“Well, their reach is far but worry not, my mistress.” He gave me a reassuring look before he turned from the stairs and walked past the shelves of herbs. “Dealing with it will be simple enough. You’re safe here.” He picked up several different herbs I didn’t catch and mixed them with beeswax. I was almost shaken by his calmness as he hummed a soft tune. “Would you like to come with me?”
“Sure.”
With my utterance of consent Caoilfionn grabbed his stave from by the door and as he did his appearance changed again—rolling back into that guise of a handsome and yet unremarkable elf. Grabbing my cloak and sword, I followed him into the night after locking the shop. We rode the dapple together through the streets of town, past the fields to where the king’s road jutted from between the arms of the forest.
Caoilfionn continued to hum as he hopped from the saddle and smeared his forehead and neck with the salve he had made and then struck his stave on the ground. The illusion of it just being some random gnarled branch shattered and he anointed the crystal atop it. He gazed up the road and then peered into the forest for a handful of moments. Once satisfied by whatever he saw, he cleared his throat and thrust the stave into the air. That white crystal flared to life like a captured star, and he shouted a single word, and all sound around us stopped. It was like the bitter winter wind was afraid of wrangling with whatever power the unicorn was conjuring. He brought the crystal down to point at the king’s road, and my body broke out in gooseflesh as I felt his magic pulsing out from that simple point. I could almost see it like a net of diamonds that was cast out from that spot on the road to over the city and all the way to the shore. And then it was gone, and sound returned. Caoilfionn lingered, listening in the night.
“Is something wrong?” I asked after we had stood in silence for quite some time. My fingers were starting to grow numb from the cold.
“Shhh, do you hear that?” he whispered and closed his eyes, as his stave returned to the guise of a gnarled old walking stick.
“No.”
“Smell this and then close your eyes.” He held the ointment out to me. I looked it over for a moment before I took a whiff of the pungent herbs. I half staggered off the horse’s back—the potency was almost too much for me. Shutting my eyes as I fought to get my bearings I did hear it. The baying of hounds and a host of hoofbeats.
The snow was thick at our feet and almost came up to my knees. The moon illuminated the night as surely as the sun did the day as those hoofbeats grew louder. The haunting howl of the humongous hounds heralded the churning crunch of snow that made me only a little afraid to open my eyes. Caoilfionn’s hand on my back made me jump, and my eyes opened with the shock of the touch.
Standing before me was that large black-armored rider. I peered at the host that loitered behind him. Among the horde, I picked out Baba Yaga riding a massive undead chicken with black feathers and a sole cloudy, rotten eye that dangled from its socket. Red Sun was beside it on a chestnut warhorse that was larger than any horse I had seen aside from the one ridden by the daunting figure in black.
The white wolf with the ruddy nose approached me, sniffing the air around me. Oh, I was both terrified and confident of my safety in a single breath. The monstrously mammoth wolf, who I could only assume was Dormarth, stepped back from me to return to the side of Gwyn ap Nudd. He said something in a voice that had all the dark nuances of rolling thunder, but I couldn’t understand a word he said to me.
“He is offering you a place beside him in the host for tonight’s ride,” Caoilfionn translated. I shook my head no. I couldn’t find my voice; I was too stunned to speak. Caoilfionn said something and Gwyn ap Nudd sounded his black horn and the host of horrors continued on.
“You’re recognized, Valentina! No other before you has been recognized by either Gwyn ap Nudd or Arwn.” Caoilfionn was almost giddy. “Do you know what this means?” I stared at the grinning, glamoured unicorn for a handful of moments.
“Nope, and at this point, I don’t particularly care. It’s…an added complication that I probably don’t need.”
“It means the Swynwr can’t treat you like some random human slave next time you see him because you are recognized by Gwyn ap Nudd himself as Arwn’s blood—you’re truly Annwn royalty!” He was so wound up by this revelation that I was starting to worry his heart would burst from excitement.
“And what does that mean outside of Annwn?”
“Well…”
“That’s what I thought.” I sighed and rolled my eyes before remounting the dapple.
“You’ll always be a princess to me, Your Grace.” He laughed as he slipped into the saddle behind me. “It might not matter to you but it’s a big deal to me,” he added, as we continued down the king’s road.
