Chapter 10
Adrian’s eyes snapped open and he blinked at the shadowed, unfamiliar ceiling above his head.
Not sandstone—only wood.
Not the crawler—Wyldonna.
He frowned to himself and his head ached dully as if he were trying to remember something he ought. He couldn’t recall even crawling into bed the night before, although he must have done just that shortly upon entering; his boots and shoes were missing from his person.
He did remember his dream of Maighread Lindsey, though. She was in his arms and she wanted him.
Adrian sat up and was startled to see the ugly Reid sitting in what appeared to be a chair made of logs near the window, through which it appeared night still maintained a firm grip on the island. He didn’t think he’d noticed the glazed square when he’d arrived, but because there would be little to see beyond the panes in a land cloaked in a habitual dusk, Adrian didn’t think much of it.
There was no window last night.
Don’t be ridiculous.
No wonder the large man was so malformed; body and mind needed sunlight to properly thrive. Although that did not explain Maighread Lindsey’s fierce beauty.
The giant stood and gave a stiff nod of his enormous head. “Good morrow, Man. The queen has requested your presence in the hall once you have dressed and eaten. I hope you find the meal more satisfactory than last eve’s fare.”
Adrian frowned. He hadn’t eaten at all last night, had he? No, he was certain he had drunk wine, but . . . he couldn’t remember anything at all after that.
There was no window.
“I assure you I meant no slight by my lack of attention to last night’s offering,” he said, throwing back the covers and swinging his legs over the side of the bed. “I apologize. Please tell the queen that I will answer her summons very soon.” He looked up at the man, expecting him to make his exit and leave Adrian to ready himself in peace.
“I will accompany you,” Reid said, with another stiff nod of his head. Adrian noticed the way the man’s eyes flicked over the marks on his flank before he turned away toward the window, as if suddenly interested in the shadows that cloaked the land beyond.
A demon in the window . . .
Adrian shook his head to clear it as he fought the urge to argue with the man. He was unused to having an audience while he dressed in his private chamber, and he obviously needed some time to order his chaotic and unlikely thoughts. There were no personal servants for the humble brethren at Melk, and Adrian had become accustomed to being alone. He preferred it, actually. But since it was likely Reid was only following orders, he would not press the proper man into disobedience.
His eyes fell on the chair, where the shirt he had apparently discarded the night before lay neatly folded, the hem just grazing the tops of his boots resting neatly in pair. He stood from the bed and moved to his clothes, pulling on his shirt and then pouring a cup of cider from the pitcher on the table and taking a drink.
He would not press the man to leave him, but he did have questions.
“Am I a prisoner, then?” he asked as he turned to take a seat on the chair and attend to the donning of his boots. He looked over his shoulder and saw Reid glance back in the same manner, but the man gave no answer. “I only ask because you seem to have been given clear instructions to keep me under guard.”
“You are an esteemed guest,” he answered haltingly. “My presence is for . . . your comfort.”
“And yet you are not permitted to speak to me,” Adrian countered. Reid gave no answer, and so Adrian made a wager with himself and muttered, “Incredibly rude manner with which to treat an esteemed guest.”
A glance over his shoulder rewarded him with the sight of the man’s torso swelling up, as if it was taking all of Reid’s self-control not to burst.
“I have been advised,” Reid said very slowly, very carefully, “that any questions you have should first be addressed to the queen.”
“I see,” Adrian said, working now on his other boot. “Can we not then act as learned men, discussing such mundane things that apply to our lives? I do find conversation with a person of intelligence to be quite stimulating.”
“As do I,” Reid answered right away.
“For instance,” Adrian said, spinning around on his seat to address his platter of oatcakes and honey, “I must say that I found myself quite taken aback at your stature.”
“As was my mother,” Reid replied. Adrian chuckled, but, to his surprise, the man continued. “It was only to my benefit as a child, however, for she tended to dote on me and protect me from my brothers due to my stunted size.”
Adrian paused, an oatcake halfway to his mouth while the man continued in a musing tone.
“As I grew older, it became quite clear that I was not likely to marry in our tribe due to my slight physique. But the Lindseys showed my kin great kindness in employing me within the castle. I am the only one of my kind able to enter the palace, you see, and so it is also my honor to represent our tribe at court.”
