute dark, the absolute silence, willed himself to sleep.