Erika did reach for her blade then, and lunged toward Magda, wanting nothing more than to rip the smaller woman’s throat out. Instead, she tangled in her own skirts and fell to the floor, hard.
Mocking laughter came to her through a sudden haze of pain. “No, Conor will never love you, Viking whore! In fact, with thanks to the elixir you just imbibed, he may come to hate you, for destroying his child.”
“No!” Erika tried to scream a denial, but pain forced all air from her lungs.
“Oh yes.” Magda retrieved the damning cup and walked to the door. “Pity that you’ll not be able to recall our talk, if you even survive. I would have enjoyed seeing your face as you told Conor what transpired here, and seeing him not believing you. A good day to you, Angel of Death.” Her laughter lingered even after she left.
Stars danced before Erika’s eyes as another wave of pain hit her, clawing at her insides. Clawing at her child. She tried to climb to her feet using a nearby chair for leverage, and only succeeded in toppling over again.
Panic squeezed the air from her lungs, making it impossible to scream, to call for help. She had to get aid; if she didn’t, Conor’s babe would die.
Her fingers clawed the floorboards as she dragged herself to the door, a door that suddenly seemed a league away. She wasn’t going to make it; she would never reach the door…
Her hand connected with wood. Survival instinct flowed into her veins, momentarily overpowering the poison and giving her strength to stagger to her feet. To open the door and stumble out.
“Help me.” In her mind it was a scream, but her body continued its rebellion, the plea only a whisper. The hall reeled around her as her body cramped again. She retched, the force of it kicking her from her feet, sapping her strength.
She was dying, taking another life with her, a precious life. The last unclouded part of her mind railed against it, but the poison was stronger than her will. Her hand moved feebly to her womb as she begged for forgiveness, forgiveness she knew would not come.
The screaming could be heard everywhere about the dun. Urgent, grieving shrieks that clammed the skin of all who heard it.
Conor ran into the dun, a brace of soldiers with him, weapons drawn. Something was wrong with Erika; he knew it to the depths of his soul. He shouted her name, pounding up the stairs in the direction of the screams.
Múireann stood at the head of the stairs and ’twas she who screamed, horror limning her features as she stared at the floor.
Erika lay crumpled facedown at the top of the stairway, her hair spread about her like a pale silk cloth. Still, so very still. Falling to his knees, he turned her over, ignoring the palsied tremor of his hands. On the front of her gown a scarlet flower blossomed, increasing with every heartbeat.
It wasn’t a flower.
“Erika?”
Slow, oh so slow, her eyes opened, washed out with pain. “C-Conor. The babe…must save…” Her eyes fluttered shut.
“No!” Gathering her in his arms, Conor raced to their chamber, shouting orders at the top of his lungs. He laid her on their bed as his people scattered for water and linens and Aine.
Erika thrashed on the bed, moaning with pain. The blood had become an angry vermilion stain, soaking her robe and the front of his tunic, and still it would not stop. He took his dagger, slicing the front of her dress, looking for a wound, praying there was a wound.
“Kill me,” she whispered, her voice frantic. “T-tried to—” She heaved beneath his hand, rolling to her side to vomit, to utter a weak scream.
Aine came into the room, followed by servants carrying the necessary supplies. They tried to make him leave, but he refused to go farther than across the room. He needed to be there, just in case.
It was a nightmare that would not end. Erika alternated between Gaelic and Norse, breathless pleadings that they save the baby, cries for forgiveness. Each whimper tore through him like a sword strike, bleeding his soul. There was nothing he could do for her save add his pleas to her own, to whatever gods would listen, that they save her and their child.
Those pleas were in vain. Erika lost the battle to keep their babe. Aine won the battle to keep her from bleeding to death. A final, pain-filled shriek of denial rang through the chamber, slamming into Conor, sending him to his knees.
Gone. Everything, all his hopes…gone.
People milled about the room, Múireann and Aine and the priest and Olan, who nearly killed a horse in his race to his sister’s side. Feeling like an old man, Conor climbed to his feet. “Did anyone see what happened?”
His question was greeted with silence. Anger surged through him, temporarily holding the grief at bay. “All of you were in the hall. Did you not see anything?”
None answered. “Get out,” he ordered. When no one obeyed his command, he drew his sword. “Get out, all of you! Leave now!”
He pushed people to the door, throwing some bodily into the hall. At last he slammed the chamber door and bolted it, resting his head against the smooth wood. The cool surface did nothing to quell the demons rising within him, the specters of death that had haunted him for two years.
He had failed her. He had been so consumed with distancing himself, with shielding his soul against her inevitable departure that he had not been there when she needed him most.
Images danced through his mind. Erika, handing him the tiny dagger as a gesture of trust. Giving him her sword during their marriage ceremony. Yielding her body to his, surrendering the freedom she valued above all else. She did all this, based on a promise he had made, the one promise he should never have made.
The promise to protect her.
He had failed Erika and their child. Failed to protect them, just as he had failed to protect his older brother and three nephews during the fighting at Clontarf. His mind roiled with images, all awash with screams and blood. And above them all, Erika’s cries and pleas echoed in his mind, his soul.
