by Shana Ab
They stayed mostly in the woods, where the ground was giving but tricky with roots and leaves. The ocean's call was constantly to the left, and sometimes he could catch glimpses of the blue of it through the trees.
No one spoke. The only sounds to be heard were the steps of the horses, the occasional songs of birds above them, and of course, the surf, crashing nearer and nearer.
Just when it seemed the throbbing pain in his arm would completely consume him, the woman ahead of him slowed, and then stopped. Ari did too, and Lauren twisted around in her saddle, waving him forward. He walked up to her, the pain that suffused him suddenly clearing, the blood in his veins alive again.
They were at the verge of a beach, he saw; the same beach where he had been felled by the Norseman days ago. Only now the other side of it was lined not with Vikings but instead with his own people—many of them—mounted and waiting.
There was a small commotion when he was spotted. Someone stepped away from the crowd, walking over to them. Gray hair, short beard, an older man with a forceful stride—Fuller, his steward, second in command.
Lauren dismounted, landing gracefully beside him. Arion turned to look at her, swathed in the gentle forest light.
“I kept my word, du Morgan.” Her head tilted, indicating the mass of his people waiting on the sand.
“Aye,” he said slowly.“You did.”
Her look was clear gold, direct.“Will you keep yours?”
“I will.”
Fuller was getting closer. Arion could see his expression from here: worry, caution, relief.
“Then tonight I will send someone to this beach,” she said very softly, not moving her look from his face. “Explain your plan to your people. If it goes well, if they are amenable, then you send someone here as well, when the moon is at the apex of the sky. Agreed?”
“Agreed,” Arion said.
That frown came back between her brows, a plain indication of doubt. But all she said was, “I'll be sending only one man, du Morgan. If you've been deceiving me—if this was all just a lie—then you'll be killing only one soul, at least for tonight. Tomorrow, there will be a war. Know that now.”
“Don't fear, MacRae. I don't want a war any more than you do.”
“I hope not,” she said, sounding very sincere. She looked up and behind him, making a subtle gesture with one hand, and Ari's hauberk, sword, and scabbard were tossed down to him from the nearest Scot. He checked the blade and found it sound, then fastened the leather belt for the scabbard around his waist. A glance to his men showed them doing the same. He bent down and picked up the heavy weight of his chain mail, ignoring the jab of pain in his shoulder at the move.
Fuller was almost upon them. Lauren MacRae was watching his approach with apparent unconcern, but Ari could see the way her hand hovered near the dirk at her waist, her fingers light against the metal. The sunlight fell and lit her like an icon of fire, gorgeous reds and golds and bright warmth. She still looked for all the world like the angel he had first imagined her to be, back when he was bleeding to death from that treacherous arrow.
Arion turned around again and found Hammond and the rest ready and waiting, watching, looking to him for his next move. He motioned them to come forward.
“You'll hear from me tonight, MacRae,” he said down to Lauren, and then stepped away from her, onto the sandy beach that represented the beginning of his half of this feral and untamed island that was his new home.
Chapter Four
ESS THAN HALF A YEAR ago, Arion had been wonderfully unaware of the drastic changes that were about to take place in his life.
He was living in London, enjoying the fruits of his knighthood, carving out a distinct niche for himself amid the royal court as a trusted adviser to King Henry And although the gilded edges of court life held almost no appeal for him, he still preferred it to his family's demesne, where his uncle presided as the Earl of Morgan.
Morgan Castle rested in the lush crescent of a string of fine English hills and vales, yet the earldom itself was not sizable. The mainland holdings were mostly farmland, small but fertile. It would have been enough to support any ordinary man in excellent style—but of course, Ryder du Morgan was anything but ordinary.
Arion used to imagine Uncle Ryder back at the castle, crouched in the splendor of his rooms, making his plans to destroy all his enemies, his soul growing darker and more sour with each new plot.
It was Ryder who years ago had discovered the wealth of Shot, a du Morgan holding long neglected. It was Ryder who had exploited the fruitful lands there, who realized he had grazing pastures going unused and vast farmland ready to be plowed. It was Ryder who had funneled almost all the profits of Shot back to his castle, and kept his world like that, spinning gold from the straw of the island, like some stooped troll from a dark fairy tale.
Ryder had never liked the island, only the luxury it provided him. So, over the years, the mainland holdings grew more and more extravagant, and Ryder more and more rapacious. He ruled with complete control, dispersing pain and cruelty with such abandon that Arion could not recall any man who had dared to look into his eyes for more than a few seconds at a time.
It was into this world that Ari and his sister had come, orphaned, alone.
Although Ari had spent his boyhood at Morgan Castle, it had never felt like home. He didn't like the coldness of it; a condition, he thought, not so much of the place but rather a reflection of the man who ruled it. Ryder du Morgan had no pity for anyone or anything that Arion had ever seen. Ari and Nora had lived in fear of the man from almost the very first day they had arrived there as children, after an illness sweeping the land had taken both of their parents.
Poor Nora. Tender, fragile Nora, his elder sister who had never been able to grow up.
