Curse of the Celts

by Clara O'Connor

  A moan escaped me. I looked at the men kneeling in the sand beside me. Their faces told me the news I would not, could not, hear. They didn’t believe he could be saved.

  I reached inside for something, any faint smudge of power to help him. Nothing, there was nothing. A hand took mine, gentling with its touch, calming me as only he could.

  “Cass,” he whispered.

  “Devyn.” I got out a broken, ruined approximation of his name.

  “Sorry.”

  “No, don’t you dare,” I warned him. He couldn’t leave me. He couldn’t…

  “Do something,” I screamed at the silent, unmoving figures keeping their useless vigil beside me. Gideon’s amber eyes met mine in anguish before he nodded and hurried away.

  “Shhh,” I hushed Devyn’s attempt to speak. “It’s going to be all right. Everything’s going to be fine.”

  Blood was welling out onto the white sand. We had to stop the blood. I held a hand over the wound and pressed down. “Help me,” I pleaded to someone, anyone.

  And then there was another older gentle set of hands there, pressing a cloth on the wound. It was small and there was so much blood. I looked up into the sorrowful eyes of a druid.

  “Please, fix him,” I begged.

  The druid placed a hand on Devyn’s forehead, pushing away his dark glistening curls. He started to speak, an incantation, but it was all wrong. No, no, this wasn’t right. He wasn’t healing, he was helping him pass. Helping him pass away from me, away from this world.

  I snarled, pushing at the druid. I put myself between them. I held the blood-soaked cloth to the wound, shaking my head. No. No. This wasn’t happening. Not now. Not here. We had come so far. He couldn’t die. He couldn’t leave me. Not yet. Not…

  “Protect.” The word was faint, pleading. Devyn’s dark eyes rolled from the men around him back to the druid. “Griffin.”

  The druid leaned in to catch the words that were more breath than speech.

  “Last.”

  The druid looked at me for an explanation but I couldn’t connect anything. I looked back at Devyn; he was fading. He was leaving me. I didn’t understand.

  “He’s the last Griffin,” Rion Deverell interpreted.

  Devyn’s gaze locked on Gideon who blanched, shaking his head.

  “Do it.” The King of Mercia’s tone was all command.

  Nobody reacted. Rion groaned above me.

  “It can’t be me. My house has a different destiny.” His voice broke. “Please, Gideon.”

  I didn’t understand. Gideon’s face was without expression as he looked at me, then back to my brother, before giving the druid a sign of assent.

  He dropped to his knees. The druid took a knife and pulled it across the inner side of Gideon’s wrist, then, taking Devyn’s hand, he did the same.

  No, he couldn’t lose more blood… What were they doing? The druid joined their wrists together and bound them with a cloth.

  “Stop.” I tried to grab their wrists and tear the cloth off, but again, strong arms held me.

  “Catriona,” came my brother’s voice, soothing and sorrowful in my ear. “Peace.”

  A pulse beat strongly through Devyn. Whatever they were doing, it was working. I smiled at Devyn and he smiled back at me, clear-eyed.

  I let out a huff of air. He was going to be all right. The druid’s incantation continued over the bound wrists as the steady pulse built and grew stronger.

  “Cass…” Devyn’s other hand tightened on mine. “I love you. It has been the greatest… You have been all in my life. To have found you, to have brought you home… that was all I ever wanted. And I got so much more.”

  What was he saying? We had plenty of time for this, but I was so grateful for the steadiness of his words that I smiled back.

  “I love you too.”

  “You are everything, you and our child.” He looked at Gideon, then at my brother, whose face showed no surprise at news of a child. “Protect them.”

  His gaze drifted slowly back to me as the druid’s incantation grew slower, the light fading in those dark eyes. The druid unwrapped the cloth and they all stepped away, leaving us alone. He had promised me the skies of Cymru. Here we were. We were here. Together.

  I gripped the hand in mine.

  Tightly. Not tightly enough.

  Love and warmth passed along our connection, but it was duller, fainter as the light dimmed in his eyes. Blood welled out of his mouth as one last burst of joy and strength and honour pulsed through the bond.

