Coveted

  Chapter 17

  I did not sleep well that night. My mother had been given another night off, so she was waiting when Bran brought me home. I couldn't sit in a room with anyone normal. I was still working too hard to understand everything of the evening so I headed to bed. That had proven to be just as bad an idea. Without a good distraction, my mind had been free to torment me until dawn, when exhaustion overpowered it.

  When I awoke at midday, I shambled to the living room and flopped on the couch. I could hear Riley snoring down the hall but I doubted my mother was still asleep. Given that it was a Saturday morning after a night off, she was more likely running all the errands that tended to back up during the week.

  I stared at the blank TV as I tried to reengage my thought processes. All I could think of was how much I needed Bran. It was his touch that spurred my lungs to take in oxygen. But I needed perspective. I had been lacking it and if I had had any, meeting Alistair might not have shaken me as it did.

  I grabbed my phone from my coat pocket. Without meaning to, I navigated to my photos and stared at the smiling image of Bran. I shook my head clear and texted Michael. He would think I was crazy but Maria was right, he deserved better. We were best friends. If I couldn't tell him this, then what kind of relationship did we really have?

  Can I come for cereal? I typed.

  I did not mention what had happened the night before or anything about what I had learned about Bran or Alistair.

  He wrote back: Sorry, no. At the mall.

  Me: You???

  Him: Shut it. Maria needed help that YOU didn't give.

  He had nerve.

  Me: Carrying all her purchases?

  Him: Won't be home til late. Talk tomorrow.

  Me: Whipped.

  He didn't write back.

  I wandered to the kitchen to make some tea. I considered going to the mall to find Michael but Maria's confession of the day before nixed that idea. I didn't want her to think I was going to use my new knowledge to interfere. Instead, I stayed at the kitchen table, surfing the news on my phone and drinking tea. Halfway through an article about the IMF, I shut off my phone and pushed it away. My answers weren't in world politics.

  I leaned back and stared through the kitchen door. Only one thing had given me any answers so far, even if I hadn't always interpreted them correctly but I needed to know why Alistair and Bran hated each other so much when both claimed to be protecting me and why I had chosen the sides I had.

  I returned to my room and sat on the bed. With a deep breath, I reached into the drawer of my nightstand.

  I was shaking, cold, and completely soaked through. Every other breath forced more earth into my mouth but I dared not spit it out. At least the earth smelled better than the decay and ash around us. The footsteps around me seemed far louder than the rain pelting the boards on top of me.

  "We'll be slaves for sure!" Siobhan said in a whispered panic.

  I hushed my sister as best I could without moving or adding to the dirt already pressing against my mouth. She stayed quiet but I could feel her shaking was as bad as mine. The burning in my chest, which had blasted through me just before the attacks had started, had finally begun to lesson.

  "Over here!" A man called and any life that had remained in me drained into the ground. They must have heard us. The rain was so heavy. I had no idea how.

  I had no voice left to scream when two large men lifted the plank off us and threw it to the side. It broke in a loud bang and clatter as it hit a pile of rubble. I just stared up at them, panting and wide-eyed. I could not see their faces, a third man was holding a torch behind them so that they were only in silhouette.

  "Kill us!" Siobhan begged. "I don't want to be a slave!"

  "Siobhan, be quiet," I ordered out of the side of my mouth.

  The men seemed to be ignoring us. The man holding the torch looked over his shoulder. "We found them," he called.

  "But that's what they do to girls," Siobhan wailed. "They'll rape us and marry us off to old men!"

  "Siobhan! Be quiet!" They weren't moving at the moment but I didn't want her giving them ideas.

  A young man with a large fur draped across his shoulders walked up behind the torch bearer. "We found his daughters," the torch-bearer said.

  He was only just a man. As he stepped into the light and looked down at me, I took in a young Alistair.

  "There they are," he said as he walked forward to kneel before me.

  Siobhan had buried her face into my side. I wrapped my arm around her to hold her close but did not take my eyes from Alistair. He reached out a hand. I stared at it and then back at his face.

