{ history } suddenly she steps wrapped into the wind brightly into brightness as if singled out
Steam rises and there is a sense of the familiar in the warm air surrounding her, a scent that she knows. The heat and oil from her bath mingles with the languorous ache in her limbs and leaves her drowsy, comfortable; the candles burning around her flicker in the shifting wind through a window, die down a moment and then rise and she sighs over someone else’s breath, rolling her shoulders back. Flaithrí is yet sleeping; she hears the bed shift in the other room, smiles without opening her eyes. The wine earlier left her feeling sinuous and at ease, and the loose tug of another mind joined to hers is just as it should be, isn’t it?
Her steps are steady when she rises from the bath, but slow, her hand resting against the marble as the water drains, a rough gurgle of water that mixes with another sound she can’t yet place. There is no handmaiden at this hour to press a towel to her body and wrap a gauzy robe around her shoulders, so she does it herself, the long gold of her hair leaving damp impressions in the fabric at her back, and the air is cool against her body when she slips back into his chamber, the curtain billowing in a crisp spring night-breeze.
A hot, wet hand finds her shoulder as she sinks down in the darkness and the peace is shattered as his death-cries reverberate through her mind.
He lives, still, but only just - Nuala presses her hands ineffectually to the knife-wound that bared his throat, her voice raising in a scream that he can’t vocalize alone, but the palace guard will be too late to witness anything but the stain of a lord’s gold blood on her pale skin, on her hands and on her body when she moves, clinging, no healer and no match for a mortal wound.
The eyes in his mind are hers-not-hers, and it is her brother’s name she shrieks in rage and grief as Flaithrí passes, his flesh as stone under her hands and then dust, streaking through the blood he left on her.
Nuala is as a statue herself, waiting, as the door bursts open and there is nothing they can do.