Bloodchild (18 page)

She understood what he meant, but
she still didn’t like it. Back on Earth, she’d been studying Political Science
with a distant hope that she’d one day help make the world a little bit better,
possibly as part of a non-governmental organization. And here she was now, set
to duel a king to challenge his right to rule and assert her own birthright,
with the people who supported her swearing what were, in essence, feudal oaths
straight from the Middle Ages…

It was the very antithesis of what
she’d wanted to be, what she’d hoped to do, but she couldn’t see what else she
could have done to veer from the path she was on. Rhuinn needed to be deposed
and the High Families didn’t seem inclined to oppose him in the open.

Who would do anything if not her?
And how could she have any impact without support? If she couldn’t prove she
could draw guards to her, why would anyone else want to join her cause?

Swallowing her protests, she
yielded.

“All right,” she said, stifling a
sigh. “I’ll let them swear if that’s really what they want. We can do it later
today.”

Maybe pushing it back a few hours
would allow her to get used to the idea…

She was about to stand when she
realized Aedan still hadn’t moved. Kneeling as close as he was, he blocked her
way.

“Is there anything else?” she
asked, unable to silence the weariness in her voice. It felt much too early to
deal with all this.

“Dame Vivien, I…”

Aedan swallowed before he
finished. His eyes were caught between a chilling metallic blue and icy silver.
He gave a tiny shake of his head that seemed as much for himself as it was for
her and stood, retreating out of her way.

“Nothing else,” he said, and while
Vivien had a feeling that wasn’t the truth, she didn’t want to push the issue
now. Whatever it was, she’d hear about it soon enough.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Oaths

Vivien had never felt as
uncomfortable in her life as when she stood in one of the reception rooms, with
Olric and Savel kneeling in front of her, listening as first one then the other
recited the QuickSilver Oath to her. She tried her best to look appreciative
rather than distressed at the thought that these two men she barely knew were
pledging to give their lives to protect hers, but she wasn’t sure she could
control her features quite that well.

To them, maybe, she looked the
part of the silent and regal dame they wished to serve, but she had no doubt
that someone who knew her better than they did would have seen through her mask
in an instant—which was why she was very careful not to look toward Aedan as he
stood to the side and bore witness.

The next step was almost worse
than the oaths. Having welcomed them as her guards, Vivien now found herself
having to mark Olric and Savel as though they were cattle. It was what they
wanted, and they had both asked to receive the QuickSilver mark from her, but
it didn’t stop her from hating every second of it.

Savel had chosen to receive the
mark on his right arm, while Olric wanted it on his neck, “where everyone will
see,” he’d said. Vivien channeled the Quickening, using her discomfort as her
focus emotion since it was what she felt most strongly, and she did what Aedan
had explained she should: she held Savel’s arm with both hands and envisioned
his skin marked by the silvery curls of the symbol she’d learned to know so
well, the same symbol she had first seen on Brad’s hand, back on Earth, before
she had any inkling of what it might mean.

She’d expected it would be
difficult to alter skin and living flesh with the Quickening, but on the
contrary it was surprisingly easy. It was moments before the mark, as wide as
her palm, stood on Savel’s bicep. Even out of direct sunlight, it gleamed like
silver, and flexed as though it were part of his skin when Savel, beaming,
shifted his arm to have a good look at it.

Olric’s mark took even less time;
now that she knew she could do it, it was easier. It felt as awkward, though,
both because she had to hold his head in her hands and because she knew all too
well that, if she died, he’d continue to bear this mark where it couldn’t be
hidden for the rest of his life.

The next step was for her new
guards to write their names in the large leather-bound book that served as
record of all the QuickSilver guards. Vivien had seen the book in the library,
but she’d never looked at it, and felt some trepidation as she watched Savel
open it on the desk where Aedan had set it, turn the pages to the last one, and
write his name in fresh ink. Olric did the same, then blew softly on the page
before closing the book again.

The two of them were still smiling
when they took their leave, the same pride suffusing both of their faces and
erasing the few decades that separated them.

As they left the room to go back
to their training, Vivien opened the record book again. She turned the heavy
cover, and could see at once on the first page the very same oath she’d just
heard, written in elegant letters that formed a strange language she could read
as easily as English.

She flipped through the pages,
stopping here or there to take in the name of a ruler, or glance over the lists
of names of the guards who had served her ancestors. Soon, she reached the last
two pages on which something had been written. On the left, her mother’s name
graced the top of the page, with a long list of names underneath. Most were
followed by a small star.

