“And what did you expect me to do?” Orla demanded, her hands yet again on her hips as she faced off with Liam back in their house. “Leave these women defenseless against attack?”
“That was not an attack, Orla,” he said, trying hard to keep his voice down as he battled an old surge of panic. “It was an accident. You know the men would never have targeted Aifric.”
“And Bevin? Was she not a target?”
He squeezed his eyes shut and counted to thirty. Ah, sure that dream of Orla naked in the stream was waning fast.
“Peadar will be chastised by the council. You had no right to teach Bevin something so hurtful.”
“You mean something that saved not only her honor, but her fairy soul? Peadar has been after her since before you left, Liam. She wouldn’t tell me. You know what a gentle soul she is. But I got it out of her today. He’s been harassing her, as if harassing his own consort weren’t enough.”
“Did he physically attack her?”
“No. He entered her mind.”
“Then he didn’t hurt her.”
She seemed incredulous. “And you don’t think that forcing your way into another’s mind without welcome and attempting the taking of her is an invasion?”
“Isn’t that what you used to do?”
She flinched as if he’d struck her. “No. It isn’t. I was always welcome, husband, and if I wasn’t, sure, I left right away. Liam, the tanner wouldn’t let her alone. She hasn’t slept for the past three or four days, so afraid she’s been that he’d appear and try to force her.”
“But a fairy can’t force himself on another, Orla. You know that.”
For the first time since he’d stormed into the house after her, she looked vulnerable. “I’m not so certain anymore, Liam. I swear I’m not. I see disaster coming.”
That unfamiliar panic spread tentacles through his chest. Lugh, she was asking him to let her act, to step into dangerous situations, as if it were her right. He couldn’t allow it. He couldn’t. Not when tensions were escalating across the frontier.
“You’re exaggerating,” he said. “You know it can’t really happen. It’s against every fairy oath and principle. So teaching Bevin to inflict such cruel punishment is just petty.”
That quickly, her spine was back. “And why don’t you hold your opinions until you’ve watched things a bit yourself?”
“Are you saying I’ve been neglectful for having to be out in the wastelands?” he demanded, furious.
“I’m saying you should keep an open mind. You haven’t seen the escalation in violence since you’ve been gone. The aggression the likes of which I’ve never witnessed before, except in the nightmares sent by—”
“The Dubhlainn Sidhe.” He turned to look out the window, suddenly even more exhausted than ever. “And you expect that we’re every one of us capable of unimaginable evil, I guess.”
“I expect nothing of the sort. Am I not the same woman who lay with you willingly, not once, but a dozen times? Do you really believe I think so little of myself that I would take a monster into my body without objection? Stop assuming all is well, Liam. Take a new look at your people and tell me I was wrong. Tell me the women here should be happy with their lot.”
He swung around on her, finger in her face. “The women are not allowed to use force. That’s the end of it, Orla. I’ll hear no more. Do you understand?”
“Well, sure, and aren’t I that glad I let you talk me into visiting?” a new voice interrupted from the front doorway.
Liam turned and went stupid. He knew he blinked a couple times. He was sure he opened his mouth. But he was just too distracted and too bloody tired. Suddenly there was a furious little girl standing in his front door, and for a moment he couldn’t think why.
“Binne?” he said, even more stupidly.
“Ah, well, it’s good to see you, too, Liam.”
That sarcastic voice simply didn’t fit that tiny body. He turned to Orla, as if this surprise were all her fault.
“By the way,” she said in deceptively dulcet tones, “did I tell you that your daughter has accepted your invitation to visit? She’s been here about two moon cycles now.”
He could do nothing but close his eyes. “I forgot to tell you she was coming.”
At least Orla had the decency to keep silent, he thought.
“Well, so much for the hearty welcome,” his daughter said.
That got his eyes open. “Is this what your mother’s people have taught you?” he demanded. “Disrespect to your elders?”
“If you didn’t want me to come, why did you send for me?”
Ah, the unanswerable question.
She was so little, he thought. So proud, her shoulders back and her little pointed chin up. Lugh, she looked like him, and already she had the heart of a queen. She was squeezing his heart with the sight of her, because he knew what she thought of him. Worse, he knew he deserved it.
