Chapter 16
In the moment between wake and sleep, there was candlelight, and the bliss of nothing. Easy warmth and sheets scented with lavender, and floating on the comfort of nothing.
But the moment passed, and Glenna remembered.
King was dead, hurled into the sea by monsters with the same carelessness of a boy tossing a pebble into a lake.
She’d gone upstairs alone, by her own request, to seek the solitude and oblivion of sleep.
Watching the candle flicker, she wondered if she would ever be able to sleep in the dark again. If she would ever be able to see night coming and not think their time was coming with it. To walk in the moonlight without fear? Would she ever know that simplicity again? Or would even a rainy day forever send chills down her spine?
She turned her head on the pillow. And she saw him silhouetted by the silver light that slid through the window that overlooked his herb garden. Keeping watch in the night, she thought, over her. Over them all. Whatever burdens they all bore, his were heavier. And still he’d come to stand between her and the dark.
“Hoyt.”
She sat up as he turned, and she held out her hands to him.
“I didn’t want to wake you.” He crossed to her, took her hands while studying her face in the dim light. “Are you in pain?”
“No. No, it’s gone under, at least for now. I have you and Moira to thank for that.”
“You helped yourself as much as we did. And sleep will help as well.”
“Don’t go. Please. Cian?”
“I don’t know.” He sent a troubled look toward the door. “Closed in his rooms with the whiskey.” Looking at her, he brushed back her hair, turning her face to take a closer study at the bruising. “We’re all using what we can tonight, so the pain goes under.”
“She would never have let him go. She would never have released King. No matter what we’d done.”
“No.” He eased down to sit on the side of the bed. “Cian must have known that somewhere inside him, but he had to try. We had to try.”
By pretending to be a bargaining chip, she thought, remembering Hoyt’s explanation of what they’d seen on the cliffs.
“Now we all know there can be no bargaining in this,” he continued. “Are you strong enough to hear what I have to say?”
“Yes.”
“We’ve lost one of us. One of the six we were told we needed to fight this battle, to win this war. I don’t know what it means.”
“Our warrior. Maybe it means we all have to become warriors. Better ones. I killed tonight, Hoyt—more from luck than skill—but I destroyed what had once been human. I can and will do it again. But with more skill. Every day with more skill. She took one of us, and she thinks it’ll make us weak and frightened. But she’s wrong. We’ll show her she’s wrong.”
“I’m to lead this battle. You have great skill in magicks. You’ll work in the tower on weapons, shields, spells. A protective circle to—”
“Whoa, wait.” She held up a hand. “Am I getting this? I’m consigned to the tower—what, like Rapunzel?”
“I don’t know this person.”
“Just another helpless female waiting to be rescued. I’ll work on the magicks, and I’ll work harder and longer. Just like I’ll train harder and longer. But what I won’t do is sit up in the tower day and night with my cauldron and crystals, writing spells while the rest of you fight.”
“You had your first battle today, and it nearly killed you.”
“And gave me a lot more respect for what we’re up against. I was called to this, just like the rest of us. I won’t hide from it.”
“Using your strengths isn’t hiding. I was given the charge of this army—”
“Well, let me slap some bars on you and call you Colonel.”
“Why are you so angry?”
“I don’t want you to protect me. I want you to value me.”
“Value you?” He shoved to his feet so the red shimmer from the fire washed over his face. “I value you almost more than I can bear. I’ve lost too much already. I’ve watched my brother, the one who shared the womb with me, taken. I’ve stood over the graves of my family. I won’t see you cut down by these things—you, the single light for me in all of this. I won’t risk your life again. I won’t stand over your grave.”
“But I can risk your life? I can stand over your grave?”
“I’m a man.”
He said it so simply, the way an adult might tell a child the sky is blue, that she couldn’t speak for ten full seconds. Then she plopped back against the pillows. “The only reason I’m not working on turning you into a braying jackass this very moment is I’m giving you some slack due to the fact you come from an unenlightened age.”
“Un... unenlightened?”
“Let me clue you in to mine, Merlin. Women are equals. We work, we go into combat, we vote, and above all, we make our own decisions regarding our own lives, our own bodies, our own minds. Men don’t rule here.”
“I’ve never known a world where men rule,” he muttered. “In physical strength, Glenna, you’re not equal.”
“We make up for it with other advantages.”
“However keen your minds, your wiles, your bodies are more fragile. They’re made to bear children.”
