Christina Phillips - [Forbidden 01] (36 page)

Aeron gripped his hazel rod with such force his fingers grew numb. How dare she turn her back on him? How dare she treat him as if he were a lowly acolyte, unworthy of her time?

The fucking
whore
.

Breath hissed between his clenched teeth as he watched her disappear between the trees. He attempted to calm his mind, regulate his pulses, reach for serenity.

But the image of Carys in the arms of the enemy pounded through his brain.

She didn’t remember anything that happened at the Cauldron. He accepted that. But when had her consciousness returned? What had the Roman done with her?

He couldn’t believe the Roman had taken her to a Celtic dwelling to recover. A Celtic dwelling where, by chance, a pregnant woman required assistance.

Not unless the barbarian preferred fucking other men, and the look on the Roman’s face as he’d glanced at Carys left Aeron in no doubt as to where his sexual preference lay.

So how had she escaped her captor? It was inconceivable he had allowed his delectable slave to leave.

Unless she wasn’t his slave. Wasn’t with him unwillingly.

The answer flared through his cortex, splintering his reason.

Had Carys stayed with the Roman last night
voluntarily
?

Carys kissed Druantia and settled in her usual place at the elderly queen’s feet.

“You’ve found someone at last.”

Carys’s breath hitched in her breast. She should have known the great Druid would see the truth. Druantia was smiling down at her, but it was a smile shadowed with doubt.

She swallowed the flicker of apprehension. “Yes.” Sweet Cerridwen, don’t let Druantia ask her who the man was. It would crucify her to lie to her beloved matriarch.

Druantia stroked the top of Carys’s head. “And yet he is not Aeron.” There was a questioning note in her tone, as if she pondered the fact.

“No.”

“I always believed the Morrigan meant you for Aeron.”

Carys barely suppressed a shudder. She still hadn’t recovered from the odd sensation of primal terror that had whipped through her as Aeron had scrutinized her earlier.

“Aeron isn’t the man for me.”

Druantia’s hand stilled on her hair. “The Morrigan was grieved when you turned from him, my Carys. And her affront was great when you spurned all other men afterward.”

Carys clasped Druantia’s other hand. When Aeron had become her lover at the age of fourteen, she had secretly hoped the goddess would honor her by acknowledging her presence. It wouldn’t have mattered how fleeting that acknowledgment was. Just a small sign to reassure her that the Morrigan wasn’t truly ignoring her. That the feeling of being slighted was all in her mind.

It had made no difference. During the three years she’d been with Aeron, the goddess had remained as distant as ever. If even having the High Druid as her lover hadn’t caused the Morrigan to look upon her with favor, how could taking another man change that?
And how was she supposed to have known severing her relationship with Aeron would have grieved the goddess?
“But I still worshipped the Great Goddess. I tried to show her how much I loved her.”

Druantia shook her head, as if Carys spoke nonsense. “You know that isn’t the same. You needed a man. And if Aeron wasn’t that man, you should have chosen another. But you didn’t.” She frowned, and her wrinkled face cascaded. “Something is fearfully wrong, Carys.”

Carys tried to ignore the way her heart thundered against her ribs. At first she’d been sure the Morrigan would remain in blissful ignorance of her liaison with Maximus. Then, after she had been touched by the raven’s eye, she convinced herself that the goddess was bestowing her approval.

But there had been only anger and frustration, not approval, vibrating in the air when she had entered the goddess’s sacred domain. A chill clutched her heart.
Was that the reason for Druantia’s distress?

Because Carys had entered the goddess’s sacred domain without permission?

“What has the Morrigan said?” Her voice was scarcely above a whisper, dread coiling deep in her stomach.

Druantia slid her arthritic fingers along Carys’s braid. “Her great malevolence rolled across the land, seeking yet not finding.”

“Her malevolence?” She recalled the chilling sensation she and Morwyn had felt yesterday, as they left the settlement. That had been the Morrigan? Why, then, hadn’t Morwyn recognized her goddess?

“Why couldn’t she find you, Carys?”

Ice trickled along her nape. “She was searching for
me
?” But she had swept right by her. Carys had felt the dark cloud of fury, the fingers of dread—how could the greatest goddess of them all have been unable to locate her whereabouts?

“I beseeched her for mercy. Begged her to give you more time. But she was deaf to my pleas in her frenzy.”

Horror crawled through her heart as realization dawned. “She’s angry because I’ll never return to Aeron?”

Druantia’s glazed eyes watered. “No. I thought, in my ignorance, she had finally lost patience with you for denying her gifts. This is why I intervened, my Carys, why I begged for her lenience.” She sighed, a whispery sound not of this world. “It seems you didn’t need me to intercede on your behalf.”

She didn’t want to ask. Didn’t want to know. And yet she knew she must. “Does—does the Morrigan not approve of my lover?”

Of course she didn’t. How could she have been so naïve as to imagine, for even a fleeting moment, that the Great Goddess would accept the homage and not care that Carys worshipped while fraternizing with the enemy?

Druantia cupped her cheek, a tender gesture. “My child, the Morrigan cannot see you at all. You have vanished, like the mist in the morning. She searches, but in vain. All this I saw in the blink of an eye as I begged for her favor. And yet I believe she scarcely acknowledged my existence in her fury.”

“I don’t understand.” Carys fought the panic threatening to choke the breath from her lungs. “How can she not see me? Am I no longer her daughter?”

“You are a Druid, as all the women of our line have been and ever will be.” Druantia smiled, but still the shadows clouded her eyes. “And yet at the moment of your birth, when the Morrigan stood poised to make you her own, Cerridwen appeared and claimed you for all time. And the Great Goddess turned from you at that moment.”

