By the Light of the Moon (17 page)

Owain himself was not hunting. He carried his bow but he had yet to fire a single arrow; he did not hunt for sport. He hunted for food if need be, and his wolf did every full moon, but he felt no desire to compete with the strapping young men, vying for their benefactor’s attention and praise. Of course, Moira was the other reason, huge and looming over all the proceedings; her wincing and the way she held her breath when she looked away from a kill.

Almost subconsciously, he was drawing closer to her. Nobody was really paying attention, fallen back as she had, and even if actually talking to her was out of the question for many reasons, her scent in his nose got a little stronger. It wasn’t mere lust or longing that pulled him to her. If she fell, if something happened to her — none of them would see. Nobody would be there fast enough to help her. He could be; he had to be. It was an almost subconscious drive, when he sidestepped a tree on the side nearer to her rather than the other one, and then a bush and another tree. It felt good to be closer, both to him and the wolf inside his soul and he breathed her in deeply. However disguised her smell was by her obvious discomfort in the situation, underneath that she was still the wild and beautiful girl he had kissed under the pale face of the moon.

A commotion went through the group of riders then, the dogs and men on foot were splashing through a small creek and the first horses poised to jump, then leaped gracefully through the air. Their hooves landed hard on the ground but the trained beasts hardly faltered, continuing their trot through the undergrowth.

Owain, however, felt a sting of worry. All the men were sitting astride their horses, their feet in the stirrups easily able to feather off the impact and balance them on the mighty animal. Moira, however, was sitting on her sidesaddle; her breathing was strained and her eyes were following the different strands of motion with a kind of feverish uncertainty. The desire to make sure that she was safe overrode his other concerns and his steps brought him closer. He could see her better now, beads of sweat were glistening on her forehead; she looked exhausted and overwhelmed. She wasn’t a bad rider, though, he could tell. When the row of horses in front of her jumped, she took control of her reigns and her horse jumped. It just took a fraction of a second — but the saddle seemed to shift and the sight made Owain’s heart seize so painfully that he rushed a few more steps toward her.

In mid-jump, the horse’s head suddenly spun around to him, nostrils flared and ears pressed to its head in sudden panic. And then, with a gut-wrenching crack, it was over. For a heartbeat, the forest seemed utterly silent to Owain. But then Moira screamed.

Her horse had fumbled the landing; its broken bone was sticking out through the short fur below the knee, bloody and grotesque. Its eyes were huge and full of pain before it sank down, tipping Moira out of the saddle. She fell, picked herself up, tripped on her dress and almost stumbled again before she braced herself against a tree, breathing hard. It all passed like a dream until Owain blinked and all the noise and the smells and colors came into sharp focus; a cacophony of shouts and barks and restless horses.

Before he dared to come closer, Sir Fairester was out of the saddle and tried to put his arms around her. Moira resisted, pleading for air, for space. She finally made it to her horse, gently brushing her fingers over its face. Both of them were shivering.

Owain buried his face in his hands. He couldn’t believe what he had done; years and years of experience with horses, with working in an army of foot soldiers and those on horseback and he had never made a mistake this bad. Horses didn’t generally panic at the smell of him. It just made them uncomfortable and nervous, but in that moment and fuelled by Moira’s own panic, her horse had paid the price for his carelessness.

Moira was shaking; she could almost feel the horse’s pain. The way she looked up at her, so afraid. She tried to talk to her, murmuring little promises she couldn’t keep while tears trickled down her cheeks. She hadn’t seen the break, kept her eyes averted from the sight of blood that never failed to make her queasy and shaky.

Everybody was staring, and where a moment ago, the forest had been echoing with the noise of the hunting party, it seemed unnaturally quiet now, ominously still.
Stop looking at me
, her insides screamed at them all, but outwardly, she was silent, kneeling by her injured horse while the rest of them watched unmoving.

Suddenly, a sound behind her; the crick-crack and stuffing sound of loading a musket. Moira turned around just in time to see Deagan coming up next to her, musket trained on her horse’s head.

“No!” she exhaled, pushing herself in front of the barrel, eyes wide and trembling. Her whole body seemed to seize with the effort, the fear and the mental images of what was to come. She couldn’t breathe, could barely cough out the word. “Please.”

