Haunting Warrior (20 page)

No other woman would have been able to hold her head high as she entered a room such as this—especially given the manner in which she’d left it, chased by the raucous laughter and crude comments of the people before her. Sent to be defiled by the man at her side. But Saraid looked regal, brave, and Tiarnan’s heart swelled with pride in her. Her gown was wrinkled, her hair hanging in a simple braid, and yet she still managed to look like royalty ready to address her kingdom. Scared royalty, for certain, but regal all the same.

The Bloodletter said something softly in her ear, and a sudden smile spread across her face. It didn’t make it to her eyes, though. Those were guarded, watchful. When she saw Tiarnan standing by the table, they widened for a telling moment. In her hands, she clutched her bundled wedding sheets. The proof Cathán required. For a moment, he allowed himself a glimmer of optimism that he had done right by his people.

He heard his name and it pulled his attention from his sister to see who had spoken. Beside him, his two brothers stared back with blank expressions. No one else was close and the voice had been a woman’s.

“
Tiarnan
,” it came again, this time loud enough to make him jump.

“What is it?” Eamonn asked, staring at him.

The hairs on the back of Tiarnan’s neck stood on end. He recognized the voice now. Slowly he looked back to his sister. She stood stiff as a stone pillar, chin up, eyes forward. Not even looking at him. Yet it had been her voice. He’d swear it.

When they’d been children, when they’d felt safe and cherished, they’d talked to each other with their minds. The memory of it hit him now, hard and low. He’d all but forgotten about it—when he did remember, it was with a sense that perhaps he’d imagined it. Dreamed it up like fairies and magical horses that could fly them away. And like their imagined fantasies, the ability had waned with their youth and disappeared forever.

At least that was what he’d thought.

Feeling the fool, he did as she bade.

Tiarnan frowned, unable to wrap his thoughts around what she said. No, it wasn’t shocking that Cathán would betray them. Hadn’t they planned for it, laid in wait and dread for it? Hoped they were wrong? But why would he try to kill his own son? Ruairi was the power of his right hand. The force that drove them. Why—

With a cautious glance to make sure all eyes were still on the Bloodletter and his bride, Tiarnan nodded once more.

He opened his mouth, but whether he intended to speak or not was unclear to even himself.

He heard the doubt in her voice and yet layered over it, there was hope and truth. It made no sense. None at all. And since when did she call Ruairi anything but the Bloodletter?

He coughed into his fist and gave a violent shake of his head at the same time. Beside him, Eamonn helpfully thumped his back.

He shook his head again, trying to shoot his thoughts into her head the same way she’d done to him. But if he’d really ever had the skill, he had it no more, because she stared serenely forward and his protests went unanswered. If what she said was true, how could he leave her here? How could he trust the Bloodletter to see to her escape?

The answer was clear. He couldn’t.

And yet as he looked around, he could not ignore his limited choices. Either die fighting his way to her side and bring about the deaths of all of them, or do as she said.
Trust.

R
ORY could feel Saraid shaking as they moved to the curtain. Or maybe it was him. He gave her one last glance, noting her brittle composure. Wondering if his own was as transparent. Any of the women he’d known before her would have been hysterical by now. But not this one. She held her head high, her expression blank and her eyes watchful.

Already the memory of her lying beneath him had joined the surreal realm of everything that came after. But her scent was on his skin and it teased him, even now as his mind quaked at the brink of shock. It kept him from catapulting into the dark world of insanity.

Crazy.
Crazy with icing on top, but crazy all the same.

He fought to keep the images, the shock and gore of what he’d done to Stephen out of his head. But it was there, buried beneath the motor commands that kept him standing, walking, reacting. The feel of Stephen’s eyes as they’d caved beneath his thumbs, his throat as it collapsed in his tight grip. The cry of vengeance that had pumped with Rory’s blood.

He’d killed a man. In self-defense, yes, but that didn’t make the finality of it any less severe. Nor could it dilute the horrifying thrill of victory he’d shared with his twin. The shame he bore alone.