  And then was gone.

  His eyes were empty.

  He was gone.

  I threw my body on his as if I could stop his soul from escaping. From leaving me. My hands reached up to cradle that face, those cheekbones that had broken my heart, my fingers caught in his curls as I sobbed and rained kisses on his face.

  But he was gone. Where once had been life, the central sun of my universe was now only darkness. No, not darkness. Nothing.

  I lay across his unmoving body. But he was not here. I sat up – at least I think I did. I wasn’t across him anymore. I looked down at my blood-covered hands and at the dark, wet patches on the velvet of my gown. The dark stain of his blood sank into the sand.

  Through the dullness, a sharp pain hit my arm. I looked out across the water. The imperial ships were growing smaller on the horizon. Marcus was on those ships. Getting ever further away.

  Good. It would all be over soon.

  I held Devyn’s hand. It made no sense to me. We had been about to get married; this morning, we’d had a lifetime ahead of us. It was still morning, and only moments ago we had everything before us. We were going to be together. To stand together against whatever came at us. My brother. The Britons. We were going to fly in the face of the traditions and customs of this world, and even take on the Empire if they came for us again. Whatever happened, we would stand together.

  But now we would fall together. The pain in my arm was spreading. I closed my eyes against it, the physical pain spreading and merging with the tear inside me that promised to take me first. It was the wound that would never heal, the one that Matthias had put in Devyn’s chest. He had put a matching one in my soul. And now, one set of sensations engulfed and melded with the other; I couldn’t say which was worse, and it didn’t matter anyway.

  With a moan, I lay down beside Devyn. It would stop soon. I wasn’t wearing my pendant, so I was more vulnerable to the effects than Marcus was. Once Marcus was far enough away, it would overwhelm me, and I too would be gone. I didn’t have time to wait until they removed his cuff. Would the agony even stop then, if I still wore mine? The pain tore through me. And I didn’t even care.

  “Catriona.” My brother’s concerned voice came from above. If he hadn’t rejected Devyn, we wouldn’t have been here today. We wouldn’t have been anywhere near the sentinels who had devastated this town and captured Devyn.

  The pain from my arm was rippling through me now, and my body jerked against it. My eyes opened wide as it went up another notch.

  The sky was still blue above me and the figures standing around me were a blur I couldn’t focus on. My body went rigid as a new wave rippled through me.

  “What’s wrong with her?”

  “The cuff. She’s still wearing the cuff.” Gideon knew. He had been with us and he knew that Marcus and I couldn’t be separated. But it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered.

  “What?” My brother’s voice was sharp, staccato, afraid. Maybe he would be sorry to see me go. It would have been nice to have had a brother. There was a rumble of voices answering him, explaining.

  The pain receded and my body went limp. The brother I barely knew picked me up and cradled me in his arms. At least I wasn’t alone. At least I had family at the end.

  Another wave ripped through me, stronger this time, more intense than the last and I screamed, unable to keep the pain inside.

  “Help her,” Rion’s desperate plea came again. “Help her.”
r />   There was no way. However the Empire was removing Marcus’s cuff I didn’t know.

  “Take her hand,” Gideon said. There was the sound of a sword being drawn. Of course. Violence. The answer to all life’s problems in his mind.

  “No.” I tugged at the grip that caught my arm. Freed, I pulled my arm away, bringing the agony, the source of the pain, in closer to me. I didn’t want to be saved. Certainly not if it meant taking my arm.

  “Look at me.” Hands cradled my face. “Can you hear me?”

  Gideon. Was he looking for permission? He would not have it. I would not give it. I curled into a ball and shook my head, attempting to dislodge his calloused hands. Another wave tore through me and again I arched up in my brother’s arms, rigid against the pain. I couldn’t take much more of this. Not too long now.

  Devyn would be waiting. He wouldn’t be gone too far.

  Gideon’s hands took my face again.

  “Dammit, Cat, listen to me,” he commanded. “We have to try. I know you don’t want to be here, but what about your baby? We have to try for the baby.”

