Lord of Shadows (Daughters of Avalon Book 5)

by Tanya Anne Crosby

  Only a week ago, he’d feared she would never agree to the bargain. Considering that her eldest sister was to have been his betrothed, he’d expected Rhiannon to continue to deny him out of spite, or in defiance of her mother.

  For all these past five years, he’d tried in vain—or so he’d thought—to win her over; and she was no easy mark. In the beginning, the wooing was no more than a diversion, but one night, whilst he’d lain abed… he’d realized… it had been years since he’d last thought of Nesta. It was no longer her face, but Rhiannon’s that appeared to him in his dreams, and it was Rhiannon’s name he oft breathed in the throes of pleasure—self-served, mind you. Much to his botheration, after meeting Rhiannon, he could no more consider a romp in the hay with some nameless wench than he could remember the way it felt to be touched by a woman he loved.

  For a while, guilt had plagued him, because Nesta had sacrificed her life to save him, and the least he could have done was to honor her memory. Instead, he’d found himself hard as stone with thoughts of a red-haired termagant whose tongue was as sharp as her wit.

  God’s truth. Even weary from travel, she was beautiful, with her dark, copper curls as wild and free as she was.

  No doubt, he’d wanted to cheer her when she’d burned that man-child’s hand, and with his own blade to boot. It served the wretch right for testing her so stupidly.

  In fact, now that she was free from her manacles, there was no telling what powers Rhiannon possessed, but if that was a small inkling…

  “Are you listening?”

  Marcella’s eyes impugned him.

  Cael shook his head. “Apologies,” he said, his gaze returning to the pair of reliquaries in her hand. “The problem is… now that we are no longer in her proximity, there is no way for me to tell which is mine. They are precisely identical, save for that odd glow in her presence.”

  “Even the crystals,” Marcella agreed. “The veins are precisely the same.”

  “Aye.”

  “So, then… what is the worst thing that could happen if we destroyed them both?”

  Cael shrugged. “The worst? I haven’t a clue. Perhaps nothing at all? Or, it could be that I would cease to exist. I haven’t any notion how they work. Every time I inquired, Morwen was adamant I not concern myself with specifics. She merely bade me to care for them as though my life depended upon them, because, she said it did.”

  “Aye, well, if it is any consolation, I don’t believe you would cease to exist,” Marcella argued, still examining the reliquaries. “If what you say is true, she gave you the means to destroy her, and kept your reliquary, for herself. This tells me that she mustn’t be overly concerned about its destruction.” She placed one crystal between her teeth, and bit down to test its solidity. “Rather, I believe she knew you would keep it safe from others, and she must have presumed you would guard it better than she could amidst so many enemies.”

  “We’ve now proven she’s not immune in her mortal form,” Cael said, casting Morwen’s daughter another glance, watching her interactions with Jack.

  The man-child was goading him, he was sure of it, but why? He hadn’t any sense the lad was stupid, nor had there ever been any rancor between them. Perhaps it was only to prove a point. He hadn’t missed the lad’s good-natured chuckle, nor Rhiannon’s answering smirk once he’d planted his sword between them. It remained there now, a reminder to both that he was watching them still.

  “Cael?”

  Cael nodded, then realizing he didn’t hear the last thing she said, he peered back at Marcella. “What?”

  “I can see you are too preoccupied for this discussion. Should we remain here tonight, or press on?”

  Cael could think of nothing so sweet as to lie with his wife in his arms, but this was not the time nor the place. “Press on,” he said, and suggested, “but mayhap not straight to Macclesfield.”

  He lifted up the stick Marcella had been drawing with, and poked it at the etching already made in the soil—a crude map of their intended route and destination.

  “’Tis roughly eleven or twelve leagues to Macclesfield. But… I happen to have learned that my cousin recently dispatched the lord of Amdel.”

  “Beauchamp?”

  “Aye.”

  “Dispatched?”

  Cael arched a black brow. “Aye, as in… relieved him of, not only his worldly possessions, but his life as well.”

