by Lucy Monroe
“Lais is a healer?” Ciara’s voice had dropped low in wonder. “I thought only the sacred stones could be used to heal.”
Eirik grabbed her shoulders and spun her to face him squarely. “What do you know of the Clach Gealach Gra?”
She rolled her eyes, not in the least impressed by his angry demand. Which, considering the fear she had shown toward him thus far, was some kind of miracle. “Lais asked me the same thing.”
Eirik tossed a look of censure toward his people’s healer that went unnoticed. “Did he?”
Lais had paid Eirik no heed, but Ciara nodded. “You act like only the Éan have ever heard the stories of the ancient Chrechte and their ways.”
“The Faol tell stories of the Clach Gealach Gra?” None of the wolves the Éan had taken into their confidence had mentioned this.
Ciara looked at him as if wondering at his sanity. “The world does not begin and end with the Éan, Master Dragon. There are other Chrechte in the world and they have their own pasts, though there is no doubt that at one time they intertwined.”
“Do not say that aloud.”
“That the Chrechte share a common history so long ago none of us can be sure of the truth and the myth in our ancient stories?”
“Do not mention my other form,” he said through gritted teeth.
She rolled her eyes. Again. “You really think you are going to keep your secret from the clan with the way you go flying off in your dragon form when you get into a snit?”
“I do not have snits.” And he had never taken his dragon form when there was risk of being seen except around her.
She was bad for his secrets and too much a challenge to his self-control.
“Of course not, Your Royal Highness. A prince would never admit to something so mundane.” Ciara said the word prince like another might say dung.
But he refused to be drawn. “Do not attempt to change the subject. I asked what you knew of our sacred stone.”
“Very little.”
“Do not lie.”
“I am not.” Her eyes threw green daggers at him.
“She can mask her deceit,” Lais inserted and then went back to full concentration on his patient.
The daggered look turned onto the once-again-oblivious healer.
Eirik said, “That is not possible.”
“Just as it is impossible to turn into a dragon,” Ciara said with pure sarcasm. “I’ll make a note of that.”
“The Sinclair said you were quiet. Biddable.”
With an expression of affront, she demanded, “Are you saying I am not?”
“Aye.”
She crossed her arms, no doubt having no idea how it impacted the fit of his shirt on her. The action put her lovely breasts into relief, making her dusky nipples press against the thin linen. The hem had drawn up as well, exposing more of her enticing legs.
All of it topped by an expression that tempted him to tame her. “You? Are arrogant.”
“And you have yet to admit how you came to know about our sacred stone.”
“My brother.”
Just mention of the man filled Eirik with fury. “He told you of our stone? Had he plans to steal it?”
“Of course not. He told me the stories of the sacred stones, how they could bestow gifts during the coming-of-age ceremony and be used to heal those of Chrechte decent.”
“Like me.” The words were spoken in a weak feminine voice and had both Eirik and Ciara spinning to face Mairi and Lais.
“You are Chrechte?” Eirik asked with disbelief.
The woman had no scent of animal at all.
“My father is.”
“But you have no beast.”
“She can give me one.” Mairi pointed to Ciara. “She is keeper of the Faolchú Chridhe.”
“The wolves have a sacred stone?” He glared at Ciara.
He would not believe it. What stories had she told this broken human? If it were true, Talorc would have revealed such to Eirik. If not the Sinclair, then Barr. Eirik’s brother by marriage would not have kept something so important from him.
Ciara did not meet his eyes, something secretive in her demeanor. “It was lost before we joined the clans.”
“But she can find it,” Mairi claimed.
The slight wince was barely there on Ciara’s face, but he saw it. Had she made the claim to Mairi and not expected to be held accountable for it, or did Ciara not want the Éan to know of her hopes to find the Faolchú Chridhe? Did Ciara share her brother’s view of the Éan?
