Page 121 of Bitter Burn
And then in the dream, something happens that didn’t happen the day I left Lyonesse. Mark steps out of the shadows from behind Tristan, one hand outstretched, as if bidding me to come to him.
Because not only are we real in the dark, but the darkness is real. And I’m in love with it still.
It doesn’t matter that I wake up crying, because usually I’ve fallen asleep crying anyway.
After another week of this, a visitor comes to New Camelot. He has the kind of ivory skin that probably burnishes into gold in the summer, hair like afternoon sunshine, and dark eyes that burn with some kind of secret intensity. A white clerical collar dazzles from the notch of his black shirt.
He’s a priest.
We all eat dinner together in the large but comfortable dining room, a simple meal of steak and mashed potatoes that Maxen makes himself. It’s good, but I think of Mark the entire time I eat it, of his absurdly delicate and perfect cooking, like food from a king’s hall.
After dinner and after making polite farewells to me, the two men stand to go to the study.
“It’s only the usual sins, Father,” I hear Maxen tell him as they go.
Father Jordan Brady’s voice is so melodic that it’s difficult—but not impossible—to catch the dry edges of his response. “So we’ll only need two or three hours in that case.”
The study doors close, and even though I go to bed late, I don’t see either of them leave the room.
The next morning brings with it a blue sky and a mild kiss of sunshine, and after another night of saying goodbye to Lyonesse in my dreams, I’m eager to get out of the house, to enjoy the world without needing a coat, hat, and scarf. I strike out along a riverside path and walk until I reach a friendly clutch of rocks, surrounded by trees and already slightly warmed by the sun.
“Mind if I join you?”
I turn at the sound of the lovely voice and see Father Brady standing at the edge of the trees. I hadn’t heard him at all—just a couple weeks out from being a saint, and my instincts are already slipping.
“Please,” I say, waving a hand at all the potential stone seats around me. “It’s too lovely of a day not to enjoy it.”
He climbs up to join me, making it look easy and graceful in his dress shoes and black trousers, and then sits a couple feet away with his legs crossed like a schoolboy.
“I suppose you’ll invite me to take confession too?” I ask. I try to have it come off as casual, droll, like Mark would in my shoes, but I’ve never learned how to turn my untouchable reserve into a weapon of charm and persuasion like he has, so it comes out soft and wary instead.
Father Brady doesn’t seem bothered by my wariness. He only closes his eyes and leans back on his hands to tilt his face up to the sun. “I don’t even have my stole with me. You are quite safe from being lured into spontaneous reconciliation.”
I watch him a moment, fascinated. Even his serenity seems to be lined on the inside with a secret fire.
“So…you know Maxen Colchester is alive,” I venture. I know where I want to end up, but I don’t know where to start, and this seems as good a place as any. “That must mean you’re trusted a great deal.”
“There are very few who know the truth,” Father Brady agrees. “But by your logic, you must be trusted a great deal as well.”
“Nimue trusts me, I think.”
“That counts for a lot.”
“Do you know…” I hesitate before pushing forward. “Do you know why I’m here? What I’ve done?”
Father Brady’s eyes are still closed as he nods. “I know what you’ve done, Isolde Trevena.”
God help me that I still love the way Isolde Trevena sounds. Like it was always meant to be that way, like Isolde Laurence was merely a placeholder, a scaffold for the real thing.
“Then you know that there’s no amount of reconciliation that can save me.”
Father Brady does turn his head and look at me now, his dark brown eyes made only a bare shade lighter by the impulsive February sun. “There is no barrier to forgiveness other than accepting it,” he says mildly.
“I murdered the Holy Father.”
“Mortimer Cashel was no father,” replies the priest. “He was no pope. His election came out of deception, bribery, and blackmail. He saw the role as an opportunity for power, not as a responsibility to lend that power to his sickest, coldest, poorest children, the ones who needed it the most. He was an infection that grows everywhere in the world but thrives in opacity most of all, and while there was plenty of that to cloak him in the Church, it could have just as easily been a boardroom or a parliament or a battlefield where he spun his webs.”
“I had a dream once,” I say, not sure why I’m divulging this, because it’s so deeply unimportant, “that my uncle and I lived a very long time ago. He wasn’t a priest at all but a warrior, trying to run my father’s kingdom under my father’s own nose. I remember waking up and thinking that version of Mortimer Cashel made an uncomfortable amount of sense.”
