Legend of the Lakes

by Clara O'Connor

  “I just said no,” Gideon snarled.

  I felt a tad offended. I raised an eyebrow in his direction. He glowered back.

  “Nobody is asking you to have sex,” Rion assured him before turning back to Callum. “But they could sleep in the same room. Would that be enough to restore her?”

  Callum nodded eagerly, delighted to have a reasonable suggestion. I shrugged. I didn’t mind, though logic presented the argument that I didn’t care right now. That was the point. I didn’t have enough emotion to like or dislike the solution offered. After a few weeks, I might have a different view.

  “Please just try it,” Rion said to the snarly man in the corner. “Wouldn’t you… Féile deserves a mother.”

  Gideon angled a narrow-eyed look at the King of Mercia, a mirthless smile acknowledging the hit to his weak spot. “One week.”

  “Catriona?” my brother asked. “Do you agree?”

  “Sure.” I shrugged.

  “If she shrugs one more time, I will strangle her,” came a dark mutter from the corner.

  “Maybe we can find a room with separate beds,” Callum suggested.

  Gideon was sitting by the fire drinking when I entered his room. There was still only the single four-poster bed in the middle of the room.

  I raised a brow at him.

  “It’s big enough,” he growled.

  My shoulders went to lift before I stopped them as his glare intensified. I was still smiling a little in amusement as I slipped between the sheets.

  When I woke the next morning, there was no sign of Gideon, and no indication he had ever disturbed his own bed. I sat up and saw his long legs stretched out by the fire. Just as they had that morning when we had fled the hell hounds and ended up in that inn. He had saved my life. More than once.

  “Do you feel any different?” his voice came from the other side of the chair. How could he tell I was awake?

  “I don’t know.” I checked myself. “Not really.”

  I certainly didn’t feel the joy for life that had overtaken me the morning after he had made love to me.

  The door pushed open. Oh no.

  Wary, dark eyes contemplated me from beside the door. Gideon stood up from his chair quickly so she could see him but made no further move. Féile looked at him then back at me, and then she padded her way slowly over to him without ever taking her big eyes off me. I didn’t move.

  Gideon lifted her up, still dressed in the clothes from last night.

  “Morning, poppet,” he said, dropping a kiss on her forehead, just as I had seen him do before. He started to walk to the door.

  “Dada,” she snuggled into him. He tensed but didn’t look at me as he kept walking.

  The door closed softly behind them. I lay back in the bed, my chest unbearably tight as tears squeezed out from my burning eyes.

  Okay, maybe I did feel different.

  I didn’t see any sign of them all day. Callum refused to let me train. We needed to make certain my emotional balance was restored first, he said. Each night, Gideon slept in the chair by the fire.

  On the sixth morning, Féile was accompanied by her small dog who, despite no longer being a puppy, still had some behavioural issues. Gideon had paused long enough to get dressed before sweeping Féile out of the room. Curious at the delay, Snuffles came in to investigate and snuffled around the room until he got to my slippers. He promptly grabbed one and made for the door.

  My yelp was enough to have Gideon reaching for Féile, whose giggle at her dog’s antics had her meeting my eyes in shared mirth, causing my heart to flip in my chest.

  That night, as I lay in Gideon’s bed, he again sat in the chair by the fire, nursing a whisky, the amber swirl catching the light as he twirled the glass.

  After a while, he slipped in beside me. I relaxed. He too had seen the benefits of our experiment, and if it was to become a permanent arrangement, he couldn’t continue to sleep in a chair. My entire body unclenched. He was willing to do this for me, for Féile. I had to say it. I wanted to tell him that he was a good father but I couldn’t force the words out. Couldn’t take back the ugly horrible things I had said to him. I turned away, pulling the blanket tight about me, and finally sleep came.

