“At least I would have made her death quick.”
Sarah felt Ruith flinch, but she had as well, so she couldn’t blame him. Killing a child? What sort of woman was Morag that she could contemplate the like?
And what had the child seen, or done, or known that would have merited such a fate?
“I couldn’t kill a child,” Phillip repeated, sounding as if he would rather have been having a different conversation. “So I saw to her end as I saw fit.”
There was silence in the chamber for so long, Sarah finally could bear it no longer and gingerly peeked out from behind Ruith’s shoulder.
Morag and Phillip were facing each other in front of the fire, frozen there, as if they’d been statues. She initially suspected that Morag was angry and Phillip equally so, then she realized that wasn’t the case at all. Morag wasn’t angry. She was something else, something that went beyond anger.
She was mad.
Sarah could see her lunacy wrapping itself around her as if it had been a fine cloak she had reached for, swathing herself in its comfort with a pleasure that was actually quite difficult to watch.
“You didn’t send her out to the moors, did you?” she asked in a soft voice. “Come, now, Phillip. You have no need to fear me.”
“I don’t fear you, Morag.”
Even Sarah could tell that was a bald-faced lie. The poor man looked as if he might soon fall to his knees and beg his wife to kill him quickly rather than end his life in other, more painful ways.
“What did you do with the babe?” she asked soothingly. “The truth, now, after all these years.”
“Why does it matter?” Phillip asked nervously. “I got rid of her.”
“Why does it matter,” Morag repeated slowly. “Why does it matter?” She lifted her arm and pointed back toward the door. “It matters , you imbecile, because of what walked through my gates this morning!”
“Gair’s get—”
Morag took a deep breath. “Nay, Phillip, not Gair’s son. The girl, the girl that came with him. Surely if anyone would see her for who she is, it would be you, given how often you admired her dam.”
Phillip looked at her in surprise. “But she doesn’t look like Sorcha—”
“Of course she looks like Sorcha!”
The prince fell silent, obviously considering things he hadn’t before. “But that’s impossible.”
“Because you killed her?” Morag asked in a low, furious voice. “Or is there another end to this tale you haven’t told me?”
“Ah—”
“What did you do with the bairn?”
Phillip swallowed convulsively. “I sold her, her and a kitchen lad I picked at random, to a gypsy—”
“You liar!”
“Very well,” he shouted back, “I didn’t sell her, I gave her to the witchwoman Seleg and begged her to carry her off somewhere you wouldn’t find her because I could not kill a child!”
Sarah blinked. She would have shaken her head, but there were stars spinning around it already and she didn’t want to add to the cluster of them. Ruith’s hand was immediately around her, holding her to him. She clutched his arm and continued to look at the pair before her, because she couldn’t look away. Phillip had apparently found the spine he’d been missing for quite some time, but the truth was, he wasn’t his wife’s equal in power or craft. Sarah watched spells gather in front of Morag, spells of death and misery and horror that sprang up and blossomed into a single something that towered over them both. Phillip watched it, openmouthed and unmoving.
But it never fell upon him.
It took Sarah a moment or two to realize that someone was pounding on the door. The spell disappeared, Phillip collapsed against the mantel, holding himself up by willpower alone, no doubt, and Morag walked over to the door and threw it open.
“What?” she snapped.
“My queen,” a guardsman said, sounding thoroughly terrified, “I’ve heard word there was one of the night lads found on the floor of the kitchens—”
“Put a guard in front of Gair’s get,” Morag said immediately. She shot Phillip a look. “Guard the spell here, if you have any power at all.” She sent him another withering look. “I told you we should have killed her.”
“But she has no magic,” Phillip protested. “She had no magic as a babe, which was why you wanted her in the first place, wasn’t it?”
“Shut up, you fool,” Morag said, drawing herself up and looking down her nose at him. “What would you know of it?”
“I know what you did to her sire—”
“Enough,” Morag thundered.