The shape of a mare formed itself out of the mist. His cock swelled at the sight of her, just as it had the very first day he saw her crossing the shore of Inishmaan with the sea–spray pounding upon the rocks and her hair flying about her face. His blood pumped new heat through a heart grown cold.
Her feet scraped against stone as she awkwardly dismounted and wound the horse’s reins around a branch of fir. The wind stole the hood from her head as she strode toward the fire. She crouched by the flames and slid a bulky sack off her back. It thumped to the ground. He tried to ignore her by forcing his concentration on the flash of his knife as he dug into another layer of wood. He eased the curl off the oak. He circled the shaft of the spear and ran his fingers down the length. No bumps, no ridges, no cracks. Only perfect instruments would rise from his hands, beautiful in their lethal strength, staunch in their loyalty—leaving no chance that they would fail him in the heat of battle.
Suddenly she was standing before him thrusting a flagon under his nose. The cork dangled below the neck of the bladder. The scent of mead assaulted him. His gaze drifted past the mead toward the woman.
Yes, the woman, staring at him as steady–eyed as a falcon, those silver eyes rippling with challenge. A woman, despite the sag of her tunic from her shoulders, despite the all–enveloping mantle, for he knew what lay beneath.
“Are you going to take it?” The breeze whipped a few strands of hair across her face. “Or must I stand here and suffer your glaring until the sun goes down?”
She nudged the mead at him. Something in the gesture whirled up a memory from the wool clogging his head.
His voice wheezed out of him. “This is the same honey–mead that you offered Edwen before I had him hanged.”
Edwen had taken the mead, too, he remembered. The boy had had enough self–possession to raise the bladder to Rhys in mock salutation before drinking his fill. Just like the ten–year–old Edwen that Rhys remembered returning from the salmon–stream one summer’s afternoon, battered from a fight with two older boys—and grinning about it through a chipped and bloodied tooth.
“What kind of Welshman are you,” she said, setting the bladder by his feet, “to refuse my hospitality?”
She retreated out of his range of sight, like some dream–creature melting into mist. He let his spear clatter to the ground. He curled his fist around the bladder and forced his stinging eyes to seek her out.
“By the look of you,” she said, “you don’t even know that it’s New Year’s Day, do you?”
She crouched by the fire. Her spine ridged her wheat–colored tunic as the wind tossed her mantle aside. He wondered why she’d bothered to lie about the date. He’d only just ridden from the sight of his youngest brother swinging on the scaffold. His body still ached from the hard ride. Yet with the first icy trickle of mead down his throat he found himself choking it down as if he hadn’t tasted liquid for days. And when the mead hit his stomach he noticed the carcasses of hare and grouse scattered across the ground. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and felt the give of stubble flowering into beard.
“Over a week you’ve been gone,” she said, “and not a word to any of us, not knowing if you lived or died.”
Such was the way of Annwn, where time ran differently. One moment spent among those otherworldly mists and a man would return to find a hundred years had passed. Rhys found himself thinking that the man who had created that faery tale must have had sins weighing heavy on his mind, to dream up a place where a man could turn his face away for a moment and then return to a world which no longer knew who he once was.
“You should have had the sense,” she muttered, her head all but buried in the sack, “to return to the llys by now.”
“You should have had the sense to stay away.” The bladder sank out of his hands. “Have you brought New Year’s water to sprinkle me with, woman? To give me luck?”
“You’d need the luck, but that’s a Welsh tradition and I know nothing about it. Still, I do know this.” She clanked a pot out of her sack. “Your people believe, as mine do, that what you do this day you’ll be doing for the remainder of the year.”
“I should have hanged Edwen today, then. By Christmas I’d be rid of all my enemies.”
“Nothing can change what’s done. It’s the future you should be thinking about.”
“No recriminations for me?” He fisted the splattered silk of his tunic. “This warrior, the cold–blooded killer you so despise?”
Speak, woman. Throw those words of hatred at me. Let me hear them, let me hear the condemnation of the world in your voice. Let me face it here and see the disgust in your eyes. I’ve heard it often enough before, and no time so worthy am I of your disgust, no time do I better deserve it.
She said, “What difference would it make?”
“I killed a man.” He tucked the end of the spear under his arm and leaned into it. The tether upon which he’d held the beast within him threatened to snap. “I spilled my own brother’s blood.”
“I saw with my own eyes what Edwen did to those defenseless people. I watched them die while I stood helpless to save them. Edwen murdered innocents, he committed treason.” Freckles stood stark against her skin. “You had no choice.”
There you are wrong, woman. There was always choice—always. He could have submitted to his brothers’ wishes, divided up his holding, let them build and marry and have their own children subdivide the holdings even more until nothing was left of the lordship of Graig but a string of tiny homesteads that the English and the Marcher Lords could roll over with a single incursion into the North of Wales.
But he’d made the choice to fight, long ago, to hold these lands strong and unified. And he’d done it for the Prince of Wales, for his own father, for the dream of Wales itself—to keep his homeland free of the English. His father had cursed him with this duty when he’d made him the chosen heir, bucking all Welsh traditions in the process. Now Rhys paid the price with his own brothers’ blood.
