show. “I’m truly sorry for what happened to you. That you lost them.”
Satisfied Rose was telling the truth, he gave her a clipped nod and focused his attention forward again.
Feeling brave, she continued, “I’ve had time to think about that. Kids weren’t ever something I thought about. They were this possibility to consider way off in the distant future. However, they were a possibility … and now they’re not.” Loss filled her. “It’s not the same, I know that. But I feel like I’ve lost something, anyway.”
Fionn cut her an unreadable look. She half expected him to commiserate, offer comfort, but that muscle ticked away in his jaw and he seemed to glance away guiltily. Why? It wasn’t his fault she was fae.
“What age were you when you had Diarmuid?”
At first, Rose thought he wouldn’t answer. Then …
“Sixteen.”
“What?” Her eyebrows must have hit her hairline.
Fionn smirked at her. “You’re reacting as a modern woman. Back then, I was a man at thirteen, already warring. The fae invasion distracted the clans from their wars for territory. They hadn’t come together as one just yet, but each were doing what they could to keep the fae from hurting their people. Aoibhinn and I grew up in the same village and as soon as she had her first bleed, she was considered a woman. She was fourteen when it happened. I was fifteen, almost sixteen. She was beautiful, her father was head of our clan, and she was much sought after. She could have been given to an older, more experienced clansman, but I’d proven myself in battle, her father viewed me as a son, and Aoibhinn wanted me.”
“Jesus Christ,” Rose croaked. “You got married when she was fourteen and you were sixteen.”
“Again, Rose, times were very, very different.”
“You were children.”
“No,” he snapped. “That was not a world you could be a child in for long. We’re known as the Celts now. And we were a warring, violent people. You were lucky to hold on to even a modicum of childhood.”
“Okay, okay,” Rose soothed. “You’re right. I don’t know what I’m talking about. Twenty-first-century minds do not belong in the Iron Age.”
Fionn relaxed marginally. “Aoibhinn fell pregnant quickly. Diarmuid was born just before I was about to enter my seventeenth year.”
Rose couldn’t even imagine being a parent at that age. “What was he like?”
His expression hardened but it was at odds with the softness of his voice. “He was my shadow. By the time he was seven, I’d taken over the clan and had started to bring the other clans together. He wanted to be like me, wielding the wooden sword I gave him with skill belying his young age. He even wanted his own wolf. Aoibhinn used to complain that she’d never met a child so focused on the duties of men. Diarmuid was a good boy.” Fionn swallowed hard. “I was taken to Faerie days after his eleventh birthday. By that time, I was king, grooming my son to take my place when the time came. But I missed six years of his life. When I came back, he was already a man with his own wife and child on the way.” His voice grew cold. “I’ll never know what happened to him. Or to my gentle Caoimhe who cried when others cried and laughed when others laughed and felt more deeply than those around her. She was goodness and beauty in a violent, wicked world. She was the sky and the rolling hills and the wondrous sea—she was what made that life worth enduring.”
Tears Rose couldn’t control spilled down her cheeks at his beautiful but haunted words. “I’m sorry,” Rose whispered.
Fionn looked down at her, following her tears. “She was loyal like you, Rose.”
That ache inside her intensified. “No. She was loyal like you. The man you used to be.”
Although she hadn’t meant it as an insult, Fionn winced slightly and picked up his pace.
Rose hurried to follow. “I’m sure she and Diarmuid had a long, good life. They were no longer battling the fae, and they were royalty, right?”
“Which made them targets. A simple man often enjoys a more peaceful life than a chief or a king. Still, the village we built under my kingship was a hillfort. Highly defensible. It was called An Caomhnóir.”
“Like the castle?”
“The castle is named after the village.”
The trees began to clear, water sparkling in the distance, the sound of it rushing filling the silence.