“Promise me something?”
“Anything, I am at your service.”
“Don’t tell Yorwrath.”
“Why?”
“I just don’t think it’s important.”
“But it’s important enough not to tell him?”
“I thought you were at my service and all of that sheepfucking nonsense?”
“Whatever you wish, Your Majesty.”
“Damn straight.”
“Ah, the ego of royalty.”
“Shut up.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Caoilfionn and I returned to find the shop full of light. Every single candle was lit, and the windows all glowed. Yorwrath had beaten us home. As we neared, I couldn’t help but grumble to myself about how cranky he was going to be. Caoilfionn, with his hands at my waist, chuckled quietly as we neared the door. A child’s scream cut through the night killing all of the mirth in Caoilfionn’s throat.
“Go see to it. I’ll put up the horse,” Caoilfionn said, lifting his hands from my waist. Slipping from the saddle, I threw open the door to the shop. It was loud and lousy with noise; entirely too many people were in the enclosed space for my liking. The ealdorman, the innkeeper, and a few other prominent people were gathered. Cutting through all the cacophonous chatter now and again was that scream.
“Everyone who doesn’t need to be here—out!” I yelled, as I elbowed passed people and unlaced my cloak. The crowd had started to disperse by the time I had hung up my cloak on its wooden peg. I still had to practically fight my way to the cots. I half expected to see some bloody but underwhelming hunting injury that could have been taken care of by any mother with a needle and thread. Children had a nasty habit of being worked up by the attention they received for crying. But that was not what I found on the cot nearest the fire.
Hedda was crying, holding Hywel’s hand as Yorwrath sat on the other side of the cot holding a bloodied bandage over the child’s stomach. Hywel was screaming with good reason. With the amount of blood soaked through the bandage the child had to be in excruciating pain.
“About bloody time, Dy’ne,” Yorwrath snapped at me.
“What happened?” I asked as I fetched my cure-all ointment from the shelf.
“Knights of the Morning Lily,” Yorwrath said, giving me a long look that didn’t accord with the situation at hand. “We killed some, but the child didn’t listen. He thought because he’d a few weeks training with a sword he could help. He’s lucky about the angle of the wound. Most slashed like that end with their intestines in the dirt at their feet.” Wonderful. I sighed and gathered linen, a needle and thread, and the cauterizing iron. I held it for a moment and looked down at the shiny new metal. The last time I held one that had barely been used was when I treated Aneurin. The thought made me pause before setting the iron on the fire. I placed everything else on the little table next to the cot and slipped beside Yorwrath. His clothes and face were spattered with blood, and I could tell from the pattern and placement that none of it was Hywel’s.
“Are you okay?” I whispered to him before I lifted the corner of the linen Yorwrath was pressing to the child’s stomach. It was a nasty wound, but it probably wouldn’t kill the boy. But it would need to b
e cauterized to stop the bleeding. I glanced up at Hedda, and Caoilfionn stepped in the room.
“Just a few scrapes, maybe a bruise or two.”
“Grwn?”
“The same. We would have had them all had it just been us.”
“And now?”
“What do you think, Dy’ne? Once you’ve tended to Hywel, I’m going hunting tonight with some of the others from town for big, dumb, slow animals that have swords and not antlers.”
Caoilfionn brought the leather roll over and started brewing tea. I could smell the herbs in the satchel in his hand—it was something to ease Hywel’s pain and help the boy sleep. After the tea steeped Caoilfionn forced the boy to drink. Hedda shoved the bit in his mouth, and Yorwrath held him down as I pressed the hot iron across the seeping wound at his stomach. While the scent of cooking meat filled the air and the iron charred the flesh, Hywel mercifully passed out.
“He killed his first,” Yorwrath added, as I applied ointment to the wound and wrapped a fresh bandage around it. “Had you let him train with Grwn when he was three like he should have, he wouldn’t be lying here wounded, Dy’ne. Look well on your son; this is your fault,” Yorwrath snapped at Hedda.