He’d done a lot of things he wasn’t proud of in his life, but he’d never killed. He’d never murdered . . . until now. He took a deep breath and forced that back. This wasn’t the time to feel remorse over what he’d done. It wasn’t the time to feel at all.

The smoky chamber they entered seemed filled beyond capacity. He estimated eighty to a hundred men were there, but it felt like ten times more than that. Big men, though some were more mass than muscle. They were a filthy lot, and the stench of them was overpowering. The women and children matched their number, but the kids were at a constant run, racing between tables and darting beneath them.

A fire raged hot and fierce in the huge hearth, and servingwomen hustled back and forth with platters of food and pitchers of ale or wine or whatever it was that this motley mix imbibed. Dogs snarled and snuffed at the droppings in the straw on the floor, fighting for bones and scraps. He didn’t have a sense of how much time had passed since they’d entered the curtained bedroom. Forty minutes? An hour tops? Not that time was even relevant. Getting out—that was the only thing that mattered.

“Smile,” he said softly to Saraid as he led her into the room. Her lips turned up as if on wires. The smile looked fragile to him, and he doubted it would fool anyone.

For a moment, their entrance went unnoticed by all but Saraid’s brothers, who saw them immediately.

Her oldest brother tracked their progress with hard eyes. He was tall, taller than Rory, who topped six three. He was a solid wall of muscle, ripped from his neck to rock-hard pecs to bulging biceps. A human tank. If this guy had been sent to kill him instead of Stephen, Rory would be dead.

He stood in front of the long table where Rory’s father sat with a posture of indifference that belied the sharp look in his eyes as he surveyed the room. Cathán MacGrath. His father. Even though Rory had seen his father during the rite, he still couldn’t believe it was him, and yet, there was no denying it. His father looked like a shiny nickel in a jar of old and tarnished pennies—as much an anomaly as Rory himself.

Earlier, when Rory had hovered over the processional, the impact of his father’s presence had been somehow diluted. Now he felt the full force of it, the pain and memory. The grief. The rage. Rory had worshipped this man as a boy—mourned his loss for his entire life. Nearly self-destructed under the weight of responsibility that came from knowing somehow, in some way, he’d been the cause of Cathán’s disappearance.

A thick knot of emotion caught Rory low and hard. He’d been just five when Cathán vanished from the cavern beneath the castle ruins, and over the years, his memories of his father had become a pain that never left him. Or his
absence
of memories might be a better way of putting it. He couldn’t recall playing ball or chase with his father. He couldn’t be sure he remembered the timbre of his father’s voice or even the way he smelled. But some twist of his psyche had given his need for those memories a substance, and the lack of them as he grew older became a sharp-edged hollow inside him. A chunk of himself that was always missing—leaving the rest of him to fester and rot. The hurt child that lurked just below Rory’s skin wanted to throw himself in his father’s arms and cry like a baby. Ask his dad if he’d missed Rory as much as Rory had missed him.

But there were far more important and disturbing questions that Rory needed answering. Like why did he send Stephen to kill Rory’s twin? And did his father know that the man who’d looked like Rory, talked in Rory’s voice, stared from behind Rory’s eyes was not really his son—was not wholly his son. . . .

He shut down the rampant thoughts—shying away from his fear of that answer. Saraid’s fingers tightened on his arm, bringing him back to the moment. But Cathán looked so much like Rory remembered that it both filled him with longing and unsettled him. As he’d noted before, the face was still youthful, unmarred by the ravages of age and harsh living. The only sign that time might have touched Cathán MacGrath was the gray at his temples and that had an illusory look to it, as if he’d colored it for effect. Millions of women in the twenty-first century would kill to know what fountain of youth he’d been drinking from.

Except perhaps his Aunt Edel, he realized with a start. She had always seemed ageless, too. With her, Rory had chalked it up to expensive cosmetics and a good plastic surgeon. Now he wondered.

