SONS of DON

by Brenda L. Harper

  Tony sighed, a soft smile touching his lips. He loved to talk history.

  “After the Battle of the Trees, they mostly avoided one another. But then Bran was fatally wounded in the battle with Matholwych and sent to watch over Annwn. This restricted his movements for a time, and he grew incredibly bored. So he began to plot. He got it into his head that a match between a member of his family—preferably his son—and a member of Gwydion’s family would unite the two types of magic into something that he could control. He would be the most powerful god in the natural world.”

  “Why him? Why not his son?”

  Tony shrugged. “It’s the way this magic works. The one who invokes it—in this case, the one who came up with the idea—is the one who wields the power.”

  Gwen stuck her finger in the side of her boot to itch her ankle.

  Tony reached over and pulled her hand away. “You’re only to make your skin raw.” He smiled, as though he had saved her from a lifetime of pain.

  “So…”

  “So, Bran began sending his servants out, asking them to identify viable females in Gwydion’s family. When one of them came back to him with a description of Blodeuwedd, he decided he just had to meet her for himself. He disguised himself as a traveler seeking a room for the night and he stayed at Blodeuwedd’s home. He was so taken with her that he decided she was the one who should marry his son.”

  “But things went wrong. Blodeuwedd fell in love with someone else.”

  “Did she?” Tony raised his eyebrows. “Or did she do exactly as Bran expected her to do?”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Tony stood and searched for a book on one of the many bookshelves that took up the other three walls in the room. When he found what he was looking for, he came back to the loveseat and shoved the book into Gwen’s lap. It was open to a group of paintings of several different men.

  “I don’t understand.”

  Tony tapped his finger to the page. “They all look very different, don’t they?”

  “Yes.”

  “But each one is the same man.”

  Gwen tilted her head, as though a new angle would make what he’d said true. “But they all look different. This one even has a different color hair.”

  “Those are all images of Bran taken from witness accounts.”

  Gwen stared at them again. Maybe it was just the knowledge that they were Bran, but knowing that made them begin to take on characteristics of the man she’d met weeks ago on the campus of Texas Tech. In seconds, she could see the obvious connections…but still.

  “He can disguise himself?”

  “It’s a trait many of the practitioners of dark magic have. You’ve heard the stories of Satan, correct? How he was able to disguise himself as a serpent in the Garden of Eden?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s a gift similar to that.”

  As Tony’s point slowly began to sink in, Gwen sat back and stared at him. “Blodeuwedd never fell in love with Gronw. She fell in love with Bran pretending to be Gronw.”

  “She did. He knew her loneliness, and he played on it.”

  “That’s cold.”

  “It’s more than cold. It’s calculating.”

  “Why did he want her to help him kill Lleu?”

  “To get Lleu out of the way. And to place her in a position of vulnerability.”

  Gwen closed the book and leaned over to sit it on the edge of the desk. “But then he disappeared.”

  “Gronw disappeared. But Bran’s son, Caradog, begins spending time with Blodeuwedd. But neither knew that Lleu was still alive and that Gwydion would find him. When he did, and he went in search of Gronw, Bran knew that they needed to speed things up.”

  “What did he do?”

  “He told his son to propose to Blodeuwedd. But, before Caradog could act, Blodeuwedd vanished. She ran away, so depressed was she that Lleu was dead and Gronw had disappeared, that she decided to go in search of Gronw. She arrived in his lands just in time to learn of his death.”

  “Lleu and Gwydion killed an innocent man.”

  “They didn’t know it at the time.”

  “And then Gwydion caught up with Blodeuwedd.”

  “He did. When he cursed her, he ruined all of Bran’s plans. So Bran made new plans.”

  “To get rid of the sons of Don.”

  “And, in doing so, give himself the same power he believed he would achieve with a marriage between Blodeuwedd and Caradog.”

  “Insane.” Gwen stood and began to pace again, suddenly filled with a need to expend some energy.

  “What’s really insane is that all of Bran’s work was for nothing if Blodeuwedd didn’t love Caradog. The only way their connection would have worked is if she declared her love for him, a practitioner of dark magic. But everything we know about Blodeuwedd indicates she never would have made such a declaration, so Bran never would have had what he wanted through that marriage, anyway.”

  Gwen laughed a humorless laugh. “What’s really funny is that she did love Bran when she thought he was Gronw. If he had only asked her…”

  “But he never did.”

  Gwen laughed again. But the laughter died as another thought slipped through her mind.

  “How do we know we can trust Blodeuwedd? How do we know that she didn’t eventually figure everything out and agree to help Bran? How do we know that my father is really human and not a practitioner of dark magic?”