“It means they died protecting
their dame,” Aedan said when she asked about it.

Vivien’s throat tightened.

“Anabel should have a star, too,”
she whispered. “She died because she wouldn’t tell Rhuinn about me.”

“This register is yours,” Aedan
replied. “You can change it as you wish.”

She gave him a quick glance before
picking up the quill and carefully inking a star next to Anabel’s name. As she
set the quill down again, her gaze continued to the next page. Beneath her
name, she found Brad’s and Aedan’s, and remembered how they’d sworn the oath
when they’d both been so young, little more than children.

She touched Brad’s name with her
fingertip. She missed him terribly, and had half a mind to ask if she could
reach out through the Passing Room and talk to him, but she could already guess
Aedan would have half a dozen reasons why it was a bad idea. Tomorrow, she told
herself. Tomorrow she’d get to see him.

“Dame Vivien?” Aedan said quietly
as she closed the register. He waited until she’d raised her eyes to him to
continue. “When you first came back to Foh’Ran, I asked to swear the oath back
to you. I don’t think you understood back then what it meant for us. For me.”

Vivien’s lips curled in a self-deprecating
smile.

“No, I didn’t,” she admitted. “I’m
not sure I do now, either. But I’m trying.”

Aedan nodded.

“I know you are. And I’d like to
ask…” He lowered himself to one knee in front of her. “I always wanted the
mark, from the moment I gave Bradan his. I knew I couldn’t have one yet, I
understood why, but it was always something I felt was missing. But I also knew
some day I’d be able to ask you for it. Will you please hear my oath and mark
me?”

On one hand, Vivien had heard
quite enough oaths already, and she had no desire to hear more. On the other,
Aedan had asked her before, and she suspected that if she declined now, he
would ask again, sooner or later, until she agreed. Besides, he’d already sworn
the oath, and repeating it to her wouldn’t change anything. What he truly
wanted, she knew, was the mark.

“Where would you wear it?” she
asked, swallowing back a sigh.

Something flickered over Aedan’s
face, as though he were happy but didn’t dare to hope too much quite yet.

“On my palm, please.” After a
second, he added in a whisper, “That’s where our father had his.”

Surprise left Vivien wordless, and
she could only stare at him. His palm… How many times had she dreamed of that
man whose features she couldn’t quite see, a man who bore the QuickSilver tattoo
right in the palm of his hand?

Aedan couldn’t have failed to
notice how troubled she suddenly was.

“Dame Vivien? Is something wrong?”

Blinking and pulling herself out
of her thoughts, she shook her head and took a step back, rubbing her hands
together absently.

“Nothing wrong, I just…”

She paused, unsure of herself.
She’d never told anyone about the dream because she’d always thought it was
nothing more than that: a dream. But what if she’d been wrong?

“There’s this dream I often have,”
she continued, speaking slowly. “Well, I used to think it was a dream, but I’ve
started to think it might be a memory.”

Aedan pushed himself to his feet.
When he considered her, she thought she understood why. She remembered very
little of her childhood before Earth, and every memory retrieved was like a
small victory.

“What kind of memory?” he asked.

Should she tell him? She might as
well. Maybe he’d be able to clear it up for her.

“I’m very small in the dream,” she
said, pacing back and forth through the room and letting the familiar images
play in her mind. “I’m running in the woods, and something or someone is
chasing me. I’m very, very scared. When I come out of the woods, there’s this
man standing there. The sun is behind him, and I can’t see his face, but he’s
holding his hand out to me, and I can see the mark on his palm.”

Stopping abruptly, she turned to
face Aedan.

“You said your father’s mark was
on his palm. Do you think it could have been your father?”

Aedan’s brow furrowed and he
inclined his head.

“Possibly. But not necessarily. I
don’t think he was the only guard who wore the mark on his palm.”

Disappointment flashed through
Vivien. It would have been a small thing to know who it had been, since she
still had no idea why she’d been in the woods or even anything else. But in the
absence of anyone who might remember more than she did, small things were all
she had.

“Do you remember a lot about my
mother’s guards, then?” she asked, returning to the register and opening it
again on the page titled with her mother’s name.

“Not really. We weren’t much older
than you, Dame Vivien. And we were supposed to stay out of the way of the
guards.”

She did a quick count; there were
more than sixty names on the list, broken down pretty evenly between men and
women. She paused at the names she recognized: Anabel again, Lasdan and Meriel,
Brad and Aedan’s parents, and Stephen. She taped a fingertip on that last one,
remembering vague features and pale bright eyes.

