Chapter 17
Moira didn’t think, she didn’t wait. She didn’t take her place back in the royal box to speak to her people again. As she rushed away, she could hear Larkin’s voice lifted, strong and clear. He would stand in for her, and that would have to do.
She still carried her bloody sword as she sprinted after Cian.
“How dare you! How dare you interfere!”
He continued, reaching the courtyard now, moving across it. “I don’t take orders from you. I’m not one of your subjects, not one of your people.”
“You had no right.” She spun ahead of him to block him from entering the castle. And seeing his face, saw cold rage.
“I’m not concerned about rights.”
“Couldn’t you stand it? Watching me fight one of them, torment it, destroy it. You couldn’t stand by and see me beat down a second.”
“If you like.”
He didn’t push past her but changed direction to continue across the courtyard and through an archway.
“You will not turn from me.” This time when she rounded him, she laid the flat of her sword on his chest. Her rage wasn’t cold, but hot, bubbling through her like the wrath of gods. “You’re here because I wish it, because I permit it. You aren’t master here.”
“Didn’t take long, did it, for you to drape on the mantle. But understand this, princess, I’m here because I wish it, and your permission is less than nothing to the likes of me. Now either use that sword or lower it.”
She threw it aside so it clattered on the stones. “It was for me to do.”
“For you to die in front of a roaring crowd? You’re a bit small for the gladiator title.”
“I would—”
“Have given a hungry vampire his last meal,” Cian snapped. “You couldn’t have bested the second of them. Maybe, just maybe, you’d have stood a small chance against him if you were fresh and not wounded. But Blair chose the smaller of them to begin with because it was your best chance at proving your point. And so you did, be satisfied with that.”
“You think you know what I can do?”
He simply squeezed a hand to the cut on her side, releasing it when she went dead white and swayed back against the wall. “Yes. And so did he. He’d have known exactly where to come at you.” Cian lifted the bottom edge of her tunic, wiped the blood from his hand. “You wouldn’t have lasted above two minutes before you were as dead as the mother you’re so hell-bound to avenge.”
Her eyes went from fog to smoke. “Don’t speak of her.”
“Then stop using her.”
Her lips trembled once before she firmed them. “I would have beaten him because I had to.”
“Bollocks. You were done, and too proud, too stupid to admit it.”
“We can’t know, can we, because you ended it.”
“You think you could have stopped him from sinking his teeth into this?” Cian skimmed a finger down the side of her throat, barely lifting an eyebrow when she slapped his hand aside. “Stop me then. You’ll need more than a peevish slap to manage it.”
He stepped back, picked up the sword she’d tossed down. Smiled grimly when she winced at the pull in her side as he threw it to her. “There, you have a sword, I don’t. Stop me.”
“I’ve no intention of—”
“Stop me,” he repeated, and moved quickly to give her a light shove back against the wall.
“You won’t put your hands on me.”
“Stop me.” He shoved her again, then simply batted the sword aside.
She slapped him, hard across the face before he gripped her shoulders, pressed her back against the wall. She felt something that might have been fear, that might have been, as his eyes held hers transfixed.
“For God’s sake, stop me.”
When his mouth crushed down on hers, she felt everything. Too much. It was dark and it was bright, it was hard, and unbearably soft. All that was inside her rushed toward it, reckless and crazed.
Then he was standing aside, a foot away from her, and it seemed all the breath had left her body.
“That’s not the way he’d have tasted you.”
Cian left her trembling against the wall before he compounded an already enormous mistake.
He scented rather than saw Glenna. “She needs to be seen to,” he said and continued away.
I nside, Blair sat in front of the fire in the family parlor, trying to get her bearings. “Just don’t start on me,” she warned Larkin. “She wheedled my word out of me, and the fact is, I understood why she needed to do it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you weren’t there. Because she left it for the last minute. Ambushed me. Which was damn good strategy, if you want my opinion. I argued with her, and maybe I could have argued harder, but she was right. Mostly right. And, Jesus, she made her point, didn’t she? In spades.”
