With a snort and a shake of his head, he smoothed the blade around the muscular curve of the wooden dragon’s hind leg. If he remembered correctly, Mother Sinclair’s exact words were that the youngest of the four sisters was strictly off limits and she would physically alter any man thinking otherwise into a hobbled gelding. That brutally clear announcement was but another reason he had erred in his choice of which Sinclair woman to take to wife.
But now another conversation from those forgotten memories pushed to the forefront of his mind. Mother Sinclair had revealed that she knew his personal history. Sworn she knew his true lineage and the details of his curse. He squirmed on the hard cold block of wood and stared down at the scuffed toes of his black boots. How could it be? The cryptic old woman had also told him in veiled murky words that he was meant for one of her granddaughters, but she had failed to mention which damn one.
“Stop mucking up yer future by wallowing too long in yer past. Ye always did overthink things. No good will ever come from reliving what ye canna change. Ye should have learned that lesson well enough by now.” Graham raised his glistening black head until the twisted horns sprouting in front of his armored earflaps nearly bumped the roof of the cave. The dragon’s great glowing eyes narrowed into piercing slits that shifted into an even darker glare when Ronan failed to respond.
With a disgruntled huff, the scaly beast stiffly rose from the ledge, stretching and bowing his spiked back like a gigantic house cat rising from its nap beside the hearth. He swung his steaming muzzle to within inches of Ronan’s nose. “Dinna ignore my words, Ronan. I am not one of yer gathered orphans awestruck by yer bloodline. Nor do I fear to tell ye what ye need to hear. Ye should ken that well enough by now.”
“Ahh, my friend. Have ye never heard that if ye fail to remember yer past, ye are doomed to repeat yer mistakes?” Ronan shoved Graham aside and edged closer to the mouth of the cave. He held the finished carving up to the weak sunlight flooding across the entrance. The finished carving was a mirror image of Graham, down to the mail-like scales shining across his sides. Would that he could shape his life as easily as he shaped wood into whatever he envisioned.
A pang of sadness twitched through his core as he closed both hands around the carving. He could never forget the past and all his mistakes. Among his greatest regrets were the two painfully short-lived marriages preceding the debacle at Clan MacKenna. Lady Kenna Sinclair of MacKenna keep was not the only wrong path his intuition and quest for freedom had tricked him into following. His other marriages had abruptly ended when each wife in turn had done her best to gift him with an heir. Each had died. As had each of his infant sons.
Sadness weighed heavy on his heart. If he but looked to the north, he would see the cemetery cliff with the white stone cairns of the innocents he had made the mistake of drawing into his life. Love had not factored into either of the marriages, but Ronan still regretted his part in the shortening of their lives. What an unforgivable waste. If he had not erred and chosen the sweet maids in an attempt to bring a bit of warmth into his world, perhaps they would still be alive to this day.
Ronan bowed his head and closed his eyes. Damn his father’s crazed wife and her curse. He agreed with Graham in hoping the woman of darkness who had cursed them now suffered in the worst level of hell.
“Ye nay ended their lives. Surely ye know that.” Graham stretched his long slender neck across the strand of jagged rocks and peered down into the blue-green depths of the rippling loch. “Ye had no way of knowing for sure if the curse would take them. Each of us has our own fate, old friend. Theirs was to leave behind the squalor of the poorest of clans and know a short time of ease before they passed beyond the veil.”
“All the same—” Ronan shuttered his mind against the painful past, locking the memories back into their dark corners. He slid his knife into the sheath strapped to his leg and placed the carved dragon on a stone shelf just inside the cave. “I shall not return to MacKenna Keep. Their clan is strong and prosperous. The Lady Mairi Sinclair needs no saving. She has Mother Sinclair to protect her.”
As he spoke Mairi’s full name, an odd twinge stirred deep in his heart. The more he decided to abandon the idea of seeking out yet another wife, the stronger and more insistent the twinge regarding her became. Ronan swallowed hard and thumped his chest. Perhaps he had eaten a bit too much char as well.
A sly smile curled a corner of Graham’s black leathery mouth as he winked a great golden eye. “Aye. Yer words dinna echo the wants of yer heart. Though ye’ve nay even met the woman, I believe yer soul has already noticed the Lady Mairi a bit more than ye will admit.” Graham thumped a curled claw on Ronan’s breastbone. “Yer heart wishes to see the lass and decide for itself.”
He shoved Graham’s claw aside. “And have ye also forgotten that my last visit to MacKenna keep ended in a duel nearly to the death?” Ronan stomped to the edge of the stone slab jutting out from the face of the cave and lifted his face to the wind. The crisp clean breeze coming across the water stroked him as though attempting to soothe his mind.
