Chapter 3
Chapter three
LOCKE
Locke MacMurchada had always known that he’d been destined to one day wed a bride he neither knew nor loved, but he’d never once imagined it would be his fate to marry a witch.
Although she wasn’t really a witch, he supposed, but something else entirely – something worse. Although he had to admit, she was rather lovely, this creature, despite the bruises that mottled her features, the dried blood caked across her cheek and temple.
Almost as though she’d somehow heard his thoughts, she turned slightly, her gaze fixed on the tent in which he hid.
Kept watch, he amended quickly. He was keeping watch on her, not hiding. He was a grown man, after all, a trained soldier, very well-read and more than a little clever to boot. He had no reason to hide from his intended, no matter what rumors slithered in her wake.
Even if they were fairly terrifying ones.
He loosened his grip on the flap, letting it curtain him away again in the darkness of the tent. Strange feeling, that, to feel safer in the shadows than in the light, but damned if he didn’t breathe a bit easier now that there was a barrier of sorts between him and his bride-to-be.
Stranger still to consider that she was the prisoner, bound and ostensibly helpless, and he her prince.
Former prince, that is. No throne awaited him, not any longer.
No birthright to hand down to his children and their children, no further additions to the ancient glory of the MacMurchada name.
Not since his father had handed over the keys to their kingdom without so much of a whimper, and for what?
Empty words, hollow vows, the longing for a vengeance that was merely promised, not ensured, by a force far mightier than they.
A treacherous voice whispered in his ear that they would all be better off to cut his bride free from her bonds, to set her loose on the world and let her do her worst. The gods knew she deserved that much.
Surely she must want to breathe forth that terrible power that had – purportedly – ended countless lives with only a few murmured words from those pretty lips of hers.
And yet there she stood, quiet and patient, bound hands clasped in front of her. From what he could tell in that brief glimpse of her, she didn’t seem too concerned about her current predicament.
It was all very worrisome.
“We should reconsider,” he said, interrupting the low hum of voices behind him. “I think – I think going through with my father’s plan would be a very grave mistake.”
The murmuring ceased, and even with his back to them, the concern in the air was palpable. “My lord,” said Tadhg. “There is no other path. If we hope to subdue Connacht –”
“There are other ways. Our force outnumbers their own, and with Imbolc approaching –”
“We cannot hope to invade Connacht.” Eamon cut him off, and Locke’s shoulders tightened at the unmistakable sound of fear threading through his oldest friend’s voice.
“We have discussed this, weighed all our options. Even with our superior force, the terrain is too treacherous, the mountains too full of dangers which we cannot anticipate nor defend against. This alliance is the only way.”
Locke shook his head. “I do not trust this – do not trust her.”
“She is subdued, my lord.” Eamon’s hand rested on his shoulder, forcing him to turn.
Locke’s stomach rolled at the sight of his men’s faces – tight and drawn, lined with exhaustion.
He had grown up with these men, had been boys together playing at iomáint in the grassy fields that stretched before his father’s castle, had seen them bright and loose with joy, a-roar with laughter and song in the feasting hall, cups raised and smiles wide.
No longer.
Never again, a resentful voice whispered in his ear. Because of your father’s sins, never again will they be so quick to laugh, to be at peace and unburdened by grief.
Never again to be free.
He shook it away as Eamon continued. “We have nothing to fear from her. Whatever fight was once in her, whatever rumors we once heard – she is no longer that creature. She is broken, my lord.”
Locke thought back to that fleeting glimpse of his promised bride, the unnerving stillness of her as she stood in the early morning light, head tipped back as the sun broke across the horizon.
It was not, by any means, the posture of a fallen queen.
She was the thunderclouds gathering far across the sea, ominous and dark, heavy with rain, churning with power as they bided their time, waiting for their cousins in destruction, the winds and the waves, to rise from their beds and join them in their quest for vengeance.
His apprehension grew more strident, more urgent.
“Where is the man who brought her in? The one who claimed the bounty?”
Tadhg and Eamon exchanged a glance. “Outside,” said Tadhg. “Waiting for his payment.”
“Bring him in.”
