And he was so cold. He was chilled to his marrow, colder than he might have believed it possible for a man to be. The tips of his fingers were blue and he could scarce feel his toes. But the worst of it was in his chest. It seemed that there was a lump of ice within him, one that was slowly and steadily freezing his entire body.
He did not have to look to know that the blue tendril was growing over his skin. He could feel its incremental progress, and in the darkness of the night, Murdoch was terrified.
What would the Elphine Queen do with his heart?
How could he survive without it?
Murdoch lay awake, his hands clenched into fists, fearful for the fate of the horses, of his companions, of himself.
He felt the wind still, as if all the world was holding its breath. Even the Fae in the shadows ceased to chatter, though they continued to move. When the sky was fully dark – an impenetrable black overhead, and one devoid of stars – the snow began to fall. It cascaded in silence over the forest, as if a white chemise had been cast over the tops of the trees.
It seemed that time had stopped.
Murdoch concentrated on ensuring his heart did not. He was aware that it labored more heavily than once it had, and could not purge his mind of the image of his blackening heart trapped in that crystal orb. He breathed steadily and regularly, forcing himself to inhale and exhale, all the while listening for the Elphine Queen.
The breath of the horses made plumes of steam in the air and the forest seemed wrought of silver and black. The surface of the river turned to a dark mirror as ice slowly claimed its surface. Flakes of snow fluttered through the canopy of trees, slowly carpeting the branches and the ground. Murdoch guessed it gathered more quickly on the fields beyond the forest, but he did not rise to look.
He feigned sleep, but his palms were damp with icy sweat. He heard Stewart pacing and clearing his throat on the first watch. He listened to the vigor with which Hamish snored and savored these signs of mortal presence.
Still the cold grew within him, turning his very bones to ice. He tried to think of hot summer days, of raging fires, of the golden heat that could be savored before the hearth at Seton Hall. He tried to remember merry times of companionship and the feel of a hot meal in his belly.
But what filled his thoughts was the remembered sight of Isabella’s hair in the sunlight. When she had leaned out the window, her hair had been unbound and had flowed over her shoulders like a copper cloud. Touched by the sun, it was radiant, brilliant, a sight to fill him with wonder.
He recalled the heat of her pressed against him, the taste of her and the softness of her lips beneath his. He thought of the spark of intellect in her eyes and the admiration he had glimpsed in her expression, never mind her passion for justice.
And to Murdoch’s amazement, the cold retreated. He seized upon his memories of Isabella – so few as yet, but he would see that changed – and filled his thoughts with them. He might have warmed himself fully, but he felt cold lips touch his ear.
“Hail, lover,” the Queen of Elphine whispered. “How fares your captive heart?”
The hair prickled on the back of Murdoch’s neck at her caress and he refused to open his eyes. His heart seemed to clench, its pace slowing as if it turned to ice within his body..
Murdoch gritted his teeth. He would not look into her eyes. He would not surrender. Somehow, he would survive. Somehow he would foil her scheme.
“You stole it,” he said tightly. “You lied to me. Instead of giving me freedom, you seized my heart.”
She laughed lightly, her fingertip tracing little circles on his clothing, circles that reminded him of the pattern growing on his arm.
Her voice conjured images in Murdoch’s thoughts, visions of the golden splendor of her hall and the taste of the sweet golden wine upon his tongue. A treacherous yearning to experience that Fae court and its joys again began to blossom within him. It was warm there. His leg had healed there. He had been merry and at ease, and had savored a thousand pleasures without remorse.
“Think of this, lover. I have fulfilled your desire. I let you return home and allowed you the choice.” The Elphine Queen kissed Murdoch’s cheek, her touch making him shiver. Her words fed upon themselves, making it seem natural for him to turn to her again, to look into her eyes. “Surely you have seen that this realm offers nothing to you.” Her voice dropped low. “Surely you know now that only I can fulfill all your dreams. Kiss me, Murdoch, and end this game.”
