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Carole Cummings

temporized by the fact that Brayden looked almost as shocked and repelled as Wil felt.

“You were there.” It was just as tremulous as Brayden’s had been. “How did you—?”

“I’ve no idea.” Brayden turned to look at Wil, those dark, intelligent eyes gone wide and near-vacant now.

And then he shook his head, frowned. “No. No, I… I mean yes. Yes, I do. I
think
I do.” He looked at Wil, still nearly dazed, but earnest now. “Millard was right. She loves you.”

And that was just about enough for Wil. He threw back the tangle of bedding and lurched from the bed, only half-noticing the dull spikes of pain that shot through his hips, his thighs, even his arse as he did so. Damn it, he’d had a feeling he was going to pay for a day in the saddle. He ignored it, skirted clumsily about the bed and made a dive for his pack on the floor to Brayden’s right. Wil snatched it up and backed himself out of immediate reach, hugging the pack to his chest like it was going to offer even the smallest protection when Brayden decided to… to… well, to do whatever he meant to do.

Except Brayden didn’t look like he meant to do anything but stare at Wil in troubled bemusement. He hadn’t moved a muscle except to turn his head and follow Wil with his gaze.

“You’re still bleeding,” Brayden said quietly. “Looks like it’s slowed some, but check your ear, too.”

Wil lifted his hand up to his ear then his nose, backed up into the wall when Brayden leaned over, retrieved the stained handkerchief from the bed, then held it out. He did it all without taking a single step, the breadth of his reach going from the bed to the wall against which Wil cringed without having to so much as stretch. No wonder Brayden wasn’t chasing Wil about the room—he could probably reach every corner of it without taking more than two steps.

11

The Aisling Book Two Dream

“Take it,” Brayden said calmly, held the wad of bloody linen out between his fingers. “I’m not going to hurt you, I’m not going to grab for you, just take it before you bleed to death.”

Cautiously, Wil reached out, eyes never leaving Brayden’s. A shudder he couldn’t help swept along Wil’s backbone when his bloody fingertips brushed Brayden’s knuckles. He snatched the handkerchief more roughly than he’d meant to and brought it back up to his nose, pack still clutched clumsily with his left elbow and his newly throbbing right hand. “What do you mean to do?”

It was small and too timid, mumbled through the ball of blood and linen.

Brayden’s eyebrows went up, like he hadn’t thought of anything beyond the damned handkerchief. He rubbed at his face, the scratch of callused fingertips against the bristly growth on his chin louder than it should have been, but it was like Wil’s senses had trebled. The soft patter of rain was the roar of a gale; the tiny draft seeping through the glass the winds of a wild hurricane. He could hear raindrops searing and sizzling in the flue of the chimney, could hear ash tremble loose from the dying coals in the fireplace, sough down through the grate, could feel the infinitesimal drop in temperature with each one. He would swear he heard Brayden’s heart beating, almost as loud in his ears as his own.

“Do?” Brayden laughed, a low, arched snort without a trace of mirth. “I’ve been Called. No.” He frowned, jaw clenched, and cast his gaze out the window. “No.

I’ve been dragged into a Calling I didn’t even believe in ten minutes ago.” Another snort, just as hollow, and he shifted his glance to Wil, mouth twisting with bitter irony.

“And it’s
really
not what you think it is. Whatever sinister things they told you, they were lies. Besides being a foul little shit who drugs and preys on little boys, Siofra’s a 12

Carole Cummings

bloody filthy liar. He lied because he wanted you to be afraid of me, it’s why he sent those men to Lind, and…

I don’t know, but
She
certainly—” Brayden’s dark eyes narrowed, head tilting slightly to the side. “How can you look at Her and not see the way She loves you? How could you ever think She means you harm?”

Wil shook his head, inching his way along the wall and toward the door, eyes locked to Brayden’s. Curiously, Brayden only watched him do it, a peculiar raw interest in his gaze, like he was seeing Wil for the first time and didn’t know what to make of him.

“You’ve seen Her?” Wil asked—he couldn’t help himself—voice low and hoarse, vibrating with real curiosity and profound betrayal.

Brayden didn’t answer the question, merely flicked a look over Wil, said, “You might want to put on some trousers before you bolt. And your boots.”

