Chapter 15
Chapter fifteen
RORY
Five days and four nights had passed since Locke's battle with the hounds of Lugh, and he was still very pale, her husband.
Rory was loath to admit it, but she was more than a little bit impressed. No easy feat, to go toe-to-toe with Failinis himself, to withstand the howl of his winds and the bite of his teeth, ravenous and relentless – the very essence of an éraic owed, made flesh and bone.
It had been one of her brother’s favorite tales, when they were young, the story of the sons of Tuirrean.
When she had seen the beasts emerge from the shadows – scraggly black-and-blue hair and gaping jowls, as tall and wide as the most colossal of men – she had known it for what it was, and shivered, not from fear, but from longing, from grief, that this mythical creature from one of her brother’s most beloved tales should appear to call to account the éraic she had demanded of the sídhe.
She had meant to let him die, her husband, but his pain had been so very real – not the agony from his leg, although that did look nasty, but his remorse and his grief.
The hound in its triple form had been circling behind him as he had balanced so precariously on his uninjured leg, sword in hand, and she had been prepared to watch dry-eyed as they ambushed him from the back, tearing at his flesh, leaving nothing behind but a bloody mass of flesh and bone.
But then, even as three pairs of ice-blue eyes edged their way closer and closer to his unsuspecting back, his defiant, furious expression had crumpled, and he had sunk to his knees, shoulders shaking, not with cold or pain, but with bone-deep grief, and her breath had caught in her chest, because it was the twin to her own, that same bitter, broken regret that twisted her heart so relentlessly each night when she laid down to sleep.
It was impossible to ignore the knowing that rose before her in that moment, a truth too terrible and too piercing to be denied.
It was her fault, too, a shared complicity between them, the unspeakable horrors that those innocents had endured at the hands of their enemies – enemies that would had been slaughtered where they stood, defeated and beaten back long before they ever had the chance to enact such atrocities upon the innocents of the realm, had it not been for her pride.
So she had raised her hand in a wordless command, and the hell-hounds froze, shaggy ears pricking, then silently melded back into one black-and-blue furred creature before melting away into the darkness to tend to its wounds and wait until she had need of it again.
She knew she would again call it forth again someday, the hound that could never be defeated in battle.
There was no death-blow that could be given to the hound of Lugh – it was invincible and unstoppable when unleashed upon the world, and she would set it loose again one day, to do exactly what it had been born to do.
But not to Locke. He deserved, for now, at least, a reprieve.
Almost as though he heard her unspoken thought, he glanced over at her from where he sat on his horse, both of their mounts bent low over the stream as they drank.
“Sorry to disappoint,” he said, confirming that he did indeed somehow sense the direction of her thoughts.
“But it appears that I will, against all odds, survive.”
“Perhaps. But you do look rather worse for wear.”
He flashed his trademark ever-so-charming grin. “And yet here I am, still thrice as handsome as many a man. What a lucky lady you are, to be married to such a handsome lad.”
Finn made a contemptuous noise from where he sat on his horse behind them, scanning the horizon, but Tadhg and Eamon chuckled together. “That’s more like it,” said Eamon. “I was a bit worried for you, my lord. You haven’t cracked a joke in days.”
“I have been far too worried that if I opened my mouth, I would whimper like a whelp wanting for its mother’s teat.
” Locke winced as he shifted in the saddle.
“Whatever magic you mixed in that tea last evening and again this morning, bárd, I’ll grant that it has been surprisingly effective.
The pain is hardly more than a twinge now. ”
“No magic,” Finn said gruffly. “Only a very generous helping of poppy leaves so that we all might have some peace from your constant yowling.”
“I did not yowl.”
“There might have been a small bit of time there that could be considered yowling,” Eamon said tenderly. “But who could blame you? Half a dozen wolves and you escaped with just a bit of your leg chewed up? Not bad.”
Locke shot him a glare. “I did not yowl,” he said again, and Rory smothered a smile.
She hadn’t asked him to lie to his men, but he had anyway – as soon as he’d reawakened after the initial round of Finn’s begrudging ministrations, he’d looked them both right in their worried, anxious faces and made a rueful face.