“Is this true?” Eirik demanded, wanting more answers than he would ask for. “Never mind. You can mask any lie you tell me. I will ask Talorc.”
He turned toward the keep, determined to do just that.
“Wait.” Ciara’s voice was too urgent to deny.
He stopped, not turning back toward her.
“I have not told him yet.” He could hear her moving toward him and then feel her hand on his arm. “Please, let me tell him.”
He spun to face the femwolf, knocking her hand away from him with his quick movement. “You have not bothered to tell your laird?”
She shook her head. “I haven’t told anyone since Galen. I was afraid to, afraid it would spark the same madness in them.”
“You blame your sacred stone for your brother’s idiocy?”
“No, I blame his desire to use its power, but I couldn’t be sure…”
Her lack of trust in Talorc staggered Eirik. “The man believes himself your father,” he bit out.
“He is, in all the ways that count, but Galen was my brother, my protector. And still, finding the Faolchú Chridhe was more important to him than anything else.” Her voice was husky with an old grief, but her eyes glittered with fresh fear.
“Talorc is nothing like your brother.”
“I know.”
“And still you have not told him of the wolves’ sacred stone?”
“I planned to.”
“When?”
“Soon.”
“Why wait?” He wanted her to admit it, her mistrust of her own father and laird.
“It has great power, temptation for even the most honorable Chrechte. It can call forth the conriocht, not just the wolf.”
A werewolf? They were myth.
Eirik almost laughed at his own arrogance. He shared nature with a dragon and he doubted the existence of the conriocht? A creature that was said to tower over other men and had the snout, fangs and claws of a wolf and the strength of ten men, the conriocht would be invincible to all but a dragon.
Though it could not fly.
“So, you would deny this power to your laird, to your fellow Faol.”
“Perhaps it was denied us for a reason. The Faolchú Chridhe disappeared and while my brother claimed it was stolen by the Éan, I am not so sure. Perhaps the leaders of our people saw the misuse of its power and hid it to stop such a thing from happening again.”
“’Tis all conjecture.”
She nodded. “It doesn’t matter. It wants to be found now and will give me no rest until it is.”
“Your dreams.”
“What do you know of my dreams?”
“Only that they keep you awake at night. You look as if you sleep less than a mother with twin babes and a new litter of pups to care for at once.”
Her shoulders drooped. “I am tired. So very tired.”
“Tonight you will sleep. Tomorrow, we speak to the Sinclair.”
Her mouth twisted as if she found something darkly funny, but she nodded. “Tomorrow.”
Eirik turned back to Lais and Mairi. “Is she well enough to be carried inside yet?”
“She is, though barely. She had many injuries…broken bones, bleeding inside, severe bruising in many places. I have healed what I could, but she needs more tending and sleep. I need rest before I can continue.” It was obvious Lais did not like admitting the last.
Eirik respected him all the more for doing so and nodded. “I will carry her into the keep.”
>
“No,” both his healer and that keeper of secrets, Ciara, said together.
He ignored Ciara to give Lais a questioning look.
“I have enough strength to carry her.”
Eirik took in the protective stance Lais had over the human, the way he held his body between her and the other two Chrechte. Even more telling was the fierce light in Lais’s brown gaze. The usually even-tempered man looked ready to throw down in battle over the right to transport the broken woman into the keep.
Eirik took a deliberate step backward. Think long and hard before you take a human woman as a mate, he said through their mental link. “Take her to Ciara’s room,” he said aloud.
Mairi would need watching and Ciara, for all her secrets, was the only logical choice. Talorc would not tolerate an unattached male sleeping in the same room as the female, human, or not. So, healer, or no—Lais was out.
That left Ciara.
Who, unsurprisingly, did not argue Eirik’s order to have Mairi carried to her room. For all her attempts to show herself otherwise, she had a caring nature she could not hide.
She followed them into the keep, the still quality of her silence bothering Eirik, though it should not.
