Lord of Shadows (33 page)

“Here. Press this against your forehead while I examine your ankle.”

The child sniffed. No more than seven or eight, she gazed up at Sabrina with worshipful, pain-filled eyes.

“And?” Sabrina probed the ankle with gentle fingers.

The girl flinched but didn’t cry out. “I used the barrel to climb up, but it broke, and I fell.”

“That ankle will have to be set. Here, can you . . .” Sabrina tried levering the girl up, but she moaned, new tears streaking her bloody face.

The floor creaked as someone entered behind them. “Let me help.”

Of course. It had to be Daigh. Just his voice sent a buzzing skitter up her spine. The room shrinking and shifting until his presence took up every square inch. She hoped the embarrassing flush of awareness didn’t show on her face. Angry at him for her own silly reaction. “Is this your idea of a game?” she hissed. “Stop following me.”

“I didn’t follow.” He drew her eye to the wood splitter he carried before leaning it against the wall.

Stepping closer, he scooped the child into his arms. For a moment, the obsidian gaze brightened. A rough-edged smile tipped a corner of his mouth. “What’s this? No tears now. Be a brave lass.”

The child hiccoughed and scrubbed at her eyes with the back of one hand, though whether it was due to Daigh’s words or stunned awe at the grim-faced giant carrying her, Sabrina couldn’t tell.

“What do you think you’re doing?” she charged.

“Helping, or will you carry her yourself?” He made as if to hand her the child.

She stepped back. “She’s too heavy. I’d hurt her ankle if I tried.”

“Then out of my way so I can.”

He didn’t wait for her answer. Simply ducked his head beneath the doorway, leaving Sabrina hurrying after him, fuming and grateful and furious and excited.

In the hospital ward, he laid his burden upon a cot. Stood back with a reassuring nod.

“What’s this? New trouble?” Sister Ainnir approached in a whirl of gray, glancing between Daigh and Sabrina, lips pressed together, eyes gleaming in her wrinkled face. Snorting, she knelt to examine the little girl’s ankle and the gash on her head. “These people keep me running from dawn to dusk with their complaints and their troubles. Half the time they don’t even heed my advice. I’ve not seen my bed for the space of ten minutes together since they began arriving. I’m too old for this.”

“Let me.” Sabrina tried taking the roll of bandages from the priestess’s hand.

Sister Ainnir snatched them back with a sharp look. “It’s no longer your place.” Sabrina blinked stupidly as the woman softened her tone. “Ard-siúr’s orders. You’re to be treated as a guest until your brother arrives to claim you.” She put a gentle hand on Sabrina’s shoulders. “I’d have you back in a wink if I could. You know that.”

“But—”

She shooed Sabrina along as if she were no older than the child before them. “Run along, my lady. I’ll fix the moppet up and send her back to her parents.”

A guest? No longer allowed to heal? To help? Aidan claiming her? What was she? A stray puppy?

The words piled on her chest like stone after stone. Making her imminent exile real. She would have to leave. And this time, she knew there would be no returning. She would be taken to Belfoyle and there she would remain until Aidan chose to loosen his restraints upon her. After her escape from Dublin, he’d probably lock her in and throw away the key. She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. The walls closed in around her.

Warm hands settled on her shoulders. A voice droned in her ear. And she found herself propelled out of the scrubbed infirmary into the clear bleached light of day. A cool wind chilled her face. Snapped her from the downward spiral of her panic. She drew in a quick gasping breath, salty tears sliding into the corners of her mouth. “Oh gods, what have I done?”

Daigh’s eyes burned through her, sending a flare of familiar heat low in her belly. “You sought to save a man from drowning. You’d no idea he’d pull you down with him.”

Sabrina staggered into the dormitory passage. Toward the stairway to her bedchamber. If only escape could be found in a locked room and dreams. But it couldn’t, and so no surprise met the sliding crystalline fog, the lurching dizziness as she tumbled into Daigh’s past. The thinning veil of mist revealing a smoke-filled hall full of confused voices. Men and women moved like wraiths, their eyes weary, their bodies crouched and distressed.

