By the Light of the Moon

by Blake, Laila

  “I know … ” Moira’s voice was quiet and just for one moment, she touched Bess’s hand before she quickly drew it away and pushed herself off the low chair by the mirror. “Thank you, Bess, that will be all,” she added. A shiver went through her body and her face twitched to the side just once as though trying to dislodge a spider from her hair.

  Sucking her bottom lip between her teeth again, she gathered the courage to step toward the door. She had never been comfortable with meeting strangers — and this one was not just a stranger. He was not even human. And from this day on, he would be around her as much as Bess; more than her mother and father, more than her tutor Brock or her governess or her other instructors. A shadow to watch her every step. Another shiver ran down her spine, making the little hairs on her arms stand to attention, tingling uncomfortably.

  When Bess left the room, she sat down again. She knew they were waiting for her, and she knew it wasn’t polite, but she needed a few moments to gather herself. Moira needed the quiet and the calm, the loneliness. She went to open a window and closed her eyes against the gentle breeze. It was always a little colder at her side of the castle, the one that faced the mountains. It had less sun and every so often, Moira was sure that the ice-capped peaks in the distance sent a little touch of winter through her window; the promise of snow.

  She inhaled deeply and slowly, it quieted her aching and clammy chest, slowly loosened the tight muscles in her neck and shoulders. Wind and snow, a kiss of the wild outside; she had to keep her eyes closed to picture it, to erase the warm glow of the busy autumn afternoon in the fields below.

  When she finally walked down the long corridor toward her father’s study, the breeze had already torn a few strands free from their tight and careful braid, wisping around her noble face as she walked. She couldn’t hear any voices as she stood in front of the oak door that led to the library. Breathing and gathering herself, she hesitated a moment before she pushed it open. Inside, her father stood by the window, several feet away from Sir Clifton and the stranger. All three men had their hands behind their backs and she thought she could taste the tension in the air; that note of crackling sulfur, like the wind before a thunderstorm.

  “Moira,” her father said immediately, walking a few steps to meet her and take her arm. She thought she’d detected a note of relief in his quick steps. His eyes lingered on her face for a long moment and Moira looked away uncomfortably. She didn’t like being looked at, particularly not with that worried expression her father always held in store for her.

  “This is Owain.”

  Now that it was proper, she permitted herself to look at the man who wasn’t really a man. His hands didn’t look any different than any other human’s though, nor did his eyes. He was tall, almost shockingly so, dwarfing her father as well as the captain in height and stature.

  “My lady,” he uttered and his voice, while low and a little raspy, was by no means a growl. Bowing low, he looked less intimidating but Moira still took a tiny step back before her father’s hand on her shoulder stopped her.

  “Owain has taken up residence in the chamber by the stairs,” Lord Rochmond continued into the silence left wide open by his daughter. She was still looking at the now-standing Blaidyn and he had the audacity to look back.

  “You should see little of him provided you stay where I know you are safe.”

  Turning to her father, she gifted him with a cold glare, the humiliation of the punishment biting deep in front of the other men.

  “Thank you, sir,” she uttered in a forced voice, an eerie little smile crept into her features but only made it as far as her full, colorless lips. “Then I shall go, and be where you know me safe.”

  Without deigning to bestow another look on the other men, she turned and exited the library. She was shaking by the time she was alone in the corridor and once back in her room, she tore all the windows open again, already seized with the powerful urge to run free outside. To breathe.

  Chapter Four

  Three days after his arrival at the Keep, Owain was standing in his chambers, his arms crossed in front of his broad chest and his eyes directed at the closed door. He was confronted with a relatively new state of mind. It had taken him a while to recognize it for what it was — the need to move but no real reason to do so or place to be. The tension, the occasional bout of exhaustion that had no physical cause at all; boredom.

  It was different from those endless days waiting for a battle to start, for a horn to blow or some general to give an order. There was no nervous anticipation, no calm before the storm, no quiet mental and physical preparation. He simply existed now; spent a lot of time alone waiting for an occurrence that would provide little excitement or danger, nor require preparation in the least. At some point in time, so he had been informed, the young Lady of the house would start to wander and he was to keep an eye on her — in a protected castle, at the far eastern edge of Lynne, far from any battle site. But for three nights and three days now, she had not done anything of the sort and it was only dawning on him now that while in a battle, three days delay always meant something important, here, it wasn’t even a long stretch of time. If anything, it was a herald of the way he would spend the next months, or possibly years.

  He saw her now and again, always from a distance. She was bustled around from tutor to governess and back to her chambers for a bath or to have her hair braided again. Then there would be dress-fittings, meals and long hours where she apparently just sat in her room. Sometimes he heard the squeaky little sounds of a lyre but more often than not, there was silence.

  Maybe it was the focused attention on a single person that did it, he thought. He was always aware of her; that was his job and he had the sense to do that easily without constantly standing in everybody’s way. He heard her — or rather he heard people talk to her and her growingly taciturn and weak replies. He heard her heavy sighs, and sometimes, at night, plaintive sounds as if she were crying but he hadn’t heard a woman’s repressed tears in so long, he wasn’t sure. He knew wailing over death, earth-shattering grief, pain — but this was different. He also picked up her scent all over the castle, that earthy note, weak and metallic sometimes. Not a bad smell altogether, but not a happy one.