The irony of it all was that he no longer cared if the English conquered the cantrefs around him and built their churches and villages and castles while burning the sound of Welsh off every man’s tongue. Now he fought for himself. He could not live out in the world, so he fought to hold this place of his exile.
And here this silver–eyed woman stood talking to him of choices.
“Am I receiving absolution?” He wove the sign of the cross in the air before him, swaying drunkenly off the support of the spear. “You’ve committed fratricide, Rhys, but it’s the New Year so I forgive you?”
“Don’t mock me.”
“What honor, to be forgiven by a saint.”
“I can hate just as well as any man, I wager.” She fussed with a piece of hemp as she tied a makeshift tripod. “But I’ve come to think that there’s more than just good and evil in this world. I’m beginning to think there might be something in between.”
He stood mute as he watched her hang a pot on the tripod and, deft as any soldier, stoke the flames. Then she pulled wilted leeks out of the bag and stripped them into the pot, as calmly as if she stood outside the kitchens and not, instead, amid an aerie in the wilds of mountains with him losing his grip on sanity.
He should have kept this woman chained in the storage shed. He should have allowed her out only for the healings, then bound her in silver and locked her in irons. But no, he’d seen fit to set her loose to throw her spear of human kindness. He wheeled away from the acid on its point.
“Go back to the castle,” he said. “You’re not wanted here.”
“Are you a man who doesn’t honor his bargains?”
“Pack your riddles with your leeks and go.”
“You promised me passage back to Inishmaan in the spring.” She knotted the hemp tight and fished a knife out of her pocket. “But only if I try to heal you.”
“Your salves do me no good.”
“Are you a liar, then? You told me I’d stopped it from spreading.�
�
Caught again. This was his punishment for craving pity–kisses. This was his punishment for craving yet another taste of this woman.
“In any case, there’ll be no going back to the castle for me now unless you’ll be taking me there yourself. Dafydd watched me from yonder rise until he was sure I had set upon the right path, but he’s halfway home by now.” She cut the hemp and tossed the knife to the ground. “I’ll go, if you insist, but only—”
“To be caught by my loving brothers? They’d hang you. Or burn you. I’d be forced to hunt them down until all of them lay dead at my feet.”
“I shouldn’t have had to make this trip at all. You have a fey habit of running away from the world whenever it wounds you.”
“And you,” he said, as rage hazed his vision, “have a fey habit of running to the wolf’s den while the blood still clings to his teeth.”
He strode to her. Branches snapped beneath his feet. Damned fool woman, staring at him with widening eyes. Didn’t she know there came a time when a man no longer cared for the sanctity of his soul?
There was only one hell, after all, and he already lived in it.
He yanked at the tie which held his mask against his neck, then at the leather that stretched across his forehead. The wind tore the leather from his hands and battered the mask against his shoulder.
Yes, woman, you’ll see it now. You’ll see what children fear in the darkness.
He stared into her eyes waiting for the horror to transform her features. He waited for the sudden slackness of her mouth. The brows trembling together. He waited for her to fling herself back and away, to hold out her hand, palm up. He waited for her to make the sign of the cross or fumble for a holy relic or to pull a perfumed linen to wave in his direction, as if she were warding off plague. He waited for the sound of alms clanking at his feet—payment against a curse no man would wish upon his enemies.
He said, “Ever see a scourge like this, Aileen?”
The blood had drained from her face, but she didn’t step away. No, Aileen the Red stepped toward him. She raised her fingers toward his face but he seized her hand in his grip before she could touch his jaw.
No.
She ignored his silent scream. She raised her other hand and traced the edge of the affliction over his cheek, past his eye to where it raged upon his forehead. Bare fingers on bare skin, and all in the light of day.
His breath slammed hard into his lungs.
She is looking at me.
Not at the bubbling boil of his face, but at him, at his eyes, and deeper still. His throat parched. The world shifted around him. It was as if the mist changed color, the wind shifted its pitch. This was a dream, a crazed dream of madness. The world seemed drawn in sharper focus, the fir trees glowed a deeper green, the sky a lighter white, the oak spears glowed golden against the silvery sheen of the hut’s stones. His heart floated up from his chest as if a great stone had been knocked off it. He could not look away from her—he could not.
He crushed her fingers in his grip. Then he raised that hand to his face. He watched her over the curve of her knuckles as he sucked her thumb deep into his mouth.
Chapter Twelve
There existed in Ireland an herb called faud shaughran, the faery grass. Whosoever was fool enough to tread upon it would find herself tearing mindlessly through night and day, through brambles and woods too thick for sun to penetrate, over choppy seas and up the cliffs of mountains, so fast and furious it was like flying, it was said—a mindless headlong journey that paid no attention to exhaustion but forced the enchanted one on, for the herb rendered her powerless.
So here Aileen stood, sucking air into her lungs and trembling fit to shake her bones out of her skin. Rhys ridged his teeth against the heel of her palm. She stood snared in the blue blade of his gaze while her heart raced, raced, and all her body shuddered with a fierce, unyielding emotion.
