Chapter Sixteen
Fionn
I went with Darragh to the part of the house where Ehlbert had put him and my other soldiers for what was left of the night.
Not that I slept at all. I sat in a chair in Darragh’s room, by his window, sunk in misery.
I listened to him toss and turn and trying not to think about the dull ache in my head and the way Braden had looked at me, imploring me to believe him.
I tried not to think of how he’d pleaded with me to trust him instead of the evidence of my own eyes.
Tried not to think of those beautiful eyes of his spilling over with tears as I shouted at him in Tadgh’s room and threatened to kill him.
How I’d called him names and drew my sword and told him I’d paint the walls of Tadgh’s room with his blood.
I must have been half out of my mind with outrage and fury and jealousy to threaten him like that.
Not to mention some other powerful emotion that felt a great deal like grief.
Though why should I feel that I had no idea.
It wasn’t like I loved him. It wasn’t like I’d suffered some great loss.
I barely knew him, really, even though I’d foolishly rushed into marriage with him, seduced by his incredible beauty and the promise of his father’s kingdom.
He’d slept in my arms every night since.
Would I ever hold him like that again? Pain struck me deep in my chest as I thought I probably never would. I might not be able to put a name on what I felt for him, and it wasn’t love, but it was powerful. Enough so that it would probably kill me.
How was any of this possible? How was the son of King Callum really some kind of demonic creature?
I’d long suspected something like it, of course, from that day in the outpost outside of Jorvik, when he said he read the demonic script the ogre left on the walls written in the blood of her victims, but I’d never suspected the extent of it.
At our wedding ceremony when the cross of the goddess had burned his lips when he tried to kiss it as the priest had wanted us to—that had definitely been an early sign of trouble.
And when he alone among my men at the river on the way to the Gorian kingdom recognized the demonic nixie and banished him with the words he spoke to the creature.
None of that had made sense, but at the time I’d reminded myself that his mother had been “moonstruck,” and he’d had a strange upbringing by his grandmother, the two of them alone and isolated in the woods from what he’d told me.
He had looked right at me and grinned last night, as I stood in the door, watching him rutting on top of Tadgh.
He’d laughed at my bellow of rage and then he’d flown to the window and through it.
He had flown! Like some kind of pureblood demonic creature.
It was inconceivable to me how he had managed to conceal his true nature from me for so long.
I had truly powerful magic of my own and not once had I noticed the slightest hint of corruption about him. I had tasted the air he had exhaled the first night I saw him and picked up nothing more than his Faery blood and the faintest hint of brimstone, so slight I thought I must have imagined it.
If he’d been demonic, it should have—would have—been strong and unmistakable, like it had been in Tadgh’s room when I first came in. It was impossible that he could have hidden it from me. It was simply something that couldn’t have happened…
I think I stopped breathing for a moment as the realization hit me.
It couldn’t have happened. It couldn’t have happened!
Either I’d been dreaming or that thing literally had not been Braden, but a shapeshifter who had taken his form.
Ogres were known to be shapeshifters. And when I’d seen him, lying on top of Tadgh’s naked body and kissing him, fondling him—well, I had simply lost my mind.
I’d been so jealous I couldn’t think straight.
I jumped to my feet as the sudden awareness of what I’d done hit me like a blow to the chest. I had threatened him with my sword, called him a liar and a demon and shouted at him that I was going to kill him.
He must have been terrified, but still he tried to hold his ground and face me.
He hadn’t backed down but tried to explain.
And he had even come to my aid when Tadgh struck me from behind.
In return, I dragged him to our bedroom, where so recently, I’d held him in my arms as he slept, and I’d had him bound to the bed.
I put the goddess’s symbol around his slim throat, hoping it would hurt him.
I’d taken his boots so he couldn’t run and strongly implied I’d be back to kill him in the morning.
He must have slipped his boots on in a hurry when he left our room because he hadn’t been wearing any stockings on his feet, so when I’d pulled them off him, I saw those small, white feet of his with the toenails like little pearls at the end of his toes, and I wanted to scream at him and hurt him the way I was hurt and then cry over him as I held his body next to mine.
This would drive me crazy before it was done—if it ever truly was.
Everything I’d done had been designed to frighten and hurt him. To humiliate and demoralize him and make him feel half as crushed as I felt. But what if I were wrong?
Oh goddess, what had I done? I surged to my feet and ran toward the door to go upstairs to him, and I could hear Darragh calling after me and scrambling to follow.
No doubt he thought I’d taken leave of my senses, and maybe I had.
I ran to the main part of the house and made my way upstairs.
Everything was quieter now after the terrible scene I’d caused.
I flung open the door only to find the room empty.
Frayed ropes were still attached to the bed frame and the chain with the symbol of the goddess was now lying in the middle of the bed.
Braden was gone—into the night with no coat and no boots and no weapon to defend himself.
Where had he fled to? What had he been thinking?
A treacherous voice inside me said he was probably thinking that I was coming back soon to kill him, like I’d promised him I would, and I fell to my knees on the floor.
****
Braden
My grandmother used to tell me she feared her family—or at least her own offspring—were inherently wicked creatures, because of Zaguel, and they were “cursed” never to prosper, because of what she’d done.
Her “terrible sin,” she called it. She had once lain with a “watcher,” and it had been the ruination of her life and that of her child.
Considering the cruel turn my life had taken, I began to think she could have been on to something, after all.
She told me that the Bible said that God opposed the wicked and their ways. She said their actions would ultimately lead them to ruin. I knew now that she must have been right.
For a long time, I thought my poor grandmother had been simply raving, out of her head in her last illness.
She had died from the White Plague, a terrible wasting disease that ate away at her muscles and flesh, literally “consuming” her body, no matter what I tried to do for her.
I still remember the hollowness of her eyes, and the coughing that went on all day and night.
Not to mention the high fevers and night sweats every night that left her so exhausted and weak.
“I never told you about your grandfather, did I, sweet boy? I always promised you I would,” she said to me, late one night when I was sitting up with her.
I had tried to ease the relentless coughing with a healing potion I’d gotten from the same old wise woman, herself incredibly old by that time, that she had taken me to when I was a little boy.
“I was sixteen years old, and his name,” my grandmother said, “was Zaguel, or at least that was the name he told me. He was so beautiful, Braden, with his silvery hair and the bluest eyes I ever saw. Like yours—like the sky on a summer’s day.
I knew even then that he couldn’t have been a mortal being.
But I didn’t care. I was so lonely and he’d come to me in my time of need. I thought he might be an angel.
“He first came to me at evenfall at my family’s cottage in the woods, while I was sitting by the doorstep, carding wool to spin the next day in what was left of the dying daylight.
My father was gone by then and I knew my mother was attending a young mother giving birth, and she wouldn’t be home until morning, but I wasn’t afraid to stay by myself. I’d done it many times before.
“It wasn’t quite dark, you see. It was that lovely twilit time of day between light and dark.
Caught between the two and neither one nor the other.
Like Zaguel was himself in a way…and he seemed so sad.
The saddest, most melancholy being I ever met.
So filled with sorrow and regret that nothing I could say or do could ever reach him. And I tried so hard…”
She’d trailed off then, overcome by weakness and the relentless, racking cough that brought the bright red flecks to her lips. I wiped them away, gave her water and tried to get her to rest, but she wouldn’t, not until she’d told me everything she remembered.
The coughing interrupted her story again and again, until she was too weak to continue any longer. She’d tried to tell me later, though, the next night, and then again, night after night, lost in her memories of him, right up until the hour of her passing.