by Jayne Castel
Gavina tensed. She agreed with Cassian that an English attack was imminent, but the thought of it being somehow ‘preordained’ made a chill feather down her neck. “Could ye recite the riddle to me?” she asked.
“You don’t need to hear it, My Lady,” Draco said curtly. “Such things needn’t concern you.”
Gavina bristled. “Perhaps not, but they still do,” she replied, her own tone turning frosty. She recalled Draco’s anger back on that hilltop, at dawn after they’d slain the English patrol. He hadn’t wanted the women to learn their secret. But it was too late now. Gavina knew who these men were.
“What can it hurt, Draco?” Maximus’s brow was furrowed as he met his friend’s eye across the fire pit. “She knows the worst of it … Lady Gavina might as well hear the riddle too.”
A muscle bunched in Draco’s jaw. He respected Maximus, Gavina sensed it. In many ways, Maximus was the unspoken leader of the three men, despite that Cassian captained the Dunnottar Guard.
When Draco didn’t voice another protest, Maximus cleared his throat and began to speak. His voice, low yet powerful, drifted across the fire.
“When the Broom-star crosses the sky,
And the Hammer strikes the fort
Upon the Shelving Slope.
When the White Hawk and the Dragon wed,
Only then will the curse be broke.”
When Maximus finished, Gavina pondered his words. The riddle fascinated her—so much so that she forgot the humiliation and disappointment regarding her brother.
“And so, ye have managed to solve most of it?” she finally asked.
Maximus nodded. He glanced up then, his gaze shifting to the star-sprinkled night sky above them. “That fiery star comes every seventy-five years, My Lady … and the three of us wait impatiently for its arrival.”
Gavina raised her chin, focusing upon the bright silver comet that streaked across the heavens. “The Broom-star,” she murmured, before her mouth compressed. Her dead husband had been a suspicious man; ever since the star had appeared in the heavens, he’d muttered on about it being an ill-omen. Indeed, it might have signaled the end for him, yet to these three immortals, it remained a sign of hope.
“The Hammer refers to Edward,” Maximus continued, casting Draco a pointed look. “And the fort upon the Shelving Slope refers to Dunnottar’s old name.”
Gavina nodded. Dùn Fhoithear. She remembered Donnan De Keith telling her about it once.
“And now we finally have our ‘Dragon’.” Maximus’s mouth quirked as he gestured to Draco. “We have only to find a ‘White Hawk’ for him to wed, and, as the riddle says, ‘the curse will be broke’.”
Silence settled over the fire. Draco’s shuttered expression had turned brooding. He whittled the piece of wood in sharp movements, tension rippling off his lean frame.
“The White Hawk and the Dragon,” Gavina murmured, letting the words sink in. A chill slithered through her belly then, making the wine she’d been sipping churn. “And ye have no idea who the ‘White Hawk’ is?” Her voice sounded forced and a trifle shrill, as dread now wrapped icy fingers around her throat.
Both Maximus and Draco looked her way once more, their gazes narrowed.
“Not yet,” Maximus admitted, his frown deepening. “Is something amiss, My Lady? Your face has drained of color.”
Hysteria bubbled up inside Gavina, but she managed to swallow it down. “It’s a shock … that’s all,” she choked out.
“What is?” Draco demanded, his voice sharp.
Heart fluttering against her ribs, Gavina turned her attention to him. She held his gaze steadily as she replied, “It’s just that my name … Gavina … means ‘White Hawk’.”
VIII
GRASPING AT SHADOWS
SOME SILENCES WERE truly awkward—and this was one of them.
For a few moments, Draco and Maximus merely stared at Gavina. Both men wore poleaxed expressions, their lips parting as the weight of what she’d just revealed settled upon them.
Eventually, Maximus shattered the brittle hush. “Gavina means ‘White Hawk’?”
Gavina swallowed once more, in an effort to ease the choking tightness in her throat. “Aye … I remember my mother telling me once.”
Her words fell heavily, reverberating afterward like iron upon stone.