  Snows gave way to spring showers. Marina came north for the spring equinox to help at Keswick and Penrith in my absence and Oban joined her, leaving me to fend for myself as I grew stronger. The land became green once more as the small boat in my mind was gradually pulled back closer to shore. By Beltaine I was decreed strong enough to return to my long-neglected training, though I despaired that I would ever have decent control of the elements. Equilibrium had settled throughout the house too. I spent my nights with Gideon, though we did our best to pretend the other didn’t exist. I might not be able to sense his emotions as I had Devyn, but he didn’t exactly mask his feelings. It was exhausting being on the receiving end of the disdain that rolled off him in my presence. It was one thing to know he hated me, another to lie there next to that sullen resentment every night.

  However, over the summer I was deemed stable enough to spend time with my daughter and Gideon unbent enough to slowly allow me to spend unsupervised time with her as she turned two.

  My daughter’s eyes glowed as her dark curls dripped with water, the apple gripped in her teeth. I beamed back at her, my heart filled to bursting. The castle burned bright on this night, the night the dead walked the land. I felt strangely close to Devyn, as if he stood at my shoulder, at peace with me, glad that Féile and I were better, even happy that Gideon was such a great father, showering our little girl with the love and affection he had never had the opportunity to bestow. It felt good, I felt good, stable, unlike the ley line, which continued to deteriorate. I had celebrated Samhain at Penrith at the request of the druids there – it had needed a lot of work. Tomorrow I would have to go out to Keswick because Oban had returned with the news that Marina was struggling. I couldn’t let her continue to shoulder the burden alone.

  The druids and I had tried everything. The wrongness, the corruption that crept along the ley line from the south was growing, as if someone was pouring a black sludge into it and the current was bringing it inexorably further up the line, corruption sucking the energy out of the land, turning everything grey in its wake.

  Féile hopped up onto the bench beside me, and her warm body curled into me as the mummers cavorted their way into the room. Rion presided over the festivities with the same thoughtful consideration with which he did everything. Féile’s head grew heavy against my shoulder. The painted laughing faces of the dancers and staff as the bonfires were lit flashed around me as my little girl fought sleep to enjoy every minute she could. Samhain had been eagerly anticipated for weeks. I breathed in the lavender scent of her hair, the shampoo that the druid Elsa had brought her from the summer meadows when she visited Glastonbury in Kernow.

  A shadow fell over us as the tall, dark-haired warrior bent to take her to bed. I wanted to follow but knew I would be unwelcome. He had allowed her to stay close to me all day. My presence, even after all these months, was merely tolerated and always keenly observed.

  I waited long enough to see Gideon re-emerge in the hall before I slipped away to sleep. Or at least to lie in bed… his bed. I felt like a ghost when I entered his room. Despite the months I had spent here, it bore no trace of me; it was still dark and masculine, wholly his. Swords and daggers hung high on the wall where his daughter’s little fingers could not reach them. They were secured now so his crazy wife’s tantrums couldn’t send them spinning around the room. Luckily for me, they had been away for cleaning at midwinter, otherwise what was already one of my worst ever days could have been unspeakably worse.

  I lay in the dark waiting. I couldn’t help it. He rarely acknowledged my presence, but I felt wound tight until he arrived. Sometimes he didn’t come at all, and I lay staring at the embroidered canopy until the early hours. I didn’t know where he spent those nights – it was none of my business. He o
wed me nothing. But I was further punished on those days because on top of insufficient sleep the lack of time in his company inevitably led me to seek him out at training.

  I paid more attention to my moods now, the ridiculous euphoria and deadly rage of those early days not something I wished to repeat. I worked hard to ensure that I maintained the emotional stability his presence gave me. It didn’t matter if he ignored me, what mattered was that I remained me, a me who was able to hold her child, to show her she was loved – adored, if truth be told. She was an indomitable little thing. Entirely her own person, funny and bouncy like the curls on her head but stubborn as a mule when she wanted to be.

  She wanted to learn how to fight, pleaded with Gideon to show her how to be a warrior just like him. Gideon was equally as stubborn, and horrified at the idea of his little girl holding a blade. He wasn’t against the idea of women being able to fight. Just Féile. She was fierce, though. Maybe he was doing the world a favour.