He brought his hands up in a futile attempt to ward them off. Blood caked his fingers and arms. Erika’s blood.
With a cry of impotent rage, Conor drew his dagger and plunged it into the door again and again, as if he could slay the voracious demons that taunted him. The cry tore from him, from the deepest, darkest chambers of his spirit and rose to an inhuman roar that echoed through the chamber and out into the night.
Falling to his knees in exhaustion, Conor looked towards the bed. Erika had not stirred during his outburst. The thought that she might be dead near slammed him into the floor. What would he do if she were dead?
With his heart in his throat, he moved to the bed and dropped to his knees. Pale hair lay against an even paler bandage about her forehead. Her jaw line was livid with deep purple bruises, and shadows were heavy beneath her swollen, red-rimmed eyes. The slow rise and fall of her chest was the only indication that his wife still lived.
Even in slumber, sorrow was evident in her features. Had Erika ever been happy here? She had come to Dunlough a prisoner, was almost raped and had been forced into marriage by losing a duel to him. He had told her he could never love her, that he wanted an heir, not a wife.
No, Erika had not had an easy time here. Did she still dream of freedom, of a life away from him? Would she choose freedom now, since her sole reason to stay had just been taken?
As if sensing his distress, she moaned, her head moving side to side as she struggled to awaken. He was about to leap to his feet to summon Aine when her hand flailed out, catching his forearm. “Conor.”
He covered her hand with his. “I am here.”
Lashes fluttered against the sooty hollows beneath her eyes. “No…leave. You. Promised…”
Blessedly, unconsciousness claimed her before she could utter more. In rising horror he stared down at his slumbering wife, unable to believe her words, unable to hear, see, or feel beyond the flash of pain that consumed him.
He had lost everything.
Conor held the limp hand between his own, rested his head on the mattress, an
d cried.
“Ease, my lady. Ease.”
Light beckoned, promising solace. She knew it for a lie. Only the darkness could contain and conceal the pain, the grief and the terrible, terrible emptiness.
Pain flailed at her relentlessly, and that alone forced her eyes open. Aine’s face swam into view, Múireann’s beside her and weeping silently. She rolled her head in slow agonizing movements on the pillow. Her brother sat at her bedside, not her husband.
Conor’s absence scoured her. She saw the grief on her brother’s face, knew he must have felt indirectly some of what she endured. Knew the answer to her question but had to ask it anyway. “I lost the babe, didn’t I?”
Múireann’s sobs grew louder as tears spiked her brother’s lashes. “I am sorry, Rika.”
She closed her eyes, wanting nothing more than to will the blackness to return, to capitulate to the darkness and void. She could not, not until she knew… “Conor?”
“He is not here.”
Conor was gone. Olan’s presence washed over her, his hands attempting to draw some of her pain away as they had done since she was a child. “Where?”
“You must rest, my lady,” Aine admonished her, tilting her head for a sip of something too bitter to be water. Even that small movement left her gasping, the gasping leaving her blinded with agony. Olan’s hands tightened on hers, and the physical anguish abated slightly.
“Fighting broke out in the east, near Dun Lief,” he informed her. “Conor rode out two days ago.”
Two days. He had been gone two days. She had been in darkness at least that long. Was the fighting truly so fierce, or was that merely a reason to escape? “What befell the door?”
Olan turned to the heavy oak, now pitted with deep gouges. “Conor did, after you—after Aine—” He broke off, his hand trembling in hers. “You have not stirred for three days. Three days have I sat beside you, praying that you would not die. Conor should have been here.”
She struggled to make sense of her lost time. Conor had been there, the first day. Then the call to arms from Dun Lief had arrived. As Ardan had yet to recover fully, he could have sent Padraig to lead Dunlough’s men, but she understood that he would need to go. His demons had come back, and the heavy door was not catalyst enough to help him battle them.
Images and sounds filtered through her mind, wordless pleas and curses, and a piercing roar of denial. “You must go to him, Olan.” She reached out, her hand clasping the sleeve of his tunic. “He will surely blame himself.”
“And well he should—”
“No, the fault does not lie with him,” she interrupted, her whisper halting the beginning of his tirade. “It is mine.”
Aine rested her hand on Erika’s forehead. “My lady, do not say it—”
“I must have done something wrong. You told me it was still much too soon, but I wanted to give him what he wanted most of all.”
She turned back to her brother, feeling fatigue battling the pain and the grief. “He will blame himself for this, as he blamed himself for Ardan’s injury, and his brother and nephews. Promise me that you will go to him, Olan, that you will stand with him.”
Olan’s face remained flushed with his anger. “Because you ask it, and only because you ask it, will I go. When you are rested, you will be taken to Glentane.”
“Glentane? Why?”
“Do you think I can allow you to remain here? After all that has happened?”
“But Dunlough is my home…” Her voice faded as she saw the look in her brother’s eyes. “H-he didn’t—didn’t—”
“No.” Olan leaned close to her, his free hand cupping her cheek. “He did not suggest it. In truth, he seemed to think you asked him to leave.”
She moved her head restlessly on the pillow. “Leave? Why would I ask him to leave? This is my home. He is my home.”
