The only one who wasn’t afraid was a tiny wisp of a teen girl who sat in a wooden chair near the window, doing needlework. “Would you stop calling me that already? My name is Elyzabel.”
He’d snorted dismissively. “Why weren’t you in the list to train?”
“I told you why. I’ve no intention of learning swordplay. It’s what I have you for, Duey.”
The growl he let out succeeded in causing the watchmen to withdraw from the room. They scurried away like rats fleeing a fire.
She laughed. “You’re scaring the guards again, brother.”
“Too bad I can’t scare you.”
Sighing, she tied off her thread, then bit it in twain. “Well, you need the frustration of dealing with me. Everyone else gives you your way.”
With a grimace that would have caused a sane person to wet herself, he knelt by the girl’s chair and handed her the cup from the floor so that she could sip at it. “Why won’t you train?”
She reached to toy with the braid that fell down from his temple. “I’ve no wish to take a life.”
When he opened his mouth to speak, she placed her finger to his lips to stop his argument.
“That is no judgment against you, Duey. I love you more than anything in this life and I always will. But as you know no peace, I want to know no war. Ta gave you no choice in your life or your fate. He forced a sword into your hand as soon as you could walk, and saddled you with responsibility for me and Edyth and our people. Never once have you ever complained of it. I’ve watched you all these years as you’ve grown from a beautiful boy to a handsome man. I couldn’t be prouder of you. And I thank you for the fact that you’ve given me a choice as to my future here with you and with our people. Please don’t take it from me now.”
He lifted her hand into both of his and kissed it. “I want you safe, Elf. You’ve no idea what horrors I’ve seen. What happens to the women when their men fail to protect them. The Romans keep advancing on us. I’ve held them off thus far. As well as the Adoni, but should I fall—”
“You will not fall,” she said with a chiding smile. “No one can defeat my brother.”
He brushed his hand tenderly over her scarred knuckles. “What happened to my little Elf who used to climb trees and beat any boy who said she couldn’t run as fast or shoot as well?”
Sadness darkened her eyes before she blinked it away. “Childhood scuffles are vastly different from what you do.”
“You blame me for our parents.” He started to stand.
She held him fast by her side. “I never said that. ’Tis your guilt driving you, not me. I want to see you happy, Du. You never speak of family or peace. ’Tis as if you don’t think yourself worthy of either.”
He let out a bitter laugh. “How can I marry and have children when every woman, save you, cringes at my approach?”
“Not true. I’ve seen the ones what vie for a place in your bed.”
“And flee the moment we’re done as if terrified I’ll strangle them come morning.”
“Then let them see the side of you that you show to me.”
He glowered at her. “What side is this?”
“Well, not that expression. Dagda’s toes, Duey, you’d scare grown warriors to their graves.” She used both hands to smooth out the furrows on his brow until she had him smiling. Something that betrayed a set of deep dimples in his cheeks. “There now! That’s what would melt the coldest heart. No woman could ever resist a smile so sweet.”
“Sweet? You’ve gone completely daft.” Standing, he tugged playfully at her braids. It was an action so out of character for Du and yet so completely normal for an older brother that it warmed her heart.
“In spite of what you think, Duey, you are a kind man. A good man. And a fair one, to boot. Never let anyone tell you otherwise.”
He didn’t speak, but the expression on his face was unlike anything Mara had ever seen. It was one of pure affection. “So what do you want?” There was a teasing note beneath those gruff words.
“Pardon?”
“I know you, Elf. You never compliment me unless there’s something you’ve got your heart set upon.”
A blush stained her cheeks. “Who says I want anything?”
He gestured toward her face. “That does. So tell me already.”
Clearing her throat, she reached for more thread and refused to meet his gaze. “I want to marry.”
His eyes flared red.
As if sensing it, she glanced up and tsked at him. “Nay, you cannot disembowel him, brother. He has not laid a finger to me for fear of what you’ll do to him. He’s barely spoken to me.”
“Then how do you know he wishes to marry you?”
She arched a brow. “Am I that intolerable?”
“You know what I mean.”
Smiling, she wrinkled her nose at him. “I do, and we have spoken. He’s merely a quiet man. Like you. He wishes to ask you himself, but is terrified of how you’ll react. So I told him I’d approach you first to keep you from lashing out and gutting him before you’ve had a chance to acclimate to the idea of it.”
His nose twitched as if he were holding back a deluge of curses or an outburst. But after a few heartbeats, it settled down to a fierce tic in his jaw. “It’s what you want?”
“It is.”
“I suppose if you change your mind later, I can always kill him then.”
“Du!”
“What?” he asked innocently. “I’m king here. Can do as I please.”
Shaking her head, she laughed. “You’re incorrigible.” Then she sobered and met his gaze. “Have we your permission?”
“Only if he asks me himself. Then I shall give it.”
“Without a gutting?”
“Aye.”
She arched one brow.
Making a sound of supreme annoyance, he flung his hands out. “Fine! No denutting, either. Though that’s being unfairly cruel to me, just so you know.”
