Chapter 7 #2
"Go along, then, both of you." Aniera waved them away, doubtless wishing to be alone with her memories. "Caitlin and I will speak later."
Caitlin glanced up at Niall as she followed him away from the room where his mother now sat enthroned on the rickety stool, staring into ashes.
Every muscle in Niall's body was rigid, as if he were holding himself in check, battling the need to...
what? Bolt away from this place and the devastation he saw every time he turned his head?
What had he said to Fiona? That he would rather have hidden Caitlin in hell?
She would well believe it. And yet he had come here, had faced all of this because of her.
With a furious swipe, he dashed away a spider's web large enough to trap a linnet and shoved open a wooden door.
A tidal wave of dust curled into the air.
Caitlin stifled a cough behind her hand, her eyes watering.
She rubbed at her eyelids, trying to dash away the grit.
When her vision cleared, she took her first tentative look at the chamber that was to be hers as long as they were at Castle Daire.
Light filtered into a surprisingly large room, setting it aglow with an aura that was otherworldly, as if they had stumbled into a castle lost through a fairy enchantment for a thousand years.
Caitlin gasped, gazing at walls covered with what must have once been glorious tapestries. White-capped waves almost seemed to dance, a gold-thread sun gleamed above, while sea creatures spun from a wondrous imagination frolicked in the glorious blue-green swells.
Exquisite shells, polished to perfection, seemed to breathe salt air into the room.
Caitlin touched the delicate web of a fisherman's net draped over the box of the bed. "It must have been so beautiful."
"Before the wood rotted and the bed was covered in grime?"
"I did not say that." Caitlin protested.
Niall grasped the mouse-nibbled robes upon the bed box, flung them to the floor. He stripped his cloak from his shoulders and tossed it upon the bed.
"You must have thought it. Perhaps my mother does not see that she lives in a dung heap, but I am certain you noticed."
His words might have wounded her if she had not felt his pain. "Niall, I am far too grateful for shelter to care about a little dust."
"A little dust?" He gave a strangled laugh. "The castle is practically crumbling atop their heads! But I did not know that they were suffering." He glared at her, as if daring her to believe him. "I never knew."
"Of course you did not."
Niall stared at her. "Is it so simple for you to believe a man whose very name screams of betrayal?
Then you are a fool. I thought I was burdened by that name because of my father's shame.
But look around you, Caitlin." He swept his hand in an arc about the wreckage of the chamber.
"I betrayed my mother. I betrayed Fiona. "
"You did not know!"
"I should have! What would it have cost me to make certain they had what food and shelter they needed?
I would not even have had to come to Daire myself.
There were other men I could have sent. But no.
I was too angry. Too bitter. Too proud. Too consumed by the seven quests that would win back my honor.
Tell me, Caitlin, where is that honor now? "
She wanted to comfort him, feared he would only dash her hand away. But she laid her fingertips upon the curve of his jaw. He jerked at her touch, as if she had stung him. "I am alive because of that honor," she said.
"Are you?" His mouth curled in mockery, self- loathing. "Have you not wondered for an instant if this did not save your life?" He grasped her chin, turned her face up to his.
Caitlin stared into his features, so hard, so desperate, his gaze devouring her face. Her heart raced. Hunger and loathing—never had she known they could mingle in one man's eyes. "I do not understand."
"If you were not so beautiful, Caitlin, do you think I would have hesitated to kill you?"
Her breath caught. Heat shimmered along the surface of her skin, reddening her cheeks.
He thought her beautiful, and yet something ugly lay beneath his words—the possibility that he would have completed his dark mission if she had been plain, like sweet Sister Mary with her mouse-colored hair and pockmarked skin.
She loathed the possibility that the things men valued most in women were mere accidents of birth, the cast of cheeks and lips, the color of eyes and hair, not traits earned by courage and strength and kindness.
Nay, it was too painful to think Niall would have let his sword fall upon any innocent woman. "I—I believe... I hope that you would not have hurt me, no matter how my face looked."
"Why? Because now that I have defied Conn's orders, you see me as some sort of hero?
