"A child? No." Again, the chill anger.
"I'm sorry, love."
"Why?"
"That must have hurt you."
When a Shifter woman was childless it was an impossible sorrow to her. As dangerous as breeding was for Shifters, females were happy to risk it to bring in cubs. "I imagine 'tis different for a Fae woman." The Fae were so long-lived they didn't bear many children. Fae women who did like children often stole them from humans, rather than bearing their own, raising them to be their doting little slaves.
"It did hurt me," she said.
Niall saw the pain in her eyes. She looked so out of place, sitting in his forge, her strange, elegant robes already soiled from the dust and soot. He never thought he'd feel sorry for a Fae, but the sadness on her face was real.
"Did your lover not want a child?" Niall asked gently.
"My lover, as you call him, died." Alanna's jaw was fixed, rigid. "We tried to have a child, but I don't know whether it was even possible."
"Fae do breed. I've seen your wee ones." Even crueler than the adults, unfortunately.
"My lover was human."
Surprise stilled Niall's hands. "A human man? Let me guess. A slave?" He couldn't keep the disgust out of his voice.
"He had been captured, yes." She met his look defiantly. "But not by me."
"Oh, that makes it all right then. Whose slave was he? You're royal brother's?"
"Yes. It was a long time ago."
One of her brother's slaves, made into her lover. A typical story of Fae cruelty except for the grief in her eyes. He wasn't imagining that.
He bent over his task again. "How long ago?" he asked.
"One hundred years."
"And you loved this man? Or pretended to?"
Her silence was so flint-hard that Niall raised his head again. She was glaring at him. "Did you love your mate?" she asked in a sharp voice.
"I won't apologize for my question, love. You are the one coercing me into helping the bastard who stole my children. I'll answer yours--yes, I loved her more than my own life."
"My answer is the same."
She met his gaze without flinching. The pain in her dark eyes wasn't false and neither was the loneliness, and Alanna didn't look ashamed of either.
Niall went back to pounding. After a time he asked, "So what happened to this human male so worthy of the love of a Fae woman?"
"My brother killed him."
Niall stopped. "The very brother who sent you here? Why?"
"Because Dubhán dared to touch me."
"The man was your slave, love. He wouldn't have had a choice."
Alanna's face grew cold again. "You see everything through Shifter eyes. Dubhán was my brother's slave, so of course you believe I forced him to service me. I told you, I loved him. I freed him, I fled with him to the human world, and we became lovers. Until my brother found us."
"You sneaked out of the Faerie realms to become lover to a human?" Niall's astonishment and respect for her rose. "You are an amazing and brave lass."
"I was foolish, as it turned out. I should have sent him off and not tried to stay with him. Kieran would have forgotten about one slave in time, but he never forgave me for letting a lesser being touch me."
"Which is why he sent you here to become hostage to a Shifter."
"I am my brother's prisoner and in disgrace. I am forced to do his bidding."
"Does he not fear that while you're in the human world you'll break away and flee him?"
Alanna shrugged. "I have nowhere to go, and unlike Shifters, I cannot pass for a human. The spell that lets me resist iron will wear off." She shivered. "And it is so cold here."
Niall rose, fetched the woolen cloak he'd thrown aside when he'd started to work, and draped it over her shoulders. She looked up in surprise, jerking her hand away when his brushed hers.
He'd thought her overly slender when she first walked in, but now he saw that this was a trick of the loose-flowing garments. Her bosom was round and full, her waist nipped in above strong hips. Her face was delicate, a little too pointed for Niall's taste, but her dark eyes drew him in. Her braids outlined her pointed ears, but the ears didn't look as strange and unnatural close up. She was flesh, not cold marble, her skin flushing as she warmed from the fire and the cloak.
"You could pass for human," Niall said as he went back to the forge.
"Unlikely. Look at me."