  "It's alright," he whispered. "I'm a friend of your father's. His messenger came to us for help." He looked around. "It appears we were too late."

  I followed his eyes to take in the burning remnants of the castle. The great hall was little more than rubble. It had been no match for the catapults.

  He looked back at me and I at him. When I did not move, he smiled. "It's alright, Ilia. I promise nothing will happen to you."

  "M-m-my father?"

  His smile faded. "Come on, Ilia. It's not safe to linger here." He had not withdrawn his hand.

  I looked down at Siobhan who was still crying into my side. "Siobhan, let's go." She shook her head. "It's alright Siobhan. They're friends." I could not convince her to extract her face from my ribs but I gave my hand to Alistair. His smiled broadened as he helped me, and I in turn helped Siobhan to her feet.

  Yet another man ran to join us. "Sire, I have an urgent message." He handed a scroll to Alistair, who unrolled it.

  Something fell to the ground at his feet. I did not see what it was. He bent to pick it up too quickly, but did not look at it at first, instead reading the message before the rain washed it away.

  His face darkened as he read. He looked at the small object that had fallen out of the parchment, holding it up to the torchlight and turning it over and over. It looked like little more than an old rock but as he turned it, the light caught something shiny on the surface and blinded me. His fingers tightened around it and stuffed it into a pouch on his waist. He crumpled the parchment before throwing it aside.

  I could see his shoulders heaving. After a moment, he looked down at me, but he said nothing. Then he looked at his men. He pointed to one. "Seamus, you stay with me." He pointed to the torch bearer. "Colin, take Siobhan and the troops back home as fast as you can. Keep the people safe. It is possible Sheehy's band will attack there." He looked around at the rubble and then at me. "Apparently there is nothing this devil won't do."

  I held tightly to my sister. "We go together," I insisted. Siobhan's warning might have been hysterical but it was no less true for her panic. Even if he had meant well, he had just confessed he was sending my sister to a possible target for the same army that had destroyed my home.

  His face did not soften. "If you wish to bring death to you and your sister, she may come. But to keep you both alive, I must separate you. I promise, she will be safe. My men will let no harm come to her. As the daughter of a dear friend and a great chieftain, I will ensure she has the best life can offer her. I will find her a rich and kind husband. You need not worry for her safety."

  I kept my eyes locked on his. "And mine?"

  He stayed quiet at first. The pain on his face made him look more like the aged warrior I knew. He looked down at the pouch at his waist. "You are going as far away as we can get you."

  "You haven't gotten up yet?" My mother called.

  The familiar thump of the stone hitting the carpet confirmed that the vision was over. I stared at it as I felt the grief of the loss of my family and the fear of my unknown fate still pooling in my blood. I looked at my hands. I lifted a lock of my hair. It was dry. I looked down at my body, nearly full grown, not the small child who had hidden under rubble.

  As reality began to register in my pores, logic slowly returned. There could be no doubt now about why Bran and Alistair ha
ted each other. I stared at the stone. Bran had been chasing me. He had destroyed an entire castle and its inhabitants in his search of me and Alistair had been trying to save me from the same fate.

  I wrapped my arms around my middle and rocked. My efforts at self-comfort were pitifully weak. The tears came.

  "Lucina!" My mother called again. "Don't sleep the day away, you'll feel awful."

  "I'm just reading," I called back.

  My mother said nothing. There was nothing she needed to say but her silence made me wonder if she suspected something was wrong. Something was wrong but how could I explain any of it to her? She would think I had lost my mind.

  The gnawing demanded I go to Bran. It did not matter to it what he had done. I swallowed hard. It might want him but my reasoning mind did not think it wise. I stared at the stone. There had to be more. There had to be something I was missing. What was Bran to me? Why did he care about me at all? Why did I love him so much when history had seen me do everything I could to escape him?

  The stone had better have more for me. I picked it up.

  I sighed as I traced the knotwork dove with my finger. As I tickled Bran's ribs, he growled. "Dangerous ground, lass" he muttered sleepily. His burr was strong. His skin was so much softer against my cheek than the rough hay beneath us. It smelled sweeter too, like a promise of good things. The hay's smell of dry, hot earth could not compete.