Adrian blinked. “Your tribe.”
Reid turned and gave Adrian a haughty look. “Yes. I might be a small giant, but I am a giant nonetheless.”
Adrian considered the oatcake still in his hand before laying it carefully on the platter, untasted. He picked up the cider.
“And you?” Reid inquired. “You are a man, and yet you . . . you . . .”
Adrian swallowed and looked at the . . . giant. “Yes?”
“Your skin is painted. Are you a piece blood?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“I mean you no offense,” Reid said, turning and giving Adrian a bow. “I only assumed that since you were marked, your tribe is one of exile. I apologize.”
“No offense,” Adrian assured him vaguely. “These marks were given to me by a man who was once a prince in his land. They are meant to cover the scars I bear.”
“Protection.” Reid nodded solemnly. “Of course. Were you banished by your people?”
“No,” Adrian said with a shake of his head, although he was more than a bit surprised that the man had used the very term also employed by Song to describe his marks. And hadn’t Adrian felt his friends were exiling him from the library on the day he left Melk? “I wasn’t banished. I—”
“Your family was in exile then, and you shunned them. I see.”
“No,” Adrian insisted, his mind tangling in the intricacies of meaning that could make Reid’s statement true. “My father is a respected English noble. I haven’t seen him in many years because I have been unjustly accused of a crime.”
Reid nodded, a bit of smugness creeping around his mouth. “So you were banished.”
“No!” Adrian stood from the table. “Any matter. I should not keep the queen waiting.”
“Very good.” Reid bowed. “This way, Man.”
“There’s no need to call me Man,” Adrian said crossly at the giant’s wide back as he followed him from the chamber. “You may address me as Adrian.”
Reid ducked through the doorway and into the corridor. “It would be highly improper for me to address a Man guest by his given name,” Reid advised. He strode down the passage ahead of Adrian, causing the floorboards to undulate so that Adrian was forced to lift his feet with each step. “But it is completely forbidden for me to do so with a piece blood.”
Adrian sighed and shook his head. “I’m not a piece blood, whatever that is.”
“I would not readily admit to it either,” Reid confided.
Adrian determined that drawing the obviously unstable Reid into conversation had been a mistake. For a brief moment in his chamber he had almost considered that the huge man had been part of a race of gigantic creatures. Pretty manners could cover much insanity, he reasoned to himself as he followed the servant through a senseless maze. Up stairs, down sloping corridors—Adrian was fairly certain they journeyed underground at one point—until they finally emerged into a long narrow hall.
Unlike the manor homes he was familiar with in England, Wyldonna’s hall boasted no elevated dais with a lord’s table. Instead, a longer trestle sat directly on the floor parallel to the chamber’s side walls and was flanked perpendicularly to either side by shorter tables. Fantastic tapestries and plaid cloths in patterns and colors Adrian had never seen combined were hung from the high ceiling like banners—at least fifty of them, by Adrian’s quick guess. There were no rushes on the floor; the stones gleamed as if they had been polished and were set so carefully and finely together that they gave the illusion of being one massive slab of smooth rock.
Two circular pits in the floor at either end of the long room were home to tall open fires that warmed the space and added to the glow of the candles set along the center of the trestle table. Queen Maighread sat in a plain chair in the center of one side of the table, her back to him, but Adrian could see that her manner of dress and appointment was vastly different than that of the woman with whom he’d traveled to Wyldonna. Gone was the simple gown and tumbling curls, replaced with a deep red velvet and hair twisted atop her head beneath a thin crown of hammered silver. When she turned her head at the sound of their entrance, Adrian nearly faltered in his step at her regal bearing.
This was the woman he’d likened to a laundress.
Across from Maighread—to Adrian’s surprise—sat her brother, the recently deposed Malcolm. He did not appear pleased to be in the hall with his sister, and Adrian noted that his entrance had seemed to interrupt a rather heated conversation between the siblings.
Adrian stopped several feet from the table and gave a bow. “Queen Maighread.” He rose and nodded to the woman’s brother. “Lindsey. Good day.”
