by Rebecca Ross
My heart began to pound. I couldn’t swallow, or hear much beyond his voice. Fear resonated through me. “You can’t be sure of that.”
“Oh, but I am. I gave them seven days to meet in the Valley of Bones. They should have already begun the arrangement to travel there.” He shifted his weight, the stool groaning beneath him. “I told you I wouldn’t harm you if they complied. But they are trying to outmaneuver me. The problem is, lass, that they will never find you here. And that means I can take my time, sending them one of your fingers here, a toe there, maybe even your tongue later on down the road, to help them make up their minds.”
I shuddered.
“But maybe . . . maybe carving out your tongue would be a mistake. Maybe if you answer my questions, I will let you keep it.”
I desperately wondered if answering him would gain me time, or if he was simply toying with me. But if it would truly save my tongue . . . I gave him a slight nod.
“How did you find the stone, lass?” he inquired. He sounded so gentle and polite, nothing like the demented man that he was.
I replied honestly, “My ancestor.”
Declan’s brow arched. “Which one?”
“Tristan Allenach. I . . . I inherited his memories.” My mouth was so dry I could scarcely speak.
“How? How did this happen? Can you make more of them?”
Slowly, I told him about ancestral memories, about the bonds I had to forge between my time and Tristan’s time. And how the only memories I had from him were about the Stone of Eventide.
Declan listened raptly, his hand continuing to stroke his beard. “Ah, Brienna, Brienna . . . how envious I am of you!”
I was shivering, unable to hide it from him. Fear had a deep hook in my heart; I could not tell if his excitement was good or bad for me. It was like I sat on the edge of a knife, waiting to see which way I would fall.
“You have descended from one of the greatest men in our history,” he went on. “Tristan Allenach. The man who stole the Stone of Eventide and assassinated the last queen.”
“He was a traitor and a coward,” I replied.
Declan chuckled. “If only I could transform you, Brienna. To make you see life from the other side, to have you join me.”
I stared coldly at him. “You would not want me on your side. I am an Allenach, after all. I would end up overthrowing you a second time.”
He laughed at that. While he was distracted, I gathered the chains in my hands, readying to launch myself at him, to loop it about his neck. And yet he was faster. Before I could lunge, he had taken me by the neck and slammed me against the wall.
Stunned, I gasped for breath. I could feel my pulse throb hard, slowing beneath his iron grip.
He was still smiling at me as he said, “I think we are ready to begin.”
He let me go and I slid down the wall, as if my bones had melted. My breaths wheezed, my throat still tingling from his choke hold.
Two guards entered my chamber. They unlocked the chains at my wrists, leaving the iron manacles in place, and dragged me to the center of the chamber. They forced each manacle onto a hook dangling from the ceiling. It was just high enough so that my toes could touch the stone floor, but not enough to offer me any relief. My shoulders began to ache and pop, fighting the pull of gravity, trying to remain in joint.
The two guards left, and I was, once again, alone with Declan. I thought about screaming, but my breaths were nothing more than shallow rasps.
I watched as he withdrew a gleaming blade from his belt. Cold sweat broke out along my skin as I stared at the steel, at how the light reflected off the dagger.
I struggled to breathe, my panic rising. Time. I needed to give Jourdain and Cartier more time.
“We’ll start with something very simple, Brienna,” Declan said. His voice echoed in my ears, as if my soul was already leaving my body, tumbling down a fathomless hole.
I gasped when he took a fistful of my hair. He began to shear me in painful jerks, and I watched as my long hair drifted away, down to the floor. He was rough, his blade nicking me a few times, and I felt the blood begin to trickle down my neck, seeping into my dirty chemise.
He has halfway done when we were interrupted by a shriek.
The sound pierced me. At first, I wondered if it had come from myself, until Declan whirled around. It was Keela, kneeling before the open cell door, sobbing hysterically.
“No! Da, please don’t hurt her! Don’t hurt her!”
Declan growled. “Keela. This woman is our enemy.”