He handed her a cup of wine, crouched in front of her. “You think I’m angry with you. I’m not. With her, a bit. With her because she didn’t trust me with this. Because it wasn’t just her mother those things killed, but my aunt. And I loved her. It wasn’t just her people she sought to rally with this business tonight, but mine. And I can promise you, Moira and I will speak of it.”
“Okay. Okay.” She drank, looked at Hoyt. “Have you got two cents to put into this?”
“If you’re meaning do I have an opinion on it, I do. She shouldn’t have taken this on herself. She’s too valuable to risk, and we’re meant to be a circle. No one of us should make such important decisions without the others.”
“Well, if you’re going to be logical.” Blair sighed. “You’re not wrong, and if there’d been time, I’d have insisted she bring everyone in on it. We wouldn’t have stopped her, but we’d have all been prepared. She went all queen on me.” Sighing again, Blair rubbed at the tension at the base of her neck. “Man, she took some hits.”
“And Glenna will tend to her,” Hoyt answered. “She would have taken more if Cian hadn’t acted.”
“I wouldn’t have let it happen. I’m not going to kick at him for jumping in, grabbing the crossbow out of my hands, but I wouldn’t have let her take on number two. She was finished.” She drank again. “But I’m not sorry she’s tearing the skin off his hide instead of mine.”
“His is thick enough.” Idly Hoyt poked at the fire. “We’ll have our army now.”
“We will,” Larkin agreed. “None can doubt what we’ll come to face. We’re not a people of war, but we’re not cowards. We’ll have an army come Samhain.”
“Lilith will be here any day,” Blair pointed out. “We’ve got a lot of work ahead of us. We’d better get some sleep, get an early start on it tomorrow.”
But as she started to get up, Dervil came to the doorway. “I beg your pardon, but I’m sent for the lady Blair. My mistress wishes to speak with her.”
“Another command performance,” Blair muttered.
“I’ll wait in your chambers.” Larkin laid a hand on her arm. “You’ll come, tell me how she is.”
“I’ll let you know.” Blair started out, glanced at Dervil. “I know the way now.”
“I’m asked to bring you.”
At the door of Moira’s chambers, Dervil knocked. It was Glenna who answered, let out a breath of relief when she saw Blair. “Good, thanks for coming.”
“My lady.” When Glenna lifted a brow, Dervil cleared her throat. “I would apologize for my poor behavior today, and ask at what time you wish to have the women gathered for instruction.”
“An hour past dawn.”
“Can you teach me to fight?”
“I will teach you,” Glenna corrected.
Dervil’s smile was hard and tight. “We’ll be ready.”
“Something I missed?” Blair asked Glenna when Dervil left them.
“Just part of a very long day. Something else you missed.” She kept her voice low. “I found Moira arguing with Cian at the edge of the courtyard.”
“Not a big surprise.”
“It was when he finished the argument with his lips.”
“Come again?”
“He kissed her. Hard, steamy, passionate.”
“Ho boy.”
“She was pretty shaken.” Glenna glanced over her shoulder. “And not, in my opinion, due to insult and outrage.”
“I repeat: Ho boy.”
“I’m telling you because I don’t want to be worried about this all by myself.”
“Thanks for sharing.”
“What are friends for?” Glenna stepped back. “Finish that potion, Moira,” she said, lifting her voice now to conversational level. “I mean it.”
“I am. I will. You’ve fussed enough.”
Moira sat near the fire. She wore robes now, with her hair loose down her back. The bruising on her face stood out against her pallor. “Blair, thank you for coming. I know you must be tired, but I didn’t want you to go to bed before I thanked you.”
“How are you holding up?”
“Glenna’s fussed and tended and dosed me.” She held up the cup, drank the contents down. “I feel well enough.”
“It was a good fight. You had some nice moves out there.”
“I toyed with him too long.” Moira lifted her shoulders, then winced as the wound in her side objected to the movement. “That was foolish and prideful. More foolish, more prideful to tell you to release the second. You were right not to.”