  “Because I’ve spoken with your father. He is not a practitioner of dark magic.”

  Gwen felt the blood drain from her face. She reached up and buried the fingers of both hands in her hair, but didn’t move, didn’t turn to look at Tony. She stood very still, trying to allow the shock to slip through her before she reacted.

  “You should—”

  She held up a hand to stop him. “I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

  “All right,” Tony said quietly. “I can respect that.”

  “What I want to know is who I can trust and who I shouldn’t.”

  Silence fell in the room for a long moment. Gwen stood still, her eyes falling on the maps and satellite pictures, but not really seeing them. Her mind was reeling. He’d spoken to her father. He knew who her father was.

  Why hadn’t he told her before this?

  “They say that one of the immortal servants who served the sons of Don led them to the mouth of the Annwn that day.”

  Gwen hadn’t thought anything could penetrate the shock that had settled over her. She was wrong.

  “One of the servants?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cei and Rhein—”

  “There were others. It could have been any one of them.”

  “But it could have been Cei or Rhein.”

  “It’s possible.”

  Gwen shook her head. “No, I don’t believe that.”

  “I don’t either,” Tony said, coming up behind her to lie his hands on her shoulders. “Like I said, there were at least three others who could have been the traitor. No one knows for sure. In fact, no one knows for sure that there was a traitor.”

  “Have you asked Cei?”

  “I’ve asked, but it’s not something he likes to talk about.” Tony squeezed her shoulders. “Besides, do you really think he would be so determined to protect you if he was the reason the curse happened in the first place?”

  “No,” she said. Images from her recurring dream floated through her head…as much as she wanted to ignore the implied message, she wasn’t sure she could.

  “What if it’s Rhein?”

  Another image ran through her mind: Rhein speaking to Branwen on the day Gwen went to him after her confrontation with Paul. She was there to attack Gwen, but she backed off when Rhein spoke to her. Why would she do that if Rhein hadn’t had…something, some sort of leverage, some sort of connection, that made her listen to him?

  “I don’t know much about Rhein,” Tony said. “I’ve only run into him a dozen t
imes or so over the past few hundred years. And each time, he was just a peripheral element. Not really important enough to what was happening to make a difference.”

  “Do you think it’s possible?”

  “Of the two? Rhein would be my bet. But again—”

  Gwen pulled away and headed for the door.

  “There are three other candidates, Gwen. Don’t you want to know who they are?”

  “Are they in my life right now?”

  “No, but they could be an issue sometime down the road.”

  Gwen shook her head. “Then it doesn’t seem to matter right now.”

  She pulled open the door and was about to slip through when Tony said: “Talk to Paul, Gwen. If you want answers, you need to talk to Paul.”

  She paused, one foot outside the door. She knew he expected her to ask. She should have asked. But she didn’t because she wasn’t ready to know.

  What could her social worker possibly know about the people in her life, the immortals she could trust or not trust? What could he possibly know about her birth mother, about the Welsh goddess who abandoned her at some point in her early life and left her to face the dangers of the foster care system alone? What could he know about the human father who had abandoned her at a restaurant and watched as strangers took her away?

  What could Paul possibly know?

  Everything.

  Chapter 16

  Gwen lay in the grass at the back of the house, only the light of the stars and the electric light of the houses around her to break up the darkness. She closed her eyes as she spread her limbs out wide and concentrated on the vague pull of gravity that seemed to tug at her body with tiny fingers filled with need.

  In a moment she was floating, moving through time and space as though it was nothing more than the wind that brushed the hair from her neck. She arrived in the garden faster than she had the last time, walking through the vibrant bushes with purpose. The woman was waiting, as she had been the last time, waiting and watching inside the small arbor that encircled the most beautiful of the plants in the garden.

  “You have come again.”

  “I need to ask questions.”

  “Yes,” the woman said, bowing her head slightly. “I can see you are full of uncertainty.”

  “I need to know who I can trust. I need to know who will help me on my quest and who will try to impede me.”

  “These are things you must learn on your own, child.”

  Gwen shook her head. “I need to know. I can’t spend the search for the correct ritual worrying about who might stab me in the back at the first opportunity. It takes up too much mental space.”

  “Then do not worry.”

  A wry chuckle slipped from Gwen’s lips. “Easier said than done.”

  “Things have been put into motion,” the woman said. “There is nothing you can do now but go for the ride.”

  “And where will this ride take me?”

  “To your destiny.” The woman touched Gwen’s arm. “You are destined to be the savior. Whether or not you are successful is up to you.”

