by Nicole Locke
Wounded, stitches in her back. Eldric saw the result of her failures, her ugliness. He’d never want her now. As if he ever would. Her father didn’t.
The message. Eldric had read the message as well. How much further could she be humiliated? How much more pain could she bear? She’d been trained to withstand anything, but she had always...always had someone who loved her no matter how bad her deeds. No longer did agony squeeze. The pain in her chest was like a thousand thin piercing daggers.
‘You need to talk,’ he said. ‘No more healer stories, no more lies. Who is the child that your father stole?’
She hurt so much. If she talked, she didn’t know if she’d stop. What did she know of the child stolen? Far too little. It was as if now that Eldric knew of the other daughter, she was more of a truth. That a mercenary confirmed it only made it all the more believable that the daughter existed.
Her father had kidnapped a child to replace her.
Only once did she betray him and even then was it truly a betrayal? They had positioned themselves in a tiny Scottish village, the intent to obtain a dagger and gem for the Warstone family.
She was kept hidden while he made plans with his men on how to best go about it when the very object, the very woman and man who carried the objects, stumbled into the village.
But then...but then it became clear that her father wouldn’t only wrest the object for his own, he also meant to harm the woman and her companion. He didn’t need to harm that woman. Didn’t need to cause her so much...pain. Her words, her grief over her brother, she was in so much pain, Cressida couldn’t stand it.
So she released an arrow and stopped her father. Her father was resourceful, cunning, there would be other opportunities to get objects for his benefactors.
She’d stopped him. Merely stopped him, that was all, and right there he raised his gaze to her. Gave her position away with a gaze so full of wrath, she was sure God spoke through him.
She’d stayed hidden, watching the events unfold, shaking the entire time. Waiting, knowing she would be punished—instead, she was banished. Sent away like a biblical character from the garden. Her entire life devoted to him, her entire soul and existence bent on returning to him.
And her father wanted her dead.
Too much pain! Too many vulnerabilities. It was better to fight than show any more to Eldric. He had seen her disfigured back. And what of her other disfigurements and failures displayed all over her body? No, she wouldn’t yield, wounded or not. She would see her duty to the end. Despite his strength, despite his whistling, whatever he wanted to achieve, it wouldn’t come easy for him. ‘So...’ she cleared her throat ‘... I’m to change, but you’re not?’
‘Change? I’m asking questions that you won’t answer and I have more. Why were you sent to kill me?’
‘I’m to confess to whatever it is you think you need to know, but you’ll still take me to the Tower? If I lie or don’t, the result is the same.’ She tilted her head to look at him. ‘But if you let me go, then your death won’t be at the end of it as well.’
He leaned forward, rested his elbows on his knees and clasped his hands before him. ‘I heard that mercenary. Why are you so certain of my death, but not yours? See? I have more questions and I’ll take an answer to any of them.’
That mercenary. The rumour of another daughter was true. Was she also to devote her life to the man she called father? A prick behind her eyes. Tears threatening. Tears! She would think about this in private. Not now, not while Eldric’s eyes were peering at her too closely. ‘I told you I expected them. It’s a game we play.’
‘You lie terribly, Archer. Why don’t we make this simple? You say I won’t change, but you do nothing to change my opinion.’
Why would he not leave her be! He needed to leave. ‘What would it matter?’
He tapped his fingertips. ‘Perhaps everything.’
Everything? Nothing! Nothing would change. She was nothing to her father. Nothing to Eldric. She’d killed his friend, Thomas. Didn’t prevent the other two from their deaths. He’d never forgive her. ‘So a mere scratch on my back overrides your hatred of me?’
‘Admittance now?’
She clenched her teeth, refusing to answer him. Something was overcoming inside her. Defeating her from within. It...it hurt.
Eyes narrowing, but keeping the same relaxed posture, he said, ‘I know you’re a woman; I know you’re the Archer who killed my friends and sliced my arms. I know you were truly waiting at the docks for family. I know you were whipped, almost ritualistically, as a child, perhaps by the father who created you. I know that there’s a kidnapped child out there, and you don’t want to talk of her. I know that that message was no game and they truly meant to harm you.’
He clasped his hands again. ‘Will you deny any of it?’
She was a weapon without an owner. A daughter without a father. A woman who longed for a man who would hate her for ever. She wanted to deny everything he said. Not to thwart him, but to deny her past ever happened. Deny the whipping, the training, the missives, the duties. The day she’d first heard Eldric whistle.
She wanted to deny everything. The pain in her chest! Because if she didn’t... She blinked back the overwhelming grief threatening. Threatening. Because—
She cried.
* * *
In all his days, the Archer’s response wasn’t anything Eldric could have prepared for. It was as though he had suddenly been stolen from the comforts of his home and hurled on to a battlefield surrounded by phantom adversaries.
Malicious foes who weren’t there to taunt and torture and slash at him, but a defenceless other—this woman—and everything in him welled up to fight against them. To his shock, the fierce protectiveness wasn’t because she was crying. The maddening possessiveness wasn’t because she’d been injured.
It was because the Archer broke. Utterly broke and, before he could truly understand what he was doing or why, he sat beside her on the bed, gathered her in his arms and held her.
