Page 38 of A Treacherous Trade
What I hadn’t known until that nauseating moment was that Aidan had perpetrated the carnage himself, having taken on the mantle of an avenging angel. He’d learned of his victims’ egregious sins and talked himself into believing that the voice of God granted him the power to mete out justice.
He explained to me in horrific detail just what had driven him to the brink of such madness, while wielding the knife against his next intended martyr.
Aidan had proposed to me before he left for America on a military errand, and returned to Ireland only long enough to announce that he’d vowed to become a priest.
I’d wondered why for years.
The night at St. Michael’s, he revealed that he’d pledged his life to God out of guilt. Guilt for helping the army lay waste to entire villages.
Villages filled with people very much like Aramis Night Horse’s massacred tribe.
After his confession, Aidan had expected me to join his righteous crusade against the evil infecting the Empire. He’d wanted me to wield the knife against Jorah myself.
It was join his holy war… or fall prey to it.
Aramis Night Horse had slithered into the shadows of the Sacristy, and with the fury of the damned, and the blood of unknown thousand screaming in his bereaved heart, he plunged his blade into Aidan’s back.
Thrice.
“You must be so… appalled,” I moaned, pressing trembling fingers to my lips. “Enraged, disgusted!”
“Fiona?” Suddenly he was there, towering over me, his hands encircling my wrists and firmly, gently, pulling them away from my face. “What are you saying?”
“I’ve wondered why I’d not been called upon by you for months. I thought it was because Jorah was recovering, but no.No, of course not. How could you stand to even look at me after…?”
Bemusement didn’t sit easily on features as broad and sharp as his. “I didn’t think you’d want to seemyface,” he said, suddenly releasing me. “I did not want these hands to offend you in your grief.”
Hands now stained in the blood of the man I’d thought to be the love of my life.
For months I’d wondered what I’d feel in this moment. And for a split second, I’d felt it all… but now?
I took his hands in mine and turned them over to trace the crevices drawn into the skin of his palms. They were clean, unblemished, the flesh pale and pink, in direct contrast to the rest of his body.
“These past months, I did not grieve the man you killed. I grieved the man I loved, a man who perhaps never existed in the first place. You deserved the revenge you took, and so much more. I think a part of him knew that. And you saved my life in the process… though I somehow still find myself unable to thank you just now. I hope you can understand.”
As stained with blood as his hands were, I could absolve him of this one deed. The rest he’d have to take up with whatever gods or demons received him in the end. That was no business of mine.
I finally gathered the courage to tilt my head up and saw something I’d never thought to find in his gaze.
Mercy. Compassion.
Humanity, even.
“I hated all Americans,” he said. “I came here because I refused to die on the land that had been taken from me. Because I wanted to spill blood on the ancestral soil of the American machine. I thought I would hate all of you, too. That I would blame all of you.”
“But you don’t?”
He was silent a moment. “I don’t blameyou, Fiona. That is the only truth I can give you right now.”
I nodded, both understanding him and not comprehending him at all.
“We bury this between us then,” I proffered.
The dip of his chin sealed our agreement. “It is ash on the wind.”
Just like the ruins of St. Michael’s on the night Jorah and Night Horse had torched the cathedral with Aidan’s corpse inside. He was forever canonized as a beloved priest who perished in a tragic fire.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered, finally giving in to the blink that released a tear from my eyes.