  Callum had taught me some more meditation techniques. I could feel the coil inside me wound tighter than usual, anticipation at heading out to Keswick tomorrow perhaps, or the sinking sensation that Gideon would avoid his room tonight. He hadn’t come last night and I had been forced to spend half the day watching him train when I should have been preparing to head to the lakes.

  He trained harder and longer than any other of the titled warriors, working with the master at arms to train the men and women of Carlisle for the war that now felt inevitable. I too needed to be ready. I had to be.

  I watched as he held a blonde warrior, straightening her posture with his touch, his body long against her back as he adjusted her throwing hand. His skin glistened as he went through the paces with the better swordsmen. I brought books to study on the days when I was forced to track him down to be near him. He didn’t like my being there, but what choice did I have? He never looked my way, but I knew he could feel my eyes on him, tracking his athletic body as he spent hour after hour in training.

  The ley line this morning at Penrith had been draining.

  He had to come tonight. He had to.

  Chapter Nine

  The door opened, the line of light from the hallway cutting through the dark. His purposeful stride ate up the floor, the creak of his chair indicating he had chosen to get his rest by the fireside tonight.

  “Gideon,” I said. I needed his closeness tonight. I was dreading tomorrow and I felt it like a hollowness in the pit of my stomach. I could feel the Keswick circle waiting for me, as if it called to me.

  There was no answer from beside the hearth. I no longer felt the contempt he had thrown at me in those early weeks. I knew I had earned back some of his respect as I won back my daughter’s love and trust. He primarily treated me with indifference, with more than a dash of disdain in it. Ignoring me mostly.

  I was about to call to him again when I heard his sigh, followed by the rustling of clothes, then the dip of the bed.

  “Thank you.” I was grateful, the coil inside me loosening a little. The thread that bound me to shore felt instantly more substantial. I breathed easier, despite the intoxicating smell of woodsy male behind me. He smelt warm and alive and… full of whisky. I stilled. Gideon rarely drank.

  I turned over to check on him, only to find myself inches from his eyes, staring straight at me.

  “Are you okay?” I asked. He clearly wasn’t. Interaction was not part of our agreement, but he did this for me and the least I could do was try to be there for him.

  The tension in me mounted as he lay there watching me, unblinking. Was he…? What was wrong? I reached out to touch his shoulder. Maybe he was having some kind of dream, but… with his eyes open?

  His hand shot out and caught me before I could touch him. I pulled my hand back, but he didn’t release me.

  His eyes shone in the light from the window, the light that was lit to protect us from the dead on this night. Maybe I needed more protection from the living.

  “Let me go.”

  “You let me go,” he said challengingly, his words slurred a little. How much had he had to drink, and why?

  “I’m not holding you,” I said. What was he talking about? I attempted to pull my wrist out of his grip again.

  “Aren’t you?” He wound my arm behind my back and used it to pull me flush against him. He wasn’t wearing anything. I knew that already, because he never wore anything in bed.

  “Is this better? Closer?” he asked, his head ducking into the corner between my neck and shoulder. He inhaled. “Hmm?”

  I could feel his breath on my neck, his heat on my body. I could practically feel my eyes dilating. I shouldn’t respond. He had been drinking, and he resented my presence in his life, in his bed. Responding would just make everything worse.

  His lips brushed air in front of mine. I melted. Please kiss me. I wanted this, wanted him so badly.

  “Do I feel like him?” His question was breathed into the dark.

  “What? Like who?” What was he talking about?

  “Is it the same, in the dark? Does one Griffin feel much like another?” His questions were a rumble in the dark.

  “What? No!” Why would he think that? Did he think that I pretended that he was Devyn as we lay here night after night? Of course I didn’t confuse them. They were nothing alike. Lying here with Gideon, all I knew, all I felt, was Gideon.

  I leaned forward to kiss him, to show him that I knew who he was, that I was here with him, only him.

  My lips touched his softly. I shouldn’t be doing this. What was I doing?