  “How does this serve us?”

  “Well… I warrant that with Stephen so preoccupied with Duke Henry at Wallingford, Amdel’s disputed parklands are the furthest thing from his mind. I must presume the castle lies empty still.”

  “But isn’t your cousin wed to Beauchamp’s sister?”

  “’Tis a complicated matter, but aye. Yet, not the brother you presume. Graeham d’Lucy has forsworn his lands; he ceded them all to his brother.”

  Marcella’s brows rose. “With the King’s blessing?”

  “Indeed. He appealed to Stephen some months ago, right before he left London, and Stephen agreed. Although he might well trust Blaec well enough to give him another parcel, there’s no way Duke Henry will ever concede to the granting of Beauchamp’s lands to a man who already holds a powerful seat, not when he can award them to another of his loyal barons.”

  “I ask you again, how does that help us?”

  “Because, in the meantime, Amdel remains empty… and unguarded.”

  A once, Marcella relieved him of the stick, then poked at her etching, at a location that appeared to be somewhere behind them. “Correct me if I am wrong, but Amdel lies here.” She poked at the drawing again, and again. “We are here, and we must go here.” Then, she poked the stick far to the right and north of her drawing. “This is where we must end.”

  Warkworth.

  “Aye,” said Cael, relieving her of the stick once more. “So this is what I propose… we backtrack a bit, go here.” And then he drew another small cluster in the dirt. “From Amdel, we travel through Kinver, then pass to Wellington, and through the parklands at Drakewich. From there, we will still end in Macclesfield, although without having to cross the moorlands.”

  Marcella sat, silently poring over Cael’s proposal. And then, she asked, “Art certain Amdel lies empty?”

  “As certain as I can be. Worst case, we pass by and travel on to Drakewich—another three or four hours thereabouts.”

  “I don’t know if she can endure.” Marcella hitched her chin in Rhiannon’s direction. “We’ve been traveling endlessly.”

  “She’s strong,” he said with a note of pride. “My guess is she may very well outlast both you and me.”

  “Nay,” Marcella said. “You overestimate her. She’s vulnerable. After five years locked away with those manacles, I’m surprised she’s made it this far without so much as a complaint.” There was a note of admiration in the paladin’s voice, though Cael didn’t remark upon it. Finally, Marcella nodded, perhaps beginning to see the wisdom in his plan.

  Not only would it circumvent the need to travel so far under open skies, it might further serve to confuse Morwen, because she would, no doubt, anticipate the distance they would travel since leaving Blackwood, and chances were that her birds would be circling that area, waiting.

  Ultimately, she must already have discerned their intended destination, and that’s where she would concentrate her search efforts. Nobody could anticipate they would double back—for what reason?

  He tossed the stick away, and Marcella leaned forward to brush at the dirt, erasing the proof of their stratagem. “Go on,” she said, following his gaze. “See to your wife. Far be it from me to keep you from your greatest desire.”

  Besotted as he was, Cael didn’t need to be told twice.

  He stood at once, brushing off his breeches as he considered the woman he was once involved with. It hadn’t lasted overlong, and though neither of them had any true love for the other, he realized Marcella’s feelings ran deeper than his. Alas, though, he had never anticipated that
his heart would be free again, or that he could ever love anyone so deeply. He’d told her the truth all those years ago—that his heart belonged to Nesta. It simply was impossible to compel a heart to love anywhere but where it wished. He understood that Marcella must feel tormented by his change of heart, but he’d also never foreseen how Rhiannon’s presence in his life would affect him.

  Like her mother, she was an irresistible force.

  “I am sorry,” he said, after a moment.

  “For what, Cael? For discovering that you are still capable of love?”

  He stood silently, wishing for Marcella’s sake that he could deny it… but he could not. His one point of comfort was that he knew he was never Marcella’s true love either.

  She peered up at him then, her green eyes soft with affection. “The heart must love who it loves,” she reasoned. “And I, too, have my own cross to bear.”

