HEARTS AFLAME

by Nancy Morse

  On the second morning of his visit, Rowan found himself free while Victor attended to some business with his father. He wandered out of the house with no destination in mind, merely curious about his surroundings, first following the road, then stepping onto a hint of a path cutting through some brush. After half a league or so, a thicket of bramble bushes stopped him. He skirted the edge, intending to circle around, and was surprised when the rancid scent of decay teased his nostrils.

  He didn’t know what motivated him that day. He liked to think he truly hadn’t been blind to Victor’s nature and some heretofore ignored instinct had driven him, but it was just as likely the complexity of the odor prompted him, somehow different than that of a single animal that had crawled into a bush to die. Or maybe he sensed rather than saw the hulk of the shed mostly hidden by the thorny canes.

  In any case, he thanked God for the curiosity that had him circling three times around the briars to find the tunnel of branches to crawl through, and the courage to open the door to the square building clouded by the putrid smell. The portal swung true on leather straps, nearly soundless and often used.

  The stench all but knocked him back, but he soldiered through to find shelves with proudly presented specimens surrounding a central table where meticulously cleaned tools lay on a surface stained with dried blood. A quick survey showed tortured bundles of fur, carcasses that had been dried in horrible positions, entire litters of dehydrated puppies stored in buckets and perhaps their mother tacked to the wall above them, spread-eagled in a way a dog’s hips and shoulders would not naturally flex. The horrific collection drove him back outside.

  His stood, hands on hips, sucking in the relatively fresh air. He stared for a long time at that squat shed, wondering whose it was and what he should do about it.

  He didn’t suspect Victor at first. He’d known the man for more than two years, after all. When he’d encountered him outside the manse, he almost asked about the hidden building. Then pale eyes had flickered to a tear in Rowan’s tunic, found the entrapped thorn Rowan hadn’t realized was there. The narrow patrician nose flared, sniffing, possibly catching a whiff of decay, and a gleam had come over his face, quickly hidden.

  Rowan made quiet inquiries, at first assuming he’d leapt to the wrong conclusion. The few tenants he found in the short time left of his visit couldn’t hide their fear when he spoke Victor’s name. A serving girl cringed away from the man at dinner even though he smiled at her with the same charming face he used on Fia. Dogs tucked their tails, cats arched and scattered, the horse shied when they mounted for the ride to Metz.

  They’d barely passed through the gate when Victor promptly announced his intention to marry Fia, whom he’d visited several times over the summer. “I will ask Heric once we’ve settled in for the winter,” he’d promised.

  Rowan had clamped his jaw shut. Normally he would confront a man directly, but he had no desire to sleep with one eye open on their journey or to kill a former friend in self-defense. His only goal, in truth, had been to keep Fia out of Victor’s clutches.

  Fia saw Rowan only as a friend, or worse, a brother. He must at least fulfill those roles. Even without that relationship, what kind of man would stand by as any woman married a well-polished monster?

  Despite his confidence in his decision, it was also a bleak prospect, turning on Victor and scuttling the hopes of a better life for Fia and her family.

  He’d considered it all carefully, even corresponded with his mother — without mentioning names — and mulled over his knowledge before taking Heric aside to tell him what he’d seen. He’d told him he didn’t think Victor posed a threat to his family but that Victor and Fia were well on their way to a betrothal, and putting her under the power of such a man promised a life of cruelty, if not torture.

  Heric, at his heart a gentle, loving husband and father, had been horrified and admitted some skepticism about the revelation. Yet well-veiled scrutiny accompanied Victor’s next visit to their home.

  Rowan never knew what convinced Heric. He had his suspicions based on rumors he later heard about injured servant girls in the Lord of Metz’s household. In any case, within a few days the change in Heric’s manner toward Victor made it obvious he’d accepted the truth. And when the inevitable request for permission to marry Fia came, it was politely but unequivocally denied.

  Heric spared Fia the facts. He hadn’t even told Abril, though she knew Rowan had spoken to him about a serious matter within the last week. When Fia cried out her confusion on her mother’s shoulder and begged to know why Victor had been refused, Abril wept also. After all, the match exceeded all expectations. In an attempt to give Fia any information at all, she’d mentioned how troubled Heric had been after a long conversation with Rowan.

  Fia had leapt on the tidbit. She’d jumped to her own wild conclusions while Victor played broken-hearted suitor on the surface and patiently worked out the truth underneath.

  Though the three of them remained in Metz that winter, Rowan’s friendships were broken. Fia made certain he bore the full weight of her disdain while Victor remained aloof, and only the work at the forge, the wealth of knowledge Heric could convey, kept him in town.

  He’d lost his two best friends in order to save one from the other.

  Then Victor was foisted on him as a soldier-to-be, serving as the man his father’s estate must supply to the army to fulfill his duty to his king. Rowan had warned his former friend against it, knowing he lacked the skill and mindset to succeed. The resulting argument, in which Victor held up bravado in the face of the bloody facts of war, only proved how unsuited he was for the task.

