Curse of the Celts

by Clara O'Connor

  Unable to help myself now, the sob broke through, followed by a devastating torrent of them. I couldn’t hold them inside any longer, and they consumed me. Devyn wrapped himself around me as they took me over. I cried all the tears that I had in me, for the storm of flame had burned down all my defences. I cried for the life I had left behind, the family and future that were no longer mine, for Marcus who had lost his father, for Devyn who had lost everything to find me. For the heartbreak I felt inside at this second devastating rejection.

  I had known that Devyn was pulling away. I had known I needed to go softly, to figure out why he was doing it, to fix it. The balance had still been in my favour. What had possessed me? Why had I pushed so hard? I needed to tread carefully, instead of which, out of nowhere, I had backed him into a corner. I thought back to my behaviour and my cheeks burned as I recollected my advances. I had jumped him in the middle of the night.

  “I don’t know what came over me,” I began to apologise.

  I tried to pull out of his arms, unable to think, unable to make any sense of his words as my skin crawled in self-disgust. In shame.

  He held on to me tighter.

  “I don’t think it was you,” he sighed in the darkness.

  I shook my head. I didn’t understand.

  “Whatever is going on in your crazy mind right now, stop it. What just happened, it wasn’t you.”

  Some part of me surfaced through the roiling shame and ashes, and I didn’t understand. What wasn’t me? What did he mean to imply, that I was not responsible for throwing myself at him? That made no sense; of course it was me. I was the one who got up in the middle of the night and practically forced myself on him, even though I knew that was the last thing he would welcome at the moment.

  “Marcus,” Devyn said, lifting my chin to look him in the eyes. I couldn’t hold his gaze. “This was Marcus. We know that the handfast band leaks desire. It wasn’t you. Marcus must be…”

  He didn’t need to finish. While Marcus was shielded by the charm he still wore, without my pendant, I was vulnerable to the effects of the handfast. Devyn’s presence allowed me to think clearly, but he couldn’t protect me from the leaked passion and the pain we felt on seperation. I understood. But I didn’t care. Why it had started was now less important than how it had finished. With the proverbial crash.

  “Leave me alone.”

  “But Cass, this wasn’t your fault. It was—”

  I couldn’t look at him. “Leave me alone.”

  I did not want to debate this, not now, I felt raw and empty. I closed my eyes to shut him out. He unwound his arms and went over to my blankets for I was now wrapped in his. I lay there dry-eyed, listening to the wind and rain hammer down until the first rays of dawn broke through.

  “Where have you been?” Devyn’s angry snarl alerted me to Marcus’s return as the grey dawn light entered through the open door with him.

  Marcus pulled his sopping wet hood down and unwrapped the scarf from the lower half of his face to reveal a taunting smirk. “What business is it of yours?”

  Devyn’s glance over at me was more revealing than it needed to be. Marcus followed his gaze and immediately realised something had happened. Whatever he read in my face was presumably the cause of the flash of guilt that crossed his before he squared his shoulders and stuck out his jaw.

  “No fun, is it?” he threw at me pugnaciously. He didn’t care that his actions of the previous night had made their presence felt here in the barn. Rage flooded through me. He knew what he had done to me and how bad things were between Devyn and me and he didn’t care. Two short steps had me face to face with him, and the next thing I knew he was looking back at me with a shocked expression and the palm of my hand stung from its contact with his smug, handsome face.

  “No fun,” I replied belatedly.

  The resounding silence was punctuated by the sound of the door crashing as Devyn exited the barn. There wasn’t room for three of us in here right now. I felt like the air had been punched out of my lungs as I watched my red handprint light up Marcus’s face.

  I winced as I met Marcus’s gaze, expecting to find anger there, but the look in his eyes was one of loneliness. The rage seeped out of me. What he had done was ugly, but he was in pain.

  “I’m…” Was I sorry? What he had done was unforgivable, no matter how understandable. “I shouldn’t have… It’s just all so messed up.”

