Shades of Avalon

by Carol Oates

  “Yes,” I responded plainly since I didn’t need time to think it over.

  Caleb smoothed his fingers over the back of Triona’s hand and engulfed it in his grip. She met his cool eyes, her bottom lip immediately losing some tension. “And I feel confident today’s training will prove most amusing, Ben.” He never broke their gaze as he drew her hand up to his mouth and kissed it lovingly.

  Triona frowned, and Caleb ran his thumb across the lines as though he might erase her worry. He gave her a lopsided smile before turning his attention to Eila over his shoulder.

  “Besides, Eila doesn’t mind,” he added, his tone dripping in charm.

  “Not at all.” Eila broke her conversation with Annice and Carmel farther up the table to answer and quickly dismissed us with a graceful smile. “It will be nice not having my family desire to flee the room whenever I enter.”

  Amanda and Triona exchanged a fleeting glance that hinted at frustration since Amanda shook her head.

  “I don’t know who’s worse.”

  “Oh, please,” Triona added, running her palms along the sides of her mug. “There’s no contest. This time last year, Ben still thought it was funny to stick his tongue out and show everyone his chewed up food.”

  Emma grimaced. “That’s disgusting.” She tried to hide it, but I saw her cheek twitch in an effort to hold a smile back.

  I waited until no one was paying attention to me, caught her eye, and stuck my tongue out childishly. Without the masticated food. Emma ducked her head, her shoulders trembling with her quiet laughter. Amanda turned to me with a questioning look, but I just shook my head, keeping the moment between Emma and me.

  “Okay,” Caleb started, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “I’ll meet you out by the lake, Ben, Arthur.” He pushed his chair back to stand, the wood squeaking over the floor, and I noticed worried eyes following his every move.

  Annice, Triona, and even Joshua didn’t seem convinced Caleb should be exerting himself. Caleb appeared to ignore their expressions, but if I noticed, so did he. He bent down and cupped the back of Triona’s head when he kissed her cheek. Her fingers lingered a beat longer than necessary on the fabric of his T-shirt. Triona would never presume to insist Caleb should restrain himself from what he considered to be protecting her.

  I pushed my chair back too and squeezed Amanda’s hand. “I’ll see you at lunch.”

  Drizzling rain and wind didn’t make for ideal conditions outside, but I wasn’t about to be the first one to run from a little water. Thick cloud cover blocked out any sky and appeared to settle over the trees in the distance, closing us in. The weather had been reasonable over the previous few days, so in a way, we’d gotten away lightly up to now. Spring had set in, and the land was transforming before our eyes. Tiny buds had begun to emerge from bare tree branches, and patches of colored wildflowers poked out of the earth in the woods on the estate. The green grass had deepened in color too and taken on a lush sheen. The world was starting over, and it came with a certain melancholy. No matter what happened over the next couple of days, this time next year the world would start over again, with or without us.

  Arthur handed us both a sword—a real sword, not one of the blunted training swords. These were one-handed weapons, two inches wide, the blade easily longer than my arm, with a valley down the center on each side. The hilt felt like smooth, coiled steel ropes under my grip. They were topped with a blackened pommel, well-worn despite the fact both swords were brand new and especially commissioned by Samuel. Each one carried a name. Apparently, it brought luck. This one bore the name, Lasair, meaning flame, in elegant Celtic script beneath the guard, while Caleb held Díoltas—revenge.

  “I imagine you’re looking forward to this.” Caleb smirked regarding our first encounter. We’d both been training but not with each other.

  My expression seemed enough to confirm his presumption. I tossed the heavy metal between my hands. Arthur moved back up the hill to where he could observe us without getting in our way. I expected some blood.

  “You’re good at pretending once in a while, but I know you’ve never warmed to me, Ben,” Caleb said with a frown as we began to circle each other.

  “That’s not true. I thought you were my friend once. But I didn’t know who you were,” I spat across the empty space between us. “You tore my sister’s heart out. When she forgave you, when I gave you another chance, you tried to push her away again because you thought she should be with a human. You lied to me over and over, Caleb. I trusted you, but you didn’t trust me.”

