Chapter 11 #2
He was sober soon enough, clear-headed and solemn-eyed, standing before his still-lovely bride, her cool palm pressed against his warm one, as they recited their vows – for a year and a day, I give to you the first tasting of my wine, the first breaking of my bread, to you I vow that none but your name shall I cry out in the night, none but your face shall greet mine at the dawn, to you I pledge to be the sword in your hand and the shield at your back, to you shall I be the star in the night, the brightness of the day, for a year and a day, to you I grant my living and my dying.
Her voice was steady, her features closed-off and shuttered.
Locke knew it was the twin to his own blank expression, as the priest wrapped the soft cotton binding around their hands and bound it fast in a hard, unyielding knot.
It could not be undone until dawn.
His fingers curved around hers, a gentle pressure. She looked up, silver eyes muted and dark, and did not look away until the rite was finished.
He led her back through the silent, watching cluster of his men and her bárd, past the low-burning campfire, through the dusky twilight and the flickering glow of the fireflies beginning to emerge from their day-beds, and into the dim light of the tent.
The flap fell shut behind them, shrouding them in darkness, and they were alone.
They stood, quiet and watchful, their hands still clasped loosely in one another’s, the only sound the rise and fall of their breaths, steady and slow.
He was the first to break the silence. “Are you hungry, my lady?”
She shook her head, watching him through half-lowered lids. Waiting, he knew, for him to make the first move.
“Sleepy?”
Another shake of her head.
He blew out a breath. “My lady,” he said. “I won’t lie to you. I am more than a little bit terrified to touch you, because I am not sure what will happen to me if I do.”
She smiled at that, something softer and more genuine than he had seen before. “What do you think it will do to you? My touch?”
Unravel me, he thought. Unknit my very being, sever sinew from bone, pluck my heart from chest, rend my soul in two. Undo me, entirely, with one brush of those lovely, lethal fingers of yours against mine.
He cleared his throat. “I have all kinds of unpleasant imaginings whirling about in my brain at the thought of it.”
“Ah,” she said. “We can’t have that. You may rest easy, my lord,” she said.
“I have kissed many a man, and none of them have died from it.” She cocked her head, studying him.
“I don’t think you will prove to be unique on that front.
” His shoulders relaxed in spite of himself, and she moved closer to him, fingertips sliding across his stomach, sending shivers of fear and anticipation jolting down his spine.
“Well,” she said. “We both know what needs to be done. Should we get to it then?”
“Wait,” he said as she tilted her face towards him, lips curving. “I have a better idea.”
Her eyes flew open, brow furrowed. “A better idea than sex?”
“Shocking, I know, but yes.” He lifted their joined hands and brushed a light kiss against her knuckles.
“Did you know,” he said, tugging her towards the bed and pulling her down next to him on the pile of soft furs, their hands still entwined, bound together with a soft strip of fabric.
, “that your ancestor, Midir, was not the firstborn child of the triple goddess known as the Mórrígan?
Her firstborn was actually a creature of unfathomable darkness, conceived by the Mórrígan, thousands of years before the Tuatha Dé Danann ever came to the land of éire – a child with no father, no birthright other than the prophecy uttered by his mother in the moment of his birth, the first wielding of truth-magic, of fáitsine in the land of éire.
“Meiche was his name, this firstborn child of the Mórrígan, and for centuries, he slumbered, undisturbed, in the cave of cats, the nest where his mother gave birth to him in the early days of the world, buried deep within the heart of the earth, until the time his mother saw fit to call him forth.”
“Stop.” She held up her free hand, her fingers light and cool against his lips. ““Are you telling me this tale because you hope to stall, to delay whatever horrors you think me to unleash upon you the moment you are most vulnerable, weak and unmoored and at my mercy?”
“Perhaps it is you who will be at my mercy,” he said, but she pressed her fingers against his mouth more firmly.
“You do not need to be frightened,” she said, far more softly than he'd ever heard her speak.
“There is certainly no love between us, but it is hardly necessary.
Consider whatever passes between us this night as purely transactional – an exchange of goods.
That's all sex is, after all,” she said, more coolly now, yet still he felt a hot rush of something indescribable flood through him at the glint in her gray eyes.
