by Jocelyn Fox
I frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He gave an elegant little half-shrug with one shoulder, inspecting his dagger. “Exactly what I said.”
“I’m trying to be polite,” I said, an undertone of defensiveness entering my tone no matter how I tried to squash it.
Finnead half-turned, keeping his head lowered, his eyes in shadow. I resisted the urge to clench my fists, instead trying to unclench lower parts of me as my subconscious imagined, without my consent, where his gaze traveled. “That’s just it, Tess.” He turned to fully face me. “You’re trying to be polite.”
I was at a loss, genuinely confused now. “I don’t understand how that’s a bad thing. I was only trying to…” My words faded as he advanced on me, closing the distance in three long, lithe strides. He was suddenly only an arm’s length away, the space between us electrified with some strange combination of anger and desire. He gazed down at me through his coal-dark lashes with those soul-baring eyes.
“You are trying to keep up with the steps of a dance you do not understand,” he said in a quieter voice.
“Let’s dispense with pretty metaphors, shall we?” I looked up at him, proud of the steadiness of my voice and hoping he couldn’t see the trembling of my hands. “The thing that I don’t understand, Finnead, is you.”
A flicker of emotion crossed his face. I couldn’t tell whether it was uncertainty, or amusement, or irritation, and I pushed down my own annoyance. I’d gotten some sort of response from him.
I shook my head slightly. “It seems like no matter what I do, it’s wrong. You were angry at me for saving your life, and then again for saving Murtagh.” The words started to come in a rush, tumbling over one another in my mind. “One moment you’re holding me by the fire, tending my wounds and lulling me to sleep, and the next you won’t even look at me.” I felt my whole body vibrating. “Do you still want to play this game, Finnead? That you don’t feel for me what I feel for you? Are we doomed to repeat this over and over, because quite frankly I’m tired of it and I’d like a straight answer, if you’d be so kind.”
Finnead’s eyes widened slightly at that, and I realized in female satisfaction that he looked very much like a boy confronted with his first true taste of womanly fury.
Merrick cleared his throat. I started and looked at him in amazement. He stood by the roasted meat, as awkward as I’d ever seen any Sidhe look. “I’m…going to go…check on…” He stumbled over his words, cleared his throat again, and finished gamely with, “Enjoy the deer!” And with a somewhat awed glance at me and what I guessed was an encouraging nod to Finnead, he hastily abandoned his post.
“All the grace of the Sidhe, and you couldn’t have just made a silent exit!” I yelled after him in exasperation, cheeks burning. My leg twinged sharply and I grimaced, done with playing the part of emotionless, untouchable statue. I sighed in frustration and looked back up at Finnead. He stood motionless, his eyes following my every movement. “Say something?” It almost came out as a whisper, between the pain in my leg and the pain growing in my heart.
“What…what is it, exactly, that you feel for me?” His voice matched my own, and as he spoke I felt more than saw his graceful hands encircle my waist. I felt the sword-callouses on his palms through the thin cloth of my shirt. He leaned closer, and I dared to raise one hand, tracing the hard contour of his flat muscled stomach, brushing across the hard plane of his chest, resting my fingertips on the firm muscle of his shoulder. I touched the place on his white neck where I saw his heart jumping, feeling his blood beat against my skin.
“Tess,” he whispered.
I’d forgotten that he had asked me a question. And boldly, I traced the full curve of his lower lip with my thumb, as I’d wanted so badly to do since the first moment I’d seen him leaning insolently against the kitchen counter at the Jacksons’ cabin in Texas. I savored the shudder in his warm breath and the strange light in his eyes. The Sword thrummed softly—not distracting, just adding to the lovely warmth building inside me, an undertone of strength that gave me the courage to look up into Finnead’s eyes and say one word:
“Love.”