She laughed again. “You’ll survive.”
“And he’d best be good to you or else I’ll tear him to pieces.” Duel went over so that he could lean down and kiss the top of her head.
“Love you, Du.”
He growled in response, then stepped away. “Don’t you dare think for one minute that I’ll allow you to move away from here. He’s to move in with us. Final word on that.”
“Whatever you say, dearest.”
“Mean it, Elf. No planting of any rocks will be done. I won’t have it. You keep you-know-what caged and around your neck or else I will have his nuts planted at my feet.”
“Aye, brother.”
Mara blinked as the scene faded. She wasn’t sure why Elyzabel’s harthfret had taken her there.
Not until it flashed again and she saw the image that had driven Duel to madness.
Against Du’s words and threats, and at the insistence of her fiancé, his sister had planted her stone in the nemeton where Mara had been born.
“Why here, my love?”
Mercyn smiled at Elyzabel. “I was born in this forest. While my father’s hall may be gone now, he told me that this would always be my home. That the trees here would shelter me and mine. So I wanted a piece of you placed here so that they can watch over you, too.”
But it was a trick. He didn’t want Elyzabel as his wife. He wanted vengeance against Du for his own family, who’d been slaughtered during a raid that had been led by Du’s father. The same raid that had destroyed that hall.
A vengeance Mercyn had known he couldn’t take until Elyzabel was separated from her harthfret and brother.
That was how they’d managed to kill her—especially since she wasn’t fully Deruvian, but rather half. Separated from her stone, she’d been unable to regenerate. They’d raped and slain her as a human woman.
And left her floating in the lake where they knew Du went in the mornings to read. It was the cruelest thing they could have done.
Mara gasped out loud as she saw his sister’s brut
No wonder he’d gone insane. Through his sister’s harthfret, she could feel his anguished shouts as he sprang from his horse and called her name. Feel his heart shattering the moment he gathered her frail body into his arms and held her like a baby against his chest, willing her to open her eyes and live again.
But they’d seen to it that she couldn’t.
Never in her life had Mara seen anyone so heartbroken. Heard more sorrow as he shouted his misery to the heavens and demanded the gods spare his sister and take his life in her stead.
No one had answered him.
That was the Duel she’d met as he’d torn her nemeton apart in an effort to find the ones who’d taken from him the only person who had ever given him kindness without cruelty or condition. The sole heart he’d held sacred above all others.
The only person or family he’d had in the entire world.
“Oh, Du,” Mara breathed as she finally saw the truth of him. All he’d ever known was pain and loneliness. Heartbreak. Betrayal.
No one had held him when he’d ached. Or grieved. No one. He’d gone through it all alone. Without friend or family.
With her cursing and damning him every step of the way.
That was why he’d hesitated that day in the forest. Even after everything they’d done to his sister, he’d refused to harm her. Because deep down, in spite of Mara’s Deruvian magick and his desperate need for vengeance and blood to assuage his sister’s death and his own guilt for not protecting Elf, he’d known that Mara was weaker than him. That she couldn’t defend herself against him any more than his sister had been able to fight off her attackers.
And rather than see her harmed or lay another innocent in her grave, he would have walked away and left her alone. Because, in spite of his ferocity, it wasn’t in him to harm anyone who couldn’t fight back against him.
Du was not the savage beast she’d proclaim him.
It’s all my fault.
All these centuries, she’d blamed him for something she’d done to herself.
The truth slapped Mara hard and furiously. Duel wouldn’t have gone after her sisters. He hadn’t been burning the women. It’d been the men he’d attacked. They alone had been the ones he’d wanted to slaughter. Because they had been the ones who’d attacked his Elf.
He’d been in so much pain. And no one had reached out to help him through it. So he’d lashed out, needing relief, and had sought it through the only means he knew. Violence and vengeance.
Why didn’t I see that before? Why hadn’t she seen him before this?
Because she’d been angry and afraid.
Her heart pounding, she sat down on the bunk beside him and returned the ring to his finger. The last thing she’d ever do was separate him from this most precious piece of his sister. It was all he had left to treasure.
No sooner had she settled it back in place than he took a deep breath and groaned. When he started to thrash about, she placed her hands against his chest. “Easy, Duel. You’re injured. Do you remember what happened?”
With a fierce grimace, he glared at her. “You smacked me in the head with the mast and knocked me to the sprites.”
Leave it to him to remember that part.
“I also saved you from them.”
“You hit me first.” He rubbed his hand across his stomach and winced. “Are you here to finish me off?”
“Nay. I’ve been tending you.”
He scoffed rudely. “Really, why are you here?”
She’d be more offended and outraged by his doubt had she not earned his suspicion. “Answer me one thing first. Had I not bound our lives together, what would you have done with me that day we met in my nemeton?”
Devyl looked away, but she caught his cheek in a gentle grip that seared him all the way to his soul. How cruel it was that the only thing he’d ever craved was a tender touch from her.
And it was the last thing she’d ever give the likes of him.
Against his will, she turned his head until he was forced to meet her gaze. “I want the truth.”