“Aye. I remember.” Graham resettled his folded wings along the ridge of his back and wound his massive girth down the narrow path cut through the sun-bleached fingers of sharp stones lining the hillside. In one smooth motion, he slithered off into the sparkling water without so much as a single splash. The elongated shadow of his swimming form shimmered black beneath the rippling waves. The surface erupted with a snorted fountain of crystal droplets as Graham’s head broke up through the barrier and his long slender neck rose above the water. “I also remember yer stables are now home to a pair of the biggest damn horses I have ever seen. I believe they were a gift from Clan MacKenna, were they not? A gift for handling a verra difficult situation with a great deal of honor and care? I daresay Chieftain MacKenna and his clan would welcome a visit from the recipient of those fine warhorses.”
Graham always had to have the last word.Máthairhad said he had been that way as a lad, and Graham had not lost the trait when cursed. Ronan shrugged his dark plaid over his shoulder and turned to climb the narrow stone steps leading to the top of the cliff. After centuries of friendship with him, Ronan had found the best way to win an argument with the stubborn Graham was to ignore him and walk away.
“So ye will be going then?” Graham rolled like an oversized log to float on his armored back. His silvery belly scales glinted just above the surface of the water. Idly paddling with the webbed toes of one back foot, he slowly propelled his body up the loch alongside the stone staircase winding to the top of the cliff.
“Will ye be nettling me until I do?” Ronan bristled against the foolish question. Once Graham got something in his head, he never let it go. Ronan might as well order the lads to start packing provisions for the trip. He very much doubted the threat of a century of silence would sway Graham this time.
“Aye. I will. Ye already ken the truth of it.” Graham closed his eyes and stretched one wing above the surface of the sunlit water, then turned it to catch the wind. The gray leathery skin billowed full between the inky black ribs that formed the wing’s structure. The makeshift sail bobbed the dragon along on the waves like a buoy freed from its rigging. “I’m sure ye have the right of it this time. This Mairi Sinclair is the one we both need.”
A chilling howl echoed across the length of the glen, soft at first, then deepening in pitch as the mournful cry rode the wind over the choppier northern waters of the loch. An ancient knowing rippled across Ronan’s flesh as he climbed the remaining steps up the side of the cliff.Máthair’scall affirmed Graham’s opinion in a primal language Ronan fully understood. Perhaps It was time to try again.
Dare he hope Graham was right?
* * *
Ronan shifted in the saddle,wishing for the thousandth time his heritage had been different. What would life have been like if he had not been cursed whilst still in the womb? A great deal shorter.His bitter laugh misted in the cooling air of the early evening wood. Born inA.D.900, the curse had accompanied him through three centuries searching for the one prophesied to set him free.
Damn his father—victim to an evil-hearted temptress.Old Domnall had descended from the royal house of Alpine, king in fact, and he had found a rare exotic beauty to take as his wife. Not only did the woman’s looks cause men to stop and stare, but It was also rumored she possessed chilling and unexplainable powers. As it turned out, the tales were not rumors at all.
After a few short years of marriage, Domnall discovered his wife’s many talents did not include giving him the one thing in life he truly desired: an heir. The self-professed witch and high priestess to the mighty Fates was barren. So Domnall took another to his bed and bade his mistress give him a son. Ronan’s mother, Iona, the King of Alba’s favored leman, adored her king and would grant him anything within her power.
Unlike Domnall’s wife, Iona conceived quickly. The king was overjoyed and swore to embrace the illegitimate spawn as his rightful heir for the child surely had to be a son. His queen’s jealous rage knew no boundaries. The day she learned of Ronan’s conception, the sky darkened with black lightning-filled clouds and all the land rolled and shook with her anger.
Ronan urged his mount to a faster clip as his mother’s whispered recounts echoed through his mind. Iona had told him of the ear-splitting boom that had rattled the mountains one last time before all fell silent. Tears always broke his mother’s voice when she told of the unseen claws forcing her onto her hands and knees. Many a time, with a hopeless whisper into his thoughts,Máthairhad recounted the terrible pain as her body shifted and changed into the form of a great white wolf.
He remembered the witch’s curse as though he had heard it firsthand. How many times had his mentor, Graham, andMáthairtold him how the dark sorceress had cackled with glee as she pointed at the wolf and claimed that Ronan’s mother had finally taken the form of the worthless bitch she truly was?
Then the evil one had proclaimed that Domnall would die within the next year, childless but for the bastard cub that the wolf Iona carried in her womb. The royal line would die out until the day the young wolf cub discovered how to shift into the form of a man and find the woman possessing three specific qualities:lightness of step, a soothing touch, and sight for the unseen.
If the man able to shift into a wolf at will found such a woman and married her, the curse would be broken and all would be set aright. But if he erred and chose the wrong mate, his wife and any child she attempted to bear him would die within a year of their ill-fated union.
A grumbling roar thundered to his left and the sound of snapping tree trunks and branches followed. Ronan shrugged his heavy wool mantle looser around his throat and urged his horse onward. Graham had insisted on escorting them to the farthest boundary the curse allowed the beastie to go.