  I felt dreadful. Marcus had needed to blow off some steam. Who was I to be so bloody self-righteous? He had been on the receiving end of me being with Devyn. Marcus had every right to be mad at me. He put his hand on mine in acknowledgement of my apology before pulling away to start putting his pack together.

  “Where did you go?” I asked softly. Whatever the answer, Devyn was unlikely to approve, so I kept my voice low.

  “There’s a village a mile or so back that we passed yesterday. I went to the inn there.”

  I nodded, absorbing the risk he had taken when he stormed out of here last night. Scratch Devyn being unlikely to approve; he would be livid if he knew what Marcus had done. There was a reason we weren’t sleeping in soft beds every night. I swallowed my annoyance at Marcus’s selfishness, reminding myself that I’d had months to get used to the idea of leaving the city for the wilderness. Marcus had only faced the inevitability of this new life a couple of weeks ago.

  “You can’t just go off on your own like that.” What had he been thinking? We were only a few days out of Oxford. Whoever was chasing us was unlikely to be on foot. “Anyone could have taken you, and we wouldn’t have known.”

  “You’d have figured it out sooner or later,” Marcus replied, indicating his arm. The distance we could get from one another had extended back to the levels we had been used to in Londinium but that was all. Who knew what would happen? If anyone had tried to take him, there was only so far that distance would stretch before I would start to suffer. The cursed handfast cuffs.

  “An inn?” I lowered my voice despite being reasonably certain Devyn wasn’t within earshot. It was one thing for Marcus to wander off in a huff; it was another for him to engage with the locals. Devyn did all our talking on the rare occasions when we had to interact with anyone so we wouldn’t give away how very strange to these lands we were. “What were you thinking?”

  Marcus raised an eyebrow at me. “It’s okay for you and him to get up to whatever you feel like. It’s the first time I’ve ever been with someone who wasn’t faking it. Unlike some, I never betrayed my match. I’ve never been with anyone but you. And you were only with me because of the handfast and because Devyn told you to.” I stilled in my packing but couldn’t raise my head and face him, even though I could feel him looking directly at me. Marcus had been on the receiving end of my emotions whenever I tangled with the Briton who drove me crazy, emotions that he had never inspired in me. What little chemistry had surfaced between us had been engineered by the handfast and was a pale imitation of what I had with Devyn.

  Something that Marcus must realise now. If he had found something of his own with some local girl, who was I to begrudge him? “Didn’t she notice that you aren’t a Briton?”

  “I told her I was from Kent, a Shadower looking to trade anything I could find. Besides, we didn’t do much talking.” He winked.

  “So I noticed,” I said sourly. He might think it was fun but I had never intentionally set out to hurt him with the effects of the handfast. Could he say the same?

  Marcus raised his eyebrows, probably wondering what exactly his actions had incited back at camp. My face burned. Let him wonder. Toad. All I needed to complete my humiliation was for Marcus to know what had happened last night.

  “Well, if you’re finished regaling Cass with tales of your tomcatting, we’ll get moving, shall we?” Devyn sneered, having caught the end of our conversation.

  Marcus’s head whipped up and he turned to face down the Celt standing in the doorway.

  “My what? How dare you! Like you can t
alk. I heard Callum: you shouldn’t be anywhere near her. There is no chance for you and her, yet you took her from me. When we were out in the borderlands, you said you wouldn’t touch her again. I don’t know why but I’m pretty sure you’ll never be allowed to be with her. So who and what I get up to isn’t something you get to have any say in.” By the time he had finished, there were mere inches between them, each daring the other to strike the first blow.

  “Is he right?” I asked into the charged room. I had hoped it was just a temporary thing while we were with Callum, but he had remained distant.

  I was so tired of being in the dark. I knew that Briton society was much more strictly hierarchical than the society I had grown up in. I didn’t know where I fitted into that society because Devyn still wouldn’t tell me, insisting it was safer for me not to know. From the glimpses I’d seen of this world, I thought Devyn was in the same class, a nobleman, so why would they not allow us to be together? Whatever the reason, Devyn clearly knew it. He had tried to stay away from me from the start and he continued to push me away.