“Without it, our bonding is incomplete, and we both need its validity, do we not?”
“Yes,” he said, his lips brushing over her chilled skin.
“We do. And also – yes, I am quite frightened, my lady, of what a wedding night with you entails, but that is not my goal. I tell you this because I hope that you will see that I believe you to be more than the monster into which you have shaped yourself.”
She stared at him, expression unreadable, then glanced away, down at their bound hands. “Lord Locke,” she said. “Make no mistake – the monster shaped me, not the other way around.” She hesitated, then let her fingers fall away from his lips. “You may tell me your tale, but on one condition.”
“What’s that, my lady?”
Beneath the veil of auburn hair that fell over her face, he saw her lips curve into a smile. “It was not such a terrible idea,” she said. “Getting knackered. Would you share your whiskey with me tonight, Lord Locke?”
He grinned, turning to rummage underneath the before producing a round brown jug. “After you, my lady,” he said, handing it to her. “I did swear it, after all, that you should have the first of my tastings of drink.”
“I believe you promised the first tasting of wine,” she corrected, gray eyes glinting in the lantern light. “But who am I to argue with my lord and husband?”
“What an excellent wife you are turning out to be,” he said, eying the smooth column of her throat as she tipped her head back to drink.
She smiled as she handed the jug back to him. “Finish your story, Lord Locke,” she said. “Whilst we still have the wits to make sense of it.”
Locke kept his gaze locked on hers as he drank, long and slow, from the jug.
“Meiche was boy born with three hearts,” he continued, setting the jug down between them on the bed.
“Within each heart nestled a serpent, black of tongue and red of skin.
Each lay sleeping, infantile and weak, and so long as Meiche slumbered underneath the earth, so they too remained dormant, never growing, never changing, three tiny monsters embedded deep with the blood and bones of a small, dark-haired boy.
“When the gods came to éire and settled on its vast green plains, its rich and rolling hills, high in the craggy cliffs of the west and down by the white-sandy shores of the sea, the reigns of their kings rising and falling as the sun in the east and the west, their wars raging and subsiding only to rise up and rage anew – all the while, still the boy slept on in the cave of cats, for the Mórrígan knew it was not his time, that not yet was the world ready for its ending.
She gave birth again, another boy, golden-haired and bright as the other was dark, and to him she gave the name Midir, the judge.
Still the boy with serpents in his hearts slept on.
Mortals came to the shores of éire, and new realms were forged from the magic-steeped soil of the cave of cats, that would become the realm of Ráth Cruachan.
Hundreds of other-lands ruled by the gods and their kin, the domain of the sídhe-beasts and the fairy-folk, and the resting places of the ever-living gods and the good-hearted mortals, far across the star-studded sea.
“And the Mórrígan looked upon the world and deemed it time for Meiche, her firstborn child, to wake.
“But,” said Locke, his fingers stroking hers as they passed the jug of whiskey back and forth between them in a silent communion.
“She was betrayed. A son of the Dagda, a healer by the name of Dian Cécht, learned of the boy and the prophecy that the Mórrígan had made at the moment of his birth – that he, once grown, would belch forth three serpents of insatiable appetite, which would crawl about the earth and consume all life, the ruination of the realm.
Dian Cécht could not bear the thought of it, the ending of so many lives, and thus he slipped in to the cave of cats while the boy napped and slew him, slitting his throat with a god-made knife, forged in the smithy of Goibniu himself, then cut out his three hearts and burned them in the fire before casting their ashes into the dark rumbling waters of the An Bhearú.
“To his horror, the river began to churn and boil, screaming in agony as the venomous ashes of the heart-serpents mixed and mingled with its once clear-running water.
The fish shriveled and the otters screamed as they burned alive, the mallards turned to dust and bone, and anything green and growing that fed from its water withered away, leaving death and despair in their wake.
“But then the waters settled, and the sky cleared, and Dian Cécht heaved a great sigh, for the realm was safe from the monster that lived within the three hearts of Meiche, the son of the Mórrígan, the destroyer of the world.”
Rory studied him for a moment, sipping from the jug of whiskey. “And what lesson,” she asked, “does my husband expect me to learn from such a terrible tale of woe?”