“Yeah, I was.” Blair came over to sit on the hassock at Moira’s feet. “I’m not going to tell you I know anything about being a queen. But I do know that being a leader doesn’t mean doing it all yourself. Being a warrior doesn’t mean fighting when the fight isn’t necessary.”
“I let my needs cloud my judgment. I know that. I won’t do so again.”
“Well, all’s well that ends.” She patted Moira’s knee.
“You’re the best friends I’ve known, save Larkin. And the closest women to me but my mother. I saw by your faces when you stood in the door that Glenna told you what she saw between me and Cian.”
Unsure how to answer, Blair rubbed her hands on her thighs. “Okay.”
“I think we might have some wine.” When Moira started to rise, Glenna laid a hand on her shoulder to stop her.
“I’ll get it. I didn’t tell Blair to talk behind your back, or gossip.”
“I know that as well. It was concern, as a friend, as another woman. There’s no need for concern. I was angry. No, enraged,” Moira corrected as Glenna came back with the wine. “That he would take it upon himself to end what I wanted to do.”
“He only beat me to it by a couple seconds,” Blair told her.
“Well. Well. I went after him when it was my duty to stay, to speak to my people. But I went after him, and I deviled him. He’d done what he did to stop me from making a foolish and perhaps fatal mistake. And he told me as much, but I wasn’t ready to listen, to accept. He showed me as much, and it’s all of a piece, what happened at the end of it. He only showed me that I wasn’t strong enough to stop any sort of attack. It meant nothing more than that.”
“Okay…” Blair searched for words. “If you’re satisfied with that.”
“It’s difficult for a woman to be satisfied when she’s kissed in such a way, then coldly rejected.” Still Moira lifted a shoulder. “But it was done in anger on both sides. I won’t apologize to him, nor do I expect he will to me. We’ll simply go on, remembering there are more important things than pride and temper.”
“Moira.” Glenna stroked a hand over Moira’s hair. “Do you have feelings for him?”
As if to search inside herself, Moira closed her eyes. “There are times it seems I’m nothing but feelings. But I know where my duty lies. I’ve agreed to go to the stone, take hold of the sword. Not tomorrow. There’s much to do tomorrow. But by week’s end. I’ve shown my people they have a warrior in me. Soon, if the gods’ will it, I’ll show them a queen.”
When they stepped out, Moira remained in the chair, watching the fire.
“What I gave her will help her sleep, and soon, I hope.” Blowing out a breath, Glenna dug her hands into her pockets.
“This could get complicated.”
“What isn’t? I should have seen something like this coming.”
“Time to turn in your crystal ball on a newer model?”
“Oh well.” They walked together toward their own rooms. “Should we talk to Cian about this?”
“Sure. You go first.”
With a half laugh, Glenna shook her head. “Okay, we leave it alone. Stay out of it—at least for now. You know, I’m a firm believer in full disclosure in relationships. But I’m not going to say anything to Hoyt about this.”
“If you think I’m going to blab to Larkin, think again. We’ve all got enough on our minds.”
T he morning was soggy and cold, but there were a flock of women on the gaming field. Most of them wore pants—what the locals called braes—and tunics.
“More than twice the turnout I had yesterday,” Glenna told Blair. “That’s Moira’s doing.”
“She sure as hell drove the point home last night. Look, I’ll give you an hour, get them started. Then I’m going to want to get my pet dragon up in the air.”
Whether it was the gloom of the morning or the dregs of the tension from the night before, Blair was antsy. “I want to check out the battlefield firsthand, make sure those settlements near it are cleared out. And I want to swing by, make sure the traps are up and running.”
“Just another day in paradise. Well, I guess we ought to move this indoors.” Hands on hips, Glenna turned a circle. “See if there’s a space we can work with.”
“Why?”
“In case you haven’t noticed, it’s raining.”
“Yeah, I got that with all the water dripping off my hair. Point is, we don’t know what conditions will be like on Samhain. For that matter, we don’t know what they’ll be like if any of these women have to tangle with a vamp before that. Might as well get used to fighting dirty, so to speak.”
“Crap.”