  "How did you get it?" I asked, without heeding his warning. I looked up at his face. It was thinner and younger than the face I knew. He was not yet a man. His chest was smooth. Only a few remnants of nicks and cuts marred his flesh.

  "Born with it. Mother said it proved I was a gift from the gods." He chuckled. "I doubt that. I was a wretched brat."

  I could feel the animal purring in my chest. It was content, for now. It would demand more later, as it always did. I stopped tracing the dove and snuggled closer. "What do you think it means?" I muttered into his side.

  "What it means or doesn't mean has made no difference to my life."

  I pouted. "Thasna fun."

  He cracked open an eye and peered down at me. "You know what it means to me?" he said. "It means that for the rest of my life, when I looked down at it, I will remember this moment, right here, with you. It means that no matter what happens, I will always have this memory and so it means you. You are my dove."

  I looked down at our entangled feet. "No matter what happens..." I whispered. I bit my lip. I hadn't told him. I had wanted to pretend it wasn't true, but it was. It would happen eventually. If my father knew what was happening at this moment, he would have my lover disemboweled in the courtyard. I did not want to think what would become of me. Unbeknownst to him, I had already lost one of the terms for his negotiation. I buried my face into Bran's side. "We should run away," I breathed against him.

  "Aye," he murmured. This was not the first time we had discussed it but fear had kept us where we were. This time, I was serious. What loomed before me was too dreadful to stay and face.

  I shook my head. "I don't want to leave. Here, it's like finding the edge of beauty in the clouds."

  I could feel him lift his head but I kept my eyes on our toes. "Dove?"

  My cheeks were wet. My hands trembled and I pressed myself more firmly against him to keep myself still. I could not be taken away from him. If we were parted, my soul would die.

  "Please, tomorrow night," I begged. "Please, let's just grab what we can and leave. It doesn't even have to be tomorrow. Let's go now."

  The hay crunched beneath us as he shifted to lift his weight. I refused to move. I held him tighter and kept my cheek pressed against him.

  "You're mad," he said. "With nothing but the clothes on our backs? We'd be dead within the day."

  "Better that than staying here." Now my voice began to quaver as much as my shoulders.

  "Dove, what is it?" He used one finger to tilt my face up to him. His brow was creased with concern; his lips pressed together in a firm line.

  The warmth of the barn had been banished by the drafts.

  "My father... " Why had I chosen to tell him? I couldn't hide it now. I should have stayed quiet. "I will have a husband within the month."

  His eyes darkened.

  "We knew this would happen," I insisted. "Father has been negotiating for months. It was inevitable we would have to face this. But I can't live without you. You are too much a part of me. We need to run."

  He nodded. "Get dressed. We leave tonight."

  I rolled away from him and grabbed my chemise and tunic, pulling both over my head at once. It helped that they had been removed at once. I pulled on my mud-covered slippers.

  "What are we going to do?" I asked. He had been right that leaving just as we were was too dangerous.

  "I'll have to get back to the barracks to get my sword," he said. "Can you sneak into the kitchens?"

  I nodded.

  He had already folded and belted his kilt and was now reaching for his boots. "Good," he said. "You can get us some food. There is a passage through the crypt we can use. It lets out by the waterfall. It only ever has one guard. He won't be a problem."

  I swallowed. "Do you have to kill him?"

  He paused mid-tug on his boot. "Yes."

  I wished we could leave the killing behind too but life refused.

  He stood and climbed to the edge of the hay loft. He looked over his shoulder. "Meet me back here as soon as you can."

  I nodded and the next moment he had dropped down and was out of sight. The creak of the barn door was unnoticeable during the day. Now it shrieked in my ears.

  I scurried to follow. Holding onto the edge of the loft, I lowered myself before letting go to drop on the ground. My knees buckled and I tottered onto my backside. With a curse, I stumbled to my feet and ran for the door.

  It was still open a crack. I peered through before opening it just enough to squeeze through. There were no torches here so I was hiding in the darkness. It was why we had chosen the place for our nightly trysts.