The crackling of the fire filled the void, and somewhere in the surrounding trees, a lonely owl hooted.
And then Draco muttered something in a tongue Gavina didn’t understand.
“It’s merely a coincidence,” she spoke up. The men’s reaction to her comment unnerved her.
Maximus’s dark eyes had gone wide, and they now gleamed with excitement, whereas Draco had stopped whittling his piece of wood and stared at her as if she’d just sprouted horns and a forked tail.
Gavina heartily regretted being so candid. Why did ye tell them what yer name means? she berated herself inwardly. Some comments were better left unvoiced.
“I don’t think it is,” Maximus replied. “Nothing that’s happened in the past few months has been.” His voice had tightened. “Everything is falling into place … as it is meant to.”
“You think this is fate deciding for us?” Draco asked, not bothering to hide his disbelief. Unlike his friend, he hadn’t welcomed this news. “After all these centuries of struggle, you believe the stars have aligned in our favor?”
Maximus’s mouth quirked. “They had to … eventually. You and Lady Gavina are destined to wed.”
Draco stared back at him, the expression upon his sharp-featured face a blend of disbelief and horror.
Another chill swept through Gavina. This time the sensation made her hands and feet prickle. Like his friends, Draco Vulcan wanted the curse broken—but the thought of being wed to her made him lose sight of that fact.
Wed to me?
Gavina’s breathing quickened, blood now roaring in her ears. “I think ye are mistaken, Maximus,” she heard herself say, although her voice sounded as if it were echoing down a long tunnel, almost as if it didn’t belong to her. “I’m a widow in mourning … and am expected to remain chaste for at least a year. I cannot wed anyone.”
She glanced down at the drab woolen kirtle she wore—dyed a dull-charcoal. It served as a reminder to them all. A widow didn’t remarry barely a month after her husband’s death.
Maximus stiffened, a shadow crossing his handsome face. “We don’t have a year, My Lady.” He gestured to the sky. “The Broom-star will fade from sight in less than a month. After that, the opportunity will be lost forever.”
Gavina’s fingers clasped around the cup. She could see the panic in the man’s eyes. He loved Heather and wanted to grow old with her. Although she sympathized with his predicament, anger spiked through Gavina’s belly.
He was desperate. But he’d lost sight of the fact that the decision also impacted her life. He was wedded to someone he loved, but he’d literally throw Gavina to the wolves in order to break the curse.
She shifted her attention to where Draco’s face suddenly looked hewn of granite.
Gavina’s belly twisted. He might have looked horrified at the thought of binding himself to her—but she felt the same way.
Draco Vulcan is the last man I’d choose as a husband.
Setting aside the cup, she rose to her feet. “I’m tired,” she announced. “I shall retire now.”
Maximus’s spine straightened. “Please, My Lady … don’t dismiss this.”
“I’m not.” A sharp note crept into her voice. “I just don’t want to talk about it any longer.”
“You have just given us all the answer we’ve been searching over a millennium for,” Maximus countered. His handsome face had gone taut, his eyes dark in the firelight. “There’s no good pretending you haven’t.”
“Aye, but maybe I shouldn’t have said anything. This is folly … all of it!”
His gaze narrowed. “Perhaps to you it is, My Lady.” His voice was sharp now. “But not to t
hose of us who’ve had to live with the curse.”
“I’m not marrying yer friend.” Her voice was hoarse with the effort it was taking not to shout. “I’m sorry for yer pain.” And she was, although it was difficult to feel anything but anger right now. “But I’ve just escaped one loveless marriage, and I don’t want another.”
A strained silence fell then. An infuriated expression settled over Maximus’s face, yet he said no more. Perhaps he realized he’d overstepped, and that to say anything more right now would just worsen the situation. Draco held his tongue as well, although he watched Gavina, firelight playing over the lean angles of his face.
Heart pounding, Gavina turned and walked stiffly across to the tent they’d erected for her earlier. Without looking back at her two protectors, she knelt down and crawled inside.
Draco returned to the piece of rose-wood he was whittling. He needed to distract himself, to think of other things besides the brief yet explosive conversation that had just transpired.