She knew this. All her kin did. But none of them knew
why
. “But she could always see me before.” The goddess had simply chosen to ignore her. But this was a new hurt, to know that now the Morrigan no longer even saw her. And yet what of her vision? Even there, in the goddess’s most sacred place, she had been invisible, a nonentity.

“Something has changed.” Druantia sighed and tugged gently on Carys’s braid. “The balance is shifting. I can feel it, but I can’t comprehend it. It’s Cerridwen the Morrigan rages against. And you are, always have been, Cerridwen’s.”

Carys clutched Druantia’s fragile fingers as a terrible certainty gripped her. “It’s my fault.”

“No. Cerridwen protects you, my child. And although I can’t envisage why, it is she who shields you from the Morrigan.”

What had she done?
If she could rewind time, she would never have taken the illicit root. Never have tumbled into the goddess’s sacred realm, nor seen the bloodied visions.

The Morrigan would not have become enraged by her audacity, and there would be no need for Cerridwen to intervene. And the two goddesses would not now be locked in bitter conflict.

And Maximus would not have taken her from the Cauldron back to his quarters
.

She tried to close her mind to the memories, but the love seeped into every pore, every breath, every erratic beat of her heart. He was intertwined with her soul, a part of her, and a chill rippled through her core at the knowledge that, even were she given such power to change her actions, she wouldn’t.

She dropped her forehead onto Druantia’s knees. “I entered the Morrigan’s domain without permission.”

Druantia’s hand stilled on her braid. “You know that cannot be, my child. The Morrigan must have allowed you entry.”

Carys choked on a breath and risked looking up. “I thought Cerridwen invited me, but Cerridwen wasn’t there. I was alone, and the Morrigan—she didn’t see me, Druantia.”

For one terrifying moment, Carys thought she saw fear flick in the old Druid’s eyes. But that couldn’t be. Druantia feared nothing. She was the most powerful Druid in Cymru.

“Where were you?” Druantia breathed the words as if she almost didn’t wish to know.

Carys sucked in a shaky breath. “The crossroads of life. And I saw—I think I saw—the future.” A shudder attacked her, chills chased along her arms and she clasped her fingers together in supplication.

Druantia’s fingers covered hers. “What did you see?”

She closed her eyes, and instantly the vision returned in all its bloodstained, fiery fury.

“The sacred Isle of Mon, drenched with Druid blood, the holy groves razed to the ground, the sisterhood vanquished.”

At the deathly silence following her words, she wrenched open her eyes and stared helplessly at Druantia. “Mon burned,
Britain
burned. Our goddesses and gods writhed in agony. Everything we cherish was crushed by—by Rome.”

The ancient Druid’s hands trembled, and Carys threaded her fingers through the old lady’s, infusing strength, but wishing desperately Druantia could offer her solid comfort in return.

She didn’t want her vision to be true. She wanted her queen to refute her words, to scorn her interpretation, to reassure her that somehow all would be well.

“You stood by the fork in the road?” Druantia’s voice was hushed.

“Yes.”

“What of the alternate path, my child? What is our choice?”

Terror uncoiled in the pit of her belly and slithered through her gut. Sweet Goddess, Druantia believed in her vision. Believed that Mon would burn, that their ways were doomed.

Unless they took the alternate path. And no Druid would take the alternate path.

She swallowed, her mouth as dry as sunbaked rock; her chest constricted with mounting despair. She couldn’t say the words, but Druantia waited.

She hitched in a ragged breath. “To embrace Rome.”

Druantia recoiled, as if Carys had just spit in her face. “That can never be, Carys.” She grasped her fingers in a surprisingly strong grip. “There must be more to this vision, my child. Think. What else did you see?”

“It was Rome, Druantia, the way Gaius used to describe it to me. But even without that knowledge, there could be no mistake. The wide Roman road leading into the heathen future could be nothing else.”

Druantia was silent, and Carys resisted the urge to sag. Since waking in Maximus’s quarters yesterday, she had kept the gut-churning terror at bay by telling herself she misunderstood the vision. That there was something she hadn’t seen, something she’d misinterpreted because of her inexperience.

“Druids and Romans live together in harmony?” There was skepticism in Druantia’s tone, but also something else, a hint of hope, of possibility.

She didn’t want to crush that hope. Goddess, she wanted that future more than anyone could ever know.

But her vision hadn’t promised anything of the kind.

“There was no sisterhood.” Her voice was dull. “No fellow brethren. Only darkness encroaching upon the horizon of Rome, crawling ever closer to where I stood.” She shivered at the remembered sensation of isolation. “I couldn’t see far, Druantia; it was so dark. Only one flame lit the way and it was so faint, as if the slightest breeze would extinguish it forever.”

Druantia’s fingers tensed. “One flame.” Her tone was hushed, as if the significance was clear to her. “The light in the darkness, as the Morrigan foretold. That is what you saw. No matter how this ends with Rome, we will prevail into the future.”

Carys wanted to believe her. But her heart ached. She didn’t want a future of bloodshed or darkness. She wanted Maximus, her kin, a family of her own. She wanted it all, and she couldn’t see how it could ever be.

“How did you leave the sacred crossroad, Carys?”

Carys frowned, unsure what Druantia meant. “How?”

“Did Cerridwen return you to this realm? Or did another Druid assist you?”

She didn’t answer straight away. And then knew she had no choice but the truth. “No. My lover rescued me from certain death.”

Druantia nodded slowly, as if Carys’s death within the vision or the fact her unknown lover had saved her did not surprise her.

“You didn’t choose Aeron, the man I thought the goddess wanted for you, but if this lover could lead you from the immortal realm, then you have chosen your mate wisely.”

Blood heated her cheeks, burning her skin. Druantia had given her blessing to her joining with Maximus, but if she knew who Maximus was, she would not hesitate to destroy them both.