  The door to the kitchens was just around the corner and steps away. I looked to the sky. It was a clear, warm night. There was no sign of dawn. If I was quiet, I wouldn't wake the cook.

  I tiptoed to the corner and held close to it. There was a torch just outside the door to the kitchens. I would need to be quick. I looked around for any sign of watchful eyes. When I found none, I skipped silently to the door, pulled it open and slipped inside before pulling it shut behind me. It shut with a quiet creak and thud.

  Even the kitchen fire was beginning to die down. It smelled more of cold ash than burning wood. It was late. I kept my back pressed against the door as I listened for any movement. Snoring came through a small plank of a door to the right of the fire. Slowly, I tiptoed to the shelves as I bunched up my skirt to make a pouch. I grabbed the remnants of the day's bread, a wheel of cheese, and as many apples as I could stuff into the remaining space in the pouch. I scurried back the way I had come, ignoring the roll that fell from my burden. I grabbed the door ring with the crook of my elbow and pulled it open. Too hard; it squeaked.

  I held still as I listened for any movement from behind that door by the fire. The snoring continued unhindered. Hooking the door with my ankle, I gave a quick tug to pull it shut behind me. I ran through the torchlight to the corner, only slowing to silence my steps once I was back in the shadows.

  "You think you can steal just like that and not get caught?" Yelled a man.

  I froze.

  There was a thud and a grunt.

  The man continued to yell. "Do you know the punishment for that?"

  I looked around. I was not being yelled at. It was coming from across the courtyard; from the barracks. My body went cold. My fingers went limp and my dress fell from my fingers, taking the supplies with it. They tumbled to the ground in discordant percussion. I took a step forward.

  The door to the barracks burst open against the force of my love being thrown against it. He fell to the gro
und in a heap. The torchlight from the barracks glistened off his face. The head of the barracks was immediately upon him and practicing his punches on my love's face.

  "No," I whispered. They would kill him. If I thought it would help, I would run forward and demand they release him, but I was just a girl and my appearance in the middle of the night, coming to his aid would only seal his fate. I could only stand where I was and whisper a silent prayer over and over.

  He didn't fight back as the commander bellowed into his face even while continuing to beat it. I silently urged him to stand. Another hit and another. Why was he not fighting back? Get up. Get up! More hits. Blood was pouring from him.

  I couldn't do this. I couldn't watch as he was violently brought to death. I moved my foot forward. As my toes touched the dirt at the edge of shadow, his arm slashed through the air. The commander's bellows faded to gurgles. His body fell to the side. The men who had come to witness the beating lunged forward.

  It was too late. They fell but their screams had been enough to alert others. Guards came running from inside the barracks, from the gates, and from the walls. Messages were relayed through shouts. Within seconds, my father would be awoken.

  My love lifted his face to me, trying to see me through swollen eyes. I took another step to him. He lifted his hand to stop me. I remained frozen in the shadows. No one had seen me. They were all focused upon him.

  "I will find a way," he bellowed as more guards descended upon him. They fell in his whirlwind of blows but more were coming. There was no way he could defeat them all no matter how good he was. If he stayed, he would die. He knew it too. With one last glance, he ran to the crypts.

  I fell to my knees. My chest would rip open. The demon inside it would flee with him. It had to. It could not survive without him. I curled in on myself. The shrieking and the talons ripped their tantrum into my flesh. The wounds were not visible but they burned no less. I surrendered to it. If it were merciful, it would kill me.

  I was lying on my bed, a soft mattress beneath me. I blinked up at the ceiling.

  Bran had not yet been immortal. We had just been kids, even younger than I was now. It had been the beginning and it had happened just as he had said. I rolled onto my side, pulling my knees up to my chest. The stone lay next to my pillow where it had fallen from my fingers in my grief.

  Broken, I pulled my pillow over it to hide it. I couldn't face it again. The heartbreak it made me relive each time was too much. I couldn't use it again. It hadn't helped. With everything it showed me, the decision to trust Bran was still completely up to me and I felt completely ill-equipped to have such power.