  “Jack?” he said quietly, and when she nodded, he said, “It’s obvious.”

  “Indeed,” she said. “Alas, though… I remember a time when my heart was so easily led as well.”

  This, he realized, was not a reference to him at all, for their relations had been anything but simple, or easy. He knew who it was she was speaking of, and it wasn’t him, nor was it Jack. And this, too, was something they’d shared in common, because, though his love for Morwen wasn’t Eros, Morwen was a poppet master of the greatest degree, expertly pulling her strings. Terrible though she might be, she knew how to engender loyalty, and… yes, even affection. Those who followed her, followed her devotedly, knowing the venerable lady behind the veil. In her weakest moments she bled like everyone else, and Cael had once cared for her as well.

  How could he not?

  But, then, again, love was not the proper word for what he’d felt for Morwen Pendragon. He’d never once shared her bed, nor, until recently, had she ever invited him.

  There was only one woman he had ever truly loved, and not even Nesta had inspired in him the passion that his beautiful dewine bride could inspire.

  Rhiannon was very much like her mother in some ways, but in every way that mattered, she was nothing like her at all.

  During his time in this realm—at least this time around—the few times he’d fallen into another woman’s bed, it had been joyless and uninspiring. No other woman, save Rhiannon made his cock so hard that he walked around in a state of constant arousal, like some beardless youth with more seed than sense. Even now, he could think of little else but having her… undressing her, at long last, dragging her beneath him, and drinking from the font between her thighs.

  Somehow he understood that what he now felt for Rhiannon—this wildly impassioned fire—Marcella had once felt for Morwen. They’d been friends before they were lovers, at a tender age when love must have seemed sweet and new—two gloriously pagan young women unashamed to explore. Some part of him envied her doughtiness, to love where she willed. He lingered a moment longer, because he felt compelled to speak aloud what they both knew.

  “In the end, she must be destroyed,” he said.

  Marcella nodded gravely, averting her gaze. “I know,” she said, and a single tear slid down her cheek. “The only true question remains… who will be the one to do it?”

  25

  Cael could barely concentrate on the business at hand for all his lusty thoughts of his wife. Therefore, he slipped away when he could, to find himself a quiet spot, thinking everyone would be better off if he could only reduce a bit of tension.

  He couldn’t do much about their current circumstances, nor the travesty hanging over their heads, but there was something he could do to relieve a bit of stress—or, at the very least, settle the beast in his breeches.

  Devil take him, he wanted naught more than to drag his new wife into these woods and consummate their vows at long last, but this was not the time for that.

  And nevertheless, he should have enough bloody sense not to choke his cock alone in these woods, with his travel companions not more than twenty yards away and a wolfhound sniffing at his heels. But evidently, he didn’t, and there was only one small comfort he could embrace—that he was still human enough to have a man’s desires, even amidst the chaos surrounding them. And nevertheless, it was a youth’s appetite he enjoyed of late, and this was nothing to crow about. He was a besotted auld fool, whose modicum of good sense now faltered whenever faced with his beautiful, willful bride.

  Such as it was, Cael couldn’t even begin to conceive why it was that he was compelled to make excuses in broad daylight, or why he thence put his back against a tree, or why he then unlaced his trews, or pulled out his cock—only to piss, he reasoned. But that wasn’t true, because he stood there with the beast in his hand a moment too long, and then he stroked himself a few times for good measure, moaning with pleasure over the feel of the hot, tight flesh in his hands.

  But there was that bloody hound, with its bright wolflike eyes fixed upon him…

  Still, intent upon his pleasure, he shut his eyes, envisioning Rhiannon’s face—not the way she appeared tonight, with that mile-long scowl—the way she oft looked when she trounced him at a game of Queen’s Chess, her soft, sultry lips curved ever so slightly with that beauteous smile, and her steel, blue eyes glinting with bravado…

  The dog whined and Cael opened his eyes.

