Pure

Maigred set the last plate of food on the table and looked around the table. The way Finten’s men ate, she wondered how long it had been since they’d been fed properly.

It was late, so Cathal had carried Cara out to the dinning room, she and the rest of the inn staff were eating with Finten’s men. Finten was still in the kitchen, having volunteered to help Maigred run the kitchen while the others ate. She didn’t need the help, there were only a few customers left, but he had insisted.

Maigred checked on her other customers, musing over the the things she had learned about Finten in the last few days. She went back to the kitchen to get an ale for a customer. Finten was cleaning out the stove, his sleeves rolled up, smudges of black soot on his hands and arms as he cleaned out the ashes. He didn’t look up at her as she went by him. She felt strangely pulled to touch his back as she passed, the way she might with Cathal. She didn’t.

He wasn’t the weakling she thought he was, hiding in the shadows from his shame, while his people suffered for his cowardice. He was a broken warrior. A man who had lost everything he had loved and fought for. A man who had given everything in his body and soul to ensure that his beloved’s people would survive.

She didn’t really understand why he had stayed to protect the people. Tarasque were driven by instinct and emotion, not carefully laid plans. Finten obviously had no long term plans, he was simply reacting to crises as they arose, giving whatever was asked of him to keep the people alive and the land thriving. But he was just surviving. Tarasque didn’t live that way. They were wild and free, only the love of a fully devoted mate could bring out enough allegiance to make them settle down and call someplace home. A tarasque lord could temper the wildness of his tarasque men, but it was the love of his mate that pulled all of them to remain faithful to the land.

Caevah had been dead for thirteen years, and still Finten and his men were here, carrying the weight of keeping a people and land alive, barely surviving, but refusing to abandon the people to their fate.

Cathal had been right. Finten had refused her because he knew she didn’t want him. She felt ashamed now about how she had approached him. No tarasque would have accepted a proposal from a woman who despised them. Caevah had taught her better than that, but Maigred had been blinded by her own bitterness, poisoned by her eagerness to blame someone for the suffering she and her people were drowning in.

Dinner was finally finished. Finten’s men went home. He stayed to help clean up. After they were done cleaning up for the night, Cathal locked and barred the front door, while Maigred let Finten out the back door.

“Thank you for all your help today,” she said.

He gave a nod. “It’s the least I could do. I appreciate you all letting me stay here for the day.”

“You’ll all come back in the morning for breakfast?” Maigred asked.

Finten hesitated.

“You know, it was Cara who insisted. You don’t want to get her riled up. She’ll find you and give you a piece of her mind.” Maigred smiled.

Finten blinked at her. “How? She can’t walk.”

Maigred laughed. “Do you think that will stop her? She’s a woman with an iron will, Finten. She’s stayed alive this long out of sheer determination. She’s intent on seeing this inn passed to Eoghan and his future wife.”

Finten smiled and it wasn’t just his mouth that smiled, his whole face softened and brightened. It reminded Maigred a bit of how he had looked back when Caevah was alive.

“Alright, we’ll be here. We appreciate your generosity.”

“It’s the least we can do, Finten.”

His eyes searched her face for a moment. “You’ve given up on proposing courtship to me, haven’t you?”

She as a bit surprised by the question. “Yes. I haven’t gotten another vision telling me to seek you out. That must be a bit of a relief to you.”

A serious expression came over Finten’s face. He opened his mouth to reply when Cathal come up behind Maigred.

“Finten! You’ll be here in the morning for breakfast, right?” He asked cheerfully.

Finten smiled. “Yes. Maigred has convinced me to accept the invitation.” His eyes went back to Maigred for a moment. “Good night, then.” And Finten disappeared into the dark.

Maigred slowly shut and latched the door.

“I interrupted something, didn’t I?” Cathal asked.

Maigred shook her head. “No. He was just saying goodnight.”

They began climbing the stairs up to their rooms.

“Your attitude towards Finten seems to have changed.”

Maigred frowned a little. “I suppose it has. I still don’t really know him, but he’s not the coward I thought he was.”

“Are you going to ask to court him again?”

Maigred shook her head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t really thinking before, I was just acting on the vision I received from the earth sister. But now…I don’t know what I want to do.” She turned to Cathal. “Do you think it’s wrong to think about how I feel instead of just obeying the gods? I haven’t gotten another vision to pursue him but…”

Cathal wrapped his arms around her and pulled her to himself in a comforting hug. “I think the gods try to guide us, Maigred, but we have to live with the decisions we make. We both learned that the hard way. Don’t make any decisions you can’t live with.”

Maigred rested her cheek against his strong chest. “Are- are you ever sorry for what we chose to do Cathal?” She’d never dared ask him that before.

His arms tightened around her. “Never. I would choose it again in a heartbeat.”

Maigred bit her lip. “If I had known that Lon would betray us, or what Hadeaon was going to do to you, I would have never gone. It didn’t do any good anyway, Hadeaon ended up getting exactly what he wanted, while you…” She leaned back, reached up and touched his cheek softly, tracing the scars there. “You lost everything.”

Cathal’s lips pulled up in a soft smile. “No. I didn’t lose anything worth keeping. We fought against evil. We don’t have to look back and say, ‘if only’. We gave everything we had. We may have lost, but it wasn’t for a lack of trying. It was absolutely worth it.”

“Cathal, how did you know? About Finten? How did you know that he was still fighting?”

Cathal’s smile widened. “Before you came to get me, Finten used to come visit me everyday at mother and father’s. We talked about a lot of things.”

Maigred’s brow creased. “Should I have left you there? Were you happier with them?”

Cathal chuckled softly. “No. You know I wasn’t doing well there. Finten helped keep me alive, but bringing me here was the best thing you could have done for me, Maigred. If I had stayed there, I would have been dead within the year.”

Maigred swallowed and looked away.

Cathal pulled her chin back to him. “Hey, I know I still struggle, but that’s not your fault. There’s no where else I’d rather be than here, I just…sometimes the dark thoughts in my mind are loud. That’s all.”

Maigred smiled. “I love you, Cathal.” She hugged him again. “Goodnight.”

Cathal hugged her back. “Goodnight older, smaller sister.”

She giggled and smacked his shoulder. Cathal chucked softly and they parted ways. Maigred peeked in at Sinead’s room. She was sleeping peacefully. Maigred made her way to her room. She undressed and slipped into bed, wondering what Finten had been about to say to her before Cathal had walked up on them.

She stared up at the rose that Finten had brought her.

What did she want? She wasn’t planning to be here for more than a few more years. Finten seemed loyal to the land here. There wasn’t a future for them.

She thought about how it would feel when she left, how it had felt all those years ago when she had run away and lost her connection to the earth. How it would be for Sinead to never really know the feeling of the earth’s nurturing power grounding her, that feeling of home that settled into your bones when you came back to your own plot of land.

She thought about how much Aoibh struggled, not being able to properly connect to the land here. She struggled with depression, like Cathal did. She would probably never be able to have children, she couldn’t own land. Maigred’s chest constricted. This was the future she was condemning her daughter to by taking her away from her land, but the alternative was worse. Allowing her daughter to be raped by a monster. Her innocence and virginity torn from her in exchange for allowing her and her people to live.

Maigred fell asleep staring at the rose, all the horrible futures she could choose for her daughter passing through her mind in an endless cycle.