Page 42 of Dark Embrace

He stiffened.

“You need comfort,” she whispered unsteadily. She laid her cheek on his trembling back. “Let me comfort you.”

He turned. Suddenly she was in his arms, his hands hurting her shoulders. “Well,” he snarled, “ye can comfort me the way the camp whores do.”

“I will comfort you as a friend.”

“I dinna have friends,” he shouted at her, shaking her.

“You are so wrong. You have me.” Her own tears finally gathered.

His eyes widened. “Dinna weep fer me!”

He still gripped her, but she lifted her hand and laid it on his rough cheek. “There is hope. I began a communication with Ian. It may take some time, but we will find out what he wants, and then we can release him.”

“I canna release him,” Aidan cried.

His tears were falling again, over her hand, and his rising grief filled her, too. She caught his beautiful face in her hands. “Let me help you. We can find a way to release Ian together.”

He seized her wrists so hard that she tensed in alarm. “How can ye help me? Yer a virgin,” he mocked cruelly.

She understood his fury, his need to lash out. “It’s okay.”

“I like courtesans and whores,” he hissed.

“I am not leaving you like this. In fact, I am not leaving you anytime soon.” She stroked his jaw.

He threw her hands aside. “Dinna touch me! Dinna come close. I dinna want yer friendship an I dinna want yer warm little body in my bed. I want power. I want blood,” he shouted at her. “I want my deamhan father’s head!”

Brie cringed, Aidan’s wrath filling the night, filling her. It was so savage. “I know you do. I want revenge, too.”

“Ye ken nothin’! I want my son!”

“I know!” she cried, seizing his hands. His pain-filled, blue gaze met hers. “Aidan, Ian is dead. You have to let him go.”

“He’s my child! How can I let him go?” he cried, and tears streaked down his face.

“You can…and you will,” she whispered.

He jerked away from her hands. “I canna leave my son!”

“Then you are selfish,” she said. “Can’t you see that your poor son wants peace, and until you give up, let go and stop this vengeance, he will never be at peace?”

His eyes were huge. “Damn ye, Brianna!”

Aidan strode toward the forest. She watched him until he vanished into the darkness there. Hadn’t Grandma always said that the truth hurt the most of all? She tripped, stumbling down the hill, crying now. She hadn’t meant to be cruel, but she had spoken the truth. If Aidan could only see what he had to do, then he could find peace, too.

And maybe he’d recover his soul, at last.

CHAPTER SEVEN

FROM THE EDGE OF THE FOREST, Aidan stared down the ridge, watching her stumbling to his tent. When she was safely inside, the handful of men he’d chosen to protect her clearly at their posts, he stared blindly into the night.

There was hope?

If he dared believe that she might truly speak with Ian and then she failed, he might finally die from the pain. It had been eating him alive for sixty-six years, and he knew he could not withstand it for much longer.

But he did secretly hope she might succeed, otherwise she wouldn’t be in his tent.