"I just did." Niall took up the heated bar with his tongs and tapped the rapidly cooling metal. "If you wore your hair loose to hide your ears and dressed in human clothes instead of fancy frippery, no one would look twice." He considered as he flipped the bar. "No, they'd look twice, because you're a beautiful woman, but unless you shouted it, I don't believe they'd realize you were Fae. Most humans don't believe in the Fae any longer, anyway. They pretend to--they avoid the stone circles at night and put out milk to appease the sprites, but deep down, they believe only in hard work, exhaustion, and God. Bless them."
"You care for them," Alanna said, sounding surprised. "But you're Shifter."
"If you lived in the human world before, you might have noticed that Shifters are not all that thick on the ground. We might be stronger and more cunning than humans, we might be able to change into ferocious beasts when we wish to, but we need humans in order to survive."
"Do the humans in this village know you're Shifter?"
Niall shrugged. "They know I'm different, but as I said, they don't much believe in the other anymore. But they know I'm a good smith and that the villages round about get left in peace now that I live here."
"You're good to them."
"It's survival, love. We each have what the other needs. 'Tis the only way Shifters are going to last."
"The Fae chose to retreat." Alanna said it almost to herself, as though she didn't expect an answer. "We sought the mists of Faerie."
"Aye, that you did."
She fell silent, but Alanna was difficult to ignore as he continued work, and not just because of the distinct Fae smell, which didn't seem so terrible now. Perhaps he was growing used to it.
Niall sensed her presence like a bright light--her beauty, her sorrow, her courage in coming here when she knew she'd likely lose her life. Fae princes could be mean bastards, and the fact that she'd defied this Kieran about the human slave spoke much of her.
Once Niall had the metal thin enough, he heated it again, ready to shape it. As he set the blade on the anvil and took up his hammer, he felt her breath on his shoulder.
"Wait."
"Metal's hot, lass. It won't wait."
"I need to layer in some spells."
His eyes narrowed. "What is this sword for? For ceremony, I know, not fighting, but what sort of ceremony, exactly?"
"I'm not certain myself."
Niall's grip tightened on his hammer. "Don't lie to me, lass. If you're putting in the spells, you know what they do."
"I cannot tell you. Please, if you know, then your sons will die."
"I think they'll die anyway, and I think you know that too. Tell me this much--is the sword meant to hurt Shifters?"
Alanna said nothing, but the look in her eyes spoke volumes. He read guilt there, anguish, grief, anger.
Niall shoved the bar from the anvil with a clatter. He sat down on the floor, his hammer falling to his side. "You're asking me to save my sons by forging a weapon against Shifters? What kind of monster are you?"
Alanna sank to her knees beside him, her silks whispering across his skin. "Niall of Baile Ícín, I ask you to please trust me. Make the sword. All will be well."
Niall growled. "Your bastard brother will slaughter my boys the minute he gets this piece of metal in his hands. He knows I'll kill you in retaliation, and then he'll kill me, and laugh about it. That is how things will play out."
Alanna shook her head, her braids touching his bare shoulders. "Not if you trust me. I cannot tell you everything, but you must make the sword the way I have instructed
." She put her hand on his shoulder--Fae, who didn't like to touch. "Please, Niall."
"And why should I trust you? Because you once bedded a human? Should I believe you have compassion for the whole world then?"
"Because of a vow I once made. I will never let your children come to harm. I promise."
Fae had a way of enchanting, of charming. Niall knew that, had experienced it firsthand. But Alanna's pleading look was different somehow from the Fae who'd once spelled Shifters to be slaves to them. Fae charmed by being too brightly beautiful, too desirable, stirring a person into a frenzy before they knew what happened. Alanna didn't make Niall feel frenzied or dazzled. He was angry and sick, tired and sad.
When Shifters lost loved ones, they retreated from the rest of the pride or pack to be alone with their grief. A survival instinct, he supposed, because in that gut-ripping sorrow, they had no desire to fight or hunt or even eat. A wildcat or wolf or bear might weaken the pack by refusing to fight, and so the Shifter took himself away until the worst passed. Or he died.
