I let the weight of it wash over me, for the elements themselves to anoint the pain. I allow the skies to weep, the deluge falling on me and my shadow prince, connecting us even as he thinks to separate. We will always be under the same sky.
A minute, two, to indulge the ache of his parting, then my eyes open and I send it back. I am not so easily drowned.
Matthew. Matthieu. God's gift. He always keeps his Christian name. Diana; of the divine. He's mine, always mine. I was not raised to know his God, but I will not turn away his offerings. God's gift, my gift. I know this, I know it in a way the inadequate passage of time cannot define. Three weeks? No. A lifetime: yours and mine. You never change your name, waiting for a day foretold (for all our ignorance), but meeting was like being found, not just for me, nor for paper bound by leather and magic, but deeper in your own chest. You know me like the listless pulse of blood that has begun to quicken in my charge, and I know you like the lightening in my veins that has begun to spark under my skin at your nearness. You entreat me, as if you think this is a spell I could cast (The memory hurts again, the press of his mouth hungry against mine). This is older than either of us. It's not the kind of magic any being has dominion over, this force between us.
You made this choice, conscious and fully-formed, when you took my hand in Oxford to lead me to France. Consequence be damned, we would walk this path together. You've been making that choice since the moment we met, every minute watching in the library, every sip of wine in my rooms. You think you followed the book? Foolish, beautiful idiot. You think you can claim and not be claimed in return?
In every new burst of power calls an echo of an older voice, not ancient God or older Goddess, but a primal, primitive resonance, a more basic instinct entirely my own. You cannot possess and remain unpossessed. We belong to each other, this knot that binds us will not be unravelled by a mere contract and a thousand years, by creatures who think this blink in the Goddesses eye gives them the power to turn us asunder.
We are under the same sky and you are my gift. Given and received, I will not allow us to be returned from whence we came. Protect me? We will be together and the council can be taught, or damned, or both.
I can feel Ysabeau behind me, a witness to the sky and my reckoning.
The council will no more stop us than they will stop the sun from rising. The rain is gone, returned, and the Earth as dry as my eyes. A hand on my arm and Matthew's mother turns me back to the house. What foundations would she have overturned to bring Phillippe to her? Matthew worries of war, of the danger, yet here is a woman who drained whole covens in recompense for her loss. There's been a change here, we find ourselves a little more kin than kind. Protect me? Teach me. I am wind and fire and sky. Our love has teeth, hers and mine, show me how to use them.
This game was started long before tonight, and for all Ysabeau's pain, it makes her more clear-sighted than her son. Our love – and it is love, for all he runs from it – is not one she would choose, but here it stands. Ready to do battle.
We go back inside.