Chapter 14 #2
Albionna eyed her for a long moment, her great brown eyes reflecting an odd mix of sadness and determination.
“Accountability, Divine One. When we make choices, we are accountable for those choices and must accept whatever comes to us because of them.” She nodded at the tray again.
“Please eat. Yer color is so much better, but ye must get stronger. Our chief will not allow the Weavers an audience with ye if ye dinna eat and prove to him that ye are well on yer way to reclaiming yer strength.”
“I am not a child to be kept prisoner in my room.” While Lyla appreciated Magnus’s protectiveness, she refused to be obsessively coddled. “And I can sit in a chair when I see them. I’m not so weak that I need to stay in the bed.”
“Just for this one visit, aye?” Albionna rested a hand on the nearest chair. “Besides, I have already moved them into such a pleasing arrangement. The mighty MacRaith will be impressed that ye allowed me to do so.”
Lyla recognized a load of crap when she heard it, but wouldn’t make the maid’s job any more difficult by calling her out on it. To humor the hawk-eyed servant, she took a bite of the buttery scone, then washed it down with another sip of coffee. “Delicious.”
Magnus lumbered into the room, suspiciously scanning the place like a ready-for-a-brawl security guard. When his focus landed on the breakfast tray, his brooding expression darkened even more. “One bite?”
“I like to enjoy my coffee first, and then the food.” Which wasn’t a lie, but she could tell by the look in his eyes that he wasn’t buying it.
She held up the plate that was loaded down with entirely too many scones, chunks of cheese, slices of apple, and questionable strips of something that smelled suspiciously like smoked or cured pork.
“By the way, while I appreciate Tern and the kitchen’s efforts, could you let them know I don’t eat meat? Want some?”
“Ye dinna eat meat?” He sat beside her on the edge of the bed, kissed her cheek, then scooped up the meaty strips and downed them in one gulp. “How can ye not eat meat and live?”
“Vegetables. Fruit. Cheese. Eggs. Bread. They keep me alive quite nicely.” She shrugged. “It bothers me to think about an animal dying so I can eat, so I don’t eat meat.”
He eyed her as if he’d never seen such an oddity, slowly shaking his head. “Meat makes ye stronger.”
“I’m not eating meat. If you want to, that’s your choice. No meat is my choice.” She wouldn’t yield on this one. Besides, her body probably wouldn’t even know how to digest meat. It had been that long since she’d eaten any. “Why were you gone when I woke up? You worried me.”
With a rueful smile, he brushed another tender kiss to her temple.
“Forgive me for worrying ye, my own, but I feared if I remained in our bed, my control would weaken yet again.” He pressed his forehead to her and sighed.
“I want ye healed. Rested. When ye are fully restored, then we can enjoy one another fully.”
“Our consummation was perfect,” she whispered, since Albionna still flitted around the room, doing whatever it was she did to keep everything in pristine order.
“It was entirely too brief because it had to be,” he said, “and I should have remained strong against yer temptation and waited for a more proper time.”
“Well, I’m glad you didn’t.”
His lopsided smile endeared him to her even more. It made her heart, as well as everything else, flutter. “Aye, my love,” he said. “I am glad I didn’t, too.”
A knock at the door interrupted them. Albionna flew across the room to answer it, and Magnus rose and stood in front of the bed, becoming an impenetrable wall of muscle between whoever was at the door and Lyla.
She barely shook her head at his level of overprotection, but didn’t remark on it.
He knew this world better than she did, and instinct told her it would be this way until Kcirred was conquered.
She wondered if they would send him to the abyss or if Magnus would choose to rip the druid to shreds?
Something told her it would be the latter.
Albionna closed the door and turned to Magnus. “The Weavers await their audience in the solar, my chief.” She arched a brow at Lyla. “I informed them the Divine One was not yet ready.”
“Show them in,” Lyla said. Meeting with Mairwen and Keeva was more important than coffee and scones.
The maid didn’t move. Her focus remained on Magnus.
Lyla didn’t appreciate that one little bit. She’d never liked being outranked. She lifted the breakfast tray and held it out. “I am done, Albionna. Show them in.”
“Ye’ve not relaxed in the healing waters yet this morning”—Magnus glowered at the tray as if it were a mortal enemy— “and ye’ve not eaten enough. They can wait.”