And even as a whirlwind of doubt and fear consumed me, it all fell away as he closed the distance between us. His lips meeting mine felt like the only right thing in the world—the only thing that mattered, the only thing truly real. The golden warmth within me swelled to a fire, and I twisted my fingers in the raven black of his hair, my mouth seeking his hungrily. In answer he pulled my hips toward him, one arm encircling my waist as the other wrapped around my shoulder so that he pressed my entire body against him. I felt every line of hard muscle through the two thin layers of cloth between us. His hand slid up to the back of my neck, and the feel of his bare skin on mine ignited a firestorm. I pressed closer to him, and he pulled me against him roughly. A sharp stab of pain from my leg cut through my fierce pleasure. In an instant my hands were no longer twined in his hair but gripping his shoulders for support as another flare of agony made me grit my teeth. The glow of the kiss still lingered on my lips but somehow I was seated on the ground against a tree, my leg stretched out before me, without remembering moving.
“Be back in a moment,” Finnead said. The sound of my own heartbeat roaring in my ears twisted his voice, making it sound as though he were underwater.
I leaned my head back against the tree and closed my eyes, trying to ride out another wave of pain. My lips stretched in a smile as I laughed silently at my terrible timing, brushing one finger against my lips. Apparently all the help that the Sword had given me climbing the cliff had worn off, and it felt as though the wound had just been inflicted, hot bars of pain radiating from my thigh. I gasped a little, half startled, when strong cool hands touched my leg without warning. Opening my eyes, I watched as Finnead unceremoniously ripped the fabric of my already-ruined trousers with no more effort than tearing a piece of paper in two. I tensed as he wiped away a trickle of blood.
“Easy,” he murmured, glancing at me with sea-deep eyes.
“Why…aren’t they more healed?” I paused to gulp in a breath between my words.
He raised one eyebrow. “Probably because you’ve been gallivanting through the ether, bringing people bodily back from leagues away.”
“That doesn’t seem like…quite the definition…of gallivanting,” I said breathily.
Finnead smiled a little at that. “Always a witty reply. Now hold still.” One of his hands suddenly held down my leg in an iron grip while he poured a faintly sweet-smelling bluish liquid into the wounds. Starbusts erupted in the blackness behind my eyes and I dug my fingers into the soft loam around the tree’s roots, clenching my jaw around the scream bubbling in my throat. A few strangled sounds of pain escaped, but I pressed my lips down hard until the light-show in my head subsided, leaving me drenched in cold sweat.
“That affected you more than I had thought it would,” Finnead said with a note of apology in his voice.
“Do what you have to do,” I said tightly, unclenching my fists and releasing my handfuls of dirt.
“Murtagh brought interesting tidings,” he said conversationally as he worked. I looked away when he threaded a needle.
“Do you have to put stitches in?” I asked almost plaintively.
“Yes,” he replied simply.
I sighed. “What did Murtagh say?”
“The Queen thinks I am dead.”
I couldn’t see the expression on his face as he bent intently over my leg. Not that it would have mattered, since apparently I wasn’t as good at reading Sidhe faces as I’d thought. “You were dead, for a few minutes,” I pointed out.
He nodded. I felt the cold prick and pull of the needle as he started stitching the first gash. It took all my self-control not to wriggle.
“She thinks I am dead,” he repeated, as if to make himself believe his own words. “And she cannot christen a new Vaelanbrigh without the Brighbranr.”
I frowned. “That’s rather inc
onvenient. Surely there’s been a Vaelanbrigh before who was killed away from Darkhill. Or in Doendhtalam, since the Knights are the Queen’s instruments in the mortal world.”
“Since the closing of the Great Gate, we have traveled more and more seldomly between the worlds,” Finnead replied. “There has not been a Sidhe killed in the mortal world in over three hundred years.”
“And where was the last one?” I wondered out loud, not really expecting an answer.
“A place named Salem,” Finnead replied.
I started. “Don’t tell me that one of….I mean….were there really witches?”
“It is not a story that is truly mine to tell, but suffice it to say that when our worlds were closer, when mortals respected and feared the Courts…we kept some of the darker powers in your world at bay. Salem was the dying knell of that time. The Queen could no longer stand to see her people die in a world whose people turned their back on the old ways.”
“The Sidhe wasn’t burned…burned at the stake? Because I thought you couldn’t die that way,” I said.