  The baby.

  I opened my eyes and met the blast of Gideon’s fierce golden ones. So alive, so full of vitality. Not like Devyn’s dark eyes that were now blank and emptied of his soul, fixed in a kind of faded brown; it had always fascinated me the way his eyes had seemed to change colour, from a rich coffee brown to a black so dark I could fall into them for ever. Endless depths. No more.

  Gideon took hold of my hand and began to extend it.

  Would I die from blood loss before the pain took me?

  One of the other soldiers took hold of my hand as Gideon raised his sword.

  “No, don’t want…” I mumbled, but Gideon didn’t so much as glance my way as his sword descended on my outstretched arm and bounced off. Putting the great lummox on his arse where he belonged.

  The pain blasted through me again. Was it hurting the baby? I pulled my hand free of the stunned warrior who was still holding it and wrapped it around my belly as I curled into a foetal shape around her. It wasn’t right; this wasn’t right. I needed to protect her. Devyn would have loved her. I could see her: dark curls like her father, but would her eyes be a rich brown like his and her skin bronze? The pain was receding again, and then it came back even harder. Could she feel it? Was it scaring her?

  I could feel fear and despair coming at me. Not my own. Was it hers? Our little girl’s.

  I could save her. I could still save her.

  “Married,” I mumbled. My lips felt so dry I was sure they must be cracked.

  Rion leaned over me. “Did you say something?”

  His face was streaked with tears. I wondered which were for me and which were for his childhood friend.

  “Married… falls off,” I pushed out, the words so faint I could barely hear them myself. It was so loud, the waves, the burning, the smell of smoke and the grit of the sand. How was the world still here when all I had loved was gone?

  “What is she saying?” Gideon asked, his tone so deep I felt it reverberate through the air as he dropped to his knees in front of me once more. Again he was manhandling me, lifting my face to his. I wished he would stop… The pain struck again and I barely had the strength to react to it now.

  No. I was strong; they just needed to act.

  “Marry. Me.” It was all I could do to grit out the words.

  “Marry you?” Gideon echoed.

  And finally the druid seemed to understand, his babbling words explaining to them what I already knew. A marriage vow would release me from the cuff. Any marriage vow, not just a marriage to my intended. It was a basic contract charm, and once the contract was completed by marriage or death, even for just one of the parties, it would be enough to satisfy the charm. It was a technicality, but certainly an important one when one of the parties was sailing off into the horizon.

  “But who…?” began my brother. What did it matter? Any of them would do.

  My hand was taken and gripped by another; the cloth that had so recently bound Devyn’s wrist to Gideon’s now bound mine. Blood stained the cloth; I couldn’t look away from it, the red on the white. I felt so distant, the pain now an almost constant thrum through my body.

  The druid started to intone what I presumed was some wedding rite. Then I heard Gideon’s deep rumble. Gideon. I couldn’t marry Gideon, no matter how short-lived it was.

  Before I could answer, another wave of pain ripped through me. I pulled in a breath. Gideon’s eyes were liquid amber. Amber, the strange substance that held moments forever frozen in time. Would this moment be frozen in time?

  I lay in my brother’s arms. The velvet of my long skirt reached out to touch where Devyn’s body stretched out, for ever immobile, on the sand. He would never rise, never breathe, again.

  Gideon knelt beside us, looming over me, his heavy cloak whipping in the cold wind. I heard the druid’s voice asking again for my consent to this union. I struggled to lever myself up, my brother helping me until I was sitting upright, supported against his broad chest. They too were still clothed in last night’s finery.

  Only hours earlier we had danced in these clothes. Music had flowed through the air.

  Last night.

  It seemed like another world.

  I reached a hand out and placed it over Gideon’s heart, where it had rested as I pleaded with him in the castle garden to release me. His hand slowly came up to mine and held it there.

  “Cat, please…” His heart beat steadily, I could feel it. My head fell forwards on my chest. I was so very tired. But the pulse of life in him was strong and sure. The new life in me fluttered. I could do this.