Daigh prowled just beyond the firelight. She knew his stance, the cock of his head, the quiet intensity behind his every gesture. He greeted a crew of rough-looking men who’d only just arrived. Mud-spattered. Breathing hard. Daigh looked her way, the flames’ flicker dancing across his eyes. His gaze sharpened on her face, his love winding its way through her, stronger even than his nervousness or the gravity she sensed hung around him like a heavy cloak.

The fog closed in, the scene fading back into the gray swirl of cloud, talons sinking into her shoulder wrenching a startled cry from her lips.

“Gotcha, girl.”

Sabrina jerked her head up and into the face of Sister Brigh, more shriveled and dried up than usual. “If you think to scold me for shirking my duties, you’re too late. I’ve no duties and you’ve no authority,” she snarled, taking out her anger and confusion on the old woman.

“But I’ve the sight in my eyes and I know what I see. You and that man. He arrives then you arrive. Neat and tidy. And now I see your boldness when you look upon him. And his lust when he meets that look.”

“You’re eyesight’s failing. Mr. MacLir doesn’t look at me with anything but scorn.”

She tried wrenching away, but the old priestess’s fingers
bit deep into Sabrina’s flesh. “You’re a fool, girl. He watches you. Always with that empty, black stare. The mage energy swirling round him like a storm cloud. I know what he is. I hear things. Notice things. You should be careful, girl.”

“Careful of what?”

Sister Brigh’s eyes darted fearfully to the door as she wrung her bony, grasping hands. “He’s dead risen. What they speak of as a
Domnuathi
. Evil gave him life. Evil follows him. I see the beast upon his back. The Morrigan’s ravens flying close at his heels. No good can come of it.”

“Daigh wouldn’t harm us. We saved him.”

“He’ll do as his master bids with as little remorse as grinding a bug beneath his heel.” A cruel smile creased Sister Brigh’s face. “You fear it’s true even as you defend him. I can see it on your heart. He’s hurt you already.”

Sabrina slammed closed her mind from Sister Brigh’s prying, but the priestess had decades of training at infiltrating even the most shuttered thoughts.

“I protect what’s mine, girl. This order. My sisters. MacLir must go. If he leaves, the evil and the danger go with him.”

“If he leaves, the evil will take him over, and we’ll be worse off than we are now.”

“The sisters of High
Danu
survived the ages by keeping our heads down and our magic quiet. I’ll not have that destroyed. Not by you, Ard-siúr, or him.”

Sabrina finally tore herself free from Sister Brigh’s vitriol. The dormitory no longer a refuge, she stumbled back into the yard. Daigh hadn’t moved from the spot where she’d left him. His eyes lifted to hers, and that same bond of unshakeable love passed between them as in the hazy gloom of a Welshman’s hall.

Clouds passed over the sun, throwing his face into shadow. The connection severed.

Daigh turned away.

The men bowed aside and the women displayed shy smiles as Sabrina moved among the refugees. Asking after children or aged parents. Answering questions about a fever here. A rash there. Ard-siúr may have refused her the order’s resources, but her skills were hers alone and couldn’t be taken away. These she leant willingly along with advice and reassurance.

According to a frantic note from Jane, it would be only a matter of days before Aidan arrived and even these small duties would be forevermore denied her. Poor Jane. Sabrina owed her. It sounded by the tone of ill-usage in the scribbled missive that Aidan had not been exactly pleasant since Ard-siúr’s letter had arrived. She would make it up to her. She would grovel as only a best friend could.

“Heard they burned three farms over by Ballenacriagh.”

“Is it true the government’s begun registering
Other
?”

“Will the
Duinedon
attack us here?”

“They say barracks are being reinforced with regiments home from the wars.”

“They treat us as if we were less than human.”

“I’ll fight rather than let the
Duinedon
round us up like sheep.”

“That goes for me as well. Let them come, I say. We’re more than a match for the
Duinedon
.”

Rumors, like illness, thrived in cramped conditions, and long hours passed as she refuted false reports and calmed troubled minds.