Deagan looked at her, confusion written all over his face.

“Moira, my love, it’s in pain.”

She trembled and shook her head until she felt her father at her side, pulling her off the ground and out of Deagan Fairester’s line of fire.

“No … no, please.” She got out but then the deafening shot made her press her hands to her eyes and she slumped in her father’s arms, weeping and shaking. It was too much; too much noise, too much shouting, too many people watching, speaking, shooting. Too many sights, too much blood that she didn’t want to see.

Finally, she stumbled away from her father. Her hand against a tree, she emptied the contents of her stomach over its roots, heaving, hiccupping and sobbing as her forehead hit the rough bark. She didn’t feel the pain there; it didn’t even register against the agony that was spreading all through her body and all over skin. It hurt. Like blinding fire and knifes and bullets. It hurt so much, she thought her head would explode any second.

Finally, she couldn’t have said how many eternities later, she felt a hand on her shoulder and she didn’t want to shake it off. The pain was still there, but it didn’t inhabit her entire soul, there was a bit of room to notice the hand and wonder.

“Here, take my flask, wash out your mouth,” a gentle and familiar voice urged. She looked up to see Owain’s worried face looking down at her. The pain receded more. When she tried to reach for the offered flask though, her hand shook so much, she spilled half its content and with a concerned smile, Owain took it back. He helped her lean her head back and gently fed her some water.

“Wash out your mouth and spit,” he murmured. The instructions helped. She swished the water through her mouth, tasting the vile contents of her stomach again and quickly spit it out over the same roots. It cleared her head some more. Enough to, when he offered her his handkerchief, take it and carefully wipe at her cheeks and mouth and chin.

“I can take her back to the castle, milord,” Owain said, turning away from her. She had almost forgotten they weren’t alone for a blissful few moments. “It doesn’t look like she’s in any condition to ride. I can carry her.”

For a long time, there was no answer until her father came up on her other side.

“Is that what you need, darling?” he asked carefully, not utterly unaware of her plights and her needs. He was embarrassed for her display in front of her would-be husband but he could see she was hurting, panicking. In the end, she was his daughter more than a commodity.

She managed a nod, anything to get away from the sounds and the blood and the shooting and so her father nodded as well.

“Take her back. I will wait a while to send back the … horse.”

Her stomach contracted again, just once and she was grateful when she felt herself lifted into two strong arms and her cheek collapsed against Owain’s chest. He was warm and safe like none other had ever been for her.

Moira couldn’t remember the last time she had been carried like this, in two strong arms and curled against someone’s chest. She assumed it had to have been when she was a child sometime; but even then, touch hadn’t soothed her the way most people expected it would, not that a young noblewoman like her was hugged and cuddled anyway. She had seen it in the children of the village, though, the way they were kissed and doted upon. She’d seen a father throw his daughter in the air, to her delighted giggling, and then flopped her over his shoulder like a sack of flour. It had looked so alien and yet sweet, like something she read in a fairy tale; beautiful but not real.

Yet, she was being carried now; and again, there was that intense feeling of reality slipping away, fading into a dream state. She knew she had panicked, she remembered it in parts. It wasn’t the first time. There was something about the sight of blood that unsettled her deeply, and she knew she shouldn’t have gone on the hunt in the first place. But she had kissed the wrong man and had felt guilty; like she was supposed to play her role better in the future. It had been too much, the noise, the shouting, the shooting — and then her horse; the crack of broken bone, the panic in her eyes, the sweat. The shot. Blood and brain matter splattering across the clearing, tinting the little stream red.

She remembered it in images, flashes of memory that still hurt, but were soothed slowly. It didn’t seem possible that she could be carried the way Owain carried her; there should have been more effort. There was hardly any, he just kept breathing normally, carrying her back through the forest, evading trees and undergrowth. He didn’t make her want to push him away, and scream and cry. He didn’t make it impossible to breathe. Owain just was. He was there and she welcomed his presence, especially now that she was too tired and too hurt to think of the consequences.

“I’m sorry,” he finally said, his voice a quiet murmur that was enough to reach her ear as close as they were.