  “Yes. I do.”

  All went quiet. It was done.

  The bloody cloth was unwound and fluttered to the sands.

  There was stone-like stillness as everyone waited. Then I felt hands grabbing the silver cuff on my arm but the damned thing refused to budge.

  I moaned at the pulse of pain there. The vows had stopped it from being agony, but the band was still intact. I had done this for nothing. I had betrayed Devyn with these words. For nothing.

  Gideon looked from my arm to the druid.

  “It hasn’t worked.” His tone was flat. Final.

  The druid looked nervously at me then up at Gideon before clearing his throat.

  “The marriage is not… uh… not complete.”

  Gideon stared down at him, frowning. His incomprehension finally cleared as he met the unwavering gaze of my brother.

  My numb, overwhelmed brain stuttered at the suggestion. I shook my head. No. Not now. Not ever. I couldn’t. Whatever Gideon saw in my eyes as he watched me had him withdrawing, his entire body stiff as he turned his back on me.

  “My lady,” the druid began, “you understand? You and his lordship, you must consummate the marriage.”

  I shook my head again. “No. Seen it. At weddings. Falls off.”

  His words seemed to be coming from very far away. The druid looked worriedly between us. There was Gideon, the warrior, striding away along the shoreline as if to put as much physical distance between us as possible, his body stiff and unyielding. My brother going to him, angry, commanding. Insistent.

  Then he was in front of me, the golden lord who had been Devyn’s childhood friend – though I had seen little sign of that friendship in the way he had treated him. I reached out and held Devyn’s hand. So cold already. If I held it in mine could I delay it somehow?

  “Catriona. Catriona. ” Rion’s voice repeated the name he insisted on calling me over and over until I looked back up at him. “Does your arm still pain you?”

  I nodded. It had lessened to a dull throb, but it was still there. Perhaps if I answered, he would go away.

  “You and Gideon must consummate the marriage. Do you understand?”

  “I don’t care.” My gaze didn’t move from Devyn. I wanted to memorise every curve and hollow of him.

  “What?” He seemed confused
at my answer.

  “I don’t care,” I repeated. “I tried. He’ll know I tried. What happens now? I live. I die. What does any of it matter?”

  “It matters,” he started again. “Do you understand me? You have to live, for the baby. We think that because Gideon does not wear the corresponding cuff, you must be married fully. You must be joined. Physically. Do you understand?”

  I turned to him, focusing on his austere face.

  “You must do this. We don’t know how long you will have before the pain begins properly again. And then… it will be more difficult.”

  “More difficult?” my numb lips repeated. I looked at him wonderingly. Did he even know what that meant? Devyn was still here. I held his hand in mine but I had just married another man. A fresh wave of anguish tore through me. He was gone. “I can’t leave him.”

  Rion’s blue eyes pleaded his cause from his frozen face. “Catriona, you… I will see to Devyn. He won’t be alone. But you must live.”

  “Why? Why must I?” I asked softly again. That idea was taking hold again. I had tried. What if I just let go? What if I let the handfast band take me into nothingness. “It would all be over.”

  “It is not over,” a rough voice said behind me as a large hand encircled my upper arm. “Do you hear me?”

  I looked up at him angrily, pulling at my arm until he released me.

  “This is not how it ends.” Gideon’s face was set in grim determination.

  If his will alone could make it so, I would have believed him.

  “Do you want to live?”

  I did. For Devyn. For our baby.

  I placed Devyn’s icy hand back on his chest and got to my feet unaided. The pain had indeed receded, but I could feel it there waiting, waiting to return.

  Gideon held his hand out to me and I took it.

  I let Gideon lead me off the beach, through the glade, and up a path into the forest. I let my mind go numb again and simply allowed myself to be dragged behind him until we came to a small cabin.

  “I spent some time here as a boy. It’s a place for the novices to come to spend time in nature,” Gideon said as he pushed open the door. The inside was bare – just a small table with a couple of chairs and a pallet on the floor. My new husband had found a place for us to consummate our marriage.