  But he responded, his kiss blazing as if the soft caress was tinder to a waiting bonfire set with touchpaper. I was pulled immediately into the inferno, a willing sacrifice to the flame.

  He deepened the kiss, rolling on top of me, and my trapped arm twisted uncomfortably. I pushed up to free it.

  “Gideon.” I just needed him to ease the pressure to free my arm.

  He stilled. His body froze over mine, and he breathed in before roughly pulling away and leaping from the bed as if it were a pit of snakes, and I the queen viper.

  “What am I? A warm body to service the lady’s needs?” he sneered from across the room.

  Was he blaming me for what had just happened?

  “That’s not fair!” He had no right. He was the one who had pulled me in. But only after I had turned to face him and moved to touch him. Had I read him wrong? I had kissed him but it had felt like he wanted me to.

  “Is it? What choice do I have in any of this?”

  I couldn’t breathe. He was right. This was all my fault. I was the one who forced him to stay with me.

  “You can choose to be with whoever you want to be with. I’m not stopping you.”

  “Aren’t you? Always there. Always watching.”

  My cheeks flamed. He knew, knew that I…

  He was back on the bed in a heartbeat, pulling me against him as he knelt on the bed.

  “Do you want me, kitty cat? Me?” his eyes blazed into mine, seeking an answer that I did not want to give him. I would not be humiliated like this.

  “You can go and be with anyone you want to be with,” I gritted out. “I don’t care.”

  His laughter barked out in the growing cold of the room.

  “And there it is.”

  He stood up from the bed, grabbed his clothes and was gone.

  I sat shivering in the empty room, waiting for him to come back. I needed him, but obviously he had found another bed to warm, and it was none of my business. I had no right to hold him.

  “Is there any way to free Gideon?” I asked Callum as we rode out through the Lakelands the next morning.

  “Free him, from what?”

  “From me? He didn’t ask for this. There has got to be a way to allow us to live our lives separately.”

  Callum’s eyes rolled over me speculatively. “There is someone else you would rather marry? Divorce shouldn’t be too difficult to arrange. According to our laws, a mutual p
arting of the ways can easily dissolve an unsatisfactory arrangement. Your emotional health makes it rather more of a challenge.”

  Callum had been informed of the secret ceremony that had bound us legally as well as magically. After admitting that Gideon had been made the new Griffin, Rion had insisted on Callum being fully informed. But it wasn’t the marriage that was the problem. Nor was it me who wanted out, but Gideon valued his independence and this had to chafe.

  “The Griffin and the lady don’t normally… You said before that usually the lady and her Griffin don’t have anything more than the mandated relationship,” I began. Did I want to be with Gideon because of the pull of the bond? Was that what he had meant when he asked if I wanted him… or the Griffin that dwelt within? “Do you think I feel… something because of Devyn?”

  “Devyn?” Callum repeated, looking like he wanted to be anywhere but on the horse next to mine with no one for miles around but the few guards who trailed behind us. Callum screwed up his face so severely that he was in danger of being lost under his beard and shaggy hair.

  “The transfer of the Griffin abilities to Gideon may have brought across some element of Devyn’s essence, I suppose. Do you sense him?”

  “No, no,” I said, horrified. Did he think that I was only attracted to Gideon because of Devyn? That was so messed up. And also untrue. I hadn’t been entirely unaware of Gideon’s… um… charms before Devyn’s death. Me and half the women in Britannia. He was undeniably attractive, mysteriously scarred, broad-shouldered, lean-hipped, long-legged, dark, and he had the whole brooding cavalier thing going for him… “Um, that’s not, I mean, I wasn’t asking about that.”

  Callum waited for me to gather my composure.

  “I was hoping… that is, I feel much better now, but it’s all a bit… messed up. Is there any way someone else could be Griffin?” Someone else that would mean a return to the traditional roles where instead of being trailed by guards during the day and sleeping with a man who resented me at night, we could put the world back in order. And Gideon would be free to be with whoever he wanted to be with.