“This evening, then?” she asked, sipping her wine.
“If you will,” he said. “Is there a difficulty? Because if there—”
“No, no,” she said quickly. “I was only asking. We will do it at moonrise.”
There was a little silence. Broken by Paul’s quiet laughter. “We really are terrible, aren’t we?” he said, shaking his head ruefully. “We never could manage a civil exchange.”
She considered that, not smiling, though his tone had invited it. “That night by the Anor,” she said. “Until I said the wrong thing.”
“You didn’t,” he murmured. “I was just sensitive about power and control. You found a nerve.”
“We’re trained to do that.” She smiled, though, and he realized she was mocking herself a little.
“I did my share of goading,” Paul admitted. “One of the reasons I came was to tell you that a lot of it was reflex. My own defenses. I wanted to say goodbye, and to tell you that I have . . . a great deal of respect for you.” It was difficult choosing words.
She said nothing, looking back at him, her green eyes clear and bright. Well, he thought, he’d said it. What he’d come to say. He finished his wine and rose to his feet. She did the same.
“I should go,” he said, wanting to be elsewhere before one of them said something that was wounding, and so spoiled even this goodbye. “I’ll see you this evening, I guess.” He turned to the door. “Paul,” she said. “Wait.”
Not Pwyll. Paul. Something stirred like a wind within him. He turned again.
She had not moved. Her hands were crossed in front of her chest, as if she were suddenly cold in the midst of summer.
“Are you really going to leave me?” Jaelle asked, in a voice so strained he needed a second to be sure of what he’d heard.
And then he was sure, and in that instant the world rocked and shifted within him and around him and everything changed. Something burst in his chest like a dam breaking, a dam that had held back need for so long, that had denied the truth of his heart, even to this moment.
“Oh, my love,” he said.
There seemed to be so much light in the room. He took one step, another; then she was within the circle of his arms and the impossible flame of her hair was about them both. He lowered his mouth and found her own turned up to his kiss. And in that moment he was clear at last. It was all clear. He was in the clear and running like his running pulsebeat, the clear hammer of his heart. He was translucent. Not Lord of the Summer Tree then, but only a mortal man, long denied, long denying himself, touching and touched by love.
She was fire and water to his hands, she was everything he had ever desired. Her fingers were behind his head, laced through his hair, drawing him down to her lips, and she whispered his name over and over and over while she wept.
And so they came together then, at the last, the children of the Goddess and the God.
They subsided among the scattered cushions and she laid her head against his chest, and for a long time they were silent as he ran his fingers ceaselessly through the red fall of her hair and brushed her tears away.
At length she moved so that she lay with her head in his lap, looking up at him. She smiled, a different kind of smile from any he had seen before.
“You would really have gone,” she said. Not a question.
He nodded, still half in a daze, still trembling and incredulous at what had happened to him. “I would have,” he confessed. “I was too afraid.”
She reached up and touched his cheek. “Afraid of this, after all you have done?”
He nodded again. “Of this, perhaps more than anything. When?” he asked. “When did you. . . ?”
Her eyes turned grave. “I fell in love with you on the beach by Taerlindel. When you stood in the waves, speaking to Liranan. But I fought it, of course, for many reasons. You will know them. It didn’t come home to me until you were walking back from Finn to face Galadan.”