“Why don’t we all go back out and come in again fresh?” Orla suggested, her voice so suddenly calm and reasonable that Liam had to overcome an urge to stare at her. “Then we can greet each other with the happiness we really meant to.”
“You still haven’t answered me, Orla,” he said. “I want to know whether you understand that women are forbidden from resorting to violence.”
“After you’ve sat at the banquet tonight.”
“You know there’ll be a brawl at the banquet. It will tell me nothing.”
“I think it might tell you more than you think. Now, say hello to your daughter.”
He felt caught, as if his feet had gotten stuck in a bog. He was aching for his wife’s touch, and who would have thought it? He’d always sought out quiet consorts, meek women with soft words and a passive way in the bed bower. Not termagants with a knack for a bucket of water over the head. Yet he wanted her to soothe him home from his long mission. He wanted to climb from his horse to find her safe in his house where she belonged.
And then there was his daughter, whom he hadn’t seen since his last long mission, and she was glaring at him with justified accusation. He wanted to gather her into his arms, feel that whipcord little body against his and smell the little-girl smell of her. He was beset by a fierce need to protect her from everything. By the gods, he’d missed her.
“Hello, little cat,” he said.
“I prefer Deirdre,” she said with great dignity, her little spine straight enough to snap, her tone centuries too mature for her size.
He couldn’t help but grin. “Ah, and didn’t I tell your mother you’d be after demanding a second name for yourself?”
He hadn’t even gotten the words out before he realized his mistake. Orla actually flinched. His daughter glared at him, and suddenly her eyes were bright with tears.
“She’s not my mother!” she yelled, and bolted back out the front door.
Liam closed his eyes, completely defeated. “Well, that went well.”
“Ah, don’t feel so bad,” Orla said. “Most days I don’t do much better myself.”
He positively ached for someplace to simply lie down. “I’ve just been so bloody distracted by the incursions….”
“I know. There’s been no harm done here. Sure, it’s probably been better that she and I had the chance to find our way together before you appeared to muck it up.”
Liam opened one eye to find her smiling.
“I am doing my best, Orla.”
“I know, Liam. Why don’t you go bathe off the road dirt? I’ll bring out your clean clothes to you.”
He got both eyes open. “You cleaned my clothes?”
She huffed. “Don’t be daft. I destroyed your clothes trying to clean them. Aifric rewove them on that loom that’s now being used for kindling for tonight’s bonfire.”
He didn’t want to talk about Aifric again. He would much rather think about Orla. Especially Orla in the stream. With no more than a few words, she’d resurrected that image of them making love in the water, and it hit him hard. It might have been the smell of her standing near him, spice and clean air and sun. It might have been that he’d been without a woman for at least three moon cycles. He didn’t care. He was suddenly hard as a rock.
“Come to the stream with me,” he suggested, and that quickly, the images materialized in his mind.
There she was, walking down the back lawn toward the streambed, the last of the sun glinting off her hair and pouring over the lush curves of her body. She was smiling, and Liam could feel that smile all the way to his toes. He hurt with that smile. It was a smile of promise, of provocation. There in his mind she reached down and took the hem of her dress in her hands, and slowly, gods, oh, so slowly, she began to draw it up. Past the sleek perfection of her legs, the dimples of her knees, the milky cushion of her thighs. Past that tantalizing triangle of hair that was so baby fine a man almost couldn’t feel it against his fingers, that sweet nest that protected the greatest mystery of the universe.
The alternate realms were nothing, the miraculous design of days and seasons meaningless, compared to the wonder of that hot, tight refuge. She kept the hem of her dress right there, just where her belly rose toward her breasts, and she began to sway. Just a little. Just enough to set him on fire.
“Lift it,” he said to her in his mind. “Lift it away and let me see your breasts, Orla.”
“Why?” she whispered, and he knew she’d joined him there in his head, so that the two of them stood in the stream with the breeze cooling them and the shadows protecting them.
“Because I’ve thought of nothing else since I galloped away on my horse all that long time ago.”
It seemed to be the right answer. Her smile broadened, and she continued to lift, gently pulling the material up so that it swept slowly over her taut, hard nipples, so it framed her flushed, hungry face, so it floated back to earth away from her.