  I lashed out first, forgetting for a moment what Arthur said about forcing my opponent to slow down. The world around me blurred into a streak of colors as I spun, like a paintbrush swiped across an oil canvas. My sword met no resistance, and I knew I’d missed Caleb. He landed in a crouch another foot away, laughing. He’d jumped over my blade.

  “You’ll have to try harder than that, boy.” He extended his arm, and the talons on his ends of his fingers glistened in the drizzle.

  “Boy?” I echoed. Caleb had never referred to me that way although he had almost a century and a half on me. “Try this on for size, grandpa.”

  I pulled my sword up, careful not to leave myself open to attack and came at him, swinging from my shoulder. Caleb’s sword met mine with a flash of sparks, but he spent no time on defense. He went straight for assault, and grunting with each swing, I met him with equal force. Then he made his move, and his free hand swiped, but he needed to arch his body to reach my torso. I lost my head, and a second later his flesh tore beneath my nails as bile worked its way up my throat. I staggered away from Caleb’s back, and Lasair’s tip stabbed into the mucky grass. The vibrations forced their way up the bones of my arm. My growl of discomfort mingled with Caleb’s.

  He turned to me, panting, with Díoltas pointed at me and an angry red slash leaking down the sharp angles of his cheek and jaw. Fury and shock twisted his features as he touched his already healing face and pulled his hand back to examine the crimson liquid before rain sluiced it away.

  “First blood,” he said, backing away. His tone made it sound more like an accusation—as if I wasn’t fighting fair, but weren’t we supposed to use every weapon at our disposal?

  The rain was coming in sheets now, and I raised my sword from the ground, grunting out hard breaths. We were soaked to the skin, and my heartbeat thundered through every organ in my body so it seemed my pulse was everywhere at once.

  Caleb hadn’t mastered Díoltas yet, and I hadn’t meant to use it against him so soon. Regardless, the need for blood roared up inside of me. My vision dimmed around the edges.

  “Fight!” Arthur shouted from the top of the hill.

  Caleb didn’t need a second invitation, and this time instinct kicked in. He swirled and leapt into the air, coming down at me from above and sparing no mercy. I gripped the hilt of Lasair with both hands and held it vertical, shielding myself from Díoltas’s arc. The power behind Caleb’s blow still forced me to my knees, and I slid across the slippery grass. Water battered me from all sides, rain slicing downward and sending up a mud spray.

  I tumbled to my feet, but Caleb had anticipated me. He whipped my leg out from under me with his hand and twisted my ankle. His razor sharp nails dug in deep enough to hit bone, and I released a pained howl before the world went black, and I was standing over him again as he glared up at me. Nausea unbalanced me. I staggered as Caleb gritted his teeth and speared Díoltas forward, driving it through the fleshy side of my stomach. The metal gouged a hole, and it felt as if white-hot fire had erupted under my skin, spilling down my leg.

  “Enough!” Arthur roared, and I heard foot splashes chasing along the slope.

  “Don’t move,” Caleb instructed harshly. “You’ll cut yourself in two.”

  I couldn’t focus on his face to read his expression, but distress was evident in his voice. I didn’t realize I’d been pushing forward, sending the blade deeper, until it sliced clean through. I used my o
wn sword, thrusting it into the soft soil and leaning against it. Every drop of rain was a needle on my back, and numbness began to trickle into my fingertips.

  A moment later, Arthur’s hands were guiding me off the weapon and onto the ground. I blinked away rainwater, tasting the metallic droplets that leaked into my gaping mouth. He lifted my T-shirt, but the horrible knitting sensation had already begun, and I was healing. I held my palm over the wound and applied pressure to ease the pain.

  “That is not how I trained you,” Arthur snarled, his cobalt blue eyes blazing. “What were you thinking?” He directed the onslaught at Caleb, still lying on his back, his forearm over his eyes.

  “I need more time,” I started and winced when I tried to move. Blood and rain soaked my T-shirt and ran freely from my side and ankle into the grass. The wounds would never have proved fatal, but it far exceeded any reasonable training wound.

  “Tomorrow we travel to Ireland. There is no more time,” Arthur stated coldly. “If you allow your emotions to take control, you or someone else will die. You must think! I hope for all our sakes you have expelled whatever demon possessed you.” He jerked to his feet and stormed away.