“Buck up, soldier.” Blair gave her a friendly punch in the arm.
At the end of an hour, Blair was filthy, mildly bruised and in the best of moods. A little down-and-dirty training had gone a long way toward smoothing down the restlessness.
She started across the courtyard with the goal of finding Larkin, then stopped short when she recognized his mother and sister coming her way.
Perfect, she thought. Aces. She was covered with mud and sweat, and about to cross paths with the mom of the guy she was sleeping with. Just her lucky day.
Since there was nowhere to duck out of sight, she toughed it out. “Good morning.”
“And to you. I am Deirdre, and this is my daughter, Sinann.”
Blair nearly extended a hand before she remembered herself. Since she didn’t think she could pull off a curtsey under current conditions, she simply nodded. “It’s nice to meet you. I’ve, ah, been training some of the women.”
“We watched.” In the way of pregnant women, Sinann folded her hands over the mound of her belly. “You have skill—and energy.”
She smiled when she said it, so Blair ordered herself to relax. “They’re coming along.”
“My son speaks well of you.”
“Oh.” Blair looked back at Deirdre, cleared her throat. Relax, hell. “That’s good to know. Thank you. I was just looking for him. We need to do a little scouting.”
“He’s in the stables.” Deirdre gave Blair a long, quiet look. “Do you think I don’t know he shares your bed?” Before Blair could speak, could think to speak, Sinann made a sound that might have been muffled laughter.
“I’m his mother, after all,” Deirdre continued in that same mild tone. “I’m aware he’s shared beds of other women before you. But he’s never spoken to me of them, as he speaks of you. So that changes the matter. I’ll beg your pardon. From what he’s said, I believed you’d prefer plain speaking.”
“I do. I would. Oh boy, I’m sorry. I’ve just never had a conversation like this, and not with someone like you.”
“A mother?”
“For starts. I don’t want you to think I just share my bed with anyone who’s…” Could this be more embarrassing? Blair wondered as Deirdre simply continued to study her with what looked like amused interest. “He’s a good man. He’s, well, he’s an amazing man. You’ve done your job very well.”
“No compliment is dearer to a mother’s heart, and I certainly agree with you.” The amusement faded now. “This war comes to us, and he’ll do battle. I’ve never faced such a thing, so I have to believe, deep in my heart, that he does what he must, and will live.”
“I believe it, if that helps.”
“It does. I have other children.” Deirdre touched a hand to her daughter’s arm. “Another son, the husband of my daughter who is a son to me. I’ll have the same faith in them. But my daughter can’t fight like the women you teach.”
“The child is to be born before the yule,” Sinann told Blair. “My third. My children are too young to fight, and this one not yet born. How do I protect them?”
Blair thought of the crosses Hoyt and Glenna had made. She believed the others would agree Larkin’s pregnant sister should have one. “There’s a lot you can do,” Blair assured her. “I’ll help you.”
Now she turned to Deirdre. “But you shouldn’t worry about your daughter, your grandchildren. Your sons, your husband, my friends and I will never let what’s coming here get this far.”
“You give me peace of mind, and I’m grateful. We may not be able to fight, but we won’t be idle. There are many things women who are no longer young, and women who carry life, can do. We’ll do them. Now, you have work so we won’t keep you longer. Good day to you, and gods protect.”
“Thank you.”
Blair stood a moment, watching them walk away. Women with spine, she thought. Lilith was going to be so out of her league.
Satisfied, she hunted Larkin down in the stables where he was stripped down to the waist, slicked with sweat, and helping forge weapons.
Her mood only improved. What could be better than watching a half-naked, great-looking guy beat hot steel into a sword?
She could see they’d made a good start from the number of weapons set aside to cure. The anvil rang with hammer strokes, and smoke billowed as a red-hot blade was plunged into a vat of water.
Was it a wonder, she asked herself, that her mind clicked over to sex?
“Can I get one of those engraved?” she called out. “Something like: ‘To the woman who pierced my heart.’ Corny, yet amusing.”
He looked up, grinned. “You look like you’ve been rolling in the mud.”