“You just gave me a contradiction in terms. If men were responsible for childbearing, the world would’ve ended a long time ago, with no help from a bunch of glory-seeking vampires. And let me point out one little fact. The one causing this whole mess is a female.”
“Somehow that should be my point.”
“Well, it’s just not. So forget it. And the one who brought us together is also female, so you’re way outnumbered. And I have more ammo, but this ridiculous conversation is giving me a headache.”
“You should rest. We’ll talk more of this tomorrow.”
“I’m not going to rest, and we’re not going to talk about this tomorrow.”
His single light? he thought. Sometimes she was a beam searing straight into his eyes. “You are a contrary and exasperating woman.”
“Yes.” Now she smiled, and once more held out her hands. “Sit down here, would you? You’re worried about me, and for me. I understand that, appreciate that.”
“If you would do this thing for me.” He lifted her hands to his lips. “It would ease my mind. Make me a better leader.”
“Oh, that’s good.” She drew her hands away to poke him gently in the chest. “Very good. Women aren’t the only ones with wiles.”
“Not wile, but truth.”
“Ask me for something else, and I’ll try to give it to you. But I can’t give you this, Hoyt. I worry for you, too, and about you. For all of us. And I question what we can do, what we’re capable of. And I wonder why in all the world—the worlds—we’re the ones who have to do this thing. But none of that changes anything. We are the ones. And we’ve lost a very good man already.”
“If I lose you... Glenna, there’s a void in me at the very thought of it.”
Sometimes, she knew, the woman had to be stronger. “There are so many worlds, and so many ways. I don’t think we could ever lose each other now. What I have now is more than I’ve ever had before. I think it makes us better than we were. Maybe that’s part of why we’re here. To find each other.”
She leaned into him, sighed when his arms encircled her. “Stay with me. Come lie with me. Love me.”
“You need to heal.”
“Yes.” She drew him down with her, touched her lips to his. “I do.”
He hoped he had the tenderness in him that she needed. He wanted to give her that, the magic of it.
“Slowly then.” He brushed kisses over her cheek. “Quietly.”
He used just his lips, skimming kisses over her mouth, her face, her throat. Warm and soothing. He brushed away the thin gown she wore to trace those easy kisses over her breasts, over her bruises. In comfort and with care.
Soft as birds’ wings, lips and fingertips to ease her mind and her body, and to stir them.
And when their eyes met, he knew more than he’d ever known. Held more than he’d ever owned.
He lifted her up onto a pillow of air and silver light, making magic their bed. Around the room, the candles came to life with a sound like a sigh. And the light they shed was like melted gold.
“It’s beautiful.” She took his hands as they floated, closed her eyes on the sumptuous joy of it. “This is beautiful.”
“I would give you all I have, and still it wouldn’t be enough.”
“You’re wrong. It’s everything.”
More than pleasure, more than passion. Did he know what he made of her when he touched her like this? Nothing they faced, no terror or pain, no death or damnation could overcome this. The light inside her was like a beacon, and it would never be dark again.
Here was life at its sweetest and most generous. The taste of him was a balm to her soul even as his touch roused desires. Steeped in him, she lifted her arms, turned up her palms. Rose petals, white as snow, streamed down like rain.
She smiled when he slipped into her, when they moved together, silky and slow. Light and air, scent and sensation surrounded the rise and fall of bodies and hearts.
Once more their fingers meshed, once more their lips met. And as they drifted together, love healed them both.
In the kitchen, Moira puzzled over a can of soup. No one had eaten, and she was determined to make some sort of meal should Glenna awake. She’d managed the tea, but she’d been shown how to conquer that.
She’d only watched King open one of the cylinders with the little machine that made the nasty noise. She’d tried and failed three times to make it work, and was seriously considering getting her sword and hacking the cylinder open.
She had a little kitchen magic—precious little, she admitted. Glancing around to be sure she was alone, she pulled what she had together, and visualized the can open.
It shimmied a bit on the counter, but remained stubbornly whole.
“All right, one more time then.”
She bent down, studied the opener that was attached to the underside of the cupboard. With the proper tools she could take it apart, find out how it worked. She loved taking things apart. But if she had the proper tools, she could just open the bloody cylinder in the first place.
She straightened, shook her hair back, rolled her shoulders. Muttering to herself, she tried once again to do the deed. This time, when the machine whirled, the can revolved. She clasped her hands together in delight, then bent close again to watch it work.
It was so clever, she thought. So much here was clever. She wondered if she’d ever be allowed to drive the van. King had said he’d teach her how it was done.