  Caleb rolled up to sitting and pulled his knees up, resting his elbows. “I messed up.”

  I forced myself to inhale steady breaths and look at him. “I’ll heal.”

  “I’m not talking about just now. I only went as hard on you as you did on me. I’m talking about the stupid mistakes I’ve made, and believe me, I’ve paid dearly.” Caleb’s hands went into his hair and tugged at the slick, black strands. “At least I’ve tried to be your friend. But you just want to keep blaming me for everything.”

  “Not everything,” I corrected him with a snarky chuckle and winced again.

  Caleb met my gaze with sad eyes and shook his head in disbelief. “I’m doing my best, Ben. It’s all I’ve ever done, and yet here I am again, not sure if I’m second best.” He laughed bitterly. “Even worse, I owe my life to John, so I can’t even hate him for it. Everything could have been good if I’d killed Zeal when I had the chance. I messed up.”

  “I don’t know why you’re telling me this.”

  Caleb stood up and wiped his palms over his face. “I don’t know why either. I guess I wanted you to know I want to be sorry about a lot of things in my past because I know that’s what you want, but I’m not. I’m not sorry I met your sister, or that I lied so I could be with her. I’m not sorry about the lengths I went to to protect her, or that I gave her a choice when John showed up in Dublin, or that I walked away from finishing Zeal in Tara. I’ve made mistakes, but I’m not sorry for making them.”

  My jaw tightened, and I glared at him. His blue eyes turned stormy, the color of night. “I did it all for Triona. When I didn’t kill Zeal, it’s because that’s what she wanted, and I’d do it again if I had to. Triona is part of my soul, as vital to me as my lungs or heart. I don’t know how to live without her, and yet if I could rip out my own heart, if I could separate myself from her and make her human, I would. But I can’t. I strive to be more because she deserves more. Sometimes I fall short.”

  Striving to be a better man for my mate and sometimes failing was a sentiment I could relate to in my relationship. I pulled myself up to my feet and scooped up Lasair. Caleb leaned in as if he might help but stopped himself and stuffed his hands in his pockets, hunching against the rain. His injury had healed completely, leaving only a pinkish stain on the neckline of the T-shirt plastered to his body. My wound was well on the way to being healed too, though the remains of my ruined clothes were quite a bit more grisly.

  “I thought…” Caleb paled, turning ash gray in the face.

  “That’s your problem, Caleb,” I groaned and turned toward the house. He’d said enough, and I was tired of holding a grudge for things he couldn’t control and jealous because he’d made decisions I knew I wouldn’t have had the strength to make. “You do too much damn thinking. You’re not second best. Triona and John was a whole other lifetime. She chose you.”

  He came up beside me and took the sword from my hand, holding it with his own. I hadn’t noticed the terrible tension settled over his shoulders until that moment when he relaxed. He placed his arm around my back, hooking me under my armpit to help me toward the house.

  “I am sorry that you don’t trust me.”

  I chuckled darkly. “One of these days is going to be your last chance to win me over.”

  Caleb smirked. “I’m guessing it’s not today?”

  I laughed and deep inside, the tissue was still knitting. “Ouch…It’s a good thing we’re going to have centuries to work out our issues, looks like we need it.”

  Chapter 31

  Unexpected Delivery

  “BEN, THERE’S SOMETHING ELSE you should know about John. He—”

  “Didn’t we just do this?” I toed off my wet, muddy sneakers in the utility room. “Triona loves you.”

  Caleb dragged his fingers through his hair and licked his lips. He opened his mouth to speak again.

  I raised my hand to cut him off. “Do you hear that?”

  There were mutterings coming from the dining room.

  He cocked an inquisitive eyebrow. “Too late for breakfast, too early for lunch. Shouldn’t they be training too?”

  I ruffled my hair with a towel, removing most of the wet, and combed my fingers through the tangled strands. There wasn’t much I could do about the thick mud, green slime, and blood soaked though my clothes, or the rip where I’d fallen on Caleb’s sword. Caleb didn’t look nearly as bad once he had dried off a little. The rain had washed away evidence of the four angry slashes across his face, leaving his skin as flawless as ever.