He heard her sigh. “It doesn’t matter how mad I am at you,” she said in his head, her eyes dark and her breasts flushed with arousal. “I can’t say no.”
Without taking his eyes from her lovely, luscious body, he stripped off his clothes, too. “Then don’t,” he said.
It wasn’t enough. He needed to be inside her, not in her head. He vaporized the images in his mind to smoke to find her standing before him smiling, her eyes hot with arousal, and by the bright eyes of Lugh, wasn’t she still wearing that awful mud-brown dress? Well, now, he would have to do something about that. Taking a moment to secure the door against surprises, he stripped off his clothes.
“Forget the stream,” he said, and stepped right up to her.
She lifted her face to his kiss. He lost his patience. He lost his taste for seduction. He needed to be in her. He needed it now.
“I’m sorry,” he groaned against her mouth, and then he reached down and ripped her dress all the way down the front.
“Faith,” she gasped, leaning even closer. “There’s another task for poor Aifric. And her without a loom and all.”
“I don’t care. I need you, Orla. Please.”
It was the last thing either of them said. They never even got as far as the bed. Liam was frantic for her, for the welcome he knew he would find inside her. He knew he should have taken more time. He should have gentled her with his hands and courted her with his words, but he could do no more than grab her and pull her to him. And she met him, kiss for hungry, ravenous kiss. He ran hard, impatient hands over her, squeezing her breasts to feel the unbearable softness of them, curling his palm over her pelvis to cherish the angle and strength of it. She pulled and scratched and claimed as fast and hard as he did.
And when he turned her this time, bending her over the table, she went gladly. And when he stepped up to stand just behind her and slide a finger deep into her, only a finger, no other touch, she trembled. And when he took a second too long to plunge into her, she yelled at him.
So he didn’t wait. He drove into her, and she arched to take him deeper. She called to him, urging him on. She reached around to grab his hands and wrap them around her breasts, and then she rocked back against him, and rotated and swayed, so that he was bathed in her, he was drowning in her, he was impaling her, spreading her legs wider so he could drive deeper, bending down to inhale the salty musk of her as she started to come. And then, as if he were indeed a stallion, he bit her on the neck, right there at the most tender spot at the arch of it, and she screamed, convulsing around him, milking him until he thought he would die. She laughed until he clasped her shoulders and forced her down, and then he pumped into her, all of him into her, and he cried out—once and only once—her name. And when he collapsed over her damp back, he laughed, too. And then he took her again on the table, and again on the floor.
It was some time later as he lay there panting and sweating in repletion that he realized that whatever he was lying on was unbelievably lumpy. And he’d made nothing lumpy in his house. His hands still wrapped around his wife’s warm body, he finally took the time to consider the changes in his home.
Ah, well, hadn’t she been after doing just what he feared, for weren’t there rugs and curtains and breakable glass things on the tables?
On the other hand, she’d surprised him, as well. As he scanned all the disasters that decorated his home, he felt the laughter bubbling up in him. He couldn’t help it. There wasn’t a thing in this house that wasn’t hideous.
“Can you tell me,” he barely managed, knowing his voice sounded strangled, “what color my curtains might be?”
She actually turned to consider them, as if she could tell. “I think maybe it’s a brand-new color, husband. Do you like it?”
He burst out laughing, and then ran for the stream before she could dump something over his head.
The banquet fight broke out while they were still eating, which meant that not only fists flew, but food and crockery and, at one point, almost the harp. The women ran, the king retreated, and much to her husband’s displeasure, Orla knocked a few more heads together on her way out the door. This time, though, what she heard on her way out was, “Interfering bloody woman.”
Then she saw one of the men running out the door after a girl barely past her Rite of Passage. He was laughing, a skin of whiskey in one hand and reaching for the girl’s hair with the other. The girl was crying.
Orla wished her husband had made it outside to see this. He persistently refused to believe her when she told him of the escalating problem. Of course, she hadn’t gotten much of a chance to talk to him, because, as was his right, he sat at the head table with the King. As was her place, lacking a male child to her name, she sat with the women.