He studied the wood carefully, a crease forming between his eyebrows. He’d started carving it without knowing exactly what he was going to make. Often his carvings began this way. Usually, the piece of wood or stone whispered to him, told him what it wanted to be.
This one was starting to take the form of a woman—a siren maybe.
Draco’s mouth twisted. Ironic really. Sirens were famous for luring their victims onto the rocks, but Draco’s life was already foundering, he didn’t need a mermaid to lead him astray.
“I don’t know why you’re smirking,” Maximus muttered from the other side of the fire. “If Lady Gavina doesn’t agree to wed you, we’re all doomed to remain immortal.”
Draco’s chin jerked up, and he met Maximus’s angry gaze. “You sound so sure of yourself, Max,” he growled. “But you don’t know she’s the ‘White Hawk’ the riddle speaks of … any more than Cass knows I’m the ‘Dragon’. The pair of you have gotten so frantic of late you’re now grasping at shadows.”
A nerve flickered under Maximus’s eye—a sign that those words had hit him where it hurt.
Remorse flared within Draco, an ache rising just under his breastbone. He didn’t like to lash out at Maximus or Cassian. The pair of them were the only souls alive who understood him, who really cared about what happened to him. And yet, ever since his friends had found love and wed the women who’d brought them happiness, he’d felt oddly estranged from them.
Neither Maximus nor Cassian knew of those lost years he’d spent under Saint Margaret’s chapel in Edinburgh. He’d planned on telling them, yet when they’d finally met up again, he found himself making up some other story about why they hadn’t seen him in so long.
He’d felt lonely afterward. Lying to his two best friends had felt like a betrayal at the time. But oddly, now he felt as if he was the one betrayed.
Maximus and Cassian had found something to live for, and yet all he wanted was death. They wanted ‘normal’ lives—to be able to remain in one place without eventually becoming outcasts. They wanted to father children, and to age just like everyone else.
Draco just wanted an end to it all.
“This is it,” Maximus replied finally, a rasp to his voice. “I can feel it in my gut. You and Gavina must wed, or the curse won’t be broken.”
Draco’s fingers tightened around the bone hilt of his whittling knife. He’d spent the last millennium avoiding marriage. However, over the years there had been one or two women—one especially—who he’d cared for enough to consider it, if he’d been mortal. Magda had been dead nearly two centuries now, a spirited woman who’d died tragically young. He sometimes thought of her. But he’d never willingly choose a woman like Gavina De Keith.
As beautiful as a winter’s dawn, and just as cold.
He’d witnessed the horror that darkened her large blue eyes when she’d told them what her name meant. She’d regretted her admission the moment the words left her lips—especially when she’d realized what it meant.
“You can’t compel her to wed,” Draco reminded him, his own tone cooling now. Maximus’s urgency, his need to break the curse, burned so brightly, it risked consuming him. “Just as you can’t force me.”
Maximus stared back at him, his jaw tightening. “I know you’ve always been an arse, Draco … but I never remember you being this selfish.”
Draco shrugged, the insults washing off him.
“Don’t you want to break the curse?” Maximus pressed, leaning forward.
“Yes, as much as you do.”
“Really … well you’re not acting like it.”
Draco snorted, his own anger rising. “I knew this would happen. Once you and Cassian got yourselves entangled with women, you lost your perspective. We all know how dangerous it is to hope. How many times have we looked forward to the coming of the Broom-star, only to be disappointed? Again and again.”
“I didn’t lose my perspective … I gained it,” Maximus countered, a muscle flexing in his jaw. “And if it meant that I didn’t end up like you, I’m relieved I did.”
IX
CHASING ANSWERS
THE ENGLISH WERE leaving Stirling.
John Comyn, Baron of Badenoch, stood atop the castle walls and watched them go.
From this distance, Edward’s force looked a great, slithering beast, its chainmail skin glittering in the morning sun, its back bristling with pikes and standards. The clear call of silver trumpets echoed over the wide strath below the castle, drifting across the waters of the Firth and reverberating off the rocky crag and fortress perched high above.