When she stiffened, he pulled her on to his lap and folded over her. She never, not once, stopped her tears and he didn’t want her to. They streamed from her eyes like everything else she’d done since he’d known her: with fierceness and that elusive fragility that he couldn’t comprehend when he caught her and now all too terribly might have a glimpse into understanding.
A moment of breath, another, and her hands laid against his chest, her nose pressed firmly in between as if she thought to bury and hide her response from him. As if he couldn’t feel every jagged breath and hear each wrecked sound.
So aware of his size, he laid a hand on the back of her head, another on the small of her waist and gathered her against him. He could no longer see the tears, but he felt their scalding wetness soaking his tunic. Another sound, almost one of defeat on an inhale that shook her. Her capable hands now brushing the sides of her cheeks as the tears slowed.
What had she lost? He could guess. But all his guesses were unfathomable; he wanted to cease his thoughts, to gather her more tightly to him and rest his head upon her as she did him. Swollen cheeks, swollen eyes. Reddened, starkly contrasting with her eyes’ unusual colour. Making her otherworldly. She was otherworldly.
Despite what occurred, despite what he guessed, most of him should be raging against her. Not...holding her and refusing to let go.
Why was it this way with her? Was it because she’d saved his life? Or the fact that he’d read that message? Mere glimpses, but that was all it took for everything to change between them. Enough of a sliver underneath all his hatred and wrath. Buried somewhere between his questions and his wondering of why she killed his friends, why she marked him. Why?
They couldn’t continue to fight as they had. Those men came. That message was read. His friends were killed, his vows were taken. He had some answers now and even more questions. She’d f
ought him up to now, but now was different.
Holding her, he felt different. What was it between them and how to proceed? He wasn’t a spy here, or even a warrior. He suspected when it came to her, he was merely a man with his own vulnerabilities.
‘We’re not going back to how we were.’ He said his words as gently as he could, but in the silence that followed her weeping, there was still a harsh brutality about them. A reminder of what was between them.
Stiffening, she pushed against his chest to extract herself, but he didn’t let her. A few more pushes before she snatched her hands off his chest as though he was something that would harm her.
Brutal hands. Brutal body. He almost raised his hands from her, but her expression stopped him. She looked down as if she was embarrassed. No, it was...as if she was shamed.
He cupped her jaw. She allowed him to raise her gaze to his and he searched its depths. Underneath the little flutter of wary embarrassment in her eyes, just below the meaning of her tapping fingers against his chest, there was something...
She riveted him. Her white-gold hair tumbled like rolling waves of river over rock. The soft slant of her cheekbones, the coloured hue of her skin like sunlight at dawn. And then, the white-gold framing of lashes around eyes that shouldn’t be real. Like crystals held to a summer sky.
He couldn’t shake this feeling that he knew her. Something beyond his obsession of the Archer. Something else. Had he known she was there all this time? ‘How long did you watch me?’
Her lips parted and his focus went to them. A darker colour, almost like a sun setting. Had he ever held a woman thus? When the dart of her tongue went to the seam, he bent his head. A quick intake of breath that drew him in.
He pulled her closer. In his arms, she felt familiar, as though he had held her before. He remembered being reluctant to let her go—how? He looked up and fell into her gaze.
Her eyes wide. That fragility about her again, and he...wanted her with something that went beyond her beauty. Closer, until their lips were there. Sharing breaths. Until everything in him that was male demanded he close that distance.
So he did.
* * *
Giant fierce warrior. Holding her face with tender touches along her cheeks. His lips pressing against hers. Asking. It was too much. Her fear and pain from her father had built inside her until they burst out of her in torrents. Until she was empty and aware of being held for the first time. His warmth, strength. All-encompassing because of his size, his scent, because of who he was. Eldric.
Eldric, who canted his head, pressed more. She felt his fingers curve into her curls. Felt his tongue run along her lower lip.
Then...then she only felt. Her hands sweeping over broad shoulders, brushing across stubbled skin, to dig into the waves of his hair. To open her own lips, to answer whatever question this was. His tongue meeting hers.
She didn’t know this could exist. Not ever. Him pressing her closer, to mould her body to his. Closer yet. The heat of this kiss, of him. Like kindling scraping, scraping to create fire.
A sound made. Of want, need...yearning. So much want boiling to the surface, like her emotions for her father. She was unused to touches, to kisses. She couldn’t take it, couldn’t bear to be ripped apart again. Not this much.
She jerked her chin away from his hands and Eldric immediately broke the kiss. He sat frozen, his harsh exhale buffeting against her chin, which still felt the abrasion of his jaw.
He straightened, an unevenness to his movements, pulling himself from her at the same time as making his large frame smaller, rounding his shoulders, his great arms tucked back.
He jerked his gaze to the side. A flush to his cheeks showed an uneasiness she’d seen before, but couldn’t recall when or how. Not now when her body, her very soul, was attempting to understand what had happened.
‘I...apologise,’ he said. ‘You cried.’
Everything in her reared up in horrifying clarity. It had been her first time being held by someone. Even as a child she was never held, comforted. Cared for. Her first kiss.