  Victor had no idea what battle would be like, only that Rowan had grown bigger and stronger, had been trained since he was a boy to defend himself and kill others, that his father, David, was the most respected warrior in two kingdoms while Victor’s father was, comparatively, nothing. He knew he’d been thwarted in his choice of bride by the man who, in his mind, already had everything.

  With no choice in the matter, Rowan helped Victor prepare for his summer in the army. He’d gone to Victor’s home to fetch him. He’d even sneaked back to that shed in the woods, a touchstone to remind him what he’d done had been right.

  It still stood, with a stronger stench, filled with more trophies, and larger ones.

  He’d saved Fia from that, anyway. But he hadn’t been able to save Victor.

  Fia had grown accustomed to Rowan’s fortifying presence at night. He always placed his bed a respectable distance away but near enough that no harm could come to her, safe between him and the fire. She’d slept several nights without dreaming, knowing he was nearby.

  Perhaps she’d dropped her guard and allowed the terrible nightmare of flame dancing before her to take root again. The reality of the forest and the man asleep behind her vanished, replaced by the charred stench of Paris and the killing Northman who carried a flaming sword. He stabbed it into Papa again and again before turning his crystal blue, emotionless eyes on her. Her hands opened and closed on air. She’d had a hammer the last time. Where had it gone?

  As her eyes widened in terror she saw the fiery sword, right there in front of her. She cried out and crabbed backwards, fighting a tangle of cloth around her legs until she smacked into something dense and unyielding. Or someone, whose arm now encircled her. A second shriek ripped from her. Hopelessly confused, she tried to wrench away from this new attacker who gripped her tightly against him.

  “It is me, Fia. You are safe.”

  The quiet words spoken in a sleep-roughened voice, the familiar smell of him, returned her close enough to reality to stop her struggling, allowed her to see her bedding wrapped around her legs in the loam of the forest, not the dry dirt of the shed. Still, her heart pounded and her breathing sounded like the panting of a dog.

  “It is a dream, Fia,” he said, soothing her with both his voice and gentle rubbing of her shoulder while his other arm held her close.
She felt the power coursing along his body and into her backbone where she still pressed against him.

  The fire she’d seen with her open eyes was the tiny flicker left from their nightly blaze. That knowledge could not stop the shivering fear as she remembered the sword and the echo of Papa’s anguished cries. She allowed herself a moment of weakness while she leaned into Rowan’s strength, letting the tension unwind with each breath.

  “You are safe,” he repeated, over and over.

  When she’d calmed enough, she spoke, embarrassed. “I’m sorry for waking you. I hoped after the last few nights the dreams were done.”

  “They will go, in time.” His moist breath warmed her hair, and she realized his lips were very close to the top of her head. How comforting it would be to tuck her head under his chin and curl into him completely. Dear Rowan, the man who had ruined her life.

  She pulled away with a mental shake. “I’ve imposed on you yet again. I’m sorry,” she repeated as she crawled across the ground, her blankets dragging behind, still wrapped around her ankles.

  “’Tis nothing.”

  She pulled the blankets up and curled onto her side. It was the time of morning when even the nocturnal creatures were quiet, the darkness around the camp so silent Fia felt as if her screams must have shattered a woodland tranquility that had been eternal until she’d showed up to ruin it.

  Knowing she probably wouldn’t sleep any more tonight, she dug in her bag for the red disc, trying to draw strength from her father’s memory since peace was apparently out of reach. Strength would be the more valuable commodity as she faced her family’s future. If the dreams of the past weren’t bad enough, her present reality made her stomach hollow.

  Her family had lost all its income. That was the bald, terrifying fact she’d confronted more directly each day of separation from the horrors of Paris, and it was bad enough to quell the memory of the nightmare.

  Their options were few. Julius had been working with Papa but was capable of only the early tasks in fashioning a blade. Of course, Stella was apprenticing which gave her a skill but no income. Mam could not keep a household running without protection or earnings. They would soon find themselves completely destitute, Fia feared.

  If she’d been married to Victor, she would have been able to help them, possibly even bring them to his estate. Her family didn’t need much. Surely there would have been a hut with a garden, at least.

  Why had Victor wanted to go with the army, she wondered. Why did he leave me alone?

  The glass glowed deep burgundy, and all her fearful questions remained unanswered. And neither Papa nor Victor would be back to help her.

  “What is that thing you look at each morn?” Rowan asked quietly.

  You’re not alone, his voice seemed to say. God help her, through these days of travel with him, these moments when he drew her back from the cliffs of grief and terror, she remembered why they had become friends. He was calm, steady, solid as the foundation of the grand church at Metz yet open to her as its wood doors.

  She could not withhold her little token from him after waking him from a sound sleep and taking the comfort so desperately needed and so willingly offered. She sat up again and held it out. He turned it over on his palm several times, then lifted it to the firelight exactly as she had.

  “There are words engraved on this side,” he said in wonder. “I can’t read them without better light. What do they say?”

  “We go in circles at night and are consumed by fire,” she recited.

  “Hmmm.”

  “At least that’s what Papa said when he gave it to me. At the end. He said it had been in the hilt of someone’s spata. He thought I should keep it. I don’t really know what to think of the words, but looking at it does comfort me.”