Bleary-eyed, Hedda scowled and lunged at him across her child, but Yorwrath was too quick for her. He moved out of the way and she connected with the floor hard enough to shake the house. Grabbing her by the hair, he pinned her against the wall. She went limp and sobbed as Yorwrath whispered something that reached me as a murmur before releasing her and snatching up his cloak.
“Bye,” I called to him, glaring at his back. He paused and turned around.
“I don’t know how long I’ll be gone…” He stared at me for a moment before closing the distance between us to brutally seize my lips in a rough and desperate kiss that left me light-headed. “But when I get home, I’m going to destroy you, Dy’ne,” he growled softly into my ear, before nipping the lobe.
“Be safe, Elf.”
“I promise nothing, Dy’ne,” he called to me before closing the door.
Hedda glared at me as Caoilfionn and I started cleaning up. Oh, an argument was coming! I could feel that thick angry tension building to a head. She wiped her eyes and sat at her son’s side. Part of me believed Yorwrath was right. She was pretending here. Her son would face more obstacles in life than she and Grwn did. Morwenna wouldn’t because she looked like an elf. She could go into the forest and have the protection of Grwn’s family. Hywel, however, looked neither elf nor human completely. He had the somewhat rosy pale complexion of an Erslander and ears that came to the slightest of points. When he became a man, his life would be a struggle if he left the shore.
“Do you even know what that word means?” Hedda finally spoke, pulling her shawl tighter around her shoulders.
“Yes. I do.”
“He doesn’t love you. If he did, he wouldn’t use that word, and he certainly wouldn’t use it to refer to you. You’re a sweet girl, Valentina. A kind person. You could do so much better than that…monster.” I let her ramble as I washed my hands of Hywel’s blood. “Do you really think he’s going to come back if that’s all he sees you as? He probably has a whole harem full of women waiting for him when he gets bored with you. What makes you think he’ll come back?”
“I would appreciate it if you didn’t talk about my relationship in front of your children.”
“Did you know what he said to me? He said if you weren’t here he would have beaten me like the bitch of a Dy’ne I am.”
“He was angry, and he was right, Hedda. The boy needs to learn to defend himself.”
“So you’re just going to excuse him?”
“Yes, because I know him. I know he loves me and would kill his own to defend me—even kin.”
“I know him too. I know what it’s like to have his knife pressed to my throat, know what it’s like to have him force himself inside of me.”
“And that’s how you met Grwn, right?”
“No, this was years before I met him.”
“When I first met Yorwrath he attempted the same thing within moments of meeting me, after forcing his way inside my home. I know what he’s capable of, Hedda. I’m not oblivious to who he is. But I also know he’s out there going after the men who hurt your son. I know that he’s drawn steel against his own brother to protect me. I’m not dumb enough to think he’s changed toward the rest of the world, but he does love me. I’m sorry about what he did to you but…things are rarely as simple as they seem.”
“Say what you will but I’ve seen it before, Valentina. He won’t come back at May Day or even midsummer. I like you, Valentina. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“Caoilfionn will treat Hywel for the rest of the night.”
“I will?” Caoilfionn said, raising a brow as he turned his attention toward me.
“Mhm, I’m going to read for a bit. Call me if you need me,” I added before I walked up the stairs, wiping my hands on my trousers—I didn’t want to look at Hedda anymore.
For the rest of the night, I sat in my bedroom, curled up in a chair, reading by candlelight. At some point, I fell asleep there, and the herbal I was studying fell from my hands to the floor. When dawn came, I was woken by the softest of kisses on my throat.
“Mmm,” I groaned as my eyes fluttered open. Yorwrath was kneeling at my side. He had washed for bed; his skin was still wet with the rosewater. The gambeson had gone, and he only wore those leather trousers that hugged his legs and hips like a second skin. I stared at him for a moment as he knelt there, my eyes tracing over every scar—and there were quite a few of them. “Weren’t you going to destroy me?” I asked groggily with a smirk.
“I’m too tired.” He chuckled and rubbed his face against the rough linen at my shoulder. “Happy Yule.”
“Gwynfydedig… Byrddydd Gaeof.” Holy fuck I hope I said that right. He responded with a long, beautiful, soft-whispered monologue in the elven tongue, but I had no clue what any of it meant. “I only know how to say ‘happy winter solstice.’ I’m sorry, ‘blessed winter solstice.’ Morwenna was very clear that it doesn’t mean happy.”