  “Is that true?” I demanded again.

  Devyn tore his macho eyeballing away from Marcus to give me a tormented look. His walls were still up so I couldn’t sense his emotions, but they were writ loud on his face: pain, shame, truth. The same emotions that had run through him after we had been together that first – and until last night, only – time.

  “Right,” I said to no one in particular. I needed a minute to process this. Or rather, I needed more information to fight whatever it was that would keep Devyn and me apart.

  Marcus shoved against Devyn as he collected his pack and exited the barn into the morning light. Devyn stood unmoving, never taking his eyes off me as I processed this new information.

  “You’re not going to explain any of that, are you?” I asked. It was all I could do to keep my voice from breaking.

  He pushed his fingers through his dark curls. “Cass, I can’t. I—”

  He broke off, his attention caught by something outside. His voice rose to carry out to Marcus.

  “Where are you going?”

  I couldn’t hear Marcus’s reply, but it gave Devyn an excuse not to answer my question. “We need to go. Marcus is halfway down the road already.”

  “Of course he is,” I huffed in annoyance as I gathered my pack. How convenient.

  I drew the hood of my cloak over my head as I stepped out into the pouring rain, wrapping my scarf as high up on my face as I could. Devyn preferred us to travel like this. That way, if anyone asked, we were just three nondescript travellers on the road. Not a fair-haired woman with two darker-haired men. Even during what little interaction we had with people on the road, Devyn did all the talking, a scarf wrapped around his lower face, for while he spoke with a more pronounced Briton accent out here, he was also the one who was most likely to be recognised. Devyn was from here and those who chased us knew what he looked like, so he took extra precautions to remain concealed.

  I knew nothing about them, these shadowy figures who were pursuing us across the countryside. I sighed as I trailed after Devyn, who ensured he stayed a few steps in front so I couldn’t engage him in conversation. Marcus also kept quite a way ahead of us as the path wound through the woods, and I only occasionally caught glimpses of him before the trees obscured him once more.

  Chapter Ten

  We had lost sight of Marcus after he crested a hill ahead of us when suddenly we heard raised voices ahead. Devyn indicated that I should stay quiet and then we hurried up the hill. As ever, to my annoyance, my efforts to make as little noise as possible were substantially less successful than I wanted them to be. Arriving at the top of the hill, we could see Marcus in a clearing below surrounded by half a dozen men on horseback.

  The smaller man at the front dismounted and strode towards Marcus.

  “I told you, I’m a Shadower looking to trade.”

  We couldn’t hear what the man said as he was facing away from us but he was making a big show of looking around.

  “I don’t have anything with me. I’m scouting,” Marcus protested in response. “If your bed was cold this morning, I’ll be happy to warm it again when I come back this way.”

  Not a man. His lady friend from last night. Perfect.

  Devyn’s eyes narrowed as he learned more of Marcus’s escapades of the night before, and he muttered under his breath at Marcus’s arrogant ham-handed answers. He indicated that I should stay hidden while he dealt with the situation. I shook my head; I wanted to go with him. But he glared me down and I retreated behind a particularly wide tree trunk as he wound his scarf higher around his face.

  “Ho, friends,” Devyn hailed the group as he walked into the clearing.

  Spooked by his unexpected appearance, the riders drew their swords, their horses skittering at the charged atmosphere. The dismounted cloaked woman pointed hers directly at Marcus while the rider closest to Marcus nudged his horse forward, blocking Devyn’s route.

  “Good day, friend,” he responded sardonically. The warrior’s hood was down and his long hair tied back, revealing, even from this distance, that he was exceptionally handsome despite the scar that tracked down his right cheek. “Can we help you?”

  Devyn looked up at him and alarm pulsed through the connection. Whoever he was, Devyn recognised him, and he was most certainly not someone he considered a friend.

  “Just looking for my travelling companion,” Devyn replied, coolly edging his way around the horse in order to reach Marcus’s side. “‘All’s well?”