Comyn ‘The Red’ observed the departing army with a cool gaze. Edward had reacted swiftly following his meeting with Galbraith. As reinforcements had arrived the previous day from Northumbria, he immediately set about preparing to march upon Dunnottar. The king had also sent word of his movements to his son in the south.
The baron stood upon the walls a long while, enjoying the warm sun on his face. Eventually, his attention shifted to the keep itself, his gaze swiveling to the guard of six English soldiers behind him. The guards stared back at him, their helmed faces impossible to read, and their hauberks glittering in the sun. They were his own personal escort that Edward had left behind to ‘watch over’ Stirling’s guardian while he was gone.
The English king had also left a sizeable garrison behind to keep the town and castle in English hands. Edward might have been focused on capturing William Wallace at present, but he was as sharp as ever. Despite that Comyn had minded his manners since the English had taken Stirling, Longshanks still didn’t trust him.
Clenching his bearded jaw, Comyn glanced back at the view as the last of the horns faded and the army’s rearguard stomped their way east.
He’s right not to.
Comyn had a job to do—but it wouldn’t be easy with this lot watching him.
Nonetheless, ‘The Red’ wouldn’t be thwarted.
The baron threw back the plum-colored cloak he wore about his shoulders and climbed down from the walls. Ignoring his escort, he then strode back across the inner-bailey courtyard toward the keep itself. Pebbles crunched underfoot, and his attention flicked across to the rose-entwined archway leading through into the gardens.
It was barely a moon ago that David De Keith had attempted to cut the English king’s throat in there.
If only the fool had managed.
Chaos would have ensued, but the Scots could have made good use of it. Scotland would have been liberated by now.
Comyn made his way up to the solar where he and Edward usually broke their fast together in the mornings—and where the pair of them often shared a cup or two of wine in the evenings.
Before Longshanks’s arrival, this had been John Comyn’s space, but now the Plantagenet banner—a field of golden lions on a crimson field—hung upon the pitted stone wall.
Comyn’s mouth thinned. How he’d enjoy ripping that banner down and burning it. Instead of golden lions, he longed to see a pennant ha
nging there with just one golden dragon, holding a dagger in its claw. Underneath it would be the Comyn motto: courage.
Courage indeed. He’d bided his time long enough. The English had made him their toady for too long. He could stomach it no longer. Now was the time to act.
A platter of food awaited him, as he’d expected. The noon meal was approaching, and as Edward wasn’t residing in the castle at present, the baron would take all his meals here rather than in the Great Hall.
Seating himself at the long, rectangular table, while three of the guards took up their places inside the solar and the remaining three in the hallway beyond, Comyn lifted the wicker cloche to discover a large bowl of still-steaming venison stew, accompanied by oaten bannocks and a large wedge of cheese.
Satisfied, Comyn began to eat in hearty mouthfuls. He was a big man who enjoyed his meals, and as such, the castle cooks did their best to oblige him.
He had just finished the last of the meal, and was sipping from a pewter goblet of bramble wine, when a comely form appeared in the doorway.
Comyn smiled at the sight of Fyfa Comyn. Wed to his cousin Hume—steward of this castle—Fyfa was a sight indeed. Sometimes the baron wondered how the staid Hume managed to handle his spirited, doe-eyed wife. Comyn thought then of his wife, waiting for him in Badenoch. Joan was horse-faced and blade-tongued. How had Hume—who was a dour individual—managed to capture Fyfa’s heart?
Tossing her wild dark-auburn hair over one shoulder, Fyfa shot the guard nearest a saucy look and flirtatious smile. “Bonjour!”
“Bonjour, Madame Comyn,” the guard replied, his gaze devouring her.
Fyfa—with her lovely pale Scottish skin, wild hair, and soft curves—was indeed an arresting sight today, especially in a low-cut lèine and kirtle. The latter was a deep blue that matched her eyes.
And as Comyn had hoped, the guards all gawked at her.
It was the moment he’d been waiting for.
