He blew out a sigh, glancing up at Serena.
"My wife was not a well woman. She had...ailments. Most of them unseen, things only she could understand. This healer, Haven, called on her often with sundry brews and liniments. The day of the raid on Greycliff, while I was away from the keep on estate matters, Haven had given Elspeth a potion of mandrake and pennyroyal."
Serena frowned. "Those herbs are powerful strong. Too much could kill."
"Aye," Rand agreed. "Elspeth had consumed half of the pouch by the time I returned home that evening."
"Mercy," Serena gasped. "Had the woman not warned her that it could do harm as well as heal?"
Rand's chuckle grated his ears, so raw yet was the shame of what had greeted him upon his arrival home that night. "Elspeth knew well the danger in the brew. She procured it purposely, and took it all by choice. She would have taken more, had I not returned when I did."
"You saved her," Serena suggested, hopeful.
"No. That was something I never could do for her, not before, and most certainly not that night. We argued, both said terrible things. And then the attack occurred, and none of it seemed to matter anyway."
For a long while, Serena said nothing. She just looked at him, passing no judgment, showing no pity, simply waiting for him to tell her more. And Rand wanted to tell her more, he realized in astonishment. He needed to tell someone--all of it. He needed to tell Serena, knowing she would be the one person he could trust to see the depth of his wound and not mock him for a fool, not condemn him for his failure as a husband and a man.
Serena's clear gaze held him aloft when he felt himself sinking into self-loathing, like an ocean blue wave cradling his beaten body, his dying heart.
"My wife," he said, finally, "could not bear to endure her life any longer. I could not make her happy. In truth, so she told me that very night, by loving her I had only made it worse. Elspeth was with child again--our child, just a few weeks in her womb--and she feared the babe was eating away her soul."
"Was it true?" Serena asked, a stricken look on her innocent face. "Can a babe possibly--"
"Nay," Rand answered, tersely certain. "A babe can do no such harm. Elspeth's melancholy was the demon that consumed her soul...and, slowly, her mind. She felt more deeply than most, but unpredictably; giddy with joy for an instant, then morbid with despair the next. I never knew what moved her. She never let me that close."
"But still you loved her."
"I did," he admitted, hoping it would not hurt Serena to hear him say it, in light of the intimacy he now shared with her.
What he felt for Serena was a separate thing from the bond he'd had with his wife, and while he was not immediately prepared to give it a name, his feeling for Serena was real and deepening...more powerful than it should be. Rand met the gaze watching him tenderly in the sunlight. Tranquil peace shone back at him, a sanctuary he never thought to find. Ironic that he should discover it now, when his life was pledged to unholy purpose. A quest that would, inevitably, necessarily, take him far away from Serena and the idyll he was beginning to know when he was in her company.
"I loved her," he said, "but Elspeth and I had grown distant after our son's birth. Before that, even, though I was slow to see it. She had always been vulnerable to illness and headaches, which worsened every year. Nothing seemed to help, least of all anything I could give her. While she retreated into herself, I retreated into my duties about the keep. I knew she was unhappy but I did not fully grasp the extent--not until her last act of defeat, when she swallowed those deadly herbs. Elspeth would have killed herself, and our child, to be free of her pain."
"That wasn't fair of her," Serena said, judging at last, a note of defensiveness lacing the sweet hush of her voice. "Life is filled with equal measure of joy and pain. To deny either is to deny the full experience of living."
As she spoke, she reached across to him and took his hand in hers. Even this, the careful touch of her, was a gift of utter acceptance and trust. Her bare fingers twined with his own, and he knew she could feel all that he did now, the Knowing absorbing his anger and shame, the useless futility that had dogged him in those final years of his marriage. The cutting sharpness of the realization that his wife--a woman he had vowed to cherish and protect, and had done his best to do so--preferred the endless night of death over another day of life with him.
"No," Serena said, tenderly denying his unspoken pain. "What she did is her own. You were not to blame, Rand. I will never believe that, nor should you."