“Have been. I was about to go clean up.”
He handed his hammer off to one of the other men, then picked up a cloth to scrub the sweat from his face as he walked to her. “We’ll have every man and woman in Geall armed by Samhain. Cian’s remark some time ago about beating the plowshares into swords isn’t that far off. Word’s gone out.”
“Good. It needs to. Can you break away from here?”
He used his finger to rub some of the mud from her cheek. “What did you have in mind?”
“A couple of flybys. Weather’s crappy, I know, but we can’t wait for sunshine and rainbows. I need to see the battlefield, Larkin. I need a firsthand look.”
“All right then.” He grabbed the tunic he’d discarded earlier and called out a quick stream of Gaelic to the men working behind them.
“They’ll push on well enough without me.”
“Have you seen Moira this morning?”
“Aye. We had a discussion, with considerable heat. Then cooled off and made up. She’s gone into the village to speak to people, the merchants. To bargain for more horses, wagons, supplies, whatever it is she’s scribbled down on her list of things we’ll need in the coming weeks.”
“It’s good thinking. And smart to make sure she’s seen after last night. Anyone who wasn’t there would have heard by now. The more visible she is, the better.”
In the coming weeks, Blair thought as she went inside to clean up, the shopping, list-making, supply-gathering were all something women like Deirdre and Sinann could deal with. Keep them busy, she mused. And keep the royal family visible.
She scraped off the mud, changed into a reasonably fresh shirt, then strapped on her standard weapons.
When she met Larkin in the courtyard, she took the sheaths for his sword, his stakes. “Got something for you.” She picked up the harness she’d set on the ground, slid the sheaths into the loops. “Put this together for you so you can carry your weapons when you’re zipping around up there.”
“Well, isn’t this fine!” He grinned like a kid presented with a shiny new red wagon. “This was thoughtful of you, Blair.” He leaned over to give her a kiss.
“Do your thing, and we’ll try it out.”
“I owe you a gift.” He kissed her again.
When he’d become the dragon, Blair looped the harness over his body, gave it a quick cinch. “Not bad, if I do say so myself.” She vaulted onto him. “Let’s fly, cowboy.”
She’d never get used to it. Even in the rain it was a thrill to feel the wonder of what was beneath her, and rise up and up. Into mists now, drenched with wet, that curtained the land below. It was like flying inside a cloud, she thought, where the sound was muffled and there was nothing but the flight.
She decided she’d never be satisfied with anything as ordinary as an airplane again.
The rain thinned, and as the sun struggled to carve beams through the clouds, she saw the rainbow. It arched, a bleeding blur of delicate colors that seemed to drip through the rain. With a lazy sweep of wings, Larkin turned so that the arch glimmered like a doorway ahead. And the colors deepened, seemed to shine like wet silk. As shafts of sunlight cut through the clouds, the rain and those soft, arching colors turned the sky to wonder.
There was a trumpeting call, a kind of joyful blare. Then the sky was filled with dragons.
She lost her breath, literally felt it whiz out of her lungs as beautiful winged beasts soared beside her, in front of her, behind. In more colors than the rainbow, she realized, with their emeralds and rubies and sapphires. She felt Larkin’s body ripple as he answered their call, and grinned like a fool when he turned his head and fixed a laughing gold eye on her.
She was flying with a flock of dragons. Herd? Pack? Pod? What did it matter? The wind from their wings blew over her face and hair, sent her coat billowing as they soared through the rainbow sky. The other dragons circled, looped, somersaulted in playful dances. Anticipating, she gripped the harness, shouted for Larkin to: “Do it! Do it!”
And screamed with excitement as he dived and rolled. Hanging upside down as he soared belly-up, she could see the mists tear and reveal the sparkling green and deep, deep brown of the land of Geall.
He skimmed the treetops, dipped over the rush of a river, then climbed, climbed, climbed into air that gleamed now with the strengthening sun.
They flew on, past rainbows and jeweled wings, until it was only the two of them and the sky. Overcome, she lowered to him, laid her cheek on his neck. He’d said he’d owed her a gift, she remembered. He had given her one beyond price.