  I wrapped my arms around my head. My body trembled. The gnawing clawed and pecked at me. The memory was too much for it. It wanted Bran. I wanted him but I couldn't trust that I should. Despite being younger, I had been braver. I also seemed to understand. I understood nothing now.

  "Honey," my mother called down the hall. "Honey, you have a visitor."

  How much later was it? It must have been late afternoon at least. The light in the room was taking on a more red hue. The blanket was on the floor by the bed and I was on my back.

  "Honey?"

  I looked at my door. I couldn't face the world. I grabbed my blanket and pulled it over myself. When my mother called again, I tightened my grip around the fabric as I pulled it around my head. The gnawing erupted into a shriek that scraped along my bones. It knew who had come.

  I wasn't ready. I couldn't face him. I tried to still my body, which had renewed my shaking. The failure of my pathetic attempt forced a convulsion out of me. I tried to stop the sob but it was out. I pressed my lips together.

  There was a light knock on the door. I should have told her to go away. I should have said I was fine.

  I wanted to run to Bran as much as I wanted to run from him. I knew what he had done to achieve immortality. I knew his role for the Morrigan. I knew death came with that but the memory of my own family being killed in his pursuit was too much. Equally strong was the memory that he was my love and the knowledge that he did it all to reunite us.

  The door creaked open.

  "Lucina?" My mother said quietly. "Did you fall asleep?"

  "Yeah." My voice was hoarse, but I hoped she had taken it for sleepiness and not the misery it was.

  "Bran's here," she said.

  I didn't need her to tell me that. The animal was losing its mind raking my insides. It needed him, but the torment was not enough to overcome my uncertainty. "I'm not feeling very well," I said.

  "Do you think you're coming down with something?" Her voice was soft with concern.

  "Maybe." I pressed my face into my pillow.

  "I'll let him know," she said. "I'll be leaving for work soon. Just rest and call the clinic if you need anything."

  "Thanks, mom," I said into the pillow. Just leave. Leave me to my misery.

  She closed the door.

  I pushed the blanket from my face. I stared at the wall at the foot of my bed. The man who would burn towns to the ground for me was just on the other side of that wall. But he was a man who could and had burned towns to the ground. I had loved him once but I had loved Alistair too. Love seemed to have no bearing on allegiance. The world was proving more complicated than my education had prepared me.

  I heard the murmurings of my mother talking to Bran, followed by the door closing. The complete silence that followed told me that it had not just been Bran who had left. It did not matter. I couldn't have talked to my mother anymore anyway.

  The light faded from my room and my side hurt from resting on it so long. I rolled over and shut my eyes. I skimmed sleep, descending only enough to relive the terror of my memories. Bran had warned me and he had been right: the stone had yet to give me a happy memory. It had yet to show me anything good from my past.

  I would figure this out without it. I couldn't take reliving the horrors of a past I hadn't even known existed months ago.

  The front door thunked shut. My mother wouldn't be back yet. She hadn't even been gone that long. Before my imagination ran with the possibilities, the gnawing's renewed eruption announced the real visitor. How had he gotten in?

  I closed my eyes and breathed. I wanted him to go away as much as I wanted to demand to know everything.

  My door creaked open. I should have wanted him to leave. His presence made my palms clammy and my heart jump into my throat. I didn't know which Bran had come, the one I loved or the one who terrified me. It didn't matter. With him so close, I wanted him there.

  "Why does Alistair think keeping us apart is protecting me?" I asked.

  Stillness. The fridge turned on with a hum down the hall.

  "I saw what you did to my home and my family." The smell of the wet carbonized wood, the burnt stone, the blood... It was there as I recalled it, even without the vivid reliving the stone offered.

  "Please," he whispered. "Don't... "

  I twisted to look at him over my shoulder. "Don't what?"

  His face was pale. "Don't hate me..."

  I sighed. "I don't hate you. I think I'm incapable of hating you. Fear you? Yes."

  His head shook from side to side in tiny movements. "That is even worse." His voice was hoarse, thickening his burr.