“No, no, she’s not!” Keela wailed. “Please, please stop, Da! I will do anything if you would only leave her alone!”
Declan approached his daughter, knelt before her, and drew his large hand through her pale hair. She tried to lurch away, but he grabbed her tresses, just as he had done to mine. And my heart became wild within me, desperate, furious.
“Keela?” I called to her, my voice like steel in the forge, hammered into strength. “Keela, it will be all right. Your father is only cutting my hair so it doesn’t get in the way. It will grow back.”
Declan laughed, and the sound was like feeling serpents slither up my legs. “Yes, Keela. It will grow back. Run along now and stay in your room, like a good daughter. Or else I will cut your hair next.”
Keela was still sobbing as she crawled away from him, stumbling to her feet. I watched her dart away, her cries eventually fading into the shadows, into the heavy silence of the tower.
Declan rose and wiped my blood from his blade. As he continued to cut my hair, he started telling me story after story of his childhood, about growing up in the royal castle, about choosing his wife because she was the most beautiful of all Maevan women. I didn’t listen; I was trying to focus on a new plan, one that would aid my escape. Because I had no doubt that Declan Lannon would slowly kill me, sending pieces of my body to my family and my friends.
“I had my wife’s hair shorn one time,” he said, cutting the last of my hair. “For speaking back to me one night.” And Declan took a step away, tilting his head as he admired his handiwork. He had not shaved me, but my hair was brutally cropped. It felt like it was uneven and sparse, and I had to fight my weeping, to resist looking at my hair, which was now brushing my toes on the floor.
“I know what you must think of me,” he murmured. “You must think I am made of darkness, that there is nothing good in me. But I was not always like this. There is one person in my life who taught me how to love others. She is the only one I have ever truly loved in return, even though I must hold her captive, as I do to you now.”
Why are you telling me this? My mind pounded. I looked away, but Declan took my face in his hand, forcing me to meet his eyes.
“You look nothing like her, and yet . . . why do I think of her now, when I look at you?” he whispered. “She is the only life I ever begged for.”
He wanted me to ask who was this woman. As if by saying her name, he would no longer feel guilty about what he was about to do to me.
I clenched my jaw until I felt his fingers press harder into my cheek.
“Who?” I rasped.
“You should know,” Declan said. “You love her son.”
At first, I thought he must be thinking of another. Because Cartier’s mother was dead. “Líle Morgane died during the first rising, with Lady Kavanagh and Lady MacQuinn.”
He watched my expression, reading the lines that creased my brow.
“I was eleven years old that day, that first rising,” he said. “My father cut off Líle Morgane’s hand during battle and then dragged her into the throne room, where he was to behead her at the footstool of his throne. But I could not bear it. I could not bear to see him kill her, to destroy the one good thing in my life. I did not care if she had rebelled, if she had betrayed us all. I threw myself over her and begged my father to let her live.”
I was trembling, the weight of his words pressing down on me. I was going to be sick. . . .
“Wh
y are you telling me this?” I whispered.
“Because Aodhan Morgane’s mother is not dead. She is alive. She’s been alive this whole time, because of my mercy, my goodness.” He shook me, as if he could make me believe this.
But then I thought . . . what if he speaks truth? What if Líle Morgane is alive? What if she has been living this whole time?
Cartier. Just the thought of this, of his mother, made me come undone.
“You lie. You lie,” I shouted, tears in my eyes.
“So my father dragged me off Líle,” Declan continued, ignoring my defiance. “And he told me that if he let her live, I would have to keep her chained. I would have to silence her, or else the truth would spread like wildfire, and the Morganes would rise up again. He sent her to the dungeons and cut out her tongue, beheading another fair-headed woman in her place. Kane Morgane, that old fool, saw the blond hair on the spike and thought it was Líle.”
You lie, you lie, you lie . . .
They were the only two words I could hold to. The only words I could believe.
Declan smiled at me, and I knew the end was coming. There had to be an end to this.
“You and Líle are similar. You both rebelled against my family. You both love Aodhan. You both try very hard not to be afraid of me.”