Well, one of the women she’d been sitting with was this sweet girl. So as the girl and her pursuer passed her standing there in the shadows, Orla put her foot out and tripped the bastard. The girl kept running. The man thumped to the ground and skidded a few feet on his stomach, howling epithets by the bushel. Orla bent close to his ear and whispered worse epithets.
“And if you think to go after her again with such little respect on you, I promise I won’t wait for the king to make the judgments.”
“You broke my knee, you madwoman!” he roared.
“Better than your bollocks, I’m thinking.”
Which inspired him to silence. Every man in the village knew who’d taught the women their new trick.
Orla straightened and walked off. She ignored the vicious “Bitch!” behind her back. She was just glad that Liam’s daughter was too young for the drunk men to notice.
Since it was useless to wait for Liam, she walked on home to Deirdre. She’d made another miscalculation that afternoon by letting her hunger for her husband outweigh the little girl’s need to be found when she’d run away. Now Deirdre was hiding back in her room, and Orla was the enemy.
Ah, sure, it would all be so much easier if she had any control at all around her husband. She didn’t, though. Faith, if he hadn’t ripped her dress off that afternoon, she would have done it for him. And it was getting worse, entirely. It wasn’t just the wanting of him, it was the needing of him. It was the fact that one smell of him had her skittish as a mare in heat.
Just the thought almost brought her to blush. Well, she’d told him that she would be happy to play that game when it was her choice. And Danu knew it had been. She could still feel the sense of helplessness as he’d bent her over, easily controlling her with his big callused hands, taking her so hard that she almost couldn’t breathe.
She’d never allowed it as leannan sidhe. Hadn’t she been the one in charge at all times, after all? But with a man she yearned for, it was a variation she could very easily come to crave. Oh, all right, then, more than crave. It might be her favorite thing to do. Except for making love in the stream. And on the settee. And the floor. And to be truthful, in that big, soft bed that barely contained him.
Faith, couldn’t she easily get lost in the man and never find her way out again? It was a tempting thought. No worries, just Liam. Just his comfort and his smiles and his big hands on her to make her feel wild and safe at the same time.
But it wouldn’t—couldn’t—be enough, and she knew it. Her mother would have expected more, especially if she’d seen the state of things with the women here.
“Who’s there, then?” a man called through the darkness.
“Orla,” she said, squinting to see a familiar crop of red hair. “A good evening on you, Faolán. And why aren’t you in helping to wreck the great hall this night?”
“Ah, well, haven’t I been about the king’s business and too busy to join the fun?”
Sure, he’d cleaned up from the long ride, but he didn’t look rested. Or, come to think of it, easy.
“You bring unhappy news, I’m thinking,” she said.
“If you consider another patrol unhappy, then aye. I do.”
“But we’ve just had the satyrs in for treaty talks.”
He shook his head. “Not the satyrs, I’m afraid. An advance party from the army of the Twelfth Realm has just been repelled by our border sentries. If that isn’t enough, now, hasn’t the king demanded we track down his keeper of the Treasury keys?”
“He’s still missing?”
“Ah well, didn’t we think he was with his mother’s people. They claim no sight of him. Me, I’m thinkin’ because they can’t tolerate the little whiner any more than we. But sure, isn’t he the king’s nephew, and a monarch gets uneasy about people going missing if there’s a scuffle of any kind. Especially since it happened to him and all.”
“Great goddess. When was that?”
“Well, it was during the last great Realm War, then, wasn’t it? Sure, I’ve only heard the tales, but it’s told he was separated from his contingent of Coimirceoiri and lost in the Sixth Realm with no way back. They found him wandering the land of the scythies with no memory on him.”
Orla shuddered. She simply couldn’t imagine. “He was so lucky to come out whole, for he regained his memory, didn’t he?”
He nodded. “Most of it, all right. As unpleasant as his nephew is, we can only hope he loses a bit of his memory, as well.” He squinted at her. “I don’t suppose you’ve seen him, now, have you? Skinny lad, dark, always with a scowl on his face?”
Orla huffed in frustration. “Isn’t that every fairy in this realm lately?”
Faolán gave her a wry smile. “Aye, well, you might have something there. Is Liam still in with the king?”
“Ah, sure, all the crockery isn’t broken yet. He’ll be heaving away with the rest for a while yet, I’m sure.”