“Hailsworth.” Malcolm’s eye flicked over Adrian’s person, perhaps resentful, perhaps only just a remainder of the argument Adrian had interrupted.
“Good day, Lord Hailsworth,” Maighread said. “I hope your accommodations were adequate. I fear the servants were nae aware we would be hosting a guest at the castle.”
Lord Hailsworth now, was he?
Malcolm snorted. “Maisie doesna feel it necessary to inform anyone of anything, ’twould seem. You’ve likely begun to notice a pattern.”
Her head whipped around to regard her brother. “It is a foolish waste of time to inform those who willna listen.”
“You called for me,” Adrian interrupted, not caring at all to become an observer of their row.
“Yes,” Maisie said, once more facing Adrian, and he saw the effort it took her to compose herself. “I thought you should hear what transpired at Glayer Felsteppe’s arrival at Wyldonna, because your presence here has a personal aim as well as a philanthropic one.” She gestured toward a chair at her side with one slender, pale hand. “Please join us.”
“I assure you my motives are not philanthropic in the least,” Adrian countered, ignoring the place she had indicated and instead dragging the chair closest to him to sit at the end of the trestle, where he could observe both Maisie and Malcolm simultaneously. Although her presence seemed to affect him more deeply each time they were together, he did not want to give the woman the impression that he could be so easily ordered about, nor would he join Wyldonna’s erstwhile king.
He was no one’s lackey, and he would make that clear.
“The reason I agreed to come here—the only reason—is that your troubles are connected to a man who is the greatest enemy of myself and my friends.” Adrian looked at the siblings in turn. “If any can help you, I am confident it is I, but my priority remains ensuring Glayer Felsteppe is held accountable for his actions.”
“I admire that,” Malcolm said gruffly and then glanced at his sister. “He doesna hide his motivations behind a guise of helping others.” It was a blatant dig, although Adrian did not understand entirely the implication.
Maisie ignored Malcolm. “Fair enough. Shall we begin, or do you have any pressing questions that you would like answered first?”
Windows.
Sirens.
Did you, too, dream of me last night?
Adrian shifted in his chair. “Let us begin.”
Maisie turned to Malcolm. “Well? Yours was the first encounter with him that day.”
The bearded man placed his elbows on the trestle and folded his hands together. “I didna know he and his men were ashore until late in the day. There are always so many strangers about, so many petitions to be answered, no one paid him any heed. Likely he knew that would be the circumstance, and he used it to his advantage.”
“What circumstance?” Adrian asked. “As I understood it, Wyldonna is impossible to find and even more difficult to land.”
“It was Yule,” Maisie explained. “There are only four times of the year that Wyldonna can be deliberately located—either at the solstices or the equinoxes: Ostara, Midsummer, Autumn, and Yule. That is how, over the centuries, the stories and legends of our land were spread.”
Malcolm nodded agreement, and Adrian was relieved that he would not have to contend with the brother and sister pecking at each other the entirety of the meeting. “It’s when those who wish to do so may leave Wyldonna and those who have already left—voluntarily or otherwise—can return to visit their families and petition for return. Most are turned away, either because of the seriousness of their law-breaking or because they return with wives or husbands and children. Piece bloods canna survive here.”
At this, Adrian’s interest was piqued, and so he interrupted. “Piece bloods?”
Maisie’s fine brow furrowed. “Many Wyldonians marry out of their tribe once away from the island. They soon find that life away from Wyldonna is difficult and foreign and they wish to return to the safety of their home. But once they have intermarried with man—” she paused—“or . . . others, and borne children, they canna return.”
Adrian returned her frown. “Are you so enamored with yourselves that you cannot abide outsiders in your realm?”
“It isna that at all, lad,” Malcolm said earnestly, and Adrian found it amusing that the king referred to him as a lad when Adrian guessed himself at least five years the man’s senior. “It’s for their own good.”
“Piece blood means their blood isna whole,” Maisie went on. “They might have man’s blood with a piece of Wyldonna, or Wyldonian blood containing a piece of man’s.”
Adrian’s eyebrows rose. “So?”