And Ari, fully six years younger than she, had been mostly helpless to defend her from Ryder. Their uncle had never understood the slowness of her thoughts, the unique manner in which she drifted through her life. To him she was a weakness in the family, proof that their mother had been of inferior stock, that the earl's younger brother's marriage to her had been cursed from the beginning.
Ryder himself had never produced a child, even though he ran through three unfortunate wives trying. Eventually, Arion supposed, he had come to accept that his nephew would be his heir. And that was when Ari's life had taken a truly black turn.
His uncle wanted nothing less than an image of himself to rule Morgan after him—eternal oppression of the land and the people. He focused on Arion and never ceased trying to mold him into another tyrant. He would not leave him alone, forcing Ari to learn by his example. How to flog. How to cut. How to maim. How to cheat, to lie. To say and do such rash and unpredictably violent things that there could be only fear and loathing in the hearts of every single serf and noble at Morgan.
The boy he had been had cringed and averted his eyes, trying not to look, not to listen.
“Never let up,” Ryder had instructed him.“You must break them, Arion. Break them until they bleed, and beg for your mercy. It is the only way they will learn to respect you.”
In terror for his life, Arion spent his days hiding, closing his heart and mind to his uncle's brutal lessons. But it turned out he learned something after all: He had learned that he could never be the monster Ryder wanted for his reign.
And after the death of Nora, he had learned something new—to obscure his rage, to bide his time until he was old enough to legitimately leave Morgan as a squire.
He was remarkably lucky. The royal court had expressed an interest in du Morgan's nephew, and Ryder had been so dazzled by the opportunity to get closer to the king that he had sent Arion to London with merely delighted instructions for him to obey his elders. By the time he had come to guess Arion's secret plan, it was too late. Arion had escaped Morgan, and he was never going back.
London, bright and filthy and smelly, had been like a jewel to him. It represented the one thing that he had longed for: deliveran
ce from his uncle. He had gone there and stayed there, except for battle, advancing from squire to knight to adviser. And over the years Arion had eventually accepted that this was the best that life had to offer him—false grandeur, great riches and terrible poverty together, humming plots and schemes, quick wits and a sharp sword, secret love affairs that were never very secret at all.
It had seemed the best he could do. In London he was able to think for himself, to devise his own actions and the reasons for them. He had the respect of his peers, he had the attention of the king, and he had enough women willing to amuse him until time became just a grain of sand in the memory of God.
It was enough, he used to think as he lay awake in the deep of the night in his bed, or his current lover's. Aye, enough. It would do, this strange and fleeting life. It would have to.
But still, he was left hollow somehow. Even amid fawning crowds, Arion had always understood that he was ultimately alone—perhaps just as much as his uncle was. He remained surrounded by people, yet none of them ever truly mattered to him. None of them ever came close.
From that isolation in him there came a void that seemed to grow with each passing year, with each flattering smile and every glittering bit of praise he received. The void was a mixed blessing, devoid of true emotion, nothing like fear or dread or happiness surviving in it.
Near the end, about five months ago—after over a decade of his London life—Arion had begun to suspect that the void would swell to eat him whole. And he found, to his distant wonder, that he didn't even care.
Then Ryder died. Ari didn't really believe it at first; he thought it a new scheme of his uncle's to get him back to Morgan. Ryder had never stopped trying to reclaim him after he fathomed that his prodigy did not plan to come back. But no, it was true, the old demon was dead.
Arion realized, with a sort of sick jolt, that he was now the Earl of Morgan. It was fully expected that he would return to his home to take up his duties. Even the king had called him into a private meeting to wish him a good journey back to Morgan.
There was nothing else Arion could do. If Henry told him to go, he had to go. Never mind that he never wanted to see that castle again. Never mind that the thought of encountering Ryder just in the marble image on his tomb was enough to turn his stomach.
So, Ari went. Once back at Morgan, the first thing he did was kneel in the chapel and pray for the soul his sister. Then he prayed for the damnation of Ryder. He did not bother to pray for himself—he didn't think God was listening, anyway.
Slowly it began to sink in: He was the new earl. All the people of Morgan stared and whispered and watched him as if he might sprout horns the moment they turned away. Each hallway held an unwelcome memory, each chamber a face he wanted to forget. People jumped at the mildest of his commands. Women seemed almost to tremble when he came too close, surreptitiously hiding their children behind their skirts. Arion pretended not to notice.
He held meetings, trying to think of things to say and do to assure them that he was not his uncle. But it wasn't until he tried consulting the steward, Fuller, that he reached any level of success.
It took a full month to get the man to relax enough to sit when Ari did. It took another month to get him to laugh at a quip. Slowly, the steward began to thaw to him. While Arion struggled daily with his new role and tried to oust the memories that haunted him, gradually the people of Morgan began to change around him as well, growing less stiff, a little more friendly. It was taking time. But perhaps it could be done. Perhaps he could show them that he could rule without the brutality that had stained his uncle's life.
He worked, he talked, he studied and adapted to suit the land. It seemed almost … good.