Wil stopped dead. Stared. “You’d… I can…?”

Again, Brayden didn’t answer, just slouched over to the bed, sat heavily then propped an elbow to his knee.

He dropped his head into his hand and rubbed at his brow. “I don’t know what to do,” he muttered to the floor. “I’m meant to protect you. She
ordered
me to. She bloody
chastised
me for not doing my job.” He looked up at Wil, barked a cynical laugh. “Except She didn’t tell me how I’m supposed to convince you I’m not going to kill you, and I can’t prove a negative. The only way I can prove it is to keep not killing you, but you’ll go on expecting it, I’ll go on terrifying you without meaning to, and when you look at me like that, like I’m the worst monster conjured from your darkest nightmares, it makes me want to take your head off, so how am I supposed to…?” He threw up his hands. “Do I let you go, let you walk right into whatever’s out there waiting for you? Do I keep you a prisoner for your own good?
You
tell
me
.” He 13

The Aisling Book Two Dream

looked right at Wil, nothing in his eyes but real confusion and earnest asking. “What d’you want me to do? What do
you
want?”

It resonated right through Wil’s chest, rife with remembered surprise and cautious hope, and he echoed back the answer he’d given the last time the question was put to him: “I want to not be afraid anymore.”

Brayden winced, like hearing the words was another confirmation of something he didn’t want to believe.

Cautiously, Wil lowered the handkerchief, fairly certain now that the bleeding had stopped. He peered curiously at Brayden. It scared Wil a little to see Brayden like this.

From the moment Wil had laid eyes on him, Brayden had oozed confidence and good sense, wily intelligence and the capability to bend any circumstance to what he chose it to be. To go from that to this… disoriented perplexity…

It was almost as unnerving as knowing that what had set it off was too real to be denied.

“All right,” Brayden said quietly. “I want you to not be afraid anymore, too, but I don’t know how to…” A heavy shrug. “I didn’t mean to… to…” His great hand waved about. “I didn’t mean to ‘follow’ you, and I don’t even really think I did—I think
She
did—and even if I did, I’ll be buggered if I know how, and I’ve no idea—”

“She was there?”

“She

brought
me. I wouldn’t have been there had it not been—”

“You’re

always
there,” Wil blurted heatedly, realized what he’d said then shut his mouth, hugging his pack a little closer to his chest.

Brayden blinked over at him, eyebrows twisted tight.

“What the hell does
that
mean?”

Wil’s teeth clenched and he shook his head, angry and mortified at the same time when tears seared the backs of his eyes. “You’re always
there
,” he repeated, furious 14

Carole Cummings

now that not only did Brayden really not know, but that Wil couldn’t stop himself from enlightening him. “You’ve always
been
there, Watching me; you just didn’t know it, because… because…”

He was posturing like he knew what he was talking about, and strangely, Brayden was listening to him.

Inexplicably, it drove up Wil’s anger.

“Because you’re a great lummox of a man who thinks that if he just reasons hard enough and believes hard enough, everything will be as he thinks it should be. You didn’t
want
to see; you didn’t want to
know
. And now you’re going to sit there and tell me that all this time, She’s been watching, She’s been
seeing
, and you could but you wouldn’t, and there I was—” He choked it off, bared his teeth in a snarl. “You want me to believe Siofra lied, made me afraid of you because
he
was afraid of you, and all right, it makes sense, but it doesn’t
fix anything
!

Where
was
She for all this time—where were
you
?”

He hadn’t any idea that
any
of that was coming; it was like he was listening from the outside as every word shot from his mouth like little darts of betrayal. His mind was caroming back and forth, remembering everything he’d been told, everything he’d believed, and the possible relief of contemplating it all for lies was almost a bigger betrayal than having been lied to in the first place. It would almost be less wrenching to think that this man—

this
Guardian
—was everything Wil had ever thought he was. That Brayden had just been playing with him all this time, like a cat playing with a mouse, letting Wil suffer through small snatches at hope so it would be all the more painful when it was finally taken away. Believing that She
knew
, that She’d sent Her Guardian, that he’d been there at Wil’s back all this time, and done
nothing
…

Wil didn’t know what to do with himself. There was a chasm at his feet, and he was standing on sand.