Her lips trembled at the thought of it, of him, and she pressed them hard together. She prayed his death had been quick, and his suffering brief. In the morning, she would put up a stone for him in the graveyard she and Larkin had seen when they’d been walking.
And when she returned to Geall, she would erect another, and ask the harper to write a song for him.
She emptied the contents into a pot and set it on the burner, turning it on as Glenna had showed her.
They needed to eat. Grief and hunger would make them weak, and weakness would make them easier prey. Bread, she decided. They would have some bread. It would be a simple meal, but filling.
She turned toward the pantry, then stumbled back when she saw Cian in the doorway. He leaned against the wall, the nearly empty whiskey bottle dangling from his fingers.
“Midnight snack?” His teeth showed white with his smile. “I’ve a fondness for them myself.”
“No one’s eaten. I thought we should.”
“Always thinking, aren’t you, little queen? Mind’s always going.”
He was drunk, she could see that. Too much whiskey had dulled his eyes and thickened his voice. But she could also see the pain. “You should sit before you fall over.”
“Thanks for the kind invitation, in my own bloody house. But I just came down for another bottle.” He shook the one he held. “Someone appears to have made off with this one.”
“Drink yourself sick if you want to be stupid about it. But you might as well eat something. I know you eat, I’ve seen you. I’ve gone to the trouble to make it.”
He glanced at the counter, smirked. “You opened a tin.”
“It’s sorry I am I didn’t have time to kill the fatted calf. So you’ll make do.”
She turned around to busy herself, then went very still when she felt him behind her. His fingers skimmed the side of her throat, light as a moth’s wings.
“I’d have thought you tasty once upon a time.”
Drunk, angry, grieving, she thought. All of those made him dangerous. If she showed him her fear, he’d only be more so. “You’re in my way.”
“Not yet.”
“I don’t have time for drunkards. Maybe you don’t want food, but Glenna needs it, for healing strength.”
“I’d say she’s feeling strong enough.” Bitterness edged his tone as he glanced up. “Didn’t you see the lights brighten a bit ago?”
“I did. I don’t know what that has to do with Glenna.”
“It means she and my brother are having a go at each other. Sex,” he said when she looked blank. “A bit of naked, sweaty sex to top off the evening. Ah, she blushes.” He laughed, moved closer. “All that pretty blood just under the skin. Delicious.”
“Stop.”
“I used to like when they trembled, the way you are. It makes the blood hotter, and it adds to the thrill. I’d nearly forgotten.”
“You smell of the whiskey. This is hot enough now. Sit down, and I’ll make a bowl for you.”
“I don’t want the fucking soup. Wouldn’t mind that hot, sweaty sex, but likely I’m too drunk to manage it. Well then, I’ll just get that fresh bottle, and finish the job.”
“Cian. Cian, people turn to each other for comfort when death’s come. It isn’t disrespect, but need.”
“You don’t want to lecture me on sex. I know more of it than you could ever imagine. Of its pleasures and its pain and its purposes.”
“People turn to drink as well, but it’s not as healthy. I know what he was to you.”
“You don’t.”
“He talked to me, more than the others, I think, because I like to listen. He told me how you found him, all those years ago, what you did for him.”
“I amused myself.”
“Stop it.” The tone of command, bred into her bones, snapped into her voice. “Now it’s disrespect you’re showing for a man who was a friend to me. And he was a son to you. A friend and a brother. All of that. I want to put a stone up for him tomorrow. It could wait until sunset, until you could go out and—”
“What do I care for stones?” he said, and left her.
Glenna was so grateful for the sun she could have wept. There were clouds, but they were thin and the beams burst through them to toss light and shadows on the ground.
She hurt still, heart and body. But she would deal with it. For now, she took one of her cameras and she stepped outside to let the sun bathe her face. Charmed by the music of it, she walked to the stream. Then just laid down on its bank and basked.
Birds sang, pouring joy into air that was fragrant with flowers. She could see foxglove dancing lightly in the breeze. For a moment she felt the earth beneath her sigh and whisper with the pleasure of a new day.
Grief would come and go, she knew. But today there was light, and work. And there was still magic in the world.
When a shadow fell over her, she turned her head, smiled at Moira.
“How are you this morning?”
“Better,” Glenna told her. “I’m better. Sore and stiff, maybe a little wobbly yet, but better.”
She turned a bit more to study Moira’s tunic and rough pants. “We need to get you some clothes.”
“These do well enough.”
“Maybe we’ll go into town, see what we can find.”
“I have nothing to trade. I can’t pay.”