Alanna's hand on Niall's shoulder was cool, cutting through his instinct to seek solace. Her fingers were soothing to his roasting skin, and her fragrance no longer seemed cloying, but fresh like mint.
"Please," she said again.
Niall got to his feet and pulled her up with him. "You ask much of me, lass."
"I know."
Alanna's eyes weren't black, as he'd thought, but deep brown with black flecks, her wide pupils making them seem darker. Her hair was like fine threads of white gold, metal so delicate that the merest touch could break it.
Niall stepped away from her, fetched the half-formed blade, and thrust it back into the fire. "And you wager your life on me trusting you?"
"Yes," she said again. "Will you?"
Niall shrugged again, his insides knotting. "Looks as though I'll have to, doesn't it lass?"
She gave him a smile of pure relief. "Thank you, Niall."
Niall turned back to work, wishing her damned smile didn't warm him so.
Chapter Four
Alanna let her hand hover over the red-hot blade Niall laid on the anvil, the metal's heat touching her skin. She murmured the spell, watching the curled Fae runes sear into the metal and disappear.
Niall did not trust her, and she couldn't force him to, but she was relieved he'd at least let her do the spells. Alanna couldn't ask more of him, not without fear that Kieran would discover what she was doing.
Niall beat the sword after the runes faded, as she instructed, then put it back into the fire. Again and again they repeated the pattern--Niall hammering the blade, Alanna chanting her spells.
They worked side-by-side, shoulders brushing, both sweating from the fire, both breathing hard from exertion. Spell casting, especially spells as powerful and far-reaching as these, took stamina. Alanna soon set aside the cloak and pushed up her long sleeves.
The stench of sweating Shifter didn't seem as bad now. Niall had, well, an honest smell, one that came of hard work and caring. He protected the people of this village the same way he protected his children, a fact that Alanna wouldn't relate to Kieran. If her brother thought the villagers important to Niall, Kieran would find some way to use that against him.
When Niall said the sword needed to rest, he shoved it into a barrel of ash, wiped the sweat from his face, and led her from the forge. The dirt track outside hugged the cliffs above the sea, Niall's shop being at the very end of the high street--if the muddy track between the houses could be termed a high street. The western ocean pounded away below them, the moon glowing on the black bulk of the nearby island.
At first Alanna worried that Niall had brought her to the cliffs for some nefarious purpose--perhaps tossing her over and ridding himself of a troubling Fae--but he simply stood looking out over the dark ocean, breathing in the bracing air.
"You know we'll never finish on time," he said. "Blades have to be heated and rested a number of times to make the metal strong, and then I still have to grind the blade and make the hilt."
"You'll finish."
"You sound certain."
"The spells I'm using will temper the blade faster than your process by hand," she said. "When we go back, you'll be ready to grind it."
"I'm not ready to go back yet, lass."
He had to be freezing out here without a shirt, the icy wind from the sea whipping his short braid. His eyes were green even in the faint moonlight, hard green, not Shifter white-green.
Alanna didn't flinch when he cupped her neck with his big, rough hand. The touch of others had always sickened her, until she'd met Dubhán. She wondered what sort of strange Fae woman she was that she'd fallen in love with a human man and now didn't mind that a Shifter pulled her into his embrace.
Niall's face was lined with dirt and soot, but by now hers couldn't be much better. His hard body cut the wind, and she melded into him as he scooped her against him and kissed her.
His kiss was harder even than Dubhán's, firm mouth opening hers, his whiskers burning her lips. He tasted raw, of this wild land of Eire, of a bite of ale and of himself.
Niall eased back, and Alanna shivered, not willing to let go his warmth. The wind cut through her, but she scarcely noticed it.
"This might be our last night, you and I," he said. "The last night of our lives."
"Yes."
Niall kissed her lips, her cheeks, her neck. "Maybe 'tis Fae enchantment that you're pouring over me, but I suddenly want you with me in my bed for this last night."
She nodded, breathless. "Yes."
"You agree that it's our last night? Or are you saying you'll share my bed?"
"Both."