I whimpered, struggling to hold the sob in my chest.
He blew upon his blade, let the steel fog before wiping it over his leather jerkin. “I’m not going to kill you, Brienna. Because I want Aodhan to have you, after all. But when he looks upon your face, he will see his mother in you. He will know where to find her.”
I screamed when he took hold of my jaw, when I realized what he was about to do. I felt his blade cut into my forehead, at the hairline above my right temple. I felt him slowly drag the steel down, down, down to my jaw, opening my cheek. He spared my eye by only a hair. But I could no longer see from it, because the blood was rushing down my face, and the pain became a fire trapped beneath my skin, burning, burning, burning with my frantic pulse. Where was the end? There had to be an end to this. . . .
“Ah, you were such a pretty lass, weren’t you? Shame.”
I hung my head, watched my blood steadily drip into my shorn hair.
Declan was speaking, but the sound faded, as if it was being stretched over hundreds of years.
My ears popped. I wavered, trying to balance on my toes, and then came blistering pain in my face again. It felt like I had been punched. But Declan had not touched me; through the haze of my sight, I watched him wipe the blood from his blade and sheathe it, stepping back to look at me.
I met his gaze, my breath ragged, my gorge rising as I felt it again, pain so unbearable I screamed.
Declan frowned at me, confused by my reaction, and then came a voice, unfamiliar, distant, drawn from the past.
“Where did you hide the stone?”
Again, splintering pain, only this time in my arm. Someone was breaking my arm. Someone I couldn’t see.
“Tell us where you hid the stone, Allenach.”
More pain, climbing up my back, and I drew in a raspy breath, realizing what was happening.
I was shifting into Tristan’s memory.
I surrendered to it because I was overcome, leaving one torture chamber for another.
My body became Tristan’s body, and I saw the world through his eyes, let his skin ripple over mine as if he were a veil.
“Where is it, Allenach?” a young man asked, tall and powerfully built. He was standing before Tristan, blood splattered on his green doublet, a green doublet with a lynx pressed over the heart.
Lannon.
“Do you want me to break your other arm?”
Tristan groaned. He could only see out of one eye, and blood filled his mouth. His thumbs had been cut off, and his right arm was broken. He was confident half of his ribs were splintered as well.
“Speak, Allenach,” the Lannon prince ground out, visibly irritated. How long had he been torturing him? “Speak, or else this will get much, much worse.”
He chuckled, to know he had kept such a secret for so long, that the Lannon king and his sons had only now caught wind that Tristan Allenach knew where the Stone of Eventide was hidden.
“You’re frightened, aren’t you, lad?” Tristan struggled to say, spitting out blood and a few teeth. “You’re frightened that the stone will surface, and your reign will end before it has even had a chance to begin.”
The Lannon prince’s face contorted in wrath and he punched Tristan again, until more teeth came loose.
“Enough, Fergus,” the second Lannon son said from the shadows. “You’ll kill the old gaffer before he talks.”
“He’s mocking me, Patrick!” Fergus Lannon screeched.
“What’s more important to Father? Your pride, or the location of the stone?”
Fergus clenched his fists.
Patrick stood and approached. He was not nearly as built or powerful in stature as the heir, but there was a dark, wicked gleam in his eyes when he crouched down to meet Tristan’s blurry gaze.
“I know you’re an old man now,” Patrick said. “There’s nothing left for you here. You’ve had your share of plenty, and your wife is long dead, and your children await your death so they can take their inheritance from you.” He paused, tilting his head to the side. “Why did you do it, anyway? What made you want to hide the stone?”
Ah, there were no simple answers to such a question. Once, Tristan believed he had done it for the good of the people, to prevent the devastation of a magical war. But these days, he honestly didn’t know. Maybe he had resented the Kavanaghs and the magic they could wield. Maybe he wanted to do it simply to see if such a bold act could be done, if the legends of the Kavanaghs were true. To see if their magic would really die without the stone.
