“Nevertheless, you must deal with me.” She continued to pull the weeds from between the rocks. “Why is it secret?”
He was weakening. His hands gave him away; they were in fists at his side.
“I will not leave until you tell me,” she said.
Still, only his glare and silence met her unwavering and calm gaze.Let me help you.
He looked away from her, away from the graves and up to where some rooks were perched ominously on the highest part of the burnt wall, where a half of an old carved cross still hung. She looked from him to the graves set into the altar like those of ancient kings.
“And you call me stubborn.” She brushed the leaves and grass from the stone carving of a man’s face. Sitting back on her heels she looked up at him and said, “He looks like you.”
It was a long time before he spoke. “ ‘Tis my father.”
“And the other?”
“Malcolm, my brother.”
She frowned and stood, then looked around her and at the ruins. “These are your lands?”
“No!” he said sharply.
She stepped back as if his voice slapped her. In that single word, she heard the sound of a dark soul.
“I draw strength here. As I stand before these graves I do not forget.” With a deep concentration she could almost feel, he stared off at some distant memory and time. Both elements hardened his features and it seemed as if he was somewhere desolate and vast; he looked as if he what he carried was insurmountable. “You cannot understand.”
The rooks suddenly cawed and flapped away, one flying after a darting sparrow. When he did look at her, she caught a swift glimpse of emotion she could not name—something fragile and breakable behind the hard mask he wore and his often harsh manner.
Then it was gone, lost in a slim moment of a time, and he said coolly, “We should leave this place.”
The part of her that loved him could not ask him to explain the deaths; she could not ask for more from him. He had needed to be there and she accepted that. But not even to satisfy her natural curiosity could she make him stay where he was awounded soul, open, bleeding. “Aye. We should leave,” she agreed.
His expression held a hint of an apology and something else, another kind of sorrow, perhaps the same emotion she couldn’t read before. She held out her hand to him.
At first he stared it at as if touching her would be a mortal sin. Waiting for him felt natural to her, as did walking by his side when he joined her, and as did the feel of his warm palm against hers, and the silence cloaking them not in awkwardness, but one of those moments where words spoken aloud were unnecessary.
Each was a little puzzled by the other and lost in the curious darkness of their own thoughts and, hands still clasped, they walked out of the castle ruins together.
22
The bright morning sun bespoke of a hot day to come and brought with it some clarity for Lyall. He stood on top of the stack of rocks where years ago he had watched Dunkeldon burn, and he concentrated on the single thought that he had a mission to complete: to trade Glenna for Dunkeldon. Only one more day was left, because tonight would finally end this. Tonight, he would walk away from her.
To most, Dunkeldon was nothing but a burnt shell of a keep, a place with its glory lost except to his own memory. What value did it have? Perhaps only to de Hay and his allies who sought to gain their desires by dangling his family ruins before him.
He leapt down onto the ground and moved through the woods, his head clear, his mind focused on his goal. But before he was halfway back he stopped at the edge of the small clearing where he had played war games back when he was not living his own war.
The last place he expected to see Glenna was beneath the ancient yew. But she stood there, talking to it
“Did I imagine what I felt, Tree?” She touched the bark and stared curiously at her hand. “Do you hide fairies under your roots? Does magic pulse beneath your bark? Must I believe youare simply an old tree and my mind is bewitched?” She placed both hands flat on the trunk and leaned into it with all her weight, looking up into its wide crown. “Do you make wishes come true?” she asked and Lyall was struck by the coincidence, her image so like his own had been as a lad.
Something else hit him--a strong sense that the two of them were bound by some emotion that was kindred and otherworldly. He felt her coursing through his blood and in the marrow of his bones, and some place he could not name. His heart? His soul? His evermore?
“Hallo, little bird,” she said then she began to sing, siren music that pulled at him like before. “Bird on a briar, bird, bird on a briar…”
His resolved shattered as her song spun up into the air and around him, lifted him with its joyous notes, as if she were his hope, and the next thing he knew he was standing next to her, his arms out to her. She turned as her song waned. Under the shade of the ancient tree, she stepped into his embrace, and he made the fatal mistake of looking at her mouth.
He kissed her, because he had no other thought at that moment except to taste her, to hold her soft body to his, and yet he knew he was a madman to do this. His whole path was mad, and now his sanity constantly fought with a great and driving desire. His head cleared for a single thin moment of time and he pulled back as if he had touched hot coals.
The sense of awe in her eyes made him unable to stop himself. His mouth was on hers again, denied the strength of will to leave her untouched because of the innocent hunger he saw in her expression, her own desire clearly there for him to read and try to not act upon. He was not that noble or valiant. He had no power of self-control…only the knowledge of what was right, and he had long ago given up on doing what was right.