15

The Aisling Book Two Dream

“I’m sorry,” Brayden breathed. “I didn’t know.”

Wil…

slipped
.

“
Why didn’t you know
?” he cried. “You were
there
, you were Watching, and He just… sleeps, always
sleeps
, and mumbles things at me I don’t understand, tells me She loves me, and then just… just goes away when I ask Him for… to make it
stop
—I thought it was…” Tears were burning his eyes and his cheeks, and he didn’t care anymore; his throat was rough and sore, and he couldn’t stop screaming. “I thought I was being
punished
, and I couldn’t… couldn’t make the thing I was being punished for
stop
, and I hated Him because He made me, and I hated Her because She didn’t care, and all the while—” A rough snarl nearly closed his throat. “You say She loves me like it’s supposed to make everything all right—I don’t
want
to know She loves me. I want to think She’s dead, or She hates me and laughs when I scream, and now you’re
sorry
!” He hurled the pack at Brayden’s head. Brayden only dipped a little to the side and followed its trajectory as it bounced on the bed and down to the floor. He looked back at Wil, the regret in his eyes lancing another wrenching spike into Wil’s heart. “What am I supposed to do with ‘sorry’
now
?”

Brayden was silent for a long time, just looking at Wil.

And then he shook his head, sucked in a long breath and pushed it out in a heavy sigh. “I expect you could tell me to shove it up my arse,” he said quietly. “But I would ask you to consider that perhaps I might have known, had my home not been attacked before anyone could tell me.”

Oh… Wil closed his eyes. The softness of the words, and the quiet intent behind them—it was sharper than the keenest blade.

“I—”

“You didn’t know, you were a child, it wasn’t your fault, I understand that.” Brayden’s voice was still quiet, 16

Carole Cummings

very calm, but there was a slow swell of wrath writhing beneath it. “Just give me the same benefit, all right? We’ve enough blame and blindness between us already, I think.”

All of Wil’s own wrath seemed to have left him. He was disoriented without it. “How do you know… you’re…

you’re
not
—?”

“Those marks the Brethren wear,” Brayden cut in,

“those tattoos—d’you know what those are?” He didn’t wait for Wil to answer. “They’re Clan-marks, the tokens of the Old Ones, Lind’s shamans, only they don’t just tattoo them on, they etch them right into their skin.

They’re runes that spell out
Wæpenbora
in the First Tongue; do you know what that means?” Again, he didn’t wait for an answer. “It means paladin, weapon-bearer, warrior protector, Mother’s soldier. And the funny thing is, written language in Lind is forbidden, except for the different Clan-marks. My
father
wore the Mark of the
Weardas
, they’re only a little different, and
I didn’t know
what they meant until ten minutes ago. I didn’t bloody
remember.
I’d seen them for the first ten years of my life, and yet I didn’t recognize them. I saw them on those men the first night at the inn in Dudley, and I
knew
I’d seen them before, but…” His hands closed into fists, that low level of rage still vibrating through him, and he looked over at Wil. “All of that meaning and history in a word they likely can’t even read, and those men
stole
it all, took it like it belonged to them, and then tried to take away everything it means.”

Wil thought about it. Carefully. It still wasn’t enough.

It was too ambiguous and not nearly enough to stake his life on. “But how do you
know
?”

Brayden sighed. He looked exhausted already, and it couldn’t be past sun-up yet. “Think about it, for once, and try to do it without any of Siofra’s noise cocking up the logic. You said you saw my mother. She smiled at 17

The Aisling Book Two Dream

you, touched your cheek. Does that seem like something the mother of someone meant to kill you would do? I
don’t
know, because no one told me, and right, I could still convince myself She was a dream or delusion if I tried really hard, but I
know
now, I can’t
stop
knowing, and I can’t offer you any better assurance than that. I can offer you the relative-safety of my protection. You’re not helpless, you’ve survived on your own, but things have changed, and this is… this is fucking
huge
.” He rubbed at his brow, agitated but trying not to show it. “I can help you, but not if you keep trying to run from me, not if you still insist on believing I’m going to murder you. I can’t make you trust me, and I can’t keep seeing that, that…