“Last, the child will be mine to raise.”
“Whatever you say,” he whispers, because the daimone has caught sight of him. She has no true distinguishable features, no human mask of a face, yet those are eyes that see him, that mark his presence, and she does not recoil as he returns her gaze boldly. She watches him, blazing and effulgent, the most magnificent thing he has seen in a life that brought him face-to-face with many wondrous creatures. He does not fear her. He is too much in thrall to desire, the man who until now had remained faithful to his vow of chastity despite the many temptations thrown in his path.
Whatever you say.
The words haunt Liath.
The corpse is carried away and buried fittingly. The next day, Anne and Bernard are joined in holy matrimony in the chapel, with the others looking on as witnesses. Wolfhere paces restlessly throughout the ceremony, looking ready to spit. Rothaide, Meriam, and Severus leave for distant parts, although Wolfhere lingers for a handful of days like a man in the throes of suspicion, believing that his wife is contemplating adultery. Only when his Eagle’s sight shows him the old king, Arnulf, bed-ridden with a terrible fever, does he leave, hastening away to the side of the king he has pretended for all these years to serve faithfully.
When Wolfhere is finally gone, Anne can at last work her spell, but hers is a devious mind and she has the means to punish the only man for whom she ever actually felt unbearable physical desire. The fire of the daimone’s soul is tamed, her aetherical body is given a semblance of mortal substance, but in this process her features are molded so that they resemble Anne herself.
Trapped and diminished, the daimone turns to the one who shows her kindness and affection. Fire seeks heat when it is dying. Bernard is not unaware of the way Anne has turned his wish back onto him, so that when at last the daimone surrenders to his patient courtship of her, it’s as if he is making love to Anne herself, her face, her body, but lit by aetherical fire from within, like Anne in the guise of an angel. With that wicked, sardonic humor that made him able to withstand much suffering in his eastern travels, he even calls her “Anne” although Anne lies as helpless as a newborn in the villa, tended by Bernard hand and foot because he remains as good as his word. His entire universe has shrunk to this villa, to the care he gives faithfully to the invalid who has made his wish become truth, to the sphere of the fiery woman-creature he worships and makes love to.
Maybe what he feels for the daimone is love and maybe it is only lust, a craving brought on by a glimpse of the high reaches of the universe, too remote for the human mind to comprehend. But if what he feels is not love, then it is hard to say what counts for love in a cold world.