They flew through sunlight now, and occasional and surprising showers of rain. Below she could see small villages or settlements, the rough roads that joined them, the tangle of streams or narrow rivers, tough little knuckles of forest.
But ahead lay the mountains, dark and mist-shrouded and somehow foreboding.
She could see the edge of the valley that lay at their feet, broken land scarred with rock. The first shudder rippled down her spine as she looked down on what she’d too often seen in dreams.
The sun didn’t sparkle here. It was as if the light was absorbed, just sucked away into the dark belly of gullies and chasms, rejected by the dull grass that fought with the spears and juts of weather-pocked rock.
The land dipped and rose, tightened in on itself into folds. And the looming mountains cast great shadows across it, shadows that seemed to cause the land itself to move and shift.
It was more than a shudder that ran through her now. It was an unreasonably, atavistic fear. A fear that this hard and forbidding land would be her grave.
As Larkin veered off, she closed her eyes and let the fear have its way for a moment. Because it couldn’t be beaten off, she thought, couldn’t be battered down by fists or weapons. It had to be recognized, and accepted.
Once it had, she could control it. If she were strong enough, she could use that fear to fight, and to survive.
When he touched down, she slid off. Legs a little shaky, she admitted to herself. But they held her up, and that’s what counted. Her fingers might have felt stiff, but they worked, and she used them to uncinch the weapon harness.
Then Larkin stood beside her.
“It’s an evil place.”
It was almost a relief to her to hear him say it. “Yeah, oh yeah, it is.”
“You can almost feel that evil rising up out of the ground. I’ve been there before, and it always seemed to me to be a place out of Geall. Not quite a part of it. But it never felt as it did today, as though the ground itself wanted to open up and swallow you whole.”
“Oh boy. It got to me, I’ve got to be honest. Turned my blood cold.” She rubbed her hands over her face, then glanced around. “Where are we?”
“Just a ways off from it. I didn’t want to set down there. It’s an easy walk from here, and I wanted a few moments first.”
“I’ll take them.”
He touched her cheek. “A long way from rainbows here.”
“The wrong side of them, I’d say. And I want to say something else, before we head back and face that place. That flight—the rainbow, the other dragons, the whole ball of it, it was the most incredible experience of my life.”
“Is that the truth of it?” He cocked his head. “I thought the most incredible experience of your life would be making love with me.”
“Oh yeah, right. Well, next to that.”
“All right then.” He tipped up her chin to kiss her. “I’m glad you enjoyed it.”
“It was more than enjoyment. It was just flat down amazing. The best gift anyone’s ever given me.”
“Handy for me, that rainbow. Dragons can’t resist one.”
“Really? They’re so gorgeous. I thought my eyes would pop out of my head.”
“Happens you’ve seen a dragon before,” he reminded her.
“And you’re the most gorgeous and handsome of them, blah blah, but honestly, Larkin, they’re extreme. All those colors, and the power…Hold on—do people ride them, the way I’ve been riding you?”
“No one rides like you, a stór. And they don’t, no. They’re not horses, after all.”
“But if they could. You talked to them.”
“It’s not what you’d call conversation. It’s a kind of communication to be sure. A sort of expression of thought of feeling. And something I can only do when I’m in the dragon, so to speak.”
“Aerial warfare would give us a big, fat advantage. I want to think about this.”
“They’re gentle creatures, Blair.”
“So, for the most part, are the women Glenna and I are training to fight. When worlds are on the line, pal, you use everything that comes to hand.” She could see the resistance clearly enough on his face. “Let me just play with it in my head awhile. It’s this way, right?”
“It is.”
They walked the narrow road, framed in hedges and lined with spears of orange lilies. He bent, plucked one, then passed it to her.
Blair stared down at it, delicate petals in a strong and vibrant color. Something wild and lovely.
She talked of war, she thought. And he gave her a flower.
Maybe it was foolish—maybe both of them were—but she slid its stem into one of the buttonholes of her coat. And she breathed in its sweet scent as they walked toward the battleground.