Murdoch kept his eyes tightly shut. He reminded himself that the Elphine Queen was a liar. She promised what she could not give and took what was not her due. She would cheat him of the gift she had supposedly given, simply to amuse herself. To release him but compel him to return to her to survive was no gift.
And her realm and its pleasures was not real.
She was as unlike Isabella as any woman could be. Murdoch seized upon his recollection of that fiery maiden, just the thought sending new heat through his body. Isabella was honest and true. She was like a beam of sunlight in the darkness cast by the Elphine Queen.
“What is this?” the Elphine Queen murmured. “You find something of merit in the mortal realm, after all?” Her voice became insistent and Murdoch could fairly taste the Fae wine again. He felt the temptation grow and knew he needed to reject it.
Isabella was the key.
“You would spurn me, despite all I offer?” The Elphine Queen moved abruptly, and Murdoch’s eyes flew open in fear. She stood before him, her hair flowing over her shoulders like a black river. Her breasts were bare and ripe, her smile glinted with something that he might once have mistaken for desire. Her skin was covered with blue whorls and spirals, a pattern that was echoed by the small cluster on his wrist.
She leaned over him like a thundercloud. Murdoch averted his gaze. He recalled Isabella’s kiss, how her passion had awakened, how her touch had snared him.
“I shall leave you as I found you,” the Elphine Queen said with a hiss of disapproval.
Murdoch felt pain stab in his thigh, a pain that he recalled well enough. He looked down as the blood flowed over his leg, soaking his chausses and the ground beneath him. The cloth tore as he watched, the wound festering with lightning speed. His skin fairly boiled, infection and illness seething beneath the skin, stretching it and turning it bright red. He would feel the fever again, he would sweat and he would have chills, and he would lose his wits in a snowstorm.
The Elphine Queen watched, her smile cold. “You were ill. You were mortally ill,” she reminded him. “I saved you – and I saved you for myself.”
It was true, all true, but Murdoch could not tear his gaze away from the festering wound. He cried out in pain as the skin burst and the infection spilled forth. It spewed across his skin, and he gagged to realize it was filled with maggots instead of pus.
Murdoch shouted in horror and tried to wipe the abomination away.
“Choose,” the Elphine Queen instructed, then in a sparkle of starlight, she disappeared.
As surely as if she had never been.
Murdoch was sitting in the snow, his back against a tree, his chest so tight that he could not catch a breath. His fists were clenched, snow between his fingers. His heart raced, proof that it was yet within his chest after all. He felt his thigh, incredulous to find it as hale and strong as ever.
Was he losing his wits?
What if she spoke the truth this time? He could surrender to her and be a captive of Fae forever, or he could remain in the mortal realm, but with his old injury restored. Murdoch remembered the wound that had seen him dispatched from fighting, recalled how it had not responded to any treatment and had nearly killed him.
Was he doomed to die?
“What ails you, lad? Nightmares of your time at war?” Stewart demanded, as he came around the horses. “Or wherever you were?”
“Something like that,” Murdoch admitted, heaving a sigh and wiping his brow. He could not see the Fae in the woods anymore,
nor was he quite so cold. He swallowed and pushed to his feet, unable to resist the urge to look at his wrist.
The swirl had grown bigger.
Isabella, he reminded himself. He had to hold the maiden in his thoughts.
“I merely had a bad dream,” Murdoch lied, willing his pulse to slow. He felt disheveled, agitated, fearful, and that would not do. “It was no more than that,” he insisted, as if to persuade himself.
“Not the first you have had on this journey,” Stewart noted, though truly none had been so vivid as this one. “Tormented by your deeds in France?” His tone was light but Murdoch knew the older man invited his confidence.
If he shared the truth, Stewart would think him mad.
“The past is done,” Murdoch said, as if speaking with force could make it true. “I did only what I had to do.”