  “That doesn’t make sense.” Gwen jerked away and moved deeper into the garden, her fingers automatically reaching out to the blooms on the bushes. They seemed to reach out to her, too, some of them brushing her fingers in such a way that she could feel their eagerness, their appreciation.

  Was it crazy to think flowers had human emotions?

  “The dream,” Gwen said. “Rhein says that these dreams and visions are your way of showing me something I need to know. But I don’t understand this one.”

  “What is to understand?”

  “What is your warning? Is it the woman? Or is it something about the murdered man? Is he someone significant to all of this?”

  “It is not about the murdered man.”

  “Then the woman? Or Cei?” Gwen turned to look at the woman. “Is it about Cei?”

  A sadness came into the woman’s eyes. She opened her mouth, but nothing came out. And then…Gwen was floating again, but she was floating the wrong way.

  “Wait!”

  “Gwen?” Cei was kneeling beside her, shaking her arm roughly. “Gwen, open your eyes. Are you okay?”

  Gwen sat up and reached for her ankle, a sudden pain exploding with just that little bit of movement. Cei immediately moved toward her feet, taking her ankle into his hands and releasing it from the boot. The swelling that he had remarked was beginning to lessen seemed to have decided to come back. Her ankle was twice its size again, and it was throbbing almost worse than it had on the night it happened.

  “We should get you inside so that you can ice this.”

  Gwen reluctantly agreed. It looked like she wouldn’t be getting any answers tonight, anyway.

  ***

  “How’s that?” Cei asked as he pressed the ice against her ankle.

  “Cold.”

  Cei smiled. “At least we know your sense of touch is intact.”

  “Ha, ha.” Gwen pushed herself up against her pillows to a more comfortable position. “I wish it would just heal. I’m getting tired of lying in bed all the time.”

  “It will. You just have to give it time.”

  Cei settled on the bed beside her and slipped his arms around her until they were almost spooning. It was funny how quickly they had gotten used to lying in a bed together.

  “So, I’m all yours for the next few hours. Are there any other questions you wanted to ask about my past?”

  Gwen groaned. “I’d rather forget about all of that stuff. I don’t want to talk about immortality or gods or rituals or any of that other stuff for at least the next dozen centuries or so.”

  “Only that long?”

  There was laughter in his tone. She liked that.

  “Tell me something else. Something I don’t already know about you.”

  “Well,” he said, acting like he had to really think about it, “I like mint chocolate chip ice cream and The Amazing Race.”

  “Oh, that’s not good.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t stand mint chocolate chip ice cream.”

  “Then I guess we’ll have to call the whole thing off.”

  “Yep. We will.”

  Neither of them moved. In fact, Cei’s hand slipped up her hip as he said those words, his fingers sneaking under the lower hem of her t-shirt. She reached down and touched his hand, not really intending to make the path easier for him, but her movement moved her shirt enough that it was cleared.

  “I thought you were leaving,” she said a little breathlessly as his fingers began to play over her ribs.

  “I am. Just…not right this second.”

  “Oh. Okay.”

  He kissed her shoulder lightly, his lips barely brushing the cotton of her tee enough for her to feel the heat of his breath against her skin. Then his lips found a patch of bare skin just above the collar, the moisture of his touch burning away the second it came in contact with her overheated skin.

  “You probably shouldn’t do that if we’re breaking up.”

  “Then I guess we shouldn’t break up.”

  He tugged at her, his hand flattened now on the soft roundness of her belly. She rolled toward him, and his lips immediately found hers. It wasn’t their first kiss—not even their first kiss in bed—but it felt like it. The way her heart skipped a beat and then began to pound, the way her nerves all seemed to spark and come to life all at once, it was like she had never been here, had never been touched this way. It was new each and every time.

  Gwen’s hand moved along the hills and valleys of Cei’s chest, her fingernail scraping against one erect nipple as she moved closer to him, as she responded to his kiss with more need than she had ever revealed to a boy. She was always conservative, always careful not to let a boy know how much she liked him before she was certain of who he was and what his intentions were. But it was hard to remember things like self-preservation when Cei was touching her. She wanted things she never thought she w
ould want when she lay with him this way.

  A home, a family, a future…

  She didn’t even know if those things were possible. Could an immortal man settle down with a demigod and find some sort of happiness? Could she still go to college, still become a doctor? Could he walk away from the role he’d been playing for thousands of years to make a life with her? Would he want to?

  Another set of questions she couldn’t answer.

  It was a good thing she didn’t really care at this particular moment.

  Chapter 17

  Gwen stared out the window of her English classroom, her thoughts on everything but Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men. Not that she had to pay attention to pass the current set of assignments. She’d studied this book in eighth grade.