“Ah, you’ve fallen in love with him, haven’t you?”
“Yes.” She felt tears gather behind her eyes. Truly, she loved Conor, and it hurt all the more that she had failed him. “Bring him back to me, brother.”
“May I hurt him first?”
Erika tried to smile, even though she knew Olan was serious. “What is between Conor and me will be dealt with between Conor and me. Just bring him back.”
“I will.” He stood, bending to brush his lips against her forehead. “Recover swiftly, sister. I want you on your feet when I drag your worthless husband home to you.”
Erika awaited her brother’s departure before succumbing to tears. She wept bitterly for what she had lost: her babe, her husband, her hope.
“What did I do amiss, Good-mother?” she asked through her tears. “I did all that you instructed to keep the babe safe. Why did this happen?”
“Hush, child,” the healer whispered. “It will not do to overset yourself. Do you remember what happened?”
She tried, but memories eluded her. “Everything is blurred, like half-remembered dreams. All I can remember is feeling tired and…” She paused, about to say alone. “D-does Conor blame me?”
“Of course not. It is as you say, that he blames himself. Neither of you are at fault. Nature does this at times, for reasons we do not know. Though I must tell you, there were moments I feared I would lose you as well.”
Erika rested her hands on the bedclothes above her empty womb. She felt as if she had indeed died. There was one more question she had to ask, one she had to know the answer to. “Good-mother, I will be able to give Conor a child, will I not?”
Moss green eyes regarded her solemnly. “Time will show the truth of it, my lady. We near lost you and your body will need much time to recover from that.”
Numbness pulled at her as she took hope from the healer’s words. She had no other choice. If Aine did not believe she could still be a true wife for Conor, there would be no hope for them.
With that despairing thought still in her mind, she tumbled into sleep.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“If there is someone else here who needs killing, let us do and be done with it. I for one wish to return to my wife.”
The goad found its mark. Conor whirled and struck the Viking such a blow as would have felled another man. Olan did not even sway.
“Hit me!”
The younger man folded his arms across the metal links covering his chest. “No.”
Infuriated, Conor moved through their uneasy men until they were toe to toe. He had endured more than a month of Olan’s censure, then Niall’s when the ruler of Dun Lief discovered what had befallen Erika. His emotions were strung tighter than a harp’s strings, and the routing of raiders had failed to appease them. “Hit me, damn you!”
Blue eyes flashed with a searing rage before the pale lashes swept down, smothering Olan’s fury with calm. “There is nothing I would enjoy more at this moment than to beat you senseless. For the blow you just gave me I should kill you. That you treat my sister as less than a servant, I should kill you. That she could ask me to protect you even while she believes you have spurned her, I should kill you. Yet I cannot.”
“Why?”
“Because my sister, despite you, despite herself, has fallen in love with you.”
Breath left Conor in a rush, leaving him light of head. “What do you say?”
“Are you deaf as well as stubborn? My sister loves you.”
Conor thought that his knees would give way. While he’d hoped for Erika’s heart, he never believed it would be given to him. “Are you certain? How do you know?”
Olan folded his arms across his chest, his eyes still hard with anger. “She refused my offer to move her to Glentane. When I asked her why, that is the reason she gave.”
Erika loved him. The news warmed the dark recesses of his heart with hope. She loved him and didn’t want to leave him.
Conor strode to his horse, then stopped to face the Viking again. “Why did you not tell me this before now?”
“You were not ready to listen, and I needed the bloodletting a
s much as you. I wanted you to hurt as Erika hurt. And your guilt hurts you worse than my fists ever could.”
It was midafternoon of a brilliant fall day when Dunlough came into view. In the month that he’d been gone the harvest had begun and the herds brought back from the summer fields. Life continued, and the thought renewed his hope as he dismounted and headed for the dun.
But it wasn’t his wife who greeted him at the door. It was Magda. “Conor! Welcome home. I have much to discuss with you—”
“It can wait. Where is my wife?”
“She’s gone.”
“Gone?” The word swept into his soul like a winter squall, driving out all else. “When?”
“As soon as she recovered from the babe.” Magda sidled next to him. “’Tis right sorry I am about the bairn. A pity it is, knowing how Erika worried herself so.”
Words took their time sinking into the coldness that surrounded him. “She was worried?”
“And sure she was, over the wee bairn. I heard herself on more than one occasion, wondering what could befall the little one. ’Tis no wonder she fretted herself until she fell ill. After she recovered, she took herself to the old woman’s hut. She has not returned to the dun in days, at least a week.”
Conor spun away from her, not wanting to hear another word. Erika was gone. Olan was wrong. She had wanted to leave all along, and left as soon as she was able.
What reason did she have to stay?
Ardan greeted him as he rode toward the gate. “Did you kill everyone that needed killing?”
The censure in his captain’s eyes was obvious and unforgiving. Conor could accept it, had censured himself often enough in the last six weeks. He wanted to set things a-right, but to do that he had to find his wife.
“Where is my lady? Magda says she has been gone a week. Did she—did she go to Glentane or Dun Lief?”
“Lady Erika is at neither of those holdings.”
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