A woman sat beside Cathán. Dressed better than those assembled in front of them, she was obviously someone important to be perched up here at his father’s right hand. She had long blonde hair that showed more gray than Cathán’s and a broad face with high cheekbones, sharp nose, and a square chin. The word
Nordic
came to his mind. She was heavy boned with thick wrists and broad hands and he guessed her to be about forty, but wouldn’t lay money on it. There was a weariness to her that spoke of trials and failures. The kind that aged a person beyond their years. She shifted back from the table and revealed a swollen belly. She was very pregnant. Was she Cathán’s wife? Stephen’s mother? If so, he tried not to think of her face when they discovered her son and what Rory had done to him.

At her side, a younger woman shifted nervously on her seat. She bore a slight resemblance to the first, but tempered in the hard high plains of her face were traces of Cathán. The full lips, the aristocratic nose. The pale eyes. A half sister? Stephen’s sister? If so, did she know what Stephen had been up to? What their father had sent him to do? The girl stared at Saraid’s oldest brother, her eyes huge and soulful, gleaming with youth and innocence. Innocence Rory figured had no place in this hellhole where they stood. For a moment, Saraid’s brother gazed back and there was a raw hunger in his look, mingled with anger, disappointment, and unquestionable longing.

Interesting.
Rory filed that away for future reference.

The older woman—Cathán’s wife, he guessed—leaned close to say something to her husband just as the crowd below noticed Rory and Saraid hovering outside the curtain. She quickly glanced back and sucked in a breath. In that instant, Rory realized that she’d known Stephen’s plans for the night. As the understanding hit him, Cathán spun as well. Shock flashed in his cold eyes as he stared at his son. It was gone just as quickly, but Rory had seen what he needed to know. There was no doubt in his mind that this man was his father—that somehow, Cathán had traveled through time after that night in the cavern when they’d fought over the Book of Fennore just as Rory had done after he’d followed Saraid from his grandmother’s funeral. But whatever honor and moral fiber had made Cathán the man he was twenty-five years ago no longer existed in the man he was now. This Cathán MacGrath was not the father Rory remembered him to be. This Cathán had sent one son to murder another. . . .

His thoughts tangled over that, but Rory fought to keep his expression composed, blank, while inside a knife sharper than the one Stephen had used to carve Rory’s twin slid deep and hard between his ribs. Pressing a hand to the small of Saraid’s back, he moved forward. The man they’d called the Bloodletter, Rory’s twin, wasn’t one to smile, and for that Rory was grateful. He couldn’t have faked joviality if it had meant his and Saraid’s lives.

Saraid dropped a stiff curtsy in front of the older woman, who looked at them both as if they were rats who’d suddenly scurried across the dinner table. If she was Cathán’s wife, then she was also Ruairi’s stepmother. But there was no love between them. That much was very clear.

Cathán stuffed an enormous bite of what looked like bread soaked in greasy gravy into his mouth and spoke while he chewed. “Took your time with it, didn’t you?”

Rory doubted anyone else could see the small flare of alarm in Cathán’s eyes as he looked past Rory and Saraid, trying to see through the drawn curtain. Looking for Stephen? Wondering why his other son had not taken care of business?

“Was it to be a race, then?” Rory responded, still trying to match the cadence of the strange accent and coming close, but not exact.

His father’s eyes hardened, and Rory knew Cathán heard something off in his dialect.

“Not a race, but we are waiting for the proof,” Cathán said.

With quiet dignity, Saraid stepped forward, bowed her head, and handed him the bundled sheets she held in her arms. Cathán stood, shaking them out and examining the small pinkish stain in the center. Rory felt the burn of humiliation rising off Saraid’s skin, shared it even as an act that had been intimate despite the circumstances was now paraded in front of a horde of unwashed men and eager-eyed women. Cathán sniffed the sheet and Rory wanted to punch him. Instead, he jerked it from his father’s hands, balled it up, and thrust it back at Saraid. He knew anger etched an outline around him, but he couldn’t hide it. Thought it best that he didn’t try.