“Gossip is a many-headed hydra. Attack one story and three more grow in its place.”

She wasn’t surprised to find Daigh watching her from the open barn door. His haunted grave-black eyes, the severe magnificence of his angled features, the herculean strength in his crossed arms and the broad curve of his shoulders. Her resident butterflies took flight once more, beating against her insides until she quivered with excitement.

He motioned toward the cook fires and makeshift tents. “Máelodor is skillful at fertilizing already rich soil. Look at them. Resentful. Afraid. Angry.”

“Is it any wonder? We’re taught from the cradle to hide what we are from those who don’t understand and would label us monsters.”

His lips curved in the merest hint of irony. “Yes,” he answered softly before nodding once more toward the gathering. “But listen closely. The agitation. The defiance. Us versus them. These are the seeds of revolution.”

She glanced over her shoulder, seeing what Daigh saw. The pinched, sour faces, the clenched jaws, the growing impatience. Shuddering, she pulled her shawl close around her. “Is Máelodor powerful enough to manipulate an entire race?”

“Many are ready to rise up. Discontented. Restless. All they wait for is a leader to unite them. The last High King. Máelodor uses it to his advantage.”

“But Arthur was a great hero. A champion. He would never—”

“He’ll have no choice, Sabrina. As one of the
Domnuathi,
he’ll be helpless against Máelodor’s powers. A tool to be used by the Great One.”

His words and his emotions spilled hot and laced with fury. They battered her mind, dagger-edged and desperate.
He raged at fate. At the heavens. At the gods themselves for deserting him. Leaving him to face Máelodor’s evil alone.

She’d watched him ride off once to a death she knew he’d not escape. The vision of that parting and the grief that followed haunted her still. Could she do it again? Could she let him walk away? Without once asking why?

“You broke free. He doesn’t control you anymore.”

“He lives inside me, Sabrina. Always searching for a way to control me again. Until one of us is dead, that threat remains.” Ducking his head, he retreated back through the door.

She should turn now, walk away, and never look back. She’d known from the first that Daigh MacLir brought trouble in his wake. That to fall beneath the spell of that muscled body and those fathomless eyes would spell disaster. She’d known and not cared.

Not then.

Not now.

She followed him into the gloom of the low-ceilinged barn. Daigh brushed down a heavy-boned mare, murmuring to it in soft nonsensical words.
“Paid barnu pob dyn ar weithredoedd un.”

“What are you saying to her?”

He ran his hand carefully over a bare patch on the mare’s flank. “See these marks on her side? She’s been used cruelly. I’m telling her not to judge all men by the actions of one.”

The mare’s ears flicked back as she shifted ominously, one leg poised. Daigh merely murmured again, his voice low pitched, more words in a rolling, lilting growl.
“Rwyt ti’n brydferth. ’Dwi’n gwneud yr hyn sydd angen i amddiffyn ti.”

Sabrina leaned against the partition. “Now what are you telling her?”

Daigh smiled. “That she’s a beauty of a lass. And I mean her no harm. I only do what I must to keep her well.”

Delicious heat lapped against her insides as Daigh gentled the mare with hands and voice. The horse lowered its head, breathing deeply, the large brown eyes half closed, sides twitching at every pass of Daigh’s brush.

“Look at her,” she said. “She trusts you. Believes you.” Their eyes met, Sabrina willing him to see her heart.

A rare and sudden smile lit his face, startling her with its brilliance. Sending her heart leaping into her throat. “How long can we play this game of words?” he teased.

Reckless excitement swept her along just as it had in Dublin when the rugged lilt of his voice, the scent of his skin, the forever depth in his gaze had drawn her on when sanity told her she was mad. “How long do you have?”

“I was closer to Brendan than any of my family. Not that I didn’t love my parents, but Mother’s love was all for Father. No one else could intrude into that bubble. And as for Father, Aidan was his heir. Brendan his favorite. I, a mere daughter. Not much use. Not much trouble.” She twirled a stalk of timothy grass between her fingers. “Not until I could be used as barter.”