  The entire set-up seemed rather odd to him now. In their correspondences, Owain had been led to believe that he would be protecting a girl, a child, from unspeakable dangers that awaited her every day and every night. Upon closer inspection, however, none of his assumptions had turned out to be true in any way. The Lady Moira was not a girl and definitely not a child. She was a young woman, old to be unwed, in fact. She was a woman at the cusp of her physical development — a time in which she should have been celebrated and welcomed into adulthood.

  Among his own kind, female pups were not treated very differently from male ones, they all played and trained and learned and when a woman blossomed into her body, she was admired and soon looked at differently. She inherited new responsibilities together with new ways to amuse herself.

  In this noble house, however, the young lady was not merely coddled but almost held in place in her development by hands stronger than her own. It felt unnatural and strange to Owain, how little control she seemed to have, how tutors and governesses talked to her like a child, fixed her hair, laid out her clothes, observed her comings and goings all day long.

  Humans. It reminded Owain of a small, child-sized box they were all trying to keep her in, pushing and sweet-talking while they tried to fit the lid close enough to nail it shut. Maybe this was what made him so uncomfortable around her; strange woman-child that she was, a freak of nature almost. Or maybe it was his own part in the unnatural treatment of her that kept his chest tight and on edge.

  The other assumption he was beginning to suspect was quite unfounded was the danger Lord Rochmond perceived in every dark corner. He knew that humans had their shortcomings i
n this regard — dark corners, nights, strangers really held the unsettling quality of the unknown in a way they never would to him or any other Blaidyn. To him, a dark corner was not only brighter than for humans, it also possessed sounds and smells or the lack thereof. So did nights. Owain could never get lost even in the darkest of hours, he could follow his nose, or even just his hearing. Quiet footfalls sounded different in an open area than in a confined space, and changed the closer he got to a wall or a person. Animals breathed, their little heartbeats fluttered and humans were the loudest of them all. Strangers, of course, smelled, too. Aggression, fear, tension — all of them had smells and telltale signs in body language and expressions, in the way their voice changed and their eyes wandered. The dark was not frightening to Blaidyn, not like it was to humans. But even all of that considered, he thought Lord Rochmond overly cautious. It was a safe castle in a backwater fief where everybody smelled like sun and farm-work, a fief that seemed hardly ever even mentioned in the capital anymore, save for history books, lullabies, stories told to children and treasury reports, listing expenses that flowed Rochmond’s way for their ample resource shipments.

  Finally, he sat down on the bed again and pulled out his sword. It was longer and heavier than most one-handed blades made for humans but lacked the unwieldy and crude power of a two-hander. Almost lovingly, he ran a wet stone over the shiny blade; the familiar sound was calming. It was an old sword, tried and tested in many battles, a sword that had seen more blood than his body could hold, but you wouldn’t be able to tell from looking at it. It still looked like a freshly forged blade from the sharp edge down to the simple yet perfectly balanced silver handle. Owain cared about his possessions, few as they were; he valued them and took pains to maintain them. In this case, however, his hand soon halted. The blade was as sharp as it would get. Not only had he whetted it only the day before in a similar bout of lethargy, but on this post, he never actually seemed to use his sword in any way that would dull its blade.

  Sir Clifton had offered to include him in some training sessions with the other members of the guard but Owain hadn’t taken him up on it. He had said it in that human way, where the words didn’t match with his smell or face or body. He had lived among humans for long enough to have developed strategies that would not offend but also wouldn’t force him to ignore what his senses were telling him, but it always served as a reminder that he was different, always a stranger. Not that he needed one in this place. He took his meals with the other members of the guard in their mess quarters off the main house and he was beginning to think that he was more out of place there than he had ever been in the castle itself. In a regular army, the other men became his brothers; not the closest kind, but close enough to know they fought at your side and that you would take injury to save them and they would do the same. Humans had kept him from serious harm before and he them. With a charging enemy army to face, rivalries lessened, shifted into the background and finally resolved completely. In an army, he was the extraordinarily strong and fast soldier anyone was lucky to fight alongside.

  Here, however, far away from any battlefield, he was an outsider, an interloper. He was as likely to be thought the danger, as he was the person who could keep danger away. They had no reason to trust him and there was no necessity to try, nor much opportunity for him to prove himself, except maybe the passing of time.

  He exhaled a deep breath and stood up again. His skin was prickling with the forced state of inactivity; his muscles felt tense and about to spring, an arrow drawn back against a bow-string. His wolf wanted out, wanted to run and he had the rare desire to give him free rein and let him take over. The very thought made his skin feel like the gray fur was right there pressing against his pores, ready to give at the smallest sound.