"She was dying even before the keep was attacked," he said, recalling the fits of coughing that had seized her as they quarreled, those lung-shredding whoops, the whiteness of her face as she took to their bed and demanded he leave her to die in peace. "The raiders set the place ablaze as they arrived. When I heard the ruckus, smelled the sudden stench of smoke, I grabbed my weapon and flew out of our chamber. Elspeth was delirious by then. She came after me, despite my order that she stay put. She had Tod with her--Jesu, how terrified he was, crying, clinging to her as smoke poured up from the keep below. In her weakened state, she was scarcely able to hold him."
Serena squeezed his hand, the slightest pressure, communicating warmth and sympathy for the difficulty with which he recounted the horror of that night.
"There was little I could do. The raiders were already inside. They threatened me, four of them striking out with fists and torches and swords. Enough to wound, degrade, but not kill. They needed me alive, so I could talk. I was keeping something they needed--the whole reason they were there."
"Rand, these raiders..." Serena gave a little shudder as she gazed down at their joined hands. "They weren't normal men, were they? I glimpsed them when I touched you in the cottage, but I didn't understand. They were...inhuman somehow."
Too late to hide the incredible truth of what befell him at Greycliff the night of the raid, Rand nodded his head. "Shapeshifters," he admitted, all but hissing the word. "They are neither man nor beast, but a slippery meeting of the two. They are treacherous and deadly in their ability to change forms at will."
"Wolves," Serena whispered. "They came to Greycliff as wolves."
"Aye. And it was another such beast that followed me onto the ship at Liverpool. He attacked me on the deck. It was raining; we were swept overboard. The bastard gave me these cuts before I rent his innards and let him bleed out in the tide."
"All for the cup you carried with you that day?"
"All for that," Rand answered. "When the shifters came to Greycliff, they came in search of a key I'd been given by a friend of mine, Kenrick of Clairmont. I had accepted the responsibility for its safekeeping, and vowed to Kenrick that I'd not let it fall into enemy hands. But then the shifters threatened my family. They held my wife and son in the sights of their crossbows, trapped them in the tower stairwell."
"Oh, Rand." Serena stroked his fingers with her free hand. "You couldn't let them be harmed. No promise is worth the lives of your family."
"Elspeth was already lost to the potion she drank. But my son." An oath slipped past his gritted teeth. "My little son was innocent in all of this. And he was crying, screaming for me to make them go away--to make the bad men go away."
"So you surrendered this thing you had sworn to keep for your friend."
"I did, to my shame." He had broken his honor and his word that night, but it had all been for naught. "I took them to the hiding place, gave them the seal...and retched a moment later, as a wild shot was fired, fatally striking Elspeth. She fell lifeless, tumbled down the hard stone steps--with Tod yet clutched in her arms."
"Merciful heaven," Serena whispered, reverent, pained. "That poor child."
"He died instantly. I went mad. I slew several of the shifter beasts in my rage, and wounded another--the one who had led the rest of her kind to Greycliff while she spied for the villain behind all of this evil and destruction."
"The healer--Haven?" Serena asked, no doubt hearing the name skate through his own h
eart in a mixture of bewilderment and slowly subsiding contempt. "She was there too?"
"Aye. She was herself a shifter--or rather, is still," he corrected.
"You do not hate her."
Rand shook his head, then shrugged. "I don't know. I had wanted to kill her. I turned her own blade on her that night when I realized she had betrayed us. All along she had been betraying us, or so I believed. It wasn't until later--weeks later, when I next saw her, that I was made to reconsider."
"What happened?"
"The unimaginable," he replied, still bewildered by the events of those astonishing days that followed the raid. "Nothing could have shocked me more than seeing this same woman in the company of my closest friend, Kenrick of Clairmont, after I thought her dead at the end of a blade the night of the attack."
Serena's gaze went wide with surprise. "She survived?"