But that was just an illusion. He knew that, aye; it was just a shell over his true self. Because Arion still lay alone every night—a different bed, true, and no woman beside him any longer, but the same void still slowly devouring him. It would not let him go. It was his own personal demon, large enough now to be a fatal one. Ryder was surely laughing at him from hell.
Ah, but then … but then she had come to him. Born of blood and sand and blinding light: Lauren MacRae, all grown up from the spirited child he had admired and pitied when he was a boy. She had challenged him and taunted him and teased him until Arion thought he might go mad with it, and that had been only three days of her.
Not until this afternoon, after he had left her and traveled back to Elguire, did Ari realize that at Keir there had been no void. At Keir it had been banished, faded away to nothing when confronted with her overwhelming luminescence. Instead of the void, he had felt things so sharply that he almost didn't know himself.
Who was this man who burned for a copper-haired woman, one who might kill him without a second thought? Who was this man who craved possession of her, who fantasized about her touch, about her scent, about burying his face in the luster of her hair and claiming her as his own, over and over again? Who was he now, this stranger inside him, who felt pain and hunger and admiration for her with bleeding hurt?
Who was he, Arion du Morgan, without the numbness of the void that had saturated all the years before her?
It was a great conundrum, a knot as intricate as any he had ever fashioned from his life.
He had sailed to this island with a small army of men, ready to defend it, ready to do battle to ward off the threat his vassals here had reported to the mainland. Arion was not his uncle, no. He would defend the island, or die trying—not to protect the wealth of it, but to save the people. His people. He had actually even looked forward to it, a good fight, something the void had not yet managed to swallow. And he had gotten his fight, and nearly lost his life from it. Until she came.
Arion had looked into the amber of her eyes and knew then that he had found a new lost hope—the daughter of his enemy, future wife of another man. The void shrank and paled before her. It was laughable; it was a travesty. The only woman in the world who could touch him was forever beyond his touch.
Today Arion roamed the halls of Elguire and managed to keep up the facade of calm leadership, even as Lauren's image haunted him. He knew the things to say to soothe the people here. He knew what to do to make them think he was worthy of their trust. No doubt it was because Ryder had hardly ever bothered to come to Shot, but these islanders of his had almost none of the reservation he had encountered back at the main-land. They had welcomed him wholeheartedly—and the aid he represented to them.
It had taken only a few days for Arion to realize that his aid was not going to be enough. Shot was doomed.
The Vikings had decided to pluck out this island from the chain of many that wandered up the coast, perhaps because the Isle of Shot was one of the largest, or the most fertile, or the farthest from the mainland shore. Any one of those reasons might have been enough to incite attack; all three might make it irresistible. Ari knew that over the centuries there had been sporadic conflicts with Northmen on Shot, but only now had they decided to attack in earnest. It was clear they meant to take possession. And one of the most appealing elements of this place—its sprawling vastness—was also its greatest vulnerability. There was no way the du Morgans could guard all of it all the time. Not while worrying about the Scots as well.
The MacRaes, he had been told, were involved in their own clashes with the Vikings on the other side of the island. Perhaps luck would take a hand and they would all kill each other, someone suggested, not really joking. There was no love lost between the two groups.
Elguire was fine and strong, in parts. The western half was whole, thick with stone and strong lumber. The southern and northern parts were almost completed. The eastern edge of the outer wall, however, was a disaster, rubble and broken wood, remnants of the ongoing war with the other family who lived on Shot. It was not only the longest section of the wall but the part closest to the cover of the forest, and to Keir.
The keep itself was almost complete, thank God, but the outer wall was slowing them down. They had
a patrol on it at all times, but it wasn't enough. When Arion arrived he had tripled it, and then ordered work on the wall to continue night and day. It was a deficiency they could not afford.
He walked there now in the waning light of the late afternoon, stepping around the stones in the bailey, noticing how most of them had been picked up and readied again for permanent placement. Men greeted him, leaving off their duties for a moment to come over and see for themselves that the earl was well, that he had survived his tenure with the enemy for almost three entire days. He smiled and reassured them, being careful not to comment on the MacRaes other than to say he had been well taken care of, because he didn't want to shade these men against his plan, and he wasn't yet sure how best to present it to them.
So he made his rounds, talking with Fuller, who had noticed the bulk of the bandage on his shoulder but said nothing. He would wait, Ari knew, for Arion to mention it first, and then offer whatever aid he thought he should. Ari liked his steward, this quiet and thoughtful man, and was grateful that his uncle had not managed to completely poison everyone he had touched back at Morgan.
“Looks good,” Ari said, his glance taking in the men who labored with the stone, slowly and steadily building up their defenses.
“Aye,” replied Fuller. “It's been coming along, since the MacRaes have found themselves distracted with new woes.”
Arion didn't look away from the men.“This woe of theirs is ours as well, my friend.”
“Aye, my lord,” said Fuller, with a careful lack of emotion.
“I'm glad you agree.” Ari began to walk again, moving away from the contained commotion around them. He kept his pace slow, so that the older man would not have to work to keep up.“Tell me. What would you say is the mood of the people here—whom do they hate more, the MacRaes or the Northmen?”