“It is a story for another time,” Finnead said firmly. “I will tell you of our missions in the mortal world when our own world is no longer in such grave danger. But in any case…the answer is that no, there has not been a Vaelanbrigh who has died so far out of the reach of the Queen’s power that she has not recovered the Brighbranr.”
“Like pulling it through the ether?”
“Something of the sort.” He shrugged again. “It was not for us to know the intricacies of her power.”
I frowned. Was what I had done with Murtagh a power that had before been only in the domain of the Winter Queen? The thought sent a shiver down to my bones.
Finnead said softly, “Your own powers frighten you sometimes.” His graceful long-fingered hands continued their work on my leg, the silver needle flashing in a bit of sun that found its way through the canopy of leaves overhead.
I swallowed and nodded, not trusting my voice.
“I doubt it will allay any of your fears, but even the Sidhe doubt themselves sometimes.”
I glanced at him in surprise. Was he admitting that he’d been afraid of his own power, when he was made Vaelanbrigh, or was he just trying to make me feel better by reassuring me with a generalized statement?
“You’re trying to decide whether I am talking about myself,” he continued in that same soft voice. I held absolutely still, willing him to keep talking. “Do you think I am?”
A little laugh escaped me at that. “I just told you that I don’t know how to read you. Hot and cold. Light and dark. Beauty and danger. It’s all wrapped up in you, and I can’t tease them apart.” I frowned a little. “Did you give me something to make me loopy? That was unusually poetic.”
“The disinfectant had some soothing properties. Perhaps in your blood they make you… poetic.”
I punched him lightly in the shoulder. “Don’t make fun of me.”
He smiled, kindling an answering smile on my lips.
“What were you saying about Murtagh’s news? Let’s get back to that.” I moved my good leg, trying to find a more comfortable position against the tree.
“Hold still,” Finnead admonished me.
“Mab thinks you’re dead, and she can’t have a new Vaelanbrigh without the Brighbranr…which you still have,” I said. Then I arched my eyebrows and waited.
“Her power is rapidly waning. She has the Vaelanseld, who is the oldest and strongest of the three of us, but Murtagh said that it was believed she was still drawing from the Vaelanmavar as well.”
“He’s imprisoned?” I asked quickly, my body going cold for an instant as I remembered the sickening feeling of his ravenous rough lips on mine, unbidden.
“Yes. But it takes power to baptize a new one of the Three, and with only two living, and one imprisoned…the Queen will be sorely tried to keep up Darkhill’s defenses, much less create a new Vaelanmavar.”
“What happens if she just kills him?”
“Without creating a new Vaelanmavar?” Finnead paused. “The power would be latent. Unused. Unaccessable to even the Queen, at least from what I know of it.”
“You’d know more than most, being the Vaelanbrigh.” I shifted slightly.
“I am still the Vaelanbrigh…just not her Vaelanbrigh.”
“Has that ever happened before?”
“What, one of the Three drawn back from beyond death?” His lips twisted. “No. Not even the Queen of Winter thinks she has domain over the Gray Cliffs.”
“If you’re suggesting that I think I have domain over the Gray Cliffs,” I said, “I don’t think that. I just…I can’t sit by and watch people I love die. Not anymore, not now that I have the power to change it.”
“But sometimes it shouldn’t be changed, Tess. Not even by the Bearer. The balance of it all…” He looked down at his suddenly still hands. “It’s so precarious. So difficult to comprehend. I felt it, a bit of it at least, when I was connected to Mab. That’s part of what gives her power, and why she’s losing ground so quickly now, I think.”
I shook my head. “I don’t believe that reviving you tipped the balance in Malravenar’s favor.”
“Not necessarily…reviving me, as you so euphemistically put it. Not that alone. But that among everything else, among all the deaths of those that should be living now, and those that are alive who should be dead.”
“Isn’t it fate?” I asked, pushing down the growing cold emptiness in my chest, the nameless fear of death that grew against my heart since I’d realized, one hand on my father’s casket, that I would follow in his footsteps one day. I would die and be buried in the ground, next to him or somewhere else, next to another box containing another set of bones. The Sword stirred at my morbid thoughts.