"Thanks to Kenrick, who came to Greycliff unaware we had been attacked some time before. He found Haven wandering the ruins in a state of senselessness, gravely injured. It seemed logical enough that she had been present at the raid--the apparent sole survivor. Needing to know what had happened to the secret he had left in my keeping, Kenrick brought Haven home with him to his castle, where she was mended and taken in as his ward."
"They had no idea who she was, or what she had done?"
"No. Neither did she, for that matter. Wound fever had scorched her memory."
Serena shook her head, clearly amazed. "Where were you that you could not warn your friend of the enemy he harbored?"
"After the smoke of the raid at Greycliff had settled, and I awoke to find myself yet breathing when my family--my life--was gone, I let it seem that I, too, had perished in the attack. I set three graves in the yard, then left Greycliff for good. I sought out Kenrick, of course, and that is when I realized that Haven was living under his roof." Rand gave a wry chuckle, thinking back on all that had occurred. "I tried to warn Kenrick, once I knew, but it was already too late."
Serena's expression fell into dread. "Did she...hurt your friend in some way?"
"Yes, and no. While she recuperated, unaware of her own past, Haven and Kenrick fell in love."
"Nay!" she cried, as aghast as he first had been at the idea.
"Oh, aye," Rand said, tracing the fine bones of Serena's hand. "I could scarce believe it myself, but it was true."
"What about her role in the attack on Greycliff? Did that count for nothing to your friend?"
"It mattered very much to him, but Haven swore she had not called the raid. She came initially to observe the keep and report back to the villain who commanded her, but then she came to know Elspeth and Tod. She came to care about them, emotions forbidden in one of her kind. It changed her, and put her in danger as well. The shifters who came to attack Greycliff had come for Haven as well. I had not known that at the time. It took much convincing for me to believe it when she recounted the tale to Kenrick and me."
"But you do believe it. You have accepted her, because your friend loves her."
Rand glanced at the perceptive aqua eyes that knew him so well, even unaided by the gift that could read him with a touch. "I believe her, yes. In the end, it was Haven who spared both Kenrick and me from certain death at the hands of her shifter clan. I have accepted that she and Kenrick are meant to be together."
"You've forgiven her," Serena assured him. "In time, mayhap you will even be able to forgive yourself."
He wasn't so sure about that, but Rand brought her fingertips to his mouth and placed a warm kiss against them. Her soft skin teased his lips, her clean scent a balm that could wash away all his dark thoughts and haunted past. Unable to stop himself, Rand leaned down and kissed her. Her lips were honey-sweet and tender, opening so easily for him. He broke away with a soft oath.
"You'd better go back to the cottage."
"Must I?"
"Aye," he growled, "the sooner, the better. You've a basket of crushed berries to retrieve, and if I recall, a tart to make for our sup tonight."
Her eyes twinkled playfully, her answering smile anything but compliant. "True, but I would rather stay out here a while longer."
"Up," he ordered, rising to his feet and pulling her alongside him. He pointed in the direction of the woods. "Go."
"What about you?"
"I'll be along."
She hesitated now, eyeing him with mild suspicion. A flicker of concern dimmed her bright gaze. "Are you all right?"
He nodded, then gave her a stern look. "Go, lady. We've tarried here overlong. I have things to attend as well."
For a moment, she merely waited there. She started to reach out to him, but he casually drew back from her reach. Her hand dropped slowly to her side, and she began a slow retreat back into the dense greenery of the grove.
* * *
He did not return to the cottage that afternoon, or even that night. Serena ate a quiet meal with her mother, then lay awake on her pallet as the evening stretched toward midnight. The little dove Rand had carved for her sat on the sill of the cottage window, a sweet reminder of the wondrous day they had spent together...and the amazing passion he had awakened in her with his berry-drenched kisses near the stream, then again at the falls.
She had saved him a piece of the whortleberry tart from supper. She had waited all day to see him again, but now she began to fear he might never return.