She wanted none of him and he wanted nothing of such a deceitful Chrechte. Her reasons for not telling the Sinclair about the Faolchú Chridhe would imply Ciara did not share Galen’s view of the Éan, but that was only if Eirik accepted as truth those claims.
Her ability to mask her deceit and the secrets she kept meant that he could not accept anything she said so easily.
When they got to her bedchamber, Ciara quickly drew a traditional plaid in the Sinclair colors of blue and black around her. She made pleats with nimble fingers before wrapping the end over his shirt in a diagonal across her chest. She pulled a blanket of the same fabric back on the bed for Lais to lay Mairi down and then stepped back, allowing the healer room to care for his patient.
“I will awaken the laird and tell him of the night’s happenings,” she said in a subdued voice before quickly leaving the room.
Chapter 7
The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.
—BENJAMIN DISRAELI
Ciara retreated to a corner in her own room as it filled with people.
Laird Talorc and Abigail had both come to meet the woman Ciara had found in the woods—the laird to assess the worth of Mairi’s plea for sanctuary and Abigail to assess the condition of her health. Eirik was still there as well as Lais, who hovered protectively over Mairi.
Ciara could only be grateful that Niall as second-in-command and Guaire as seneschal had not been called in as well. Though she had no doubts as to their presence on the morrow when she revealed her long-held secrets to Laird Talorc.
“I do not think she would have survived the night if Ciara had not found her,” Lais was telling Abigail as the gentle woman, who could not hear but read lips, mixed some herbs in a cup before pouring hot water Ciara had brought up from the kitchens over them.
“We will have to give thanks for my daughter’s disobedience and reckless behavior then.” The look Abigail cast Ciara left no question the issue was far from settled, however.
Mairi, on the other hand, met Ciara’s eyes with an expression of such gratitude it hurt to see.
Ciara dropped her gaze, uncomfortable with the thanks in the other woman’s eyes and heartily wishing Abigail did not have to be disappointed in her again. Ciara had never been the daughter the older woman deserved and she only hoped the girl babe Abigail now carried would make up for Ciara’s deficit.
She had not meant to hurt her adopted parents, but the looks in their eyes when she told them how she’d come upon Mairi had reflected pained disappointment. How many times had she seen that look?
First from her father of birth when he spoke of a Chrechte’s need for sons, then in her mother’s eyes when it was Ciara who would come to comfort her rather than the husband she cried out for in the night. The look of disappointment in Galen’s face when they searched for, and did not find, the Faolchú Chridhe had grown with each failed attempt.
Then Ciara had come to live with Laird Talorc and Abigail and soon seen that her inability to love them as they deserved as parents caused them grief as well. At least her ability to help with the twins had made up somewhat for her other shortcomings. Until lately.
Once again, she was not what her family needed her to be and did not know how to change that fact without opening herself to far too much pain.
Once Mairi had drunk some of the tea Abigail had prepared, Laird Talorc approached the woman in the bed. “You wear the MacLeod colors.”
The words sounded like an accusation and Ciara was not surprised when Mairi flinched. “It is my father’s clan.”
Ciara felt she should have recognized the predominately yellow plaid. Only, being neither friend nor declared enemy, the MacLeod clan’s was not a tartan she had ever seen before.
“You deny your father’s family?” Laird Talorc asked, censure still heavy in his voice.
And Ciara did not understand it. Surely he did not blame the young woman from wanting to escape the abuse her body gave evidence to? He had said many times in her hearing that the ancient laws still had value and one of them stated that to prey on those weaker was not the Chrechte way.
“I meant he is laird,” Mairi clarified. “But as to him being my family, his clan being mine? I see no benefit to wearing colors that do not protect me.”
Ciara admired Mairi’s spirit after all she had been through and nodded her head to show her understanding, catching Mairi’s gaze as she did so.
Mairi sent her a weak smile of thanks and Talorc turned to glare at Ciara. “You have something to say, daughter?”