“This one,” she said, drawing
Aedan’s attention to it. “You mentioned him before, didn’t you? Stephen?”

“Lord Stephen, yes.”

“You said he was her husband,
didn’t you? How could he be her bodyguard and her husband? He swore to protect
her and obey her to the death, but how could she ask that from him if she loved
him?”

From Aedan’s puzzled look, it
seemed as though he didn’t understand what she meant.

“What better way for him to show
what she meant to him?” he asked in reply. “And what should she have done?
Refused to acknowledge his gift to her?”

The words struck Vivien like a
jolt of electricity. All this time, she’d struggled to accept that anyone would
want to swear an oath such as the QuickSilver one, but now she was beginning to
get it. It wasn’t so much about the person who swore wanting to be heroic or
anything like that; it was about how they saw the person they swore to. For
Savel and Olric, it was about how they saw in her the end of Rhuinn’s reign.
For Brad, it was about her being the person he loved. And for Aedan…

It was about the same thing,
wasn’t it?

She closed the book again, nodded,
and he put a knee to the floor again. The oath was the same she’d just heard,
but somehow he made it sound different. Perhaps it was the intensity of his
gaze, never lifting from her as he recited the words, or perhaps it was the
fact that he sounded so much like Brad.

She took his hand afterward,
holding on to his fingertips as she formed the QuickSilver symbol, making it
fit exactly into the center of his palm. When she was done, she followed one of
the silver swirls with a finger, feeling how cool it was, metallic and yet not.
Realizing what she was doing, she let go of Aedan’s hand and stepped back,
feeling heat creep into her cheeks.

“Thank you,” Aedan said very
softly as he stood. “This means a lot to me.”

The intensity in his eyes troubled
her, and she had to look away again, unable to bear seeing it any longer. She
told herself it was proof of how much he believed what he said and nothing
else, but deep down, she knew better. She’d seen that look in Brad’s eyes
before. Every time he had told her he loved her, he had looked and sounded like
Aedan did now.

Brad’s words came back to her,
those words that had made Aedan retreat two days ago. Aedan hadn’t denied them.
He hadn’t laughed them off. He hadn’t said anything at all and had just left
Brad and Vivien alone after being, oh, so careful to always be there with them.

She hadn’t wanted to think too
much about it at the moment or even since, but it was true, wasn’t it? Aedan
was in love with her, too. Every time he’d argued with her about what she ought
to do as ‘dame’ Vivien, she’d thought he could barely stand her and was making
do with the potential ruler he’d been given, but the truth, she now realized,
was much different. How hard had it been for him to keep his feelings hidden
and stick to the role of helpful guard from the very beginning? Brad had given
it a token attempt, but it hadn’t lasted beyond Vivien’s admission that she had
feelings for him, too. Aedan on the other hand…

Aedan had stood there, watching
their love grow, trying, sometimes, to remind Brad of his duty, but eventually
giving up. He’d watched what he couldn’t have and remained as loyal as ever,
both to her and to his brother.

Should she acknowledge that she
knew, that she understood how he felt? To what end? What would it help? There
was nothing she could do. She couldn’t change his feelings, and she couldn’t
return them. Acknowledging aloud what they both knew would make things more
complicated between them, and she couldn’t allow that. It was selfish of her,
but she needed him. She’d needed him so far because he knew Rhuinn and the
court and could tell her what to expect from both. She needed him even more now
that Brad had left.

In front of the other guards, and
even in front of Doril and Elver, she tried, as best she could, to be the queen
they all saw in her. It was, after all, why they had all joined her, and she
didn’t want to disappoint them. But Aedan was different. She could show him her
fears and hesitations, and act like an ‘Otherworlder’ in front of him, because
he’d already seen her that way. Just like Brad.

“Dame Vivien…”

Vivien started at Aedan’s voice
and realized she had spent a while lost in her own mind. She glanced at Aedan
and found no trace of what she had seen a moment earlier. His face was a mask,
impassible, as devoid of emotion as marble.

“If I did anything to upset you,”
he continued with a small, stiff bow. “You have my apologies.”

“You didn’t upset me,” she assured
him. “If anything, maybe I’m the one who owes you an apology. All this time
you’ve been trying to explain why you swore the oath, but I never truly
understood.”

He looked down, opening his hand
on the symbol she’d branded into his palm then closing it when he raised his
gaze up at her again. The familiar gleam had returned to his eyes.