“The more fool me,” he’d said faintly, his lips still tight with pain.
“Wandering out into the woods in the middle of the night at the end of winter, when they’re the most bold, the most hungry,” and Rory had stayed silent, only looking at him once Tadhg had turned away to murmur something to Eamon.
Their gazes had met then, a wordless exchange, and Rory knew that he would never tell the truth of how he had almost died that night, torn apart on the teeth of a legendary hell-hound not seen in éire for centuries now.
She hadn’t brought it up, not once during the long days and longer nights that she sat by his side, offering bone broth and hot teas to his lips, changing the dressing on his wound and applying fresh poultices under Finn’s resentful but watchful eye.
“You ought to have let him die,” the bárd had said once, as Locke lay in a feverish sleep on the ground by the fire.
“We both know how foolish that would have been. How else shall we gain access to the Albion general and the traitor king without him at our side?”
Finn had said nothing, but the unspoken reproach lingered heavy in the air between them.
“I couldn’t,” Rory had said after a moment of silence between them. “It was not the right moment.” Their eyes met in the soft glow of the firelight. “But that moment – it will come.”
Finn had nodded, a single swift jerk of his head, and that, Rory knew, was that.
Something brushed against her leg, and she jolted from her reverie, turning to see that Locke had nudged his horse close up against hers, so close that his knee touched hers. “My lady,” he said, low enough that none of the others could hear. “I don’t believe that I ever properly thanked you.”
“For what?”
“For tending to my health so devotedly these last few days, like the proper little wife that you are.”
“I thought it right, seeing as how I did promise you a recurrence of my marital duties to your lordship, in the unlikely event of your survival – but alas, given the extent of your injuries, I did not think you to be hardy enough for such pursuits.”
“Indeed,” he said, hazel eyes gleaming. “But I am feeling much better now, you know, so –”
“What a pity,” she said, waving her hand in front of her face to shoo away a dragonfly hovering nearby. “My conscience is clear, and my debt, I would argue, is paid by my ministries at your bedside.”
“Agree to disagree.” He glanced at her, keen and searching. “We should arrive at Dún Ailinne tomorrow night.”
“So your men informed me.”
“We’ll celebrate the feast of Imbolc the night after that, with my father and the general.”
“I look forward to it, Lord Locke.”
“Of course.” They sat silently for a moment, their horses nosing at the tender green buds pushing their way out of the rain-soaked earth by the stream. “She will be there too, you know,” Locke said presently. “So you should prepare yourself. “
“I know.”
“They are married, after all – have been man and wife for quite some time now.”
“I know that too.”
He slid another probing glance in her direction. “And you’re all right with that?”
“I don’t have much of a choice,” she said coolly. “Do I?” She hesitated, then let her shoulders slump. “I don’t see how he can bear it though – being wed to that.”
“Some might say the same of me when it comes to you, my lady.”
“Most, I imagine, would say that.”
He smiled at that, a flicker of his old vivaciousness returning to his wan features before it faded away again. “You are no witch,” he said. “Not like her, and he – well. He doesn’t know what she is.”
“Surely he must.”
“He doesn’t,” Locke countered. “Not, at least, the full scope of evil that she possesses, that she wields.”
“But you do.”
“Yes, I do. But, as you said, my lady – neither of us have much of a choice but to smile and play nice with such a being, do we?”
There was a tentative note in his voice, a subtle questioning, a wordless request to speak truths to one another, here in the relative peace and quiet of the murmuring stream, under the pale wan sunlight of the soon-to-be-born springtime sky.
The star in the night, they had pledged to another.
To you shall I be the star in the night, the brightness of the day, and what was truth, if not a light, unwelcome and painful as it often may be?
Rory hesitated, the confession hovering there on her lips, when she felt the sudden weight of Finn’s stare on her face, his moss-green eyes deepened to a cautionary black.
She cleared her throat, forcing herself to look back at Locke’s quizzical hazel gaze with her usual cool, secretive smile.
“Thankfully, I am very good at playing nice, Lord Locke, as you well know.”