She swallowed and looked up at him, her eyes full of fear. "I'm scared, Speirr. I don't want to die. I feel so cold. I've never gone anywhere without you before."
"I'll keep you warm." He pulled more furs over her and rubbed her arms. If he could just keep her warm, she would stay with him. He knew she would...
If he could just keep her warm.
"Why is it getting dark?" she asked, her voice trembling. "I don't want it to be dark yet. I just want to hold you for a little while longer."
"I'll hold you, Nyn. Don't worry, love. I have you."
She placed her hand against his cheek as a single tear fell. "I wish I had been the wife you deserved, Speirr. I wish I could have given you all the children you wanted."
Before he could speak, he felt it. The last expulsion of breath from her body before she went limp in his arms.
Enraged and heartsick, Talon threw his head back and gave his battle cry as pain tore through him. Tears fell down his face.
"Why!" he roared at the gods. "Damn you, Camulus. Why! Why couldn't you just kill me and have left her in peace?"
As expected, no one answered. The Morrigan had abandoned him, left him alone to face this pain.
"Why would the gods ever help a whoreson like you, boy? You're not fit for anything except licking the boots of your betters."
"Look at him, Idiag, he's pitiful and weak like his father before him. He'll never be anything. You might as well let us kill him now and spare the food to nurture a better child."
The voices of the past whipped through him, lacerating his aching heart.
"Are you a prince?" He heard Nynia's childhood voice from the day he had saved her from the rooster.
"I am nothing," he had answered.
"Nae, my lord, you are a prince. Only one so noble would brave the fearsome rooster to save a peasant."
She alone had ever made him feel noble or good.
She alone had made him want to live.
How could his precious Nynia be gone?
Sobbing, he held her and the baby for hours. Held them until the sun was shining bright outside on the snow and her family begged him to let them make preparations for the burials. But he didn't want to prepare them.
He didn't want to let them go.
Since the day they'd met, they'd never been apart for more than a few hours.
Her love and friendship had seen him through so much. Over the years, she had been his strength.
She was the best part of him.
"What am I to do, Nyn?" he whispered against her cold cheek as he rocked her. "What am I to do..."
Alone, he had sat there with her, lost. Cold. Aching.
The next day, he'd buried her out by the loch where the two of them had first started their childhood meetings. He could still see her waiting for him, her face bright with expectation. He could imagine her running across the snow, gathering up a handful to make a ball so that she could sneak up on him and drop it down his tunic.
He would have chased her then, and she would have run away, laughing.
She had adored the snow so much. Had always loved to tilt her head back and let the white, pure flakes fall onto her beautiful face and into her golden fair hair.
It seemed somehow wrong that she would have died on a day like this. A day that would have filled her with such happiness.
Wincing in pain, he wished that he lived somewhere where it never snowed. Someplace warm so that he would never again have to see this and be reminded of all he'd lost.
Oh gods, how could she be gone?
Talon growled from grief. He was on his hands and knees in the freezing snow, his heart bereft of anything except painful misery.
All he could focus on was Nynia lying in the ground, holding their baby to her breast. Of the fact that he wasn't there to protect her, to warm her. To take her by the hand and lead her wherever she was headed.
He felt a tiny hand on his shoulder.
Looking up, he saw the small face of his sister. Ceara had seen more than her fair share of tragedy.
"I'm still with you, Speirr. I won't leave you alone."
Talon wrapped his arms around her waist and drew her close. He held her as he wept. She was all he had left. And he would defy the gods themselves to keep her safe.
He hadn't been able to protect Nynia, but he would protect Ceara.
No one would harm her without dealing with him...
Talon came awake just before sunset with a sick feeling in his stomach.
He felt so alone.
His emotions were raw and tattered. He hadn't felt like this in centuries. Hadn't hurt like this since the night Acheron had taught him to bury his emotions.
Tonight, he truly felt the solitude of his life. The aching burn of it sliced through his chest, and he had to struggle to breathe.
Until he caught a whiff of something strange on his skin and in his bed.
Patchouli and turpentine.
Sunshine.
His heart instantly lightened as he thought of her and the way she stumbled through her vibrant life.
Inhaling her precious scent, he rolled over and found his bed empty.
Talon frowned. "Sunshine?"
He looked around and didn't see her anywhere.
"Would you leave me alone, you walking pair of boots!"
He cocked a brow at Sunshine's voice on the other side of his door. Before he could get up, the door swung open to show Sunshine fussing at Beth and the alligator hissing back in protest.
The two of them struggled in the doorway.
"Let go of my easel, you refugee from a luggage factory. If you need some wood for a toothpick, there's a bunch of it on the porch."
The side of his mouth quirked up at the sight of them battling it out, Sunshine inside his cabin and Beth on the porch.
"Beth," he snapped. "What are you doing?"
Beth opened her mouth, releasing the easel. Sunshine stumbled backward, into the cabin, with her easel in her hands. The gator hissed and snapped at him, swishing its tail and eyeballing Sunshine irritably.
"She says she was forcing you inside before it got dark and something decided to eat you," he told Sunshine.
"Tell Swamp Breath I was headed this way. Why was she..." Sunshine stopped and looked at him. "Oh jeez, am I really having a conversation with a gator?"
He grinned. "It's all right. I do it all the time."
"Yes, but no offense, you're kind of weird."
If that wasn't the pot calling the kettle black...
She shooed Beth out, slammed the door, then put her art supplies in the corner.
Talon watched her with interest, especially since the denim of her jeans cupped her rear rather nicely as she leaned over.