“That’s what Visa’s for. It’ll be my treat.” She lay flat, closed her eyes again. “I didn’t think anyone else was up.”
“Larkin’s taken the horse for a run. It should do both of them good. I don’t think he slept at all.”
“I doubt any of us did, really. It doesn’t seem real does it, not in the light of day with the sun showering down and the birds singing?”
“It seems more real to me,” Moira said as she sat. “It shows what we have to lose. I have a stone,” she continued, brushing her hand through the grass. “I thought when Larkin comes back we could go to where the graves are, make one for King.”
Glenna kept her eyes closed, but reached out a hand for Moira’s. “You have a good heart,” she told her. “Yes, we’ll make a grave for King.”
Her injuries prevented her from training, but it didn’t stop Glenna from working. She spent the next two days preparing food, shopping for supplies, researching magic.
She took photographs.
More than busy work, she told herself. It was practical, and organizational. And the photos were—would be—a kind of documentation, a kind of tribute.
Most of all it helped keep her from feeling useless while the others worked up a sweat with swords and hand-to-hand.
She learned the roads, committing various routes to memory. Her driving skills were rusty, so she honed them, maneuvering the van on snaking roads, skimming the hedgerows on turns, zooming through roundabouts as her confidence built.
She pored through spell books, searching for offense and defense. For solutions. She couldn’t bring King back, but she would do everything in her power to safeguard those who were left.
Then she got the bright idea that every member of the team should be able to handle the van. She started with Hoyt.
She sat beside him as he drove the van at a creeping pace up and down the lane.
“There are better uses for my time.”
“That may be.” And at this rate, she thought, they’d be a millennium before he got over five miles an hour. “But every one of us should be able to take the wheel if necessary.”
“Why?”
“Because.”
“Do you plan to take this machine into battle?”
“Not with you at the wheel. Practicalities, Hoyt. I’m the only one who can drive during the day. If something happens to me—”
“Don’t. Don’t tempt the gods.” His hand closed over hers.
“We have to factor it. We’re here, and where we are is remote. We need transportation. And, well, driving gives all of us a kind of independence, as well as another skill. We should be prepared for anything.”
“We could get more horses.”
The wistfulness in his voice had her giving him a bolstering pat on the shoulder. “You’re doing fine. Maybe you could try going just a little bit faster.”
He shot forward, spitting gravel from the tires. Glenna sucked in a breath and shouted: “Brake! Brake! Brake!”
More gravel flew when the van came to an abrupt halt.
“Here’s a new word for your vocabulary,” she said pleasantly. “Whiplash.”
“You said to go faster. This is go.” He gestured toward the gas pedal.
“Yeah. Well. Okay.” She drew in a fresh breath. “There’s the snail, and there’s the rabbit. Let’s try to find the animal in between. A dog, say. A nice, healthy golden retriever.”
“Dogs chase rabbits,” he pointed out, and made her laugh. “That’s good. You’ve been sad. I’ve missed your smile.”
“I’ll give you a big, toothy one if we come through this lesson in one piece. We’re going to take a big leap, go out on the road.” She reached up and closed her hand briefly over the crystal she’d hung from the rearview. “Let’s hope this works.”
He did better than she’d expected, which meant no one was maimed or otherwise injured. Her heart got a serious workout from leaping into her throat, then dropping hard into her belly, but they stayed on the road—for the most part.
She liked watching him calculate the turns, his brows knit, his eyes intense, his long fingers gripping the wheel as though it were a lifeline in a storm-tossed sea.
Hedgerows closed them in, green tunnels dotted with bloodred drops of fuchsia, then the world would open up into rolling fields, and the dots were white sheep or lazy spotted cows.
The city girl in her was enchanted. Another time, she thought, another world, and she could have found a great deal to love about this place. The play of light and shadows on the green, the patchwork of fields, the sudden sparkle of water, the rise and tumble of rocks that formed ancient ruins.
It was good, she decided, to look beyond the house in the forest, to look and love the world they were fighting to save.
When he slowed, she glanced over. “You have to keep up your speed. It can be as dangerous to go too slow as too fast. Which applies, now that I think about it, to pretty much anything.”
“I want to stop.”
“You need to pull over to the shoulder—the side of the road. Put the signal on, like I showed you, and ease over.” She checked the road herself. The shoulder was narrow, but there was no traffic. “Put it in park. That’s all the way up. Good. So—What?” she said when he pushed his door open.