“So,” Malcolm drawled, “they doona have enough magic to defend themselves. It’s worse with the ones who are mostly Wyldonian—the piece of man rises up in the worst ways.”
“Magic,” Adrian repeated flatly.
“Men are ambitious, power hungry,” Malcom said, ignoring Adrian’s skepticism. “They are never satisfied with their station. On the few occasions when piece bloods have been allowed to remain and were fortunate enough to nae cross ways with the woodland folk, they have been unable to resist the temptation of seizing Wyldonna’s power and wealth for their own purposes.”
“As Glayer Felsteppe wishes to do,” Maisie pointed out.
Adrian shook his head. “Glayer Felsteppe is not of this place. He’s the youngest son of an impoverished family from the south of England. How do you explain his discovery of your proclaimed magical island? And why wasn’t he devoured soon after stepping foot ashore?”
Malcolm leaned back in his chair and boldly watched his sister, as if highly interested in her answer.
Maisie’s eyes shifted to Malcolm only for an instant before coming back to Adrian. “We believe he was led here by one of our own, who had left Wyldonna at Midsummer. Likely he was offered a great sum to do so.”
“That doesn’t at all explain how Felsteppe learned of Wyldonna,” Adrian retorted, refusing to budge. Something weighty hung in the air between Maisie and her brother, and Adrian wished to know what it was.
But to his surprise, Malcolm rescued the woman. “He is a man who has surrounded himself with desperate men. Has he nae been to war in the East? In your holy Jerusalem?”
“He was there, yes,” Adrian conceded, “although he managed to escape the worst of the fighting through lie and illusion, and by ingratiating himself to the Christian king there. A warrior he is not.”
Malcolm nodded. “The armies, though; they are well-known for utilizing mercenaries.”
Adrian conceded the point with his own nod.
Maisie then picked up the conversation. “Many piece bloods and exiles who are turned away from Wyldonna find securing livelihoods difficult. Because of their unique . . . gifts, a large majority of the males become paid soldiers. Some become criminals. And they are quite successful.”
Malcolm leaned forward again. “We can be certain Felsteppe came across one of these exiles. After learning about Wyldonna, he concocted his scheme to gain the fortune for his own use.”
“He needs the treasure,” Maisie emphasized. “To find you and your friends.”
Adrian was still. “You know he is searching for me.”
Maisie nodded hesitantly.
“You knew it when you came to the abbey.”
“I didna know who exactly I would find there,” Maisie hedged. “But I knew Melk would give the assistance I sought.”
Constantine would not be happy with this turn of events. Adrian gave himself a moment to compose himself before continuing.
“What I don’t understand,” he began slowly, “is why Felsteppe would demand the fortune and then leave? Why not take over Wyldonna in the moment Malcolm refused him rather than threaten you with his return?”
“Two reasons,” Malcolm supplied, the fire returning to his green eyes. “First, he came to the island with only a handful of men—nae enough to properly challenge us. Perhaps he was nae completely convinced that Wyldonna truly existed. And second . . . well . . .” He looked to Maisie.
She would not meet Adrian’s eyes. “I promised Felsteppe the reward my brother denied him in exchange for leaving Wyldonna and its people in peace. He only needed to give me the time to secure it.”
“She took my throne, said the vows, and made a deal with a devil,” Malcolm clarified.
Maisie slapped her hand on the table and turned to face her brother. “Your bloody pride would have brought war to Wyldonna and destroyed us all! If Wyldonna is nae more, it would be disastrous to the whole world, Malcolm!”
Malcolm rose from his chair and thundered, “Doona dare speak to me of what is best for this island, lass! I was king! I decide what is best for Wyldonna! The trouble is nae with my pride but that you have naught of the stuff. Your only thought now is to save your own arse, Maighread Lindsey, but I’ll nae be intimidated by some Englishman.”
“You promised him Wyldonna’s treasure,” Adrian prompted Maisie, trying not to be offended.
“Aye,” Malcolm instead sneered the answer and turned toward Adrian. “And if it canna be found, she’s promised to deliver to him the only other thing he desires more than riches.” Malcolm leaned forward and pointed a finger at Adrian’s chest.
“You.”