“My thanks.” He started along, and then stopped. “And while we’re next gone, wouldn’t I appreciate it if you weren’t after teaching too many other pretty lasses that trick with the knee? Sure, my mother wouldn’t mind a grandchild or two.”
Orla grinned at him. “Don’t deserve it, and you won’t have need to fear it, Faolán.”
Because he was Faolán, he chuckled. “Are you sure you haven’t gained a stone yet?”
“As sure as empty hands can show me. Why?”
He shook his head. “I’d think you’d at least get one for strategy.”
“I’ll take that as a compliment.”
He laughed again. “I’m still not sure whether I meant it so or not.”
Despite that, Orla smiled as she walked away into the darkness. At least she smiled until she realized that, come morning, Liam would be off again, and she would be left with a worsening situation and no power to change it.
When Orla let herself into the house, it was to find Deirdre sitting in the front room reading. “What are you doing here?” the little girl demanded.
Orla made it a point to look around. “Well, now, I think I live here,” she said.
In answer, the little girl slammed the book shut and stalked off to her room. The last sound Orla heard was a definite slam of the door.
Perhaps she needed to talk to her mother about raising girls, after all.
Liam did leave the next morning. The seeming fragility of the border worried the king, and there was none but his Protector who could advise him on it. Orla was still exhausted from their lovemaking all the night before as she watched him strapping on his breastplate before the sun rose.
“Will it take long, do you think?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I’ll try to send word, so.” He bent down and cupped her face in his hands. “Try to keep from taking over the kingdom while I’m gone, then, would you?”
“I’ll do no more than what I need to.”
He lost his easy manner. “Don’t disobey me on this, Orla.”
She looked up into his weary eyes and knew better than to lie. “Go make your farewells to your daughter.”
He nodded and kissed her. Then he kissed her again, and she knew it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.
It was curious, she thought later, as she watched him lead his band back out of the village, the horses huffing at the early-morning chill, the bridles jangling. She and her husband seemed to do nothing but argue and have sex. Even so, she couldn’t wait to see him return. She couldn’t even think about his getting injured again, or worse. She felt connected to him in a way she couldn’t remember feeling connected to any other in her life.
Even odder, she realized that she was no longer terrified of being left alone in his world. The goddess knew she hadn’t exactly found any new stone skills, but she did feel that she had a purpose. She had friends. She had the pride of knowing she was Liam’s wife, and she had Liam’s daughter, who kept forgetting to go back to her mother’s people.
It wasn’t her world. But she was making herself comfortable in it. As comfortable as she could be, anyway, with the world at risk and a husband blind to it.
There was no question now. She could see the yellowing leaves that lay across the lane. More incursions would come across their borders, and the gracious society of faerie would decay further. Soon even the king would be unable to deny the change. It was only a question of what he would do about it.
Please, Sorcha. Find that bloody stone.
Orla stood in the lane until the last man left and then returned to the house.
In the days that followed, she kept herself busy. She taught more tactics to the women and asked the horsemaster to keep her fear of horses secret. She went out riding with Deirdre, who was, of course, a natural horsewoman. It became a way for the two of them to bond, since Deirdre couldn’t bear anybody not loving horses as much as she. She would be the next horsemaster, she insisted, much to the present horsemaster’s amusement. Orla told him not to get too comfortable in his job and forged a tentative friendship with her new daughter.
The days passed, and Liam returned with news that the Treaty of the Twelfth Realm had indeed been broken. Parties met to reinforce it, and Liam left again. Orla tried farming and apothecary and sun-signing and scrying, and failed at them all. If the Stone Keeper had seen her training the women, he would have seen her real skills, but the sessions were secret, carried out when the men were at hurling, which was much of the time now.
By the time Liam came back for the third time, he had to admit to Orla that there was something wrong in his world. He saw that the border was becoming a fragile thing that needed constant surveillance. And he saw the increased aggression even among his own men, who couldn’t seem to manage a patrol without at least one knock-down, drag-out fight.
While Liam was gone, Orla had several times attempted to present to the king and his court the women’s petitions for protection against unlawful aggression. Each time she was sent away, not only without a hearing, but with a metaphorical pat on the head, and told that no fairy man would ever hurt a woman. So the next time Liam came home, she waited till he left for the hurling field, then borrowed his short sword and began to show the women how to use it.
