When Gods Die

Sometimes, especially in the early hours when darkness was only just giving way to dawn, Kat would imagine she could feel the soldiers’ rough hands upon her, feel the fibrous bite of the rope at her own throat, the breath of life slowly squeezing, squeezing from her. She would awake gasping, the terror in her mind dark and fierce. But she was not her mother. She would not die her mother’s death. And she would not live her life in fear.

For ten years now she’d been Kat Boleyn. There’d been a time when she’d known poverty and desperation, before the whimsies of fame and adoration had changed all of that. And for seven of those years she had loved this man, Sebastian St. Cyr.

She turned her head, a smile warming her heart at the sight of his familiar, beloved features and darkly disheveled hair framed by the crisp white linen of her pillow. She had loved him since she was sixteen and he was twenty-one, when they were both still young and naive enough to believe that love was more important than anything—anything at all. Before she’d understood that one made choices in life, and that some choices carry a price too grievous to bear.

She knew better now. She knew that love could be selfless as well as greedy. And that sometimes the greatest gift that one can give one’s beloved is to let him go.

She realized his eyes were open, watching her. In a few minutes he would leave her bed and she would send him into the afternoon sunshine with a careless caress and light words that asked and gave no promises.

She touched her fingertips to his bare shoulder and he reached for her, strong hands gliding up her back to draw her beneath him. She went to him with a sigh, her eyes closing as she allowed herself to pretend for one shining moment out of time that all those things that matter so much—like honor and loyalty, duty and betrayal—mattered not at all.

THE NECKLACE LAY COOL against Kat’s palm. It was an unusual piece, three interlocking, almond-shaped silver ovals set against a smooth bluestone disk.

Once, this necklace had belonged to Sebastian’s mother. Kat had heard stories about the beautiful countess with the golden hair and dancing green eyes who’d been lost at sea off the coast of Brighton one summer when Sebastian was a child. Now the necklace had reappeared—around the throat of a murdered woman.

Flipping the pendant over, Kat traced the old entwined initials. A. C. and J. S. As Devlin moved around her bedchamber, assembling his clothes and drawing on his breeches and shirt, he told her the legend he’d grown up hearing, about the mysterious Welshwoman who had once possessed the necklace but had given it away to the handsome, ill-fated prince she loved.

“I don’t understand,” said Kat. “If the necklace is supposed to choose its next guardian, then why did Addiena give it to James Stuart?”

Devlin looked up from where he sat on the edge of her bed, one gleaming Hessian in his hands. “You need to remember that at the time she knew him, James Stuart was a hunted man. Charles the First—his father, the King—had just been beheaded by Cromwell and the Roundheads, while his brother—the future Charles the Second—was a fugitive in exile.” Devlin thrust his foot into his boot and stood up. “According to the legend, the necklace is supposed to bring long life. That’s why Addiena gave it to James Stuart—to protect him. They say that when he first rode into London after the restoration of Charles the Second, he had that necklace in a special pouch he always wore around his neck.”

“She must have loved him very much,” said Kat softly, “to give him something so precious to her.”

Devlin went to tie his cravat in front of her dressing table mirror. “I think so, yes. Although he was hardly faithful to her. He went on to marry two different wives and have over a dozen children.”

Kat closed her fist around the triskelion. “He was destined to be king. He needed a wife the people would accept, not some wild Welshwoman from the fields of Cronwyn. If she loved him, she would understand that.”

His eyes met hers in the mirror. She turned away to pick up his coat of Bath superfine. “Only, it didn’t work, did it?” she said over her shoulder. “He didn’t know long life. He lost his throne and died in exile.”

“Ah, but by then he no longer possessed the necklace. According to the story, James the Second had a child by Addiena Cadel, a girl by the name of Guinevere. Guinevere Stuart.”

“Guinevere?” Kat swung around in surprise. “What a strange coincidence.”

“It is, isn’t it? As I understand it, Guinevere Stuart’s father acknowledged her. In addition to giving her his name, he arranged an advantageous marriage for her. And he gave her the necklace as a wedding present.”

“So how did your mother come to have it?”