He cupped her face in his hands. "Be certain, Alanna."
"I am. Very certain."
Niall took her hand. The night gusted cold, but Alanna suddenly felt very warm with her hand swallowed by his. Her heart beat faster. She knew she was foolish for going with him, but she no longer cared. If this didn't work she, Niall, and his children would die. Let them comfort each other for one last night.
Niall led her behind the forge and to a neat cottage with a garden in front. She saw signs of his family--small boots, scattered tools, half-whittled pieces of wood--animals the boys had been carving when they'd been snatched by Kieran's men.
Niall avoided looking at the carvings as he led Alanna inside and up to the loft, where neat pallets had been made up for the night. Niall stripped without word, revealing a body of solid muscle, male beauty sculpted by nature and the ancient Fae. Shifters had been bred to be superior in strength, speed, and stamina, and they'd also been made to be beautiful.
He put his hands on his hips, unashamed that his wanting was plain to see. "Are you not getting undressed?"
Alanna untied the complicated tapes that held her gown to her body and let it fall in one piece. She liked the appreciative way Niall looked at her nakedness instead of with the loathing or indifference she'd have expected of a Shifter. His gaze lingered on her breasts, his eyes dark and soft.
Alanna went to him. He raked his hands through her braids and tilted her head back to kiss her deeply. His hardness pressed her belly, his arousal long and thick. She'd always heard that Shifters were more endowed than humans or even Fae, and she decided that this rumor was true.
Niall's huge, work-worn hand cupped her breast, thumb brushing the tip. He kissed her neck, nipping her a little before he kissed her mouth again.
Alanna had loved Dubhán, and she always would. The fact that loving him had caused his death had haunted her for a century. But this Shifter would never go easily to her brother's men, never would give up without a fight. Niall could have killed her outright when she'd announced that Kieran had kidnapped his cubs, but he was giving her the gift of his trust--well, perhaps not his full trust, but at least his hope.
Niall lifted her and set her gently on the pallet. He came down with her, stretching his warm body on top of hers.
"You're such a bit of a thing,
" he murmured. He closed his hand around her wrist. "See? So fragile."
"I'm stronger than you know."
"I know, lass. You have Fae strength, but I've never seen it packaged in such beauty."
Was he trying to melt her heart? The big, strong Shifter with loneliness and sorrow in his eyes? She suddenly wanted to hold him and heal all his hurts.
Niall had something else on his mind besides healing just now. He parted her thighs with a soothing hand and slid himself inside her.
Alanna's eyes widened as he filled her, so big, but feeling so good. What a wonder that a huge, barbaric, beast of a Shifter could be so gentle.
He stayed gentle as he began the rhythm of lovemaking, his head bowed, his braid sliding across his shoulder. Alanna cupped his hips, urging him with hands and mouth not to be too careful with her. Niall groaned as he sped his thrusts, kissing her as she met him stroke for stroke.
Alanna's frenzy began a few seconds before his did. They peaked together, both crying out, both holding hard, kissing and panting, hot breaths tangling. Then they wound down together, Niall kissing her face, her neck, her lips.
"You see?" Alanna whispered. "I'm perfectly fine."
"That you are, love. And so am I. As you can feel inside of you."
"You mean I've not yet worn you down?"
Niall grinned and licked her upper lip. "Not by a long way, my love. Not by a long way."
He started again, this time more playfully. In spite of knowing that Niall was right, that this might be their only night together, and in spite of her worry the choices she'd made, Alanna pulled him inside her and let herself drown in his loving.
*** *** ***
Alanna awoke an hour later to see Niall leaving the bed. She lay in the warm nest they'd made, enjoying the view of his buttocks as he bent over to fetch a tunic. Their gazes met when Niall straightened up to slide it on.
His eyes changed to the feral cat within him before returning to deep green. "You're such a beautiful lass." He leaned down to kiss her, his lips warm.
She savored the kiss. "Where are you going?"
"The sword won't get finished by itself, love. It's not going to be a very good weapon made so hasty."
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