Finnead laughed humorlessly. “Are you asking whether it is fate, my Bearer, who lives and dies? Truly, are you asking me this question?”
“There’s no need to be cruel,” I said in small breathless voice. I gathered myself, calmed my trembling hands. “What other news did Murtagh bring?”
Finnead looked away into the shadows for a long moment. When he turned back to me, his handsome face was once again beautifully composed, blank as a sheet of marble. “You should ask him yourself. He will tell it better than I, and I have no desire to fight any more with you.” He stood and offered me his hand with a courtly bow. I wasn’t sure whether he was being cruel again but I took his hand, trying to ignore the electricity that shivered up my hand at the contact with his skin. He pulled me to my feet in one smooth motion, so fast that the blood rushed loud in my ears and he steadied me with a light hand at my waist. And before the spots cleared from my eyes he disappeared into the shadows, but not before his lips brushed feather-light against my cheek.
Chapter 24
I tucked an errant strand of hair behind my ear in irritation, testing my weight on my bad leg. It hurt, but not unbearably, so I hobbled gracelessly over to where Merrick had laid out the roasted deer and cut myself a portion with my knife, eating it with my fingers. Red juice slid down my palms before I licked it away. My stomach growled hungrily, and I cut another hunk of meat from the haunch, tearing at the roasted haunch savagely with my blade.
“I take it your talk with the Vaelanbrigh did not go as well as you desired?” Merrick approached me with something like caution in his step.
I settled down cross-legged with my second helping of meat. “Not necessarily,” I said, thinking of his kiss. “But I still don’t understand you Sidhe sometimes.”
“We Sidhe,” echoed Merrick with a small smile. He carved himself a portion of the deer, spearing it on a long dagger. “Why must you group us all together so?”
I shrugged. “It’s a lot like when a man says something about a woman, but applies it to all women. Like…all women are so weak, or emotional, or whatever.”
“I do not think women are weak. Or emotional. Some of the very best warriors I have known are women.”
&nbs
p; “I wasn’t looking for validation,” I snapped at him, taking a ferocious bite of deer.
He lifted one shoulder in the quintessential Sidhe shrug. “You do not need validation. You are the Bearer.”
The Caedbranr thrummed its agreement with him from across my back.
“That doesn’t seem to help at all when it comes to understanding what I’m supposed to do sometimes,” I muttered.
“If I may offer my advice, as limited as it may be?” Merrick regarded me with his luminous gray eyes, waiting for my answer.
I sighed. “You might as well contribute your two cents as well.”
“You are the Bearer of the Iron Sword,” Merrick said. “Perhaps trying to pursue matters of the heart in the midst of this war will only make you more troubled. If it is meant to be, it will be, and you should turn your attention to matters of survival.”
I chewed contemplatively and then squinted at Merrick. “How old did you say you were again?”
Merrick grinned at me. “I’m a good listener. I can’t take credit for the wisdom of others.”
“Then you must hang around with a pretty wise bunch. Thanks.”
“My pleasure, Lady Bearer.”
“So where’s Murtagh? I need to talk to him.” I finished my second portion of meat, told my stomach that it could wait for a bit before I went for another helping, and stood.
Merrick gestured with his dagger. “He’s back at the main camp. Twenty paces that way and you’ll see him. The Northerners have set up their side of camp as well in that direction.”
“Thanks.”
For some reason, as I hadn’t done for days, I reached behind my head with one hand and touched the hilt of the Sword, felt the well-worn leather grip and the smooth coolness of the emerald in the pommel. Maybe Merrick was right. Maybe it was time I stopped worrying about how I felt about Finnead…because if I didn’t win this war, if I didn’t face Malravenar and return alive…well, then romance was rather a moot point. And maybe Finnead had been right all along, I thought, smiling a little as I remembered his words to me in the barracks, after our first kiss. He was the Vaelanbrigh, after all, a seasoned Sidhe knight well versed in war. I took a deep breath, remembered the feel of his lips upon mine for one last moment, and then banished the thought to the deepest depths of my heart, alongside my other fears and desires that never saw the light of conscious thought.
