Naamah's Blessing

head. Wrenching himself away from her, he staggered to his feet, wild-eyed. “Moirin, stop it! This is some trick of yours. I swear to Elua, I’ll feed your precious husband to the ants if you do not cease!”
    “Moirin can banish me if she wills it,” Jehanne said steadily. “All she has to do is release her magic, and I will be gone from your presence forever. Is that what
you
will?”
    He was silent.
    Jehanne went to him again. “Raphael, our deeds have repercussions. If not in this life, in the next.” She gestured at herself. “Or in a limbo betwixt the two. I beg you to heed me, and turn aside from this course.”
    Raphael searched her face. “Will you stay if I do?”
    She shook her head. “I cannot.”
    His expression hardened. “Then you have nothing to offer me. I will take my chances with the gods. What can they take from me that has not already been taken?”
    “You would not ask that question if you had children,” Jehanne murmured. “It is my life’s greatest regret that I was taken from mine.”
    “Daniel’s daughter!” Raphael shouted at her. “Must you throw it in my face?”
    “
My
daughter.” Her voice was unwavering. “Of whom you spoke great folly. How could you even think it for an instant, Raphael?”
    He gave a broken laugh. “Why not, Jehanne? Mayhap it
was
meant to be. She could give me the one thing you could not. Her whole heart.”
    “Because you molded her thusly?” She raised her brows, my brows. “It is a profoundly wrong notion that violates the very essence of Blessed Elua’s precept. Did I not pity you so, I should despise you for it. But I tell you, Raphael de Mereliot, you would never love her if you did. We may have fought and quarreled, you and I, but it was always born of the passion that lay between us. You cannot separate one from the other. It was part and parcel of what bound us together.”
    “Why wasn’t it enough?” Raphael demanded, tears of frustration and pain in his eyes. “Why did you choose Daniel over me? Don’t tell me the same passion lay between you! Was it mere ambition?”
    It was Jehanne’s turn to laugh, and her laughter was as hollow as his. “Oh, Raphael! Would you stand here on the cusp of seeking godhood and chastise me for ambition? It’s true, in the history of Terre d’Ange, no Servant of Naamah had ever risen to the throne. I wanted to be the first. But I loved Daniel, too.” She paused. “He was a good and kind man who loved deeply. But there was such sorrow in him, such grief. And I was able to take it away, at least for a time. When I did…” She drew a deep breath into her lungs. My lungs. “When I did, I truly understood Naamah’s blessing.”
    “How can you possibly think telling me such a thing will sway me?” Raphael whispered hoarsely.
    If I could have looked away from the pain in his face, I would have; but I was a passenger in my own body, and Jehanne did not look away. “I don’t. I am telling you the truth. It is all I have to offer you.”
    He turned his back on her. “It is not enough.”
    She smiled with regret. “Then I will ask you a lesser boon. Raphael, you must release Moirin from her oath.”
    “No.”
    “Moirin will lose her magic the moment she honors it,” Jehanne said simply. “And you will fail.”
    Raphael turned back to her with a scowl. “What new lie is this?”
    “No lie.” She shook her head. “I am not able to lie anymore. The oath Moirin swore to you is in conflict with another. She is Desirée’s oath-sworn protector. While you mean to take my daughter to wife and mold her spirit, Moirin cannot honor both oaths. Her
diadh-anam
will be extinguished.”
    He raised his own brows. “And why, pray tell, would Moirin not tell me such a thing if it were true?”
    With unrelenting honesty, Jehanne exposed my plan of last resort. “Because she is willing to make that sacrifice to prevent you from succeeding.”
    Ah, gods! I would not have consented to this if I had known it was what she meant to do. I thought of banishing the twilight, but the damage was done.
    Peace, Moirin.
Jehanne’s voice poured through my thoughts once more.
It is not finished
.
    Raphael frowned in thought. “You came here to sway me from my course, Jehanne. It makes no sense at all for you to warn me of such a pitfall.”
    “I came here to offer you the truth,” she said calmly. “It is what I was meant to do. More than that, I cannot know.”
    For a long moment, they gazed at one