“That one is going to be trouble in a few years. Hedda’s going to hate me for it, but Morwenna’s going with Grwn to be raised by his sister in Dryslwyn Tanllyd.”
“Well, Hedda and her feelings can sod off for all I care,” I grumbled as I started to stand. He grabbed the front of my bodice preventing me from standing.
“Is this about what I did when that Dy’ne lunged at me? ‘Cause she’s lucky I didn’t smash her head like a baked apple against that wall.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about it. I had it dropped on me twice yesterday. Right now I just want to go back to sleep.” I moved to stand, and he pulled me down to seated again.
“What did she say?”
“You’re starting to get on my nerves, Yorwrath.”
“Really, Dy’ne? So sorry for having a care when someone angers someone I love,” he snapped at me.
“She said you’ll go back to your whores, and never return.”
“Of course she did. I’m far better looking than Grwn, and you’re far…far prettier than she. She’s a jealous old maid with a husband she sees two times a year. All that type does is gossip, Dy’ne.” He slid his hands down my legs to my boots, pulling each of them off. “Don’t listen to them; I’ll come back at Beltane or Nos Galan Mai, or—as I was raised to call it, Hirddydd haf—your midsummer.” He kissed my neck. “Samhain.” Sliding his hand up my bodice he tugged the string from the bow tied at the bottom. “I’ll return around harvest and keep you warm until the thaw.” He pulled the laces on my corset with those deft digits and the string loosened in an instant.
“I thought you were tired,” I snarked out with a giggle.
“Trust me, Dy’ne, I am. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see you naked.” Smiling at him I stood, and he held fast to my loosened bodice, pulling it down my body. Stepping from its shadow I un
tied the string of the shirt I wore and pulled it over my head. He was there in an instant with his hot lips on my neck again, his teeth gnashing at the soft flesh, coaxing pleased purrs from my throat. Those strong, hard, callused hands of his passed over my skin and with one hand he seized my breast possessively as his other caressed my flat belly down to the ties of my trousers.
“I thought you were going to rip them off, Elf,” I teased, reaching my hands back to rub his hips.
“I’m exhausted, Dy’ne. Keep up,” he growled into my ear.
“Obviously n—” My breath caught as he slipped his hand into my trousers and he sought my pulsing, needy, moist sex with those expert fingers.
“Say it, Dy’ne.” His gruff voice rumbled in my ear. I moaned in response, my back arching and my hips thrusting my bottom against that eager pulsing flesh trapped by the leather of his trousers. “Say it.” He groaned as my hips rubbed back against him. I knew what he wanted me to say, it was those three small words I had demanded from him not so long ago. Still, I was just as stubborn as he was… He was going to have to work for it.
“I’m too tired to say it,” I half giggled, my voice only a bit breathy from that building pleasurable warmth. His hand fell from my breast, and I felt him shift his hips as he untied his trousers.
“Say it…or I’ll take you against the wall like the whore Hedda thinks you are to me.”
“Oh, that’s a little dark.”
“Is it, Dy’ne?” He pulled my trousers down and pushed me forward, and I found myself bent over the kitchen table. Well, this is almost familiar. The air of the room was cold against my hot, needy sex. As he forced himself into me, the air was knocked out of my lungs in a softly moaned gasp. “Mmm, that’s right. You like it rough like this, don’t you, Dy’ne?” He snarled into my ear as he bent over my body. He slammed into me hard again, and I clawed behind me at his hips as he pressed his body flush against my backside. “Say it, or I’m not moving.” I moved to elbow him, and he grabbed my arms, pinning them to the table with his. “I mean it.” I attempted to move my legs, and he pinned them too. Then reality set in: he had let me win all those times; he wasn’t really trying to fight with me. Bent over me as he was, he held me fast against the table like an immovable vice that was touching all the spots deep in my body that made me tremble. He leaned his head against my cheek. “I could do this all day, Dy’ne. You know that struggling of yours makes me harder than steel.” I sighed playfully, smirking with my cheek against the table.
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