“Why?” Moira got out. She was still shaky, still only half rooted in the present and her body but she was intensely aware of him and the careful note in his voice, the warmth of his breath on her ear.

“It was my fault,” he answered. Breathing out audibly, she could feel his shoulders slumping a little bit even if he didn’t waver in his safe hold on her body. “I got too close to you, Blaidyn can spook horses, I’m sorry. I didn’t pay enough attention.”

Moira finally looked up. She was tired and emotional, but she shook her head. Whatever had happened that day, she didn’t want it to be his fault, but she was too exhausted to come up with a reason why it wasn’t.

Smiling gently, his thumb rubbed over her back and he kissed her hair at the top of her head.

“It was.” His voice was quiet, the kind of voice that only travelled the short distance to her ear and nowhere else, a voice that belonged to her alone. “And now I’m carrying you; it’s almost as if I’m being rewarded for ruining your day.”

This time, she smiled and shook her head again. She could feel the tingling in her stomach, the one she knew from that night on the battlements and almost every time afterwards when her eyes chanced upon his. This time, it was stronger; much, much stronger.

“You saved my day,” she whispered finally. They were the first words she had spoken since her troubles and they sounded raw, just like she hadn’t used her throat in a long time. “Hunt ruined it, not you.” Never Owain.

He didn’t speak again, not for a long time. His steps grew more sure-footed the closer they got to the edge of the forest and they fell in a gentle rhythm, like a heartbeat, lulling her to safety. She closed her eyes again, cheek against his chest, the woolen shirt he wore. It was warm, heated by his body and it in turn heated her cheek. The thought felt surprisingly good and a little smile edged its way onto her face again.

She hadn’t forgotten about the part she had to play, nor about their resolve to stay away from each other but if there had been one exception on the battlements, why couldn’t there be another? It was certainly an extraordinary situation. She couldn’t have walked home and would have had trouble getting on another horse. His arms were arguably and objectively the best place for her. She liked this thought, too.

Finally, as he wound himself through thinner trees, the crackling under his feet grew quieter. Around them, she could no longer hear the woodpecker or the hooting of the screech owl, but the softer songs of meadow birds. The light changed too, sunlight streaming against her face again. It made her nose itch and she rubbed it against Owain’s chest to stop herself from sneezing. In the end, it made him chuckle and he ducked his lips over her crown of red hair again.

“Are you feeling a little better?” he asked finally as they found the path past the village and eventually up toward the Keep. It was a long walk, but Moira couldn’t say that she ever wanted to arrive there.

“I do,” she answered at length, nodding so that her cheek rubbed against him again. It was a glorious sensation, touching someone. Touching Owain. The novelty of it — or rather, the novelty of loving it, of feeling addicted to it — made her want to catch her breath or cry or stay in his arms forever. There, she could inhale his scent with every breath and her body was always warmed by his. It had to be the pinnacle of existence to her exhaustion-addled mind.

“You’re beginning to look a little better, too,” he agreed and she could hear the smile in his tone. “I was afraid for you.”

There was something he didn’t say; even Moira could tell but the moment was too nice and too soft to worry about it. She didn’t even mind that he worried, that he watched her; Owain seemed to defy many of her deeply rooted issues and circumvent them with ease now. She could feel the wolf deep in his chest, could smell him and his worry, his desire to protect her and make her feel better. For a moment, she longed for the full moon where she might pet the beast and repay its kindness and care.

It only took her a moment to close her eyes as though that would stop the thought. She wasn’t supposed to be that close to Owain or his wolf. Not even now. She supposed it meant that she was feeling better, but that didn’t make her chest ache less.

The path was easy to tread and Owain didn’t have to concentrate on anything other than her anymore. It was a beautiful day, the cool late autumn sun still high in the sky made the mountain peaks glitter and show off their newly fallen snowy caps. Except for the crows, picking over the field mice who were still diligently gathering what they could find remaining of the last harvest, the valley seemed almost lifeless. The farmers were tending to their animals and the stock of their crop. It was one of the last beautifully sunny days left in the season before the winter would come down from the mountains and cover them all in its white coat.