Embers

by Helen Kirkman

  "I mean that I have somewhere else to go first."

  "What are you saying?" The dark bulk rearranged itself with a suddenness that drew crawling fright down her backbone. He was naked. She could sense all the power of him, leashed, burning through his fine supple skin. She closed her mind against the memory of the way he had looked when he was baiting Cunan, poised and ready to strike. ,

  Cunan the hellhound, who for once in his life had to be right.

  She tilted her head.

  "I have told you already." She undid her girdle with a speed that defied sight. "Your bed."

  "You—"

  She ignored the danger and stepped into the twisting serpent shadows of the moonlight. The girdle hit the floor.

  Duda had said his master was not as good at being impulsive as one might wish. This was her test. She undid the ties of her gown.

  "If I am going to be another marriage sacrifice, or if I am going to live out my own life at Alcluyd, I will not go without knowing all there is to know about you, about…" Her voice failed over the word. She swallowed. There were only moments. That was how life was. But sometimes moments could hold eternity.

  "I want to know all about love," she said. "Not just the pleasure, but all there is, whatever it means and whatever the consequences."

  She dragged the gown over her head, in one sweeping movement. Her shift was of Byzantine silk, woven so thinly it was almost transparent. All the curves and hollows of her body must be visible in the moonlight.

  Coldness struck at her skin like claws. There was no protection from it.

  He did not move.

  She said the last piece of truth.

  "I am afraid."

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  She burned him, inside and out. The touch of her skin on his was like fire. Because he was some frozen creature out of the depths of hell. But she burned it away.

  His mouth took hers, crushed it, crushed her. Because she was the only thing that could drag him out of the freezing dark. He heard the sound of her breath and felt the hot softness of her flesh cleave to his and there was nothing in the world except that, and he was falling, with her, joined, his own body twisting beneath her like a rolling battle fall to take her weight. Shoulder and hip touched not the rush-strewn floor but the softness of the overstuffed bed. He had no recollection of carrying her there.

  No recollection.

  Which only showed what a hell-thane he was. And she had said she was afraid.

  His hands froze on her body.

  "Alina, do not try and do this." The words were harsh blackness against the deeper night dark of her hair. "I am not worth it." His breath rasped. "I cannot—" The word he never said choked off in his throat. There was darkness. And the small brutal sound of her sobbing breath.

  He rolled away and that movement brought all the pain he should have felt before and had not. He kept his body and his mind utterly still, staring at the blackness above.

  He had to speak.

  "I cannot—"

  "I understand what you would say and I understand why." Her voice cut across his, clear and bright as a blade. She was still speaking in Celtic.

  "You cannot forgive me for all that happened."

  Her words struck through him.

  No, it is not that. The denial, instant, blood-searing, beat against his mouth with a force beyond thought. But it was the abandonment of the mind's power that held hell's torments.

  "I understand why," said the brilliant clearness of her voice. If he said yes she would leave him. She would go back to Strath-Clòta and she would be safe. Always.

  "It is because it is my fault." She was shaking. He knew that, even though he was not touching her. He did not have to touch Alina with his body. "I understand that—"

  The untruth of it would eat through bone. It was beyond him to let her believe it.

  "It is not true." His voice obliterated hers. "What happened was not your fault, none of it."

  "But—"

  "The blame lies with Hun's brutality and Goadel's ambition." He tried to master the black fury at the damage that had been done, the thought of the far greater harm that had so nearly happened.

  "They are dead now, both of them—" He could not think of yesterday.

  He turned back to face her in the dark and the bruised bones jarred with a pain that made him grit his teeth. But it was ordinary. Quite ordinary.

  "They are gone and the only way they can cause more harm is if you allow them to. Let them lie."

  He heard the long drawn-out thread of her breath.

  "But they should not have had the power to harm you or your brother when all this began."

  "We were Cenred's kin. Harm would always have come to us. That harm should not have touched you."

  "But if I had not gone away with you, if I had not done something so madly reckless, made you do it—"

  "The decision was mine."

  "It was madness."

  "No. What I did was no fleeting impulse to be disavowed later." He caught his breath on such dangerous ground, but he could see the small restless movements of her body, like a soul that can find no peace.

  "You cannot mean that."

  He could not watch that sort of pain.

  "It is true. I tried to tell you so that day when I spoke to Cunan. It was you I wanted to speak to. Your understanding I wanted."

  But the agitated movements increased. He wanted to still them with his touch, to take that small fragile body in his arms and take its pain and its hurts with all the dammed-up force of love inside him. But his love was not right for her and it was her very fragility which defeated him.

  "You do not have to tell me why you rescued me from Hun," she said. "I know that. You did it because of what you are. Because you see too much and understand too much about people and why they do all the helpless, selfish, inadequate things that they do. And you are not put off by it You have too much pity and too much…too much kindness for people. For me. Because when it came down to it, I was as helpless and inadequate as all the rest."