“I wanted to kill you. Truth. When I first saw you, my only thought was that you’d be the perfect revenge for what they’d done. What they’d taken. To give back to them exactly what they’d done to my sister, in full brutal measure. But when I looked into your eyes and saw your fear, I knew I couldn’t do that to you. For I saw no enemy that day. Only a frightened girl who was brave enough to stand when she knew she had no way to defend herself. And it infuriated me that your own had left you there alone to face me while they ran to save their own arses, like the very cowardly dogs they all were. That was the renewed fury you saw inside me. First, they’d violated and desecrated my blood, then they’d cast you out for what they thought to be the same fate. I wanted them all for that. None of them deserved your loyalty. Or your noble sacrifice.”
Tears welled in her eyes. “And my sister? Why did you choose her for wife?”
Devyl ground his teeth at a question that burned even deeper. He didn’t want to open himself up for her rejection. She’d cut him enough and he was done with it. He was too old to play these games.
So he started to rise.
Mara held him fast. “Truth, Dón-Dueli … please? I want to know why you married Vine.”
That simple, innocuous question wrung the most excruciating wave of pain from deep inside his soul. He’d had mortal sword wounds to his gut that hurt less. He had no intention of ever speaking about such anguish. To anyone. Not for any reason whatsoever.
And yet the truth spilled out of his treacherous lips before he could stop it. “I wanted you and you wouldn’t have me. So I let her seduce me with words I knew were false. I felt her coldness every time she touched me.”
“Then why marry her?”
“She told me she was pregnant. I’ve never wanted anything more than the babe I thought she carried.”
Mara winced as she realized the lie. “She was never pregnant.”
“Something I suspected, but couldn’t prove. She played her hand well and then told me that she lost the child not long after we married. Then promised me that there would be others. A home filled with them. Even at the time, I doubted her words, but you loved her and so I let her stay.”
She laid her hand against his cheek as she stared into the torment that haunted those dark eyes. All he’d ever wanted was for someone to love him. To have the very thing that others took for granted. And her people and family had robbed him completely. “I’m so sorry, Du. Sorry for the lies my sister told. And sorry for what my people did to yours. For what they took from you, personally.”
“I don’t want your pity.”
“Good, because I don’t offer you any.” She toughened her voice with him, knowing he couldn’t abide insincerity or patronization. He was too strong for that. Physically, mentally, and emotionally.
“Then why this elaborate show?”
She snorted at him as she sank her hand in his tangled hair and balled her fist in the silken dark strands. “For such an incredibly smart man, you’re such an idiot.” And with those words, she pulled his lips to hers.
Devyl couldn’t breathe as he tasted the passion she offered. Tasted a desire that he’d never known before.
What fresh hell was this?
But he couldn’t think straight. Not while her tongue swept against his and she clutched at him with a hunger he’d never expected from her. Growling deep in his throat, he fisted his hand in her dress and pressed her body closer to his as he lost himself to a dream he didn’t want to end. How many times had he fantasized about holding her in his arms and having her in his bed? He’d tortured himself with this. Lain awake for hours on end, knowing he could force the issue, and yet refusing to ever hurt her because her heart meant so much more to him than his own base needs. Indeed, he would bleed just to see her smile.
A part of him hated that she had so much power over him. Hated that he couldn’t stop himself from caring. He’d tried so many times to purge her from his thoughts and heart. Nothing had ever worked. The more he attempted to carve her out, the deeper she seemed to sink into his soul. A never-ending madness.
Now this …
He was lost. And only she could anchor him.
Mara closed her eyes as she drank in the scent and taste of her irritating nemesis. And yet right now, she felt something so very different. Not an enemy, but rather a missing piece.
It made no sense. She should hate him. Despise every breath he drew.
And yet, for the first time ever, she didn’t hate him at all. Not even a little. This wasn’t a beast she held. He was a wounded man. One who’d been abandoned and betrayed by everyone he’d ever dared to let near him.
And when he pulled away, she saw vulnerability in his eyes. Never before had he shown that to anyone. He’d always been so steadfast and strong. Incredibly cocksure. No weakness of any kind.
He brushed his thumb against her lips. An action that sent chills down her spine. “What do you want from me, Mara?”
“I don’t know, Duel. Right now, I’m as confused as you are. I’ve spent so many centuries hating you that this concept of not … it leaves me at a loss. But I don’t want to hate you anymore. If you can find it inside yourself to forgive me, I should like to try for a new label.”
“And that is?”
She bit her lip as she considered it. If they weren’t enemies, then what were they? What was left?
“I’m not sure. Friends?”
He snorted. “I want more than that, Mara. Much more.”
In truth, so did she. “I know. But I’m not sure how to give you that.”
He scowled at her.
She smiled at his consternation. “I was scarce more than a girl when you plucked me from my nemeton. You’re the only man I’ve ever been around, Du. Think about it.”
And with that she faded from the room to return to her nestling.
Devyl felt his jaw go slack as he finally understood why her blood had always held so much power for his spells.
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