“And war is war,” Stewart said with a nod. “You would not be the first man haunted by bloodshed and violence, whether it was by his own hand or not. I doubt you will be the last.”
Murdoch brushed off his tabard and straightened it, well aware of Stewart’s curiosity. “I shall not sleep more this night. Let me take the next watch now.”
“You will not have to argue with me on that.” Stewart wrapped himself in his cloak, then winced as he tried to find a comfortable position. “Though I hope to find myself dreaming of sweet damsels and a thick pallet by the fire.” He smiled. “Perhaps a belly full of stew and ale. That would suit me well.”
“Me, as well,” Murdoch agreed. He marched around the perimeter of their encampment, stamping his feet to warm them. His leg was fine, a fact that continued to amaze him. Stewart was soon snoring as loudly as Hamish and Murdoch was truly alone. He stared through the shadows of the forest at the distant tower of Kinfairlie’s keep and thought again of the maiden Isabella.
Murdoch closed his eyes, summoned the image of the lady who warmed his thoughts, and found the terror ebbing from his mind.
Did she have a special power to drive the shadows from his thoughts? Was it her nature at root? Or was she simply not Fae, and thus able to counter the Elphine Queen’s spells? Murdoch did not know, but he decided – that night as he stood in silence in the falling snow – that he needed to find out.
Should the lady Isabella be his salvation, that might change all.
He thought of what had transpired this night, considered what the Laird of Kinfairlie might do in retaliation and checked the hoof of the messenger’s horse once again. And in the darkness, while his companions slept, Murdoch made his plan.
* * *
“Isabella! Wait!”
Elizabeth raced after her older sister, chasing her up the stairs from the hall. To Elizabeth’s surprise, Isabella had gone past the portal to their chamber, as if she meant to continue to the solar.
“Where are you going?” she demanded. “Are you so ill that you become confused?”
Isabella halted and turned, irritation touching her expression before she smiled for Elizabeth. “I thought you meant to stay at the board for a while. Maybe dance.” She said this last word with force, as if she would have preferred Elizabeth to be dancing.
It made little sense that Isabella would care, so Elizabeth ignored her sister’s mood. So many in Kinfairlie were irritable of late, after all.
All the same, Isabella’s manner fed Elizabeth’s uncertainty. She had been so sure that she had to warn her sister, but now that the Fae king was gone and she had left the warmth of the hall, she had doubts.
She also had a curious sense that she should not tell anyone of the Fae king. Indeed, she felt protective of the moment she had shared with him, the intimacy of his words echoing in her own thoughts.
But she had to warn Isabella about the ribbon. “I have to tell you something. Quick, let us go into our chamber where no one else will hear.”
As always, the prospect of a secret to be shared made Isabella move more quickly
“Tell me what?” Isabella asked. The pair stepped into their chamber and Isabella shut the door, leaning back against it. Their maid Vera had already set a trio of braziers alight and there was a lantern lit as well. The room was filled with golden light, and the shutters were closed against the night. The cold air still seeped into the room, that cursed wind rattling at the shutters, and Elizabeth shivered.
She dropped her voice to a whisper. “The Fae came to the hall this night.”
Isabella rolled her eyes. “Elizabeth, you must forget this whimsy about seeing the Fae...”
Elizabeth was insulted. “It is not whimsy! I see them and I hear them.”
Isabella crossed her arms, her expression both impatience and skeptical. “And what has the spriggan Darg to tell us this time? Or is it invisible ribbons that you see, knotted together in the sky?”
That Isabella should mock the ribbons made Elizabeth reconsider the notion of confiding in her. “I thought you might be interested, since the matter concerns you, but I see that I was mistaken. If you mean to make a jest of my tale, then I shall not burden you with it.” She would have returned to the hall and let her sister worry about the tidings she was missing, but Isabella did not move from the portal.
“Wait a moment. What concerns me?”
“Why should I tell you?”