That fact that both were with Eldric, the man she had longed for, for years, the man she had hunted, and she’d responded. Worse, she had made sounds, dug her fingers into his hair, pressed her body to his.
And he...he’d done it because she cried. He was providing comfort and because she wanted, wanted, wanted—she’d made a fool of herself.
Blushing, she pulled her eyes away from his, bit out words that hid her emotions, pleased when the anger at herself could be heard with each enunciation. ‘So I cried. You haven’t?’
Chapter Nine
He swung his gaze back to hers, the uneasiness gone. His blue eyes cold. ‘You know I have.’
Ah, this. Yes, she did know he had cried. When she killed Thomas, when her father killed the others. Slapping a fist against his chest, she said, ‘Let me free.’
He opened his palms and splayed his fingers, and she freed herself from him. Slowly, clumsily. His size, the fact she was plastered to him making it awkward. Her feet firmly back on the ground, she spun away.
‘Your name,’ he said.
Cressida didn’t face him. The room was too small to avoid him. Her back to him was the only way to escape the horror of what she had done. She welcomed the pinch of pain in her back to distract her. She’d heard Eldric shift to stand and come closer?
‘Cressida. My name is Cressida.’
The rustle of the mattress alerting her that he had eased back down again. ‘Is your family... Greek? Italian?’
‘I don’t...’ An unsettling thought occurred. ‘I don’t know why they named me that.’ And she wasn’t all that clear why she told him the truth. She felt...lightheaded. The crying, the message. Her limbs shook.
‘You need to rest.’
Vulnerabilities! She whirled around. ‘I’m not weak!’
He huffed. ‘I believe I, among all your acquaintances, understand that.’
His words hurt, yet how they were said...
‘Do you...jest?’
‘I do. Contradictory, I know, but then so are you. Maybe that is what we are to each other: contradictions.’
A quirk to his lips. Laughter, the strike of defiance in his blue eyes. His rich brown hair waved to his shoulder, the shadow of a beard accentuating the lips she had touched. A fierce beauty to him. A weapon he wielded with uncanny ability against her. She was weak when it came to him.
Ironic. She was trained to know her opponents’ weaknesses and strengths; with Eldric, she could guess, but never seem to grasp what it was in his eyes or manners that did this to her. And nothing in her past helped her understand. She’d never been this close for this length of time with anyone. Her father certainly never gazed at her so profoundly.
When Eldric held her, kissed her, it felt as though he wanted her, which must be a mistake. It was her own wanting that confused everything between them.
‘We’re not anything to each other,’ she said.
His brows drew in and he sighed. ‘We need to talk of the missive. This isn’t about me questioning you and you not answering. We need to discuss how to stay alive.’
The sting in her heart was worse than the pain in her back. ‘It doesn’t matter now.’
‘Those men were trying to kill you.’
She shivered. She shivered and, because Eldric was watching her so carefully, he saw it. ‘Why didn’t you let me go? I’m a woman, you see that now. I can’t be—’
‘You know why I can’t let you go!’
She did. He wouldn’t be Eldric if he released his enemy. Loyal, kind, he’d never simply forget his friends’ deaths. It didn’t matter if she was the one who had killed them or not. She often thought she could have stopped her father, yet...
‘The past cannot be changed even if you take me to the Tower.’
He rubbed h
is hand over his face. ‘But even so, even so... More is occurring than what happened on those battlefields. The fact you’re a woman, that missive, the stolen child. Wrongs must be set right and more wrongs need to be prevented.’
Everything was in disarray. She’d exposed too many emotions and he didn’t understand. Wouldn’t ever understand. ‘So sure what is right and what is wrong? You know nothing, nothing!’
‘You won’t tell me what’s transpiring presently. I know nothing about your past. I’ve seen your back, your scars. It was your father who did that to you, wasn’t it, Cressida?’
Eldric saying her name. How many times had she imagined how it would sound from his lips? Her father rarely said her name. Maybe once, twice in her entire life. She’d assumed he never risked it in case they were overheard. She had never begrudged it because she dreamed of Eldric saying it and now he had. Except a question taunted her.
‘Why did he name me that?’ she said.
He stopped, and she knew she’d surprised him.
‘I know the poem. We travelled. There were lessons and literature and... Cressida means someone who cheated. Why would my father name me that? All my life, I’ve never cheated, I’ve always followed the rules. Every time, except that once.’
‘Once,’ he said.
She shivered. ‘Only once. Was that all it took to lose him?’
‘How did you lose your father?’
Cressida acknowledged that Eldric stood mere feet in front of her, that he overheard her troubled thoughts. That he was inserting words into their conversation, but they weren’t having a conversation.
She didn’t want to talk with him. No, she wanted to rail and rage. She wanted her weaponry. To shoot her bow at a target until her fingers gave way and her arms trembled from exhaustion. Too many emotions, weaknesses, vulnerabilities when her father and his new daughter could be on another ship now. Could be in France and far away from her.
For the first time, she understood that though she’d been left alone most of her life, this time she was truly alone. Without a home or protection. Her father was always supposed to protect her. Wasn’t that why she bore the brunt of his training?
