He felt her body convulse on a silent sob. For years his sweet wife had suffered. Grieved. He hadn’t been able to do anything to fix it, so he’d learned to live with her constant sadness and silent rage until he accepted it as normal.
It wasn’t normal. Gilda used to laugh. She used to tease him and smile and play.
She hadn’t been normal since Maura had run away and joined forces with the Synestryn.
“It’s not too late,” he assured her, forcing his conviction through their shrinking link.
“I’ve done things, Angus. Unforgivable things.”
His grip on her tightened. She was still cold, so he eased her down into the hot water, settling her against his chest. His lifemark still loved her touch, and it shivered toward her as if it had been starved of that touch for way too long.
“What you did to Sibyl and Maura was understandable. Our son had died. You were grieving. Distraught.” And because of what Gilda had done, his girls would never grow up. As much as that hurt, he’d forgiven her, hoping his daughters would follow his example.
They hadn’t.
“That’s not what I’m talking about,” she said. “There are things about me you don’t know. Terrible things. I’m not sure how much longer I can live with these secrets. They’re eating me from the inside, gnawing at me.”
Angus was careful to hide his shock. He thought he knew everything about his wife, but perhaps he’d been wrong. “Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”
“It is. I’ve taken so much from you. From all of you.”
“What are you talking about, love? The only thing you’ve taken from me is your touch. We’re past that now, aren’t we?” He hoped so. He hoped that her letting him hold her now was a sign her stubbornness was at an end. Finally.
“Once I tell you, you won’t want to touch me ever again.”
Angus tilted her body, hooked his thumb under her chin, and turned her head so she would look at him. “There is nothing you can do that I wouldn’t love you enough to forgive.”
Her dark eyes glittered with tears. “You’re wrong, Angus.”
“Tell me. Tell me what you’ve done that’s so bad, because I think you’re wrong.”
A single tear spilled over, and the sadness he saw in her face nearly made him weep. “I’ve tried to live without you these last seven months. I thought the distance between us would make my betrayal easier to bear.”
“What betrayal?”
Angus tried to reach through their link and see what was going on in her head, but he couldn’t get through. All he could feel was her barely constrained panic and a sense of grief so thick he didn’t know how she could stand it.
She looked down in shame. “It was the night Isaac died.”
Isaac. Their youngest son. He’d died in battle, along with three other Theronai. But that had been so long ago. Two centuries. As much as he still ached for his lost son, he also felt a huge swelling of pride for what he’d done that night—for the man he’d grown to become and the countless lives he’d saved. He’d sacrificed his life, but it hadn’t been in vain. The descendants of the humans he’d saved that night still lived on, making the world a better place.
Angus caressed her arm, hoping to comfort her. “Love, anything you did that long ago I already know. Whatever it is you think you did, I’ve already forgiven you.”
“No. You’re wrong. I’ve hidden it. So carefully, so deep, I know you’ve never seen my shame.”
“Then tell me now so I can forgive you and you can heal. Let’s get past this. The lives of our people depend on our strength, our example.”
“Yours, maybe. I’m afraid my example has been lacking.”
“Tell me, Gilda. I can’t imagine a thing you could do so bad I would stop loving you.”
She fell silent. Pulled in a breath. Her body shuddered, as if uttering the words after holding them in so long was a struggle. “The night Isaac died, I was destroyed. I knew the moment I heard the news that my heart would never be whole again. I couldn’t bear the pain, and knew I couldn’t allow it to happen again. I couldn’t lose another child.”
Angus remembered that night, despite his desire to forget. Their link had intensified their pain, as they each not only suffered their own grief, but the other’s as well. Rather than cling to him for support, as he’d ached for her to do, she’d fled—run into the hills and shut down. When she came back, she was colder. Harder.
“I went into the woods,” she said. “I gathered as much power into me as I could hold, hoping it would kill me and take away the pain. I raged at the unfairness of our son’s death. Why hadn’t it been me that had died instead of him? Why hadn’t it been one of the other men? I’d already given so much to this war. How could God take our last living son, too?”
Angus had no answers. He sat in silence, giving her time to work up her courage to say whatever it was she had to say.
“The power in me kept growing and yet I didn’t die. That made me angrier. I knew I couldn’t ever again allow another child of mine to die, so I vowed never again to conceive. I would not give any more of my heart’s blood to this war.”
Her voice quieted, vibrating with shame. “I hadn’t intended for my magic to do what it did. I hadn’t planned any of this, or had a single conscious thought as to what it might mean, but there was so much power, so much grief and rage that it went out of control. The power ripped from my body, doing my unconscious will, shimmering out from the top of that hill in waves so strong I could see the trees shake as it passed.”
“What magic?” asked Angus. “What had you done?”