  “Truly? Are you going to do this to me?” he inquired of the wolfhound. “I allowed you to come along, and I fed you.”

  Scowling at the dog, he once again tested his own bravado, stroking himself a few more times, his skin hot and engorged. But the dog whined yet again, and his manhood wilted in his hand. Finally, he let his hand fall away, and growled at the dog—nonsensical as the gesture should be.

  Shaking his head, still half mad with lust, and completely unsatisfied, he nevertheless tugged up his breeches and laced up his trews. “Bloody hell,” he said, scowling at the hound. “I thought you were supposed to be man’s best friend. God’s truth, you’re no friend to me!”

  The dog whined pitifully, and Cael bade him to follow with a snap of his fingers. Together, man and dog started back in the direction of their camp.

  Evidently contented with the outcome, the animal scampered up beside him, wagging its tail, and peering up at Cael with an unmistakable look of admiration. And, despite himself, it melted his heart precisely as it had when he’d first tried to shoo it away after leaving Blackwood.

  God only knew, the rest of the pack had been pleased enough to run free, and Cael knew that they would eventually return home, as they always did after a hunt; hopefully not before Morwen departed. Clearly, this one had a soft spot for Cael, as he did for it. He was getting soft in his old age.

  With a sigh, he reached down to scruff the animal’s thick fur. “Mayhap you can find a way to soften your lady’s mood,” he conspired with the animal. “It’s the least you can do.”

  Long before there were grimoires, or even words for that matter, the hud simply was. Therefore, even despite lacking a true grimoire, there was no spell Rhiannon shouldn’t be able to cast, given the will to do it.

  Even before her mother had clapped her in irons, she’d already begun to understand this experientially: that spells didn’t require words, nor did they necessitate herbs or rites. Rather, all these things only helped the caster cast: words for focus, herbs to facilitate manipulation of the elements, rites to channel the energy of the hud, and also to honor the Mother Goddess by whose grace all things were made possible.

  Essentially, all things were summoned or banished, created or destroyed, transformed or reformed. And while it might seem there should be many, many nuances, or that, by virtue of these differences, it left too much to be explored, she had also come to know that all spells essentially belonged to the same two classifications, and that each had a genesis in either acceptance or denial. Therefore, if one viewed the world under these simpler terms, it was easier to channel the proper energy for a given spell.

  Fundamentally, belief ope
ned up all possibility, and emotion was the energy’s source.

  So, then, theoretically, she shouldn’t even need to know what was possible in casting, she only needed to believe it was possible and to put heart and soul into the spell.

  At least she hoped these things were true.

  The time was coming soon to face Morwen—not a month from now, nor a year, but any moment…

  Considering both protection spells and offense spells, she tried to open her mind and her imagination.

  She only wished she could discuss such things with her sisters, because in the end, she needed their help—a truth she hadn’t ever considered before realizing how wrong she was about her role in the world.

  In the meantime, she was grateful to have Marcella. The paladin was as close to a dear friend as Rhiannon had ever known, complicated though their relationship might be—and despite Marcella’s obvious affection for Cael.

  And yet, truly, one could not control who they loved. Simply because Marcella held some strange affection for Cael, it didn’t mean they couldn’t be friends. Intuitively, she trusted the paladin’s word. She would never betray herself, nor her word, and no matter how she’d felt about Cael, she was still willing to put an arrow through his heart in defense of Rhiannon. This was proof of her honor.

  Considering these things, Rhiannon stood checking her cinches, after returning her supplies to her satchel.

  Marcella and Jack were both busy repairing the campsite, and all together they were preparing to depart.

  Supper had been mean—only a bit of salted beef, and a bite of pan. Evidently, Jack had meant what he’d said, and the memory of his rebellion made her smile.

  Only when Marcella had asked where the cony was, he’d shrugged and told her she must have forgotten to procure it. Then, he’d offered to go find her a proper butcher, but his tone was so acerbic that it was impossible to mistake his meaning. There wasn’t any butcher around for leagues, and neither did he intend to go searching.