  Rowan smiled slightly, a faint lift at the corners of his mouth. “I can relate to going in circles. All I’ve hoped for the last few years is a straight and clear path to show me what I should be doing. Where I belong.” He shrugged. “Even without the words, you have a talisman, a touchstone from Heric.”

  “Yes,” she agreed. Talking about someone else, thinking about a life other than her own, calmed her. “You mentioned you still want to be a weaponsmith. It seems you’ve chosen your path, so why does that feel circular?”

  He did not answer. Why would he want to tell her anything, anyway?

  He pulled his knees up and crossed his ankles. The arms he wrapped around his long legs were thick, their reddish blond hairs shining in the firelight. “Decided is a strong word. I wish it could be my path, but as the only male heir of the Alda, I have other pressing responsibilities.”

  “Or so your parents say?”

  “Perhaps. Never that strongly. My mother tries not to be disapproving. She indulged the three winters of training with your father. I think she hoped the time away would make me appreciate Alda.”

  “Your enjoying smithing over your estate was not part of her plan,” she guessed.

  “No. My father is a born warrior. For him, the forge was always a secondary interest. Ideally I would have been formed in his image with a generous dose of her enthusiasm for the estate added to the blend,” he explained with a wry smile.

  Fia cocked her head to one side. “Which means weaponsmithing should be at least third in your hierarchy of interests?”

  “Exactly.”

  She sensed there was more he held back so she waited.

  He tugged at a blade of dew-wetted grass. “The frustrating thing is, Marian is perfectly suited to step in to Mother’s role at the estate. She’s been traipsing along in her shadow for as long as I can remember. Not to mention our overseer Samuel, who grew up at Alda, same as I did.”

  “Why not leave them to it then?”

  “Hah.” He laughed. “Did anyone ever suggest you take over your father’s profession?”

  “No, but you’ve said your mother already works in the role.”

  “True,” he admitted. “’Tis the obvious solution, but we’d all have to relinquish lifelong assumptions. Marian, as a noblewoman, was expected to marry and live at her husband’s estate. She’s now twenty-seven years old and has never even had an offer made to her. Not that she minds.”

  Fia blinked at him. “Why hasn’t she married? With her connections and your family’s fortune, she should have dozens of suitors.”

  “She’s a force, Marian is, tall and intimidating to most men. She seems perfectly content to remain at Alda, which frees me from a considerable amount of responsibility.” His affection for his sister carried in the tone of his voice. “Still, our parents would have to come to terms with two of their children straying from the path, so to speak.”

  “A harder thing for a daughter than a son, no doubt. Yet your support of the plan would make it possible for Marian, I’d think.” She chewed her lip, thinking. “You couldn’t avoid the army in the summer, I suppose, though you could continue your work at the forge more freely in the winter?”

  “I’ll admit, ’tis what I’ve been mulling the last few months. I’d still have to act as the figurehead in the ways my father has, much to Mother’s chagrin. Go to the royal assemblies. That sort of thing.”

  “Oh, of course, that goes without saying,” she said with a hint of sarcasm.

  He arched one brow. It was the kind of teasing comment she would have made before, in the old days, when they’d been friends, and he’d responded in just the same restrained way. A lock of hair fell across his brow, making him appear boyish and inviting, and for the second time since waking she became a traitor to the man who had loved her. Add in that she wished Rowan would hold her again and keep telling her his dreams so she could forget the nightmare of her real life.

  “Does the work go well, at the forge?” she prompted.

  “Well enough. Father and I both have requests enough to fill each winter.”

  “You no longer employ a journeyman?”

  “We are be
tween right now. We’ve been looking since last summer.”

  “Hopefully one will present himself, both at Alda and at Metz.”

  Rowan shrugged.

  “You do not want to hire someone to work the forge year-round?”

  His chin lowered, showing his reluctance to answer. “I would rather do the work myself,” he finally admitted.

  In truth, his dream was ridiculous to a person like her. Every tradesman, tenant, and slave would see it so, wondering what sort of sot preferred the heat and soot of the forge to the management of a fat estate.

  “You are a man now. Can you not choose for yourself?” she asked.

  “I have a responsibility to my family. Do not doubt I recognize my good fortune in my birth, but…there is a price to privilege.” He ran a hand through his hair. “Price is not the right word. Compromise?”

  He looked up at her, unsure, then tried to explain. “Everyone had expectations, from the day I was born, of who I would be and what I would do. The very bed and bedroom I’m meant to occupy as master were already mapped out. And all of it will just be handed to me as long as I don’t muck it up and displease the king. My parents and sisters depend on me, but I’m not certain Alda is what I am good at, not the way Marian is.”

  She didn’t know the right words to reassure him, her heart hurting now for someone other than herself. “If Marian never marries, then you will at least have more time at the forge.”

  He shook his head. “I cannot wish for that fate for my sister. She deserves a family of her own.” His hands slapped down on his thighs. “A family fathered by a man who can at least stand up to her. I’m not sure any man could actually love her, big and bossy as she is.”