  "That is why you thought I took you from Hun? Because I felt sorry for your…your helplessness and inadequacy?" He tried to get breath through the battered wreck of his ribs. But all the air in the room, all the cold piercing freshness of Bamburgh had vanished, leaving nothing in the pain-struck mass of his chest

  "Yes. And that is why I left you. Because you had too much honour and too much pity and I could not stand it. I could not stand the price I had made you pay for me. I took everything from you—the life that you lived, your honour, your home, all that you owned. I thought I had killed your brother. That is why I went"

  "You—you left me for my sake?"

  "Yes. But perhaps there was a thread of selfishness even in that." The bitterness in her voice tore through all that was left of himself.

  "Perhaps in my heart I would rather that you hated me for leaving you than for staying. And yet despite all the…the helplessness and inadequacy in me, I would have walked barefoot the length of Britain if I could have taken any of that pain away from you."

  "To take the pain away? Do you have any idea what it was like to think that you were dead? To believe that being with me was so insupportable to you that it forced you into a flight back to a creature who would destroy people for greed, or for enjoyment? That your flight was so wild and so desperate that it caused your death?"

  He felt her move in the stifling engulfing blackness of the bed. He stopped his voice. What he said belonged to that blackness, intensified it. He fought for control over voice and breathing and all the wildly pressing feelings of his heart.

  "I thought you had left me because of all I had lost, because I had nothing left to give, not even adequate protection. You asked why I was so ready to believe you were dead, that you would not come back. But I knew it would happen, somehow. It was almost as though part of me expected it, as though your leaving had to happen. Because what we had could not last. Because such things never do."
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br />   The need to touch her, to force some connection out of the blackness, was almost more than he could prevent. But it was not fit and even as be moved, her body twisted, sliding round in the dark, widening the space between them. The words he had to say to set her tree came out.

  "I failed you."

  He got up, because he could no longer bear to be so near her and not be able to touch her. Because the separation between them was something mat could not be overcome. Nay, worse: something that should not.

  The welcoming cold struck his naked body. Somehow he got as far as the window and the air. He wrenched the shutter fully open and the ice wind of the coming autumn beat against his skin, cutting through it as though it was not there, until it found its place round his heart.

  Behind him he could hear the rustling of the bedcovers as she moved. She made a small sound like someone in torment and he turned his head because he always would for her, even if she were not his.

  Perhaps she still felt pity for him. The kind of pity that had driven her through heaven knew what dangers into Wessex, because she did not want to harm him. Her pity was like a rope made of steel, if such a thing could have been fashioned. It never let go, not even of her dangerous and tormented family.

  "It is over, Alina." The words seemed stuck in the frozen column of his throat. He forced them out. "There cannot be a future for us, however much we have tried to make it so. I cannot undo the harm I have done you, but I would not cause more."

  "That is not what I fear."

  But it was. I am afraid. The way he had touched her with such wildness. The way he had slipped the bonds of control when he had killed Goadel. Such a thing would never be out of his mind. That he was like a savage. Because of what was inside him.

  He had to cut the tie of her pity. He stared back into the blackness of the room.

  "If you are not afraid, you should be." The coldness of the air, blessing and bane, took everything. She must have heard it in his voice, sensed the death grip of it.

  "You must go, Alina, while you can. Go to Strath-Cldta. There will not be another chance." It was so hard-won, that freedom for her, so fragile just as she was.

  "You will be safe at Alcluyd. You said it was the only place you were ever happy. That what you wanted was your own place in the world. I could not give you that before. I can now."

  He turned back to the open window and the cold seared him as though it had the sting of fire.

  "Take that of me at least." His voice splintered on the ice. He forced the last words out.

  "I have nothing else."

  Alina crawled over the bed.

  She stared at the lethal black profile outlined in the wash of moonlight. Shadows and silver light like ice crystals.

  The wildly tangled bedcovers slid off her legs. There was silence. Nothing moved except the thick, painful beating of her heart.

  The moonlight showed her every plane and every ridged muscle of his shoulders. The rest fell into the unknown dark. The only other gleam she could make out was the white line of the linen strapping round his chest. She could not even see the goldness of his hair.

  She swung her legs over the edge of the bed. Coldness. Freezing.

  There were choices and there were things beyond that

  We will abide this together. Always.

  His skin was colder than it had been when she had thought he had drowned in the clear rushing water of the river. Rigid muscle moved.

  "Don't—" It was not so much a word as a sound, a sound that had the intensity of some great beast of prey that would kill itself or others before it would fall to a hunter's spear.

  She kept her hand where it was and the coldness of him seeped through her fingers.

  "I will not go." Her hand spread out across the frozen flesh. She hoped it was not shaking. "Not yet."

  "Not yet." The great head turned with a speed that was savage. His eyes, in the shadows, were not gold at all but black.

  "Not yet? Then when? When we have completed our—unfinished business? When I have bedded you as though I were some stag in the rut? Because that is what I would do, Alina. Is that what you want?"