He had opened up to her at the cascade pool, telling her about his marriage and the terrible attack on his home. She had felt his misery as he recounted it all, and she had noted the haunted look in his eyes as he abruptly sent her back home. His pain was clear. He did not think he deserved happiness so long as his enemy still breathed, and his family's deaths went unavenged. His wounds were still so raw.
And now, she wondered...
Serena sat up in her bed. Had he gone? Would he leave her without a word of farewell?
She did not think he would, not after the tenderness he had shown her that day, but she had to know.
Pulling on her cloak, Serena rose from her pallet and quietly slipped out the cottage door. She padded across the moon-shadowed space of the small yard, and out into the woods beyond. She followed her senses, her heart, bare feet trodding carefully through the cool undergrowth of the forest. There was no path on this side of the woods, only a carpet of old conifer needles and tender, flowering greenery that huddled close to the earth. Serena weaved her way silently through the maze of tall trees, pliant saplings, and forest ferns, letting the cool night air embrace her. High above the canopy, the full moon glowed milky white, threaded with shadowy, tendril clouds.
Her path was indirect, unhurried. Each step brought a dread that she might find the forest empty, that she had lost Rand to his vengeance. Night sounds greeted her: rustling ferns and ivy at her feet, roosting birds shifting curiously above her head as she passed. Farther in this direction was the cascade pool; she knew it even before the muffled thunder of rushing water met her ears.
Serena arrived there quietly, her approach masked by the majestic roar of the place.
Darkness clung to everything.
And there, draped in shadow, solitary beneath the indigo night sky, was Rand. He was seated on the flat crag of rock at the edge of the pool where she had left him that day. His hunched silhouette was haloed by the silvery blue veil of the falls before him. His back was to her as she took a hesitant step forward. He was so still, so quiet.
Oh, Rand.
She did not speak, merely approached him carefully, uncertain if she should disturb his solitude. She knew a moment of true fear, for he seemed so remote. Closed off from everything around him, sitting there in the dark. Serena feared she might encounter his bristly anger. He might snarl at her as he had at other times, like a wounded animal seeking to drive away those who might sense his slightest weakness. Even after their newborn intimacy of that day, he might yet send her away, rejecting her presence as he had so frequently rejected most of her other attempts at kindness.
> But then she spied the faintest tremor in his strong back, and her own misgivings faded to inconsequence. His stillness seemed too tightly held. He breathed, but it was a ragged expansion of his lungs, the swell of an emotion that seemed bottled up and fighting to break free. His head was hung low on his broad shoulders, his chin tucked down to his chest, his arms braced on updrawn knees.
Another few tender paces and she was within arm's reach of him. She paused, there at his back, too terrified to do anything but stand there, her heart breaking for him.
Sweet, solitary man.
His shoulders rocked with grief, but the only sound in the clearing was that of the crashing falls, unbroken, relentless.
So alone. So terribly alone.
Serena stretched out her hand, and gently laid her bare fingers across the span of solid muscle at his shoulder. Rand did not flinch or draw away. Nay, for a long moment he reacted not at all to her unannounced, lingering touch.
Serena lived his sorrow in an instant, feeling the pain of his loss travel through the heart of her open palm to the heart of her self, her very soul.
He turned then, slowly pivoting his head to face her. Trails of wetness glistened in the cool light of the falls, tracing twin lines from the corners of his pain-filled eyes, down his cheeks, into the shadow of the beard that once covered his jaw.
"Serena," he said, a rough hush of sound. An entreaty, for he held out his arm, still sitting, perhaps unable to do anything more in that moment, and welcomed her into his embrace.
Serena stepped into the circle of his arms. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders, holding him against her under the fall of her cloak. His cheek pressed into her belly, the glossy tousled darkness of his head nestled just below her heart. She stroked his hair, petting him, weathering the force of his pent-up feelings as they flooded into her, inky black, an ocean storm of fury, pain, and regret.
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