The women trained each day when the men left on patrol or for the hurling field. They weren’t discovered in their illegal behavior until the day Orla and Deirdre were out in the fields cultivating the wildflower crop for the perfume makers. There were about fifteen women there, along with a small swarm of flower fairies and a boggart, who was chasing the shrieking children around the field.
Orla felt oddly content. The sun seemed to shine more warmly on her back, and several of the women were singing old songs as they bent over the variegated blanket of flowers. Liam would be home soon, and Deirdre had actually just run up to her with a straggly bouquet of violets clutched in her hand.
“It’s for you,” she said in her odd, abrupt way, as if ashamed of her gesture.
Orla gave the girl her best smile and a quick hug. “It’s a treasure I’ll cherish, Deirdre.” And then she wove them into both their braids.
“We should get some to decorate the house.”
Orla took a considered look around. “You’re right. Faith, it’s one thing I don’t think I can bollocks up, isn’t it?”
“We’ll see if Liam notices when he comes home.”
“Stop calling him Liam. You don’t call your mother by her name when you speak of her.”
“I’m not mad at her.” Suddenly the girl’s face grew solemn. “I can’t be, can I? It wouldn’t be right.”
It occurred to Orla that neither Deirdre nor Liam had ever discussed the girl’s mother. “How did she die?” she asked.
Deirdre looked startled. “Sure, don’t you know?”
Suddenly there were screams. Orla spun on her heel to hear the thunder of horses and the raucous yells of men. The boggart was screeching like a parrot, and the flower fairies lifted in an agitated cloud. The Coimirceoiri had returned. Except they weren’t in the lane, as they should have been. For some reason they’d decided to ride right through the field where the women were harvesting.
“Get the children!” somebody yelled.
Orla didn’t see Liam or Faolán. She recognized Tullia’s consort, and he was laughing and swinging his sword as if he were charging an enemy line, instead of a field of women. Chaos reigned before them. The children had frozen in place, and their mothers were grabbing them and running.
“Stop!” Orla screamed as she ran toward the horses, waving her arms. “Turn around or you’ll hurt the children!”
But the men didn’t seem to hear her at all. They were too busy trampling the last of the flowers and swinging their swords at the bushes. The women were making for a thick stand of trees. Orla wrapped an arm around Deirdre’s waist and carried her over.
“I want to help!” Deirdre protested.
Orla patted her cheek. “Next time. Now stay here.”
Then she ran back into the field.
“Form up!” she called to the women. “Stop them!”
Aifric and Tullia and two others joined her, and they headed for the horsemen. Keeping half an eye on the other women, Orla chased down the first horse she saw and jumped for the man’s sword arm. She didn’t grab for the sword; she pulled the man from the saddle.
The man, a surly second-liner, thumped to the ground. His horse immediately stumbled to a halt.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” she snapped at the great black beast, giving him a smack on the muzzle. Obviously contrite, he bowed his head and backed away.
Then she turned to the man, who was struggling to get up. Planting a foot squarely in his chest, she gave him a great shove. Then she grabbed his sword and turned it on him.
He shrieked.
He shrieked again when Orla reached down and cut off one side of his mustache with his own sword.
“Where is the Commander of your guard, you slug?” she demanded, resting the sword point against his throat.
“The…hall,” he gasped.
“Well, then, we’ll go speak with him.”
She looked up to see at least three other women in the same position.
“Is everyone safe?” she called.
“Aye!” Aifric called back.
Orla turned back to her captive. “Which of you will tell the horsemaster and Liam the Avenger that you have participated this day in reckless, senseless destruction in defiance of fairy law?”
“What law have we broken?” the man at her feet demanded.
“You put your own children at risk, you cac. You’re going to pay for that, too.”
She never heard her husband approach. “I think first you’re going to have to tell me exactly why women of the Dubhlainn Sidhe are holding swords on their men,” he said next to her. “It is a violation of every statute in the realm.”
The man at her feet gave her an evil smile. “I think it’s you who’ll be paying.”
Ah, and wasn’t he in the right of it?