  Marcus tore his angry eyes from the armed rider in front of him.

  “Fine. I was just telling these folks that we are merely passing through, on the lookout for new trading opportunities.” Marcus repeated his story. I couldn’t see Devyn’s expression from here, but I’m sure he was less than pleased with Marcus right now for attracting the attention of these riders. Were they the ones that Callum had said were coming for us?

  “Long way from the shadow of the wall out here,” the scarred warrior on the horse nearest Devyn answered. “Don’t get too many traders this side of the borderlands. Spies, perhaps.”

  Devyn laughed, raising his hands in a placating gesture. “Spies? My friend here ain’t clever enough to be a spy, and I am from Powys; I’m a Celt through and through. I have no love for the Empire.”

  “That so? You folks been on the road long?”

  “Not too long. We were in Bath for Samhain. Been on the road since then,” Devyn continued to saunter across to Marcus, stopping when he reached his side. He stood ever so slightly between him and the dismounted warrior’s drawn sword.

  “Your friend said you were in Oxford,” the woman said, raising the sword so it lightly touched Marcus’s chest. She had a scarf wrapped around the lower half of her face against the driving rain, but you could hear the flash of false smile in her voice.

  “We stopped in at Oxford on our way,” Devyn explained, his voice betraying none of the irritation I sensed through the bond; he had let the barrier between us down a touch, no doubt to use it as a way to tell me to run if things went badly. Run. As if I would leave them. Where would I go without them? Marcus, I couldn’t leave. Devyn, I wouldn’t.

  “Quite the circuitous route.” The tall warrior nudged his horse menacingly forward, hedging them in. His skill was apparent as he manoeuvred his horse with a featherlight touch of his big tattooed hands.

  “No crime in that.” Devyn smiled back. “We got plenty of time, nowhere in particular to be.”

  “You meet many others on the road?” a third rider asked. Like the others, he wore a dark cloak with the hood up, but long red hair was visible from underneath.

  “Some, aye,” Devyn responded shortly.

  “We’re looking for two men and a girl,” the red-haired rider said. “Probably dressed as Shadowers. You seen anyone like that on your travels?”

  “Can’t say that I have,” Devyn replied calmly. “Now, if it’s all righ
t with you, friends, we’ll be on our way.”

  Devyn started forwards and Marcus moved to follow him. The sword against his chest held firm, and Marcus was forced to stay put.

  “But it’s not all right with us,” the woman at the other end of that sword said softly. “Your Shadower friend is going to come with us. I’d like to enjoy his company a little longer.”

  “Didn’t get enough last night, did you?” Marcus taunted the hooded figure. The rider was holding the pointy end of a reasonably substantial looking sword to his chest, and he thought the best way to defuse this situation was to offend her further?

  “That’s right, and I decide when a man leaves my bed. Can’t recall any man sneaking out before. That makes you… interesting. So, we’ll hang on to you for a little while. See if you don’t get a little chattier with some of my friends here.”

  “I do apologise for my friend’s poor manners but we have to be on our way.” Devyn drew the sword Callum had supplied from its scabbard and the dismounted rider somewhat reluctantly pulled her sword away from Marcus’s chest to defend against the new threat. What was Devyn thinking? It was six against one. If you didn’t include Marcus, which I didn’t. In fact, at this point, I’d happily beat the crap out of him myself.

  At a gesture from the woman on the ground, who seemed to be their leader, the riders pulled back, making space for the pair to fight. Rather than use their extra numbers, they seemed happy to let her have at it, confident that Devyn and Marcus, two humble travellers on the road, proved no real threat to any of their company one on one.

  She and Devyn circled one another, each taking in the other, the terrain, and the space available. The girl feinted first, Devyn easily deflecting her strike. Then they went at it, trading blow for blow. The girl was fast and, despite the size of the sword she wielded, never seemed to tire. Her footwork was better than Devyn’s. Devyn had spent the last decade in the city; when was the last time he had used a sword properly? The few days he spent showing Marcus the basics were not going to count against this warrior’s evident skill.