Dolmarehn - Book Two of the Otherworld Trilogy (22 page)

“Meghan?”

Cade
.  I sighed my relief and sat up, scrubbing my eyes with the heels of my hands.

“Hang on,” I grumbled after sliding off the mattress.

As I made my way across the room, everything came crashing back to me.  The beautiful castle in Erintara, my royal mother and what she’d told me about my father . . .

I pulled the door open and sucked in a breath.  Cade no longer wore the simple clothes he donned while traveling through Eilé.  Instead he had on a long, dark green coat that matched his eyes, fawn colored pants and knee-high black boots.  He looked as if he’d stepped out of an eighteenth century ballroom.  I merely stood and gaped as I counted the gold buttons running down the front of his coat.

“Meghan?  Are you alright?”

“Uh, yeah, fine,” I managed.

He eyed me warily, then stared at my hair.

My hands shot up and I groaned.  It was probably a rat’s nest.  I bit the inside of my cheek and blushed, peering down at my rumpled clothes.  Ugh, I must look like a hoyden.

“I came to tell you dinner will be served in half an hour and that one of your mother’s ladies in waiting will be bringing you some proper attire,” he said with a grin.

“Right, okay.”

“And if you’ll allow me, I’d like to escort you to the dining hall when you are ready.”

He sketched a neat bow and I covered my urge to laugh with a small cough.

“Of course,” I stated.

An older woman carrying a box appeared at the end of the hall, interrupting our friendly exchange.  She studied Cade with a sneer, her eyes cold as she turned to me.

“Young lady, your mother wants you to wear this.”

She pushed past me and set the box on the bed, curtsied, then crossed the room, giving Cade another nasty glare as she left.

I bit back my anger at her reaction to Cade.  Leaving the door open, I walked over to the bed and pulled the lid off of the box.  The dress inside was beautiful, a shimmery golden green color with tiny glass beads sewn along the seams.

I glanced over at Cade.  He stood patiently outside my door and for a moment he reminded me of Fergus.  I suppressed a grin and said, “If you don’t mind waiting, it shouldn’t take me too long to get ready.”

He nodded and closed the door.

After washing my face in the bathroom and brushing my hair, I stripped off my clothes from earlier and stepped into the gown.  The skirt was long and full and the bodice decorated with an embroidered floral pattern.  The sleeves were quite short and when I tried to button up the back, I paused and a smidgeon of dread curdled in my stomach.  I managed the first few buttons at the small of my back on my own, but I didn’t get any further.  A zipper would have been hard enough, but this was impossible.

I took a deep breath and I stared at the door.  Well, I had no other option.  Holding the front of the bodice up, I scurried over to the door and pulled it open.

Cade wasn’t right outside my room, but was standing further down the hall gazing out a window.

“Cade!” I hissed.

His head turned in my direction.

“I need your help.”

When he stood only a few feet in front of me I pulled him inside and closed the door behind us.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, eyeing the room as if he expected to find faelah hiding in the shadows.

“Um, I can’t reach the buttons on the back of my dress, can you help?”

I let the question hang as I scraped my hair to the side with one hand while holding the dress up with the other.  When I turned around Cade sucked in a breath.  I wasn’t sure if his gasp was a sound of delight or horror, but he readily complied and started buttoning.  I felt every single golden button slip into place, and when he finished, he rested his hands on my shoulders.

A tall mirror stood across the room, one I hadn’t noticed earlier when I first arrived.  Now it reflected an image that warmed my heart and made my toes tingle: me in the beautiful dress, Cade in his fine court clothes with his hands on my shoulders.  How I wanted the moment to last forever.  Then I imagined him leaning down and kissing the spot where my neck and shoulder met . . .

“You look beautiful Meghan,” he whispered behind me, breaking into my fantasy.

I grinned, unable to help myself, and watched my face redden in the mirror.

“Thank you.  You look very good yourself,” I answered after clearing my throat.

“But not beautiful, huh?”

I turned and glanced up at him, but he only grinned down at me, amusement painting his eyes a brilliant pale green.

“Now, shall we go down to this grand dinner?”

Cade offered me his arm and we descended to the first floor.  I smiled sheepishly, glad his gloominess from before seemed all but gone.  We met several people along the way, all dressed in their finest and eyeing us with curiosity.  Some of them exuded hostility, like the woman who brought the dress to my room, but none of them spoke to us.  As we drew closer to the dining hall, I clung to Cade even harder.

He lowered his head and whispered against my temple, “Relax.”

I swallowed hard and tried to loosen my grip, especially when one of the noble women frowned in irritation as Cade and I passed her.  The dining hall itself appeared as big as the throne room, and a huge rectangular table large enough to seat a hundred guests took up the room’s center.

Dinner turned out to be a long, quiet event, and the formality of it nearly suffocated me.  The young man seated to my right tried to make light conversation, but his explanation of how the first course had been prepared ended up being the most interesting thing he had to say.  Everything else he spoke of had no meaning to me whatsoever: the fruitfulness of his land, the gossip of Danua’s court, the general politics of Erintara.  I found myself nodding and pretending to enjoy myself just to be polite.

Halfway through the second course I lifted my eyes and found Cade watching me.  The men and women sitting around him were dressed well, but I had no doubt they were on the lower end of Danua’s social ladder.  Cade flashed an encouraging smile and lifted his goblet in a toast.  I returned the gesture, feeling a little better, though I still longed to be at his end of the table.  The members of Erintara’s lower upper class were clearly a more cheerful bunch than those next to me.