He smiled. “I know, you think I’m going to tell you. That if you break all of my bones I will tell you where I hid the stone. Well, you’ve about broken all of me. So come closer, lads. Come closer so I can tell you.”
Prince Fergus instantly leaned down, but Patrick, the wiser one, took his brother’s arm and held him back.
“You can tell us from here, Allenach,” he said.
Tristan chuckled, choked on his blood. “You should be the heir, lad. Not Fergus.”
Fergus took up a club and broke Tristan’s other arm before Patrick could stop him.
The pain stole Tristan’s breath, made his heart crack deep in his chest. But he gritted what little remained of his teeth and forced himself to remain conscious, for there was one more thing he needed to say to these Lannon scum.
“I am not the only one who knows where the stone is,” he said, struggling to breathe.
“Who and where is this other man, then?” Fergus demanded.
Tristan smiled. “She is not a man.”
Fergus grew still, shocked. But Patrick chuckled, not at all surprised.
“Where is this woman, then, Allenach? Tell us, and we might let you live, as well as her.”
Tristan leaned his head back against the stone wall of his cell, the cell he had been living in the past week. His vision was about to go, and he fought for the last draw of breath.
“It’s misfortunate for you. . . .” He lowered his chin to look at the Lannon boys one final time, to utter his last words. “Because she hasn’t been born yet.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
THE SOUTHERN TOWER
En Route to Castle Lerah, Lord MacQuinn’s Territory
Cartier
When dawn arrived, I climbed into the back of the wagon with Luc and Sean. We lay down side by side, watching Neeve and Betha stack bolts of linen and wool upon us until we were hidden. It was cramped and uncomfortable and we had hours before us; I was already perspiring, my heart pounding an anxious beat. I drew deep breaths to calm my mind, to ease the tension in my body.
This was going to work. Our mission would not fail.
I listened as Neeve and Betha mounted the driving bench; the
wagon began to rumble, rolling forward. Jourdain, Isolde, and a small force of MacQuinn warriors would trail us from a safe distance. And Lady Grainne had departed two days before, to rally her forces. By nightfall, we would all converge upon Castle Lerah.
None of us spoke, but I could hear the others’ breaths as the wagon continued to jolt and bump throughout the morning. The silence gave me time to mull over the truth of who Neeve was. I retraced Brienna’s words again, the account she had transcribed for the MacQuinn groom, the one that Neeve had brought to us in tears. And when Allenach realized his daughter was not going to die, but wear her scars as a proud banner, he suddenly acted as if the child was not his, leaving her to the weavers to raise as their own.
I could not believe that Brienna had a half sister. And yet when I looked at Neeve, I began to see similarities between the two. Both women had favored their mothers, and they had the same smile, the same cut of their jaw. They walked with the same languid grace.
And Sean . . . Sean had all but fainted when he had read the account. In the span of a turbulent month, he had lost his father and brother, gained the title of lordship, and then discovered he had two sisters. He had promptly wept when he and Neeve had embraced.
It was around midday when the wagon came to an unexpected halt. I looked to Luc, who was beside me. His eyes widened, sweat beading on his brow. We both waited to discover why Betha had stopped the wagon. . . .
“What’s this?” a male voice sneered.
“We are MacQuinn weavers,” Betha said calmly. “We have a delivery for Lady Halloran.”
Another man spoke. I couldn’t discern what he said, but I knew it wasn’t good.
“Why must you search the wagon?” Neeve stated, her voice cutting through the textiles, clearly reiterating what the man had said to warn us. “We deliver wool and linen every month.”
My hand moved slowly, down to my waist, where my dirk was sheathed. I nodded for Luc and Sean to do the same.
I could hear the crunch of boots coming closer. The bolts began to shift directly above me; a stream of sunlight found my face. I shot forward before the Halloran guard saw me, my dirk going directly to his throat. He fell backward, cursing, but I had taken hold of him, pinning him down while Luc and Sean confronted the other guard. There were only two of them, and the road around us was empty, but the hair on my arms rose; I felt exposed.