  “Come on,” he said, grabbing another towel.

  I followed Caleb toward the sound of voices. They were talking all at once and too fast to discern anything specific, but the tone indicated an argument.

  At first, no one seemed to notice when we entered the room. Everyone had gathered around a scattered pile of gold boxes at one end of the table. Each was about twelve inches square and maybe half that in depth. The sender had tied the boxes with black chiffon ribbon to an elaborate bow in the center of the lid. Someone had gone to the trouble of attaching a small tag to each box, but only one was open. The lid had been placed back, slightly askew, but covering the contents enough that only a tiny corner of black satin was visible. Curiosity distracted me from the ongoing conversation, but the sound of Samuel’s commanding voice snapped me back into the room like a released rubber band.

  “We should have expected this!” he exclaimed, clearly annoyed as Annice ran a soothing hand up his arm.

  “Please, Samuel, how could anyone have?” Eila defended, pacing the floor with her usual willowy elegance. “Zeal is insane, and there’s no way to predict his actions at this point. We should be glad—”

  “Glad?” Triona repeated the word with venom. “What part of he’s insane and unpredictable should we be glad about?”

  Samuel mumbled an answer, drowned out by Caleb’s voice.

  “What’s going on here?” he demanded to no one in particular, moving to wrap a protective arm around Triona’s quivering shoulders.

  “It’s Zeal,” Joshua started and paused with a frown, as if the words were too terrible to utter.

  “I gathered,” Caleb responded drolly.

  Triona did a double take when she noticed Caleb’s wet clothes, and then her alarmed eyes landed on me, and she broke away from him. Amanda followed her gaze to my shirt, and her hand flew to her mouth to cover a gasp. Suddenly whatever drama had been unfolding was forgotten as all eyes focused on Caleb and me.

  “What happened to you, Ben?” Carmel lifted the hem of my T-shirt at the same time I pushed it back down, like a kid trying to hide a skinned knee so he didn’t have to come in from riding his bike. She bit her lip, and tears welled in her eyes, but she didn’t cry. This surprised me since a few months ago, the sight of blood on my clothes would
have dissolved her into a blubbering mess.

  I’d have preferred not to answer since there were apparently more important things happening. I didn’t particularly want to draw further attention to the tentative relationship between me and Caleb. Unfortunately, the hooks were already fishing my response from my brain and forcing it out my mouth. I snapped my lips shut so as not to make it sound worse than it was.

  “It’s already healing,” I explained. “Nothing to see here. I fell on Caleb’s sword—that’s all.”

  “‘That’s all,’ he says.” Amanda threw her arms up incredulously.

  “A training injury,” Arthur added though Caleb frowned dubiously. Perhaps he thought he could have done something to prevent it.

  “We should get back to what you were talking about,” I suggested, distracting from the flare of heat coloring my cheeks because of Carmel mothering me in front of everyone.

  Triona had noticed the pink stain on Caleb’s T-shirt and tugged at the fabric, sniffing at the metallic twang of rainwater and blood.

  Merlin walked around from the other side of the table, holding the iPad he’d been using to trawl the Internet. His expression was grave, his eyes purposeful. He didn’t speak a word in explanation, simply handed me the device and turned away.

  Caleb came close, and I tilted the screen so he could see too.

  “Oh no,” he groaned wearily.

  They’d been discussing the latest news reports on the vandalism of a national monument in Ireland.

  “No respect,” Eila said. “Dagda’s cauldron was stolen sometime before sunrise, and the passageways superficially damaged. They can’t figure out how it was removed since it sat beneath forty feet of soil.”

  “No one saw anything?” I asked. “There were no camera recordings?”

  “No,” she replied. “Of course not.”

  “But I thought he needed to perform the ceremony there?”

  “The light must strike the granite at the sacred place during sunrise of the spring equinox,” Merlin told us. “Inside the chamber or outside makes no difference. He took it so we could not take it first.” His thin hand crashed down on the tabletop so hard I jumped and thought the wood might splinter. He glared at the table, storm clouds gathering in his expression. “Except we would not. We bring honor where there is none. When Zeal strikes death down upon our heads, will we lie down and accept it, or will we strike back harder?”