She pulled off her seat belt, grabbed the keys—and her camera as an afterthought—then hurried after him. But he was already halfway across a field, moving quickly toward what was left of an old stone tower.
“If you wanted to stretch your legs or empty your bladder, you just had to say so,” she began, huffing a bit as she caught up to him.
The wind danced through her hair, blowing it back from her face. As she touched his arm, she felt the muscles there gone rigid. “What is it?”
“I know this place. People lived here. There were children. The oldest of my sisters married their second son. His name is Fearghus. They farmed this land. They... they walked this land. Lived.”
He moved inside to what she saw now must have been a small keep. The roof was gone, as was one of the walls. The floor was grass and starry white flowers, the dung of sheep.
And the wind blew through, like ghosts chanting.
“They had a daughter, a pretty thing. Our families hoped we would... ”
He laid his hand against a wall, left it there. “Just stone now,” he said quietly. “Gone to ruin.”
“But still here. Hoyt. Still here, a part of it. And you, remembering them. What we’re doing, what we have to do, won’t it mean they had the very best chance to live a long, full life? To farm the land and walk it. To live.”
“They came to my brother’s wake.” He dropped his hand. “I don’t know how to feel.”
“I can’t imagine how hard this is for you. Every day of it. Hoyt.” She laid her hands on his arms, waiting for his eyes to meet hers. “Part of it stands, what was yours. It stands in what’s mine. I think that matters. I think we need to find the hope in that. The strength in it. Do you want some time here? I can go back, wait for you in the van.”
“No. Every time I falter, or think I can’t bear what’s been asked of me, you’re there.” He bent, plucked one of the little white flowers. “These grew in my time.” He twirled it once, then tucked it into her hair. “So, we’ll carry hope.”
“Yes, we will. Here.” She lifted her camera. “It’s a place that cries for pictures. And the light’s gorgeous.”
She moved off to choose her angles. She’d make him a present of one, she decided. Something of her to take with him. And she’d make a copy of the same shot for her loft.
Imagine him studying the photo while she studied hers. Each of them remembering standing there on a summer afternoon with wildflowers waving in a carpet of grass.
But the idea of it hurt more than it warmed.
So she turned the camera on him. “Just look at me,” she told him. “You don’t have to smile. In fact—” She clicked the shutter. “Nice, very nice.”
Inspired, she lowered the camera. “I’m going to set it up on timer, take one of us together. She looked around for something to set the camera on, wished she’d thought to bring a tripod.
“Well, I’ll have to mix a little something in.” She framed him in. Man and stone and field. “Air be still and heed my will. Solid now beneath my hand, steady as rock upon the land. Hold here what I ask of thee. As I will, so mote it be.”
She set the camera on the platter of air, engaged the timer. Then dashed to Hoyt. “Just look at the camera.” She slipped an arm around his waist, pleased when he mirrored the gesture. “And if you can manage a little smile... one, two... ”
She watched the light blink. “There we are. For posterity.”
He walked with her when she retrieved the camera. “How do you know how it will look when you take it out of the box?”
“I don’t, not a hundred percent. I guess you could say it’s another kind of hope.”
She looked back at the ruin. “Do you need more time?”
“No.” Time, he thought, there would never be enough of it. “We should go back. There’s other work to do.”
“Did you love her?” Glenna asked as they started back across the field.
“Who?”
“The girl? The daughter of the family who lived here.”
“I didn’t, no. A great disappointment that was to my mother, but not—I think—to the girl. I didn’t look for a woman in that way, for marriage and family. It seemed... It seemed to me that my gift, my work, required solitude. Wives require time and attention.”
“They do. Theoretically, they also give it.”
“I wanted to be alone. All of my life it seemed I never had enough of it, the solitude and the quiet. And now, now I’m afraid I may always have too much.”
“That would be up to you.” She stopped to look back at the ruins a last time. “What will you tell them when you go back?” Even saying it tore little pieces from her heart.
“I don’t know.” He took her hand so they stood together, looking at what was, imagining what had been. “I don’t know. What will you tell your people when this is done?”
“I think I probably won’t tell them anything. Let them think as I told them when I called before I left that I took an impulsive trip to Europe. Why should they have to live with the fear of what we know?” she said when he turned to her. “We know what goes bump in the night is real, we know that now, and it’s a burden. So I’ll tell them I love them, and leave it at that.”
“Isn’t that another kind of alone?”
“It’s one I can handle.”
This time she got behind the wheel. When he got in beside her, he took one last look at the ruin.
And, he thought, without Glenna, the alone might swallow him whole.