  I sat up and watched him. He was immortal. He was a warrior. Yet, looking back at me then, he was more fragile than fine china. "Why should I not fear you? You've killed how many hundreds in your pursuit of me?"

  He stepped forward. "That's not fair."

  "How is it not fair? You have been chasing me all this time and destroying anyone who gets in your way. You are the chosen warrior of a death goddess. Of course you frighten me now that I've seen what you can do."

  His jaw tensed. I could hear his teeth grinding but his eyes did not speak of anger. They showed too much exhaustion. "I told you when I met you that I had no interest in forcing you into anything," he said, "It was the truth. I never searched for you without regard for your feelings. I nev
er killed without thinking about why I was doing it. I did it because I had too. I still only do it if I have too. Morrigan hates it. I'm not some blood thirsty monster whose lost sight of everything except the adrenaline of murder. And I would never direct any of my power at you. Ever. I love you, my dove, and I will not apologize for you being the only thing that matters to me."

  I hugged my knees against my chest and stared at my toes. The night in the barn could not be banished either. The complete happiness I felt laying against his body and the soul destroying loss as I watched him beaten. Could I have survived a thousand years yearning for him without having him?

  "Please," he begged. "Don't let them win again. Don't let them use magic and tricks to convince you to run. Whatever that thing showed you, it wasn't everything."

  "No," I said to my knees. "The stone hasn't shown me everything but it hasn't just been reasons to run from you either." I looked at him now, to take in the face I had remembered. His jaw was more square and defined than when he had been young. His shoulders had broadened before he gained immortality. But the boy my soul had fallen in love with was clearly there in the pained face that stared back at me.

  "Why did we fall in love?" My question was genuine. How did anyone become so tied to another they were willing to go to the lengths he had? And what about that made someone else want to pull it apart?

  He shook his head as he approached the bed. He knelt down beside me. "I don't know. I've never known the why but from the moment we met, we have been drawn together and there has never been any room, no matter how small, for anyone else inside my heart. Nothing and no one else means anything except you."

  The gnawing and I agreed with him and the pull was far too strong for logic to restrain. I leaned against him. He wrapped his arms around me and rested his chin on my head. He was as warm and soft as a blanket and as immovable as steel. I sunk into him.

  "I loved Alistair too, once," I admitted. I had not felt drawn to him in the same way but in the visions, I had truly loved him. Now, that love felt like a story belonging to someone else. The only story that belonged to me was Bran.

  He said nothing at first. When he spoke, his voice was ragged. "I am aware of what happened between you."

  I wrapped my arms around him and squeezed. It was a feeble gesture but I hoped it reassured him. "Is this really all just petty, jealous competition?" I lamented.

  He gave a derisive snort that shuddered his shoulders. "People don't give up the freedom of mortality for petty competitions."

  I took a deep breath and indulged in his smell of ancient Scotland. I closed my eyes to indulge in his warmth. My heart rate was finally beginning to calm. "Then why did Alistair?"

  "I've never known," he whispered.

  "Bran..." In a way, I felt he already knew, but I needed to voice it out loud as much for him as myself. The shock of what I had relived was subsiding. The present, this moment, was perfect and that was all that mattered.

  "Yes, dove?" He said softly.

  "There can only ever be you."

  His embrace tightened. "To the end of my life, dove."

  "Beyond the end of mine."

  Bran and I had stayed wrapped in each other's embrace until the early morning, when he slipped out of the house before my mother came home.

  I checked my phone. It had been on silent and so I had not expected the list of messages awaiting me. Several messages Bran had left from the day before. My silence had worried him far more than he had let on when we talked. Seeing it from his point of view, I could understand it. He had sacrificed so much to see us back together. The chance it was all for nothing would be more than I could take. I didn't know how he had coped for so long.

  There were also texts from Michael, ones that did not make complete sense to me: Home early. Need to talk. You there? You and Bran alright? Lu, what's going on?

  I still hadn't told him the truth about Bran. The longer I waited, the less I knew how without sounding like a lunatic. Michael would never understand. It went against everything he thought he knew about the world. I shut off my phone without writing back.