Isabella smiled. “Because you are desperate to tell someone and I am here.”
“But you do not believe me!”
“Perhaps the tale will change my mind.”
Elizabeth doubted that, but she did think it was fair to warn her sister.
To her own surprise, Elizabeth found herself modifying the tale somewhat in the telling. She was not inclined to lie, but did not want to speak of the king. “It is Darg,” she said, which was partly true. “Since the collapse of Ravensmuir, I thought the creature departed for good.”
“But?”
“But on this night, I heard Darg muttering when the messenger appeared.”
“Muttering about what?”
“About thieves and strangers invading.” To her surprise, Elizabeth could not remember the precise verse. She could only think of the Fae king’s dark gaze.
Isabella shrugged. “Surely the battles of the Fae are not ours, if they even exist.”
“Surely they are,” Elizabeth retorted and found herself telling an outright lie. “For Darg knotted your ribbon in fury.” She gasped and clapped her hand over her mouth.
Isabella evidently took her response as a sign that she had broken some pledge to say nothing. “My ribbon? The ones you see binding each of us to our true loves?”
Elizabeth stared at the floor. What had seized her tongue? “Aye, I said the matter concerned you.”
“If you saw a ribbon of mine, you must have seen it bound to another.” Isabella’s eyes shone with curiosity. “Whose ribbon was it? Who is the man in question?”
“I do not know. I saw only that his ribbon trailed into the darkness beyond the hall. Your ribbon is copper and his is as black as soot. It might once have been purple, but it is rotted and dark.”
“Where is he?”
“I do not know.” Elizabeth shrugged before Isabella’s skeptical gaze.
“That is not much information. Perhaps the ribbon is not real.” Isabella smiled, something in her manner adding to Elizabeth’s conviction that her sister was concealing some detail from her. “Come to bed and let’s be warm together.”
“I thought you meant to continue up the stairs.” Elizabeth heard her own suspicion.
“Why would you think such a thing?”
“Because you were halfway up those stairs.”
Isabella’s smile faded. She was a terrible liar, which meant she was hiding some matter. “You were mistaken,” she said, turning her back on Elizabeth. “I was not.”
Liar, liar.
But Elizabeth could play by the same rules. Indeed, Isabella’s refusal to confide in Elizabeth made it seem perfectly reasonable to keep the visit of the Fae king to herself.
Never mind his wor
ds.
One day, beauteous Elizabeth, you will come to me.
Elizabeth shivered in delight long after she was huddled abed with Isabella. She would go to the king with his wondrous dark eyes. And then what? She was certain adventure and romance would ensue.
And she could scarce wait.
* * *
“He does just as you said he would, my lord,” Gavin whispered with admiration. “How did you guess what the Laird of Kinfairlie would do?”
It was morning and Murdoch crouched in the shadows of the forest with the boy, holding the bridle of the messenger’s horse. A fine chestnut mare, the horse had thrown a shoe in the exchange the night before and was limping badly. She had need of a blacksmith’s skill, and Murdoch would not leave her in pain.
Which meant the horse could not flee the laird’s hunting party with Stewart and Hamish. She had to go to Kinfairlie village, as that was the closest blacksmith. It would have been cruel to do otherwise.
Murdoch and Gavin stood together at the perimeter of the forest. Even from here, they could see the activity in the bailey of Kinfairlie’s tower as the laird mustered his hunting party. Murdoch wished he had a glass to see their numbers better, but in truth, it mattered little. Stewart and Hamish had already fled with the horses – save this one – and would be well away before the laird’s party even entered the forest.
“He does what my father would have done,” Murdoch said, stifling a bit of admiration for this young laird. He could have dispatched some mercenary from his household to fulfill this task, and Murdoch respected that the laird led the party himself. “Understand that it is the obligation of a laird to defend all those beneath his hand, from any threat.”
“And he thinks us a threat, sir?”
“Indeed. That is my intent.”
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