Ciara swallowed the lump trying to form in her throat and nodded.
She did not understand her laird’s attitude but feared his anger was not directed toward Mairi at all. He was furious with Ciara for being outside the fortress walls and allowing that resentment to spill forth in his dealings with the wounded woman.
Talorc crossed his arms, his stance combative. “Yes?”
“He beat her near to death.”
Laird Talorc’s expression shifted, twisting into a scowl, his fury rising at her words, rather than abating as she’d intended. But this time, Ciara was positive the object of her laird’s fury was not in the room at all.
’Twas the MacLeod he despised so fully.
Still, that did not mean he would give Mairi sanctuary. Though Ciara could not imagine Laird Talorc doing anything else. He would never send the defenseless woman back to the MacLeod to be beaten again.
“When I came here, I had little to offer the clan,” she reminded her laird.
He shrugged. “You were grieving.”
“I was unresponsive. Angry. Unwilling to be part of the family that had taken me in,” she admitted with shame, despairing of ever being able to make up for her lack. “Abigail cried more than once over me.”
“Oh, Ciara,” Abigail said, proving she had been following the conversation…one way or another.
“You never raised your hand to me, though you must have found me very frustrating…must still find me a great trial.” She whispered the last as she dropped her head, not wanting to see the truth of her words in her father’s eyes.
“I have never had the desire to hurt you,” Laird Talorc, the only father who had ever wanted her, said with quiet vehemence. “And an honorable man does not hurt a child.”
“Or someone too weak to protect herself,” Ciara said with a glance toward Mairi, who though no longer a child, was in no way strong enough to stand against a Chrechte male.
Talorc made a sound of disgust. “The MacLeod is no honorable Faol. He preys on the weak.”
“So, his daughter, who was beaten near to death, she has reason to seek sanctuary with another clan.” Ciara raised her head so she could once again meet his eyes.
He was looking at her with a hope she did not understand in this context. “Perhaps.”
The word shocked her as she fully expected him to offer Mairi the protection of the Sinclair. “Please.”
“Do you entreat me as your laird?” he asked with an expression she hoped she was finally reading aright.
“No, I entreat you as my father, a better father than the MacLeod could ever hope to be.” Talorc had earned the title and the praise.
And her love as a daughter, no matter how much it might terrify her to give it. It had always been there, she realized and pretending it wasn’t would not make it hurt any less if she lost her second family as she had her first.
Abigail made a sound that Ciara just knew meant she was crying. When Ciara looked at her, the older woman’s eyes were indeed spilling tears, but her smile was brighter than the full moon shining through the window.
Ciara felt unwelcome moisture in her own eyes and she turned her head to hide her weakness.
Her father reached out and gently turned it back with a hold on her chin. “It is all right.”
She blinked away the moisture. “Is it?”
She had finally admitted she had a family to lose again. It did not feel all right. It felt petrifying.
“Aye, daughter. It is.” He gave her a stern look. “Do not think this will get you out of a firm lecture from your mother for sneaking out to run alone at night.”
Ciara almost laughed, but the amusement bubbled up to end on an aborted hiccup of sound. “I will not.”
“I will give Mairi of the MacLeod sanctuary.”
“Wait,” the bruised woman said from the bed.
Talorc turned toward her. “You came onto my lands broken from another Chrechte’s fists. You sought sanctuary.”
“But I would not have you extend it without fully considering the consequences.”
“Your father will consider it an act of war.” Talorc’s tone said it did not matter.
“Yes.” Mairi looked away. “He does not value me, but he does value his pride. To have another clan take me in would prick it.”
“And for that, he would go to war,” Abigail said with clear disgust.
Talorc smiled indulgently at his wife. Eirik caught Ciara’s gaze and asked with his eyes if Abigail were truly that naïve. Ciara gave a slight nod of her head. She believed most people good and petty tyrants like the MacLeod the exception rather than the rule.