“The king your father would not want –”
“The former king my father,” said Locke, “is not here. I am. Bring the man in so I can hear how it is, exactly, that he managed to capture the most elusive and supposedly deadly creature in all éire with nary a scar to show for it.”
Tadhg nodded once, quick and curt, before turning on his heel and sticking his head out of the tent. “You there,” Locke heard him call. “The Lord MacMurchada wants a word with you.”
From the corner of his eye, Locke watched as Eamon’s hand tightened around the sword hilt at his side, wary and alert. Eamon, whom he had once seen take down four swordsmen with nothing more than a supper knife. He arched an eyebrow. “Is he so fearsome? This bountyman?”
Eamon’s gaze flickered over to his. “You’ll see, my lord.”
“You can both drop the pretense of respect and simply call me ‘Locke.’ My father is no longer here to care.” Locke leaned back against the table’s edge, crossing his ankles. “Interesting,” he said quietly. “Very curious.”
“What is?”
“The woman out there, rumored to be a creature the likes of which we have not seen in éire in well-nigh two centuries, dragged here into the heart of her enemy’s camp by a mysterious man so formidable that he makes even my most stout-hearted warrior tremble in his boots without so much as drawing his sword. ”
“Now see here, I am hardly trembling, I –”
“I suppose one might argue that it makes sense this way, that only a truly exceptional warrior could subdue someone with that kind of power,” Locke continued, fingers tapping. “But still. I wonder.”
The tent flap moved before either of his men could respond, and Locke watched as an impossibly tall, black-haired man stepped through.
He half-wanted to reach for his sword as well.
The man appeared deferential enough, clutching at his cap with both hands, head bowed, shoulders hunched, but Locke knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it was a facade, meant to deceive and deflect, this show of submissiveness.
It reminded him, inexplicably, of the traveling troupe of players who had visited his father’s castle in the days of his youth – that slightly theatrical look of him, the deliberate slowness of his movements, his too-deferential posture, the power muted within his moss-green eyes.
This man was very, very dangerous indeed.
Locke eased a hip onto the edge of the table and waved a careless hand in his direction. “What’s your name, friend?”
“Colin, my lord.”
“Colin,” said Locke. “‘Whelp.’ Not the most noble of names, is it?”
The man bowed. “Nothin’ noble about me, my lord. I have been a humble servant of your father’s throne the king since I was a boyo, as was my da, and his before him.”
Locke studied him. The accent was perfect, the syllables low and melodious, a Leinster man, born and raised, nothing of the more guttural sounds of the western realms in his speech.
Interesting.
“You have served my father well with this,” he said, careful to keep his shoulders loose.
“We have been searching for the girl for a while now.” He shrugged.
“I confess, having gotten a look at her, I’m at a loss to understand all the uproar over her.
I thought she’d be more formidable – it was my impression that she was quite fearsome. Rather disappointing, I must admit.”
The man kept his head lowered as he spoke. “She fought hard enow,” he said. “But I fought harder, my lord.”
“Why?” Locke toyed with a feathered quill on the desk. “What motivated you, to go after her, to face down a child of the gods like that? Was it the gold? Is that what inspired you, Colin, to do your duty for your king and bring him the bride he has sought for so long now?”
Behind him, Eamon and Tadhg shifted, uneasy, but the man raised his head and met his gaze, unflinching and cold. “Tell the king your father,” he said, “he’d be better off marrying the bitch to the bottom of a river.”
There – that, now, was true enough.
Locke smiled thinly. “Well,” he said. “It matters not, since it is not my father who seeks to make your captive his bride. Perhaps you haven’t heard, but my father has renounced his throne, has entrusted the governance of his realm elsewhere.
I am no longer the prince of Leinster, and he is a puppet king, who may lay claim to nothing now but a hollow crown and an empty title. ”
He watched closely, but the man’s expression did not falter even for a moment. “The rise and fall of kings is of little concern to a poor man.”
“And what is of concern to a poor man like yourself?”
“My wife,” said the man. “My children. All dead, because of the king her brother and his warmongering. I cannot kill him, but I can have some measure of revenge, can see a drop of that éraic paid.”