“I am neither a child nor an invalid.” Lyla scooted closer to the edge of the bed and shoved the breakfast tray at him, thumping it against his stomach until he grabbed it with both hands. “Take this. Either Albionna lets them in, or I’m going to get up and do it. Your choice.”
“They can wait,” he growled.
“Fine.” She slid her legs off the edge of the bed and started to push up and stand.
“Feckin’ hell. Stop!” He handed off the tray to Albionna, scooped Lyla up, and returned her to the pile of pillows, taking care to sit her back perfectly against them and straighten the covers across her.
Nostrils flaring like a bull about to charge, he glared at her for a long moment, then shook a finger in her face.
“Ye will stop testing me, ye ken? There are times when I know what is best for ye.”
“When we are in those times, I will do as you ask, but this is not one of those times.” She didn’t want to tarnish his image in front of the servants, but she wasn’t giving in on this, and he needed to understand that. “Can you please tell Albionna it’s okay to let them in now?” she whispered.
“Ye intend to be the end of my sanity, do ye not?”
“Not on purpose.” And she didn’t, but he was smothering her. “I’ll try to do better, but this time, I really need you to try to understand. Please?”
With a disgusted shake of his head, he sat on the edge of the bed, positioning himself between her and the seats the Weavers would occupy.
She shot him a side-eyed look. “Really?”
“Compromise,” he growled.
He was right. She needed to compromise. Slipping her hand in his, she briefly rested her head on his shoulder. “Agreed.”
“Bring them in,” Magnus told the maid.
She hurried across the room and escorted them inside.
“Congratulations on yer binding,” Mairwen said as she and Keeva gracefully crossed the room, their long robes making it appear as though they skimmed along the floor on a cushion of air. They took their seats close to the bed. “And congratulations on discovering the healing power of yer music.”
Lyla glared at them both, Keeva longer than Mairwen. She wanted to say so much to them, but it was hard to know where to start. “You lied to me,” she finally told Keeva, then looked at Mairwen. “Both of you lied to me.”
“If we had told ye the truth, would ye have believed us?” Mairwen calmly folded her hands in her lap. She tipped her head at Magnus. “Ye needed to meet yer fated mate to complete yer soul.”
“Don’t give me that selflessness crap. You lied to me for your own benefit. Not mine.”
“The tapestry of the Highland Veil must remain strong,” Keeva said. “Can ye imagine the chaos, the opportunity for evil, if the worlds crashed together, if one bled into another?”
“And the Weavers of Seven Cairns are the last left to guard the portals and protect the blessed weave,” Mairwen said. “We canna fail in our duty to the Veil, my lady—”
“Divine One,” Magnus corrected. “Ye will address her as such.”
“That’s really not necessary.” Lyla squeezed his hand.
She’d been meaning to speak with him about that Divine One title.
“I understand your duty to the Highland Veil, Mairwen. Well…sort of. Magnus explained a lot of it to me. I still say you could have handled this better. Not lied to me. Found another way to convince me to come here. You basically kidnapped me and trapped me here for fourteen days, hoping I would make the choice you wanted me to make. Luckily, I did.” She slid her hand out of Magnus’s and fisted it in her lap, something she instinctively did whenever she dared to share her past. “Trust is a big issue with me. An enormous issue.” She swallowed hard, pulled in a deep breath, then blew it out.
It was time she shared this, and then, she would never have to speak of it ever again.
“I never knew my father because he never wanted anything to do with me. Then my mother dumped me on the doorstep of an older couple she said were my grandparents. It turned out they were a foster couple selected by her and social services.” She twitched an uncomfortable shrug.
“They were kind, and I called them Grandma and Grandpa until they passed away, but I wasted years waiting for my mother to come back for me—not only because she said she would, but because they also assured me she would. She never did.” She popped her knuckles, the defense mechanism her therapist had never convinced her to give up.
“Lying to me is the same thing as telling me I’m stupid.
I have a very large problem with that, and, as you can probably imagine, I am not inclined to believe things easily or to forgive whenever I discover I’ve been lied to. ”
She thumped her knuckles against her chest, rubbing them up and down her breastbone.
“But this place talked to my heart.” She focused a hard glare on Keeva.
“You won my trust in Cincinnati”—she shook her head—“but never again.” Then she turned back to Mairwen.
“That goes for you, as well. The only reason I believed what Magnus said about you helping the people I left behind is because I saw proof of that in the Scale of Rurik.”