Eodan stared, from one to another of them, for very long. Finally he said, "What thanks I owed you before, Phryne, can be forgotten beside this."
He went to Hwicca, stood behind her, pulled her head back against him and stroked her hair. "Forgive me," he said. "There is much I do not understand. But you shall come with me, for I have always loved you."
"No," she whispered. "I will not. There is no luck in me. I will not!"
He wondered, with a deep harsh wound in the thought, how wide of the mark Phryne, too, might have been. But if they lived beyond this night—if his weird should carry him back to Jutland horizons—he would have their lifetimes to learn, and to heal.
But first it was to escape.
Boierik's son said calmly, "You are going with us, Hwicca. Let me hear no more about that."
[VIII]
But still they tarried. A new thought had come to Eodan. When he asked Phryne, she said it was good—less hopeless, at least, than most things they might attempt.
They sat in the chamber and waited. Little was spoken. Hwicca lay on the couch, after Eodan told her to rest. She stared at the ceiling; only her lungs moved. Eodan sat beside her, stroking her hair. Phryne kept her back to them.