  He finally walked over to the window, overlooking the nightly landscape. The crescent moon gave enough light for him to make out details; hay bales in some fields, others cut completely empty. The harvest had been brought in over the last days and the farmers were getting ready for the late fall climate. In the distance, he could see the town of Rochmond, from up there an unimpressive array of low houses and a guard tower. Not for the first time, Owain wondered what in the world he was doing here, so far away from any possible excitement. He hadn’t expected it to be like this, his imagination fueled by the stories of his childhood. A century and a half ago, this fief had been a raging battle site; a place where heroes had been made whose names had outlasted the ages. Time, however, had a tendency to change many things in a way for which old songs hadn’t prepared him.

  In the end, he went back to his bed and sank onto the mattress. It was softer than he was used to and made it difficult to sleep. Carelessly, he folded his hands behind the back of his neck and leaned against the feather pillow. He could close his eyes, he thought, if just for a small nap. If nothing else, it would make the time pass faster.

  He had only just decided this, however, when he felt the familiar little prickle inside his right ear and he listened closer. It was a small sound, the tiny pit-pat of naked little feet slowly creeping on stone. A moment later, he could hear the breath that went along with the motion, too; small and forced into the softest, shallowest sound.

  He sat bolt upright immediately, wide-awake in an instant.

  • • •

  There were times when it was enough to pull the windows open wide and sit on the broad windowsill at night, watching the moon, feeling the cool breath of the mountains outside. At other times, it wasn’t.

  Moira had spent three days trying to be a model daughter. She had never kept her door locked from her tutors or maids, had never lost her temper, broken down and shouted at them all to leave, had never once left the confines of her chambers without an escort. She had tried, genuinely so. It just didn’t seem to help at all.

  She had heard of people who couldn’t stop drinking ales and wines, who had to drink all the time in order to feel normal, just to stop themselves from feeling the need to tear themselves limb from limb. She thought she understood it even though she didn’t much care for wine, not even the diluted and honeyed variety women at court tended to drink. But she thought she knew what they felt like sometimes, only she could make it better when she was alone and away from people. Away from their odors and their talk, the rattling of armor and the chatter of gossip; away from clinking cutlery and snoring sleepers, from watchful eyes and worried frowns.

  There were times when opening all the windows and sitting on the windowsill was enough. Too many nights had she held herself in check, letting it build up more and more, like water against a dam. But not this night. Too many people had touched her hair and her dress that day, too many people had looked at her appraisingly, and too many times had her governess adjusted her posture by prodding her side. And then at dinner, her father had announced that he’d received a letter from the capital and Sir Deagan Fairester was planning another visit to the Keep.

  It was a small piece of news, not pleasant but certainly not reason to break into a state of panic. But on top of a whole long day’s events that had frayed her overly sensitive nervous system, it was all she could do to not break into tears right then and there. She made it through half of her meal but then hastily excused herself. She hadn’t been able to breathe or swallow or move. And once outside, she’d bent over to cough and draw ragged lungfuls of stale castle air into her mouth. It wasn’t enough. It was never really enough.

  Somehow, she had found a way to wait until nightfall, body twitching and burning until she scratched at her arms and inner thighs, shaking her head over and over like a creature caged. She hadn’t allowed Bess to enter and help her get ready for bed, hadn’t called for a bath or another drink and had tried as hard as she could to block out the other presences, just outside her door, just at the other sides of her walls.

  Finally, one by one, they all fell asleep. Leaning far out of her window, she could see candles
being quenched behind stained glass windows first here, then there and finally her room was the only left that was still illuminated on this side of the Keep. She waited a little longer just to make sure but where at other times, she could muster the patience to wait until the safest hour in the middle of the night, she wasn’t quite capable of that on this particular evening.

  She didn’t bother with shoes; they would be too loud, and this time, she had to get past the wolf. She was too desperate to feel the night wind on her face and the cool earth under feet to truly worry about it. Squeezing herself through her door, she managed to close it with softest click and exhaled a sigh of relief before she crept along the hallways, barely allowing herself to breathe.

  The castle was dark but she knew every loose stone, every carpet and she carefully set one foot before the other, toes first and then she quietly let the rest of her foot follow. The castle was still absolutely silent; she checked every few steps, stopping and holding her breath. Still not a sound anywhere.

  The stairs were trickier, but she knew the ones that squeaked and how to squeeze herself against the wall and walk so close to where the boards where fixed in the stone that they had no place to bend and creak. Even Blaidyn had to sleep; they were alive, weren’t they? Every creature alive slept and all she had to do was creep quietly enough not to rouse him.

  She was clinging to the wall, fingertips hooked into the narrow gaps between the stones, carefully setting one foot onto the landing and keeping herself from exhaling a deep breath. She wouldn’t make it past the portcullis but there were other ways, smaller, secret ways in and out of the castle and the wolf wasn’t likely to know any of them. She just had to reach the closest one, down by the kitchens. It wasn’t that far, just a little further and she would finally be able to breathe deeply, to run, to scream if she felt like it.

  “My lady.” A voice suddenly came out of the darkness and Moira uttered an involuntary squeak before she could slap her hand over her mouth. She furtively looked into the direction she had perceived the voice to come from. For a moment, she was sure she saw two eyes glowing eerily in the dark; they made her step back, her heart hammering rapidly in her chest.