He pulled her toward the tiny hut with its frosted thatch and pitted walls. She was gliding, not walking, and the wind itself pushed the door open for them. He thrust her forward. She edged around the cold black ashes of an evening fire and stopped in front of a makeshift pallet of fir boughs. The light sifting down through the smoke–hole dusted the edge of the crumpled blanket.
He came up behind her and snapped the netting off her hair. Burrowing beneath the tumble, he sucked his way down the line of her neck then came up short on the edge of her mantle. Throwing an arm around her shoulder, he pinned her against him and then tore the ties asunder. He yanked the mantle out from between them and sent it flying across the room. Every hard inch of his big body pressed against her back—heaving, just as she heaved—and radiating heat like a kiln.
Then she was leaning back into him, willingly, savoring the feel of his body so close, savoring the touch of hard man’s muscle. She bent her head back at the shock of his lips on her shoulder. She curled fistfuls of her tunic as her mind separated from her body and her body fluxed to the commands of some primitive instinct. She did things with a shift of her hips that she’d never dared imagine. And she did them to a man with half a face and a slipping grip on reason.
Oh, but hadn’t she spent the last fortnight weighing the risks and the consequences of seeking him out? She couldn’t shake him out of her thoughts. Hadn’t she brooded all through a gloomy Christmas while her heart battled with her mind, her instincts with her sense? She’d told herself, aye, he’s a warrior, an unbeliever, a man she should hold in contempt. But her heart screamed to heal the wounds that festered inside him. It wasn’t in her power to wipe away a thousand whispers of contempt, the sword–slice of betrayal, the unhealed bruise of constantly witnessing fear and disgust in people’s eyes, not with her salves or even her healing hands. But Da’s teachings rang in her ears.
There are many ways to heal, Aileen—with your herbs, with your hands, and with your heart.
So she’d come to this place ignoring Dafydd’s warnings. She’d come to this place knowing the moment she laid eyes upon Rhys’s grizzled face and unfocused eyes there would be a price to pay for her boldness. No healer could open herself up to the fire of another’s agony and remain unscathed. In the end, she had come for reasons she had not dared to acknowledge. Not until now, as she reached up and buried her hand in the tangled silk of his hair. Not until now, as she arched her back to press the stretch of his arm against a breast grown tender and bottom–heavy.
I want him.
Her legs buckled. Her knees sank in the pallet. Even like this, with him pressing against her back, she wanted him, even with his fingers digging into her side and his teeth sharp on her shoulder. She hadn’t come here expecting herb–scented reeds and tenderness. Such trappings were for beautiful women, gentle lovers, noble sentiments, none of which existed in this hut. None of which existed as he peeled himself away from her, flattened a hand on the small of her back and forced her belly–down on the pallet.
He pulled up her tunic. Cool air washed her calves, and then seeped higher, to chill the bare skin of her thighs. The hem of her tunic rode up under her. He settled the bundled fabric at her waist as he left her bottom as bare as the day she was born.
His bare hands shocked the hollow of her back, then razed down, down, shamelessly down, molding her buttocks into the shape of his grip. Before she could even release the breath she’d held at the first feel of his callused hands on her bare flesh, he kneed her legs apart and trailed his thumbs into that part of her grown liquid. She bucked at the intimacy. He probed his cold fingers in deep. Her thoughts whirled too fast for her to discern whether she’d moved to avoid the sweet invasion of those hands or to grind up against them.
He nudged her legs wider. Those fingers probed her open so that she felt the breath of an open breeze. His warmth left her, and for long agonizing moments she lay trembling on her belly with the blanket crushed in her fists listening to the snap of his belt, the clang of his sword on the ground, the harsh drag of his breath into his lungs. So this is to be the
way of it then. How fitting it was that he’d take her like this, so that she couldn’t look into his face. How fitting that even in this most intimate of human relationships, he hid himself from her still.
Then his weight crushed her to the pallet and all rational thought fled. His hands seized her hips and dragged her down. He pinned her at the source of the heat and then lurched against her hard enough to bring a surge of tears to her eyes. She’d been summoned to enough pallets the morning after a bedding to know there would be pain in the first joining, so she braced herself for the sting of it. With each hungry lunge, she felt her own body stretch to accommodate to his, and she braced for the inevitable.
And it came, the pain, aye. She hadn’t realized he’d be so thick, so hard, so long, the penetration exquisite. But it wasn’t the pain which gripped her when his harsh breath warmed the nape of her neck and one hand curled into her hair and yanked her head back so he could suck her earlobe into his mouth—nay, not pain. That came and went and though the healer in her knew she’d feel it again when the deed was done, right now that made no difference. His hips surged against hers. His hands dug into her with urgency. She knew with a sort of delirious joy that he wanted her, wanted this, just as much as she had.
She began to shudder. A shuddering that had nothing to do with cold. It thieved her of speech, blinded her to the splattered walls, dulled the stench of horse rising from the blanket, and then launched her into such a blinding white place that for all she knew she could be lying amid a bed of feathers in the grandest castle in all of Wales.
With a strangled grunt he stiffened for a long, sweet moment, and then he collapsed upon her. She lay smothered under his weight while drifting down from that high, white place, thinking, this is life.
This is life.
***
The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) Page 15