  She saw the direction of the black gaze, on her hand where it lay on the moon-silvered skin of his arm.

  "Believe me, it is not what you would want." The harshness in his words, in his gaze, hurt like the cold.

  "I—"

  "What? What will you say? That that would be a fitting ending to all the futility that we have shared? That after it you will go?"

  She could feel the coldness right inside her now, blighting all she had. It would freeze her mind and she would not be able to think. Already she felt the dizzy sickness of that cold. It would freeze her heart, rob her senses and she would drop where she stood, right here on the floor among the rushes. Just like—there was no reason to think of her father. None at all.

  "Go now, while there is something left that is not marred."

  No reason to think of her father. Brand was not like him.

  But he had known, where she had not, that her father had not been able to express what was inside his heart.

  Her father with his desperate love. With his desperate selfishness.

  Brand did not deal in selfishness. He did not try to trap people.

  She looked up.

  "I will not leave, either to go to Strath-Clòta or to Pictland." Her words cleaved through the darkness. "Where I will go is to Lindwood near Jarrow. I will not leave until you come with me."

  He did not speak and his eyes did not change. Neither did his will. It was the way a warrior defeated an opponent in battle. She did not have what it took to withstand that She did not have what he needed, and her defeat seemed final.

  But she was touching him, with her fingers splayed out on his flesh as though she were the lover she was not. The skin of palm and fingertips, more responsive than thought, lay against his. And so she felt it, through painfully stretched senses, the jolt inside that he could not disguise. She felt its rawness and uncontrollable depth, and it was doubly grievous because he would not let that break either the warrior's training or the steady citadel of his mind.

  She did not know whether what she did held any lightness at all, or only more harm. She only knew that she could not stop.

  "Then tell me," she said, holding her head as though there was no fear and no possibility of destructive loss. "Tell me why not."

  "There is no need of words. You have seen it."

  They were not the words she had expected. No bitterness. No blade-sharp assessment of why she was not good enough. Just a statement of something that was, and behind it the grief held in.

  "I do not understand."

  "You saw what lives in me. Yesterday. When I fought Goadel. You saw what happened, and I saw the horror of it in your eyes."

  "No…"

  "There is no longer room for lies between us, not even a lie out of pity. You were horror-struck. You were afraid of me. You still are."

  "No." Her fingers tightened on the tense, lethal pad of muscle under her hand and she knew it would not harm her. It would die first. That was what she had seen. "I was not afraid of you."

  Her eyes caught the darkness of his gaze, tried to hold it. There was gold there, somewhere. Gold was imperishable. She saw it in the gleam of moonlight as his head turned to hers as though drawn by some invisible thread. Like a Saxon's fate thread.

  She did not know whether the light she could see was fire or ice. Both burned, and it was not mere gold that was imperishable, it was the essence of him, the measure of the soul's power. His eyes held hers.

  "Can you not see the truth of it, Alina? Can you not know that I was afraid? Of myself and of what I did."

  It was not a truth any man ever admitted. But the soul's power never wavered. The words hung in the air, like a gift made beyond price. She could not requite it. She did not think she had that much courage, or clearness of mind. Or unselfishness.

  But she could not leave him like this
.

  Her hands tightened on the warrior's muscle adorned with the gold that betokened his rank.

  She and her brawling arrogant family had taken from him something there was no way to replace.

  "You must hate me so much."

  "Do you think I could have done what I did from hate?"

  Clarity of thought. Single-mindedness. He had said that she had that. He had seen in her things that she had been too afraid to see for herself.

  Perhaps she had the courage.

  Perhaps she could see, with his eyes.

  "You loved me, all the time. But I never let myself believe it was so."

  The moon darkness covered everything and the silence held, so that the truth, if it was there, stayed hidden.

  But even if she had destroyed what had been there for her, all that he had given and she had not seen, even if it was dead, there was still so much left to be redeemed.

  For him.

  Her fingers left small white dents on his skin.

  If she could.

  Her broken fingers straightened out on his frozen, unmoving flesh. There had to be warmth there, somewhere. She would find it. In her head, she started praying to Saint Dwyn. For the right words, the ones that would set him free.

  "You thought you were like a berserker, did you not?" The arm nearly ripped out of her grasp but she held on to it. Even though she had no strength, not in that hand. She looked at the crushed shapes of her fingers on his arm. He knew her weakness. He would not use one quarter of his force in case he hurt her.

  She began to know what to say.

  "You thought you had called up a berserk fury like a wolf skin." She knew the kind of nightmares that haunted Saxons. "You thought you were like one who is so mad with it that they feel not their wounds and kill whatever they see. You thought the way you had fought Goadel was like a berserker-gang."

  "How else would you describe it?"

  "Quite differently."

  She sat down next to him on the wall bench. She slid her hand down the lethal length of his arm, so that she ended up with his hand caught in hers.