Have you learned nothing in the days since I took you from the abbey?
To be wary. Not to trust anyone, especially me.
" He gave a snort of disgust. "You stumble into life, blind as any babe, seeing only what you wish to see. "
She lifted her chin. "I do not believe you would have hurt me, Niall."
"We will never know for certain, will we, Caitlin? Either of us. Just as we will never know if I abandoned Castle Daire and everyone in it in search of honor or because I was running away." He turned and stalked out the door.
The arrow slit glowed silver with the night, a smattering of stars twinkling in the distant sky. Caitlin pressed her face against the rough stone surrounding the opening. Worlds away in the abbey, was Reverend Mother gazing out at the same stars, thinking of her?
It seemed an eternity had passed since she had left St. Mary's.
But there, everything would go on the same—murmured prayers, weeding the garden, stitching and mending and scrubbing the stone floors.
And that sweetest of all hours, before sleep, when the air was filled with serenity, and love whispered with every breath of the wind.
Caitlin's throat ached. If she were home now, she would be leaning against Reverend Mother's knee, the comb stroking rhythmically through her hair as if the abbess held the power to untangle all the troubles of the day.
And she had—she always had made Caitlin feel better, ready to begin again.
But now there was no one to promise her everything would turn out well.
Hunted, her death ordered by Conn, it was as if some dark enchantment had spilled a river between Caitlin and those she loved, one she could never get back across.
"I do not know what to do, Reverend Mother," she whispered. "This whole castle sorrows. And I... I do not belong anywhere at all."
She blinked back tears, remembering so many times the abbess had taken her hand, led her out into the garden when she could not sleep. Look above you, Caitlin, my child. You can never be alone. The stars are angels watching over you. As I will, even when you are grown and gone away.
The echo hurt, and yet she clung to it, picturing it all so clearly, the night-veiled garden, Reverend Mother, her face turned up to the sky, a soft smile curving her lips.
And in that moment, Caitlin knew she needed to see the broad sweep of heavens, boundless as the love the holy woman had given her.
Uncertain of the direction she should take, Caitlin made her way out of the chamber, trying to remember the path she had taken with Niall.
Three times she got lost and managed to trace her way back to her room.
On the fourth attempt, she all but plunged down the narrow stone stairs.
A wry laugh broke from her lips. At least one good thing would happen if she fell and broke her neck in this attempt.
Niall could deliver her to Conn and could return to his old life as if nothing had gone awry.
Nay, she thought with sadness as she eased down one uneven riser after another.
No power in heaven or earth could give Niall back the life he had known before, any more than Caitlin could reclaim her own sweet past at the abbey.
He had seen the wreck of this castle, the suffering of his mother, the hatred of his sister.
He had broken his oath to his chieftain.
She should have been grateful once she reached the main hall. Either Fiona or Niall had built a fire in the hearth, and it cast enough fight that she could pick her way through the maze of debris without bruising herself in more than three places.
But all she could feel was grief. So much had been lost in the days since she had ridden out of the abbey gates in Niall's arms.
She pushed open the great, heavy wood door, a wave of sweet night air washing over her.
Grateful, she slipped out of the shadow of the castle, wanting to see the full sweep of sky.
She could stare up into the heavens, close out all earthbound things around her.
Imagine until the sun rose that she was in the garden at home.
But she had barely taken ten steps when a voice rumbled, making her heart slam against her ribs.
"I would not run, Caitlin. Alone in the wild lands, you would be dead before the moon wanes."
"Niall!" She stared at the man stretched out on the ground an arm's length away from her, his powerful body all but lost in the shadows. "Wh-what are you doing here?"
He threw back a tattered plaid he was using to keep warm in the chill night air. "I vowed never to spend another night under the roof of Castle Daire. Considering all the other oaths I have broken the past few days, I decided I would keep this one."
He levered himself to a sitting position, his hair tousled in the starlight. "Tell me, Caitlin of the Lilies, what are you running from? Spiders the size of a cat? An army of mice mounting a charge across your bed?"
"I am not running at all," she said, a little indignant. "I only wished to see the stars."