Eventually, the grand meal came to an end and servants moved in to clear the tables.  I expected dessert or tea to be served, but before anything else could happen, my mother raised a hand from her seat at the head of the table and everyone quieted down.

“As many of you know,” she began in her clear, authoritative voice, “a guest arrived today.”

My stomach fell to the bottom of my toes.  What was she doing?

“This guest is a young woman, a young woman you might have seen poking around the castle earlier and who is currently sitting there to my right.”

She gestured in my general direction in a bored fashion.  Several pairs of eyes descended on me and it took every last shred of effort I possessed not to dive under the table.

“There is something you should also know about her.  She has been living in the mortal world for the past sixteen years.  She also happens to be half Faelorehn and half Fomorian.”

The murmuring began as soon as Danua finished speaking.  I shut my eyes for a moment, trying to will the anxiety away. 
What was she doing
!?  Hadn’t she told me that they had scorned her for loving my father?  Why would she point it out now, after they’d finally forgiven her?

“And,” Danua raised her voice above the din of the dinner guests, “she is my illegitimate daughter.”

The room exploded with noise; people talking with voices raised in order to hear their neighbors.  The man sitting next to me gazed at me with wide eyes and a stricken expression, and I was certain that was the scrape of chair legs against the stone floor as he tried to move further away from me.

I took a deep breath and glanced up in Cade’s direction.  He sat stiffly, ignoring the chaos around him and gazing directly into my eyes, as if in doing so might pull me back from the abyss I was falling into.

“But since she is here,” Danua boomed, the room growing darker, “I’ll ask all of you to treat her as you would treat any noble of Eilé.”

The murmuring stopped almost completely.  Clearly, no one wanted to incite Danua’s wrath.

Cade stood up abruptly, and even from where I sat I caught a glimpse of the fire in his eyes.  “Your Majesty, legitimate or not, she is the daughter of a queen and deserves-”

“Do not take my hospitality so lightly that you think you can speak freely,” she spat, the room cooling several degrees to match her growing anger.  “It is because of you, Caedehn MacRoich, that my daughter broke her geis of protection in the first place.”

Cade turned a sickly shade of white and sat back down.

“Yes,” Eilé’s high queen sneered, “I know all about the incident with the Morrigan and how it almost led to Meghan’s death.  So I recommend you watch your step young Caedehn and take care not to forget your place.”

I glared at my mother, all the emotions from earlier in the day churning up once again.  Was she trying to humiliate me?  And if so, why?  What had I ever done to her to make her despise me so?  If I’d been braver, and if images of being dragged back to this very room by armed soldiers hadn’t invaded my mind, I would’ve stood up and stormed back to my own suite.  Annoying one of the most powerful women in Eilé, however, didn’t seem wise.

Dessert came a few minutes later and everyone ate in silence.  No one seemed in the mood to chat anymore and I only stared at my pudding.

When the table was cleared, Danua invited her guests back to the ballroom to play cards and other games.  She hadn’t even looked at me since her upsetting declaration, so I took advantage of the shuffling crowd and started creeping away.  The idea of playing games made me feel ill and I was sure that, despite what my mother had said about treating me as an equal, no one would want me there.  I was half the enemy after all, and who knows what mischief I might cause.

The tears started coming when I reached the long hallway that would take me to my room.  I dashed them away angrily.  I was tired of crying, tired of being an emotional wreck.  The sniveling, dramatic girl who had taken over my body needed to find a new host to torment.

Footsteps echoed behind me and I sped up.  The last thing I wanted was for one of Danua’s ladies in waiting or one of the nobles to find me in my current state.

“Meghan.”

I took a shuddering breath.  Cade.

“Meghan, wait.”

I picked up my pace, almost running now.  My room was only a few more doors away.  I didn’t even want Cade to see me.  Unfortunately, he was faster than me.  He caught up to me and wrapped his arms around me.  I tried to fight him.

“Leave me alone!” I sobbed, attempting to punch him in the chest, but I was too tired and too upset to put any real power behind the attack.

“Shhh,” he crooned as he pressed my head against his shoulder.  “Shhh, now.  Just let everything out Meghan, cry to your heart’s content.”

The dam gave way and I broke down.  I hardly noticed when he led me to my room, picking me up and carrying me when I refused to walk.  He opened and closed the door behind us and then strode over to the bed and sat down, me crying my eyes out and him rocking me in his arms and speaking softly in his ancient language.

His careful attention must have helped because the tears dried up and my sobs stopped.  Cade placed me on the mattress and took a step back.  I didn’t even think about changing into something more comfortable, which was probably a good thing because I wanted Cade to stay.  I rested my head on one of the many pillows, exhaustion finally taking over.

“I’m so sorry Meghan, I’m so sorry about everything,” Cade whispered, his hand pushing my hair away from my face.  “I never would have brought you here if I knew how Danua would treat you.  We’ll leave tomorrow, early in the morning before anyone else rises.  We won’t even give the queen a chance to stop us.  I’ll come and get you when it’s time to go.”

Something warm and soft pressed against my forehead and then several seconds later I heard the door close with a soft snap.  I tried to tell Cade not to leave, but I no longer had the energy.  I reached for my little well of magic, but the familiar warmth had gone cold in my chest.  After only a few minutes, however, I managed to fall asleep and while I slept, I dreamed of the ruined castle with a pink and green room, and the soothing sound of a waterfall to chase away the nightmares.

-Fifteen-

Unworthy

Cade came early the next morning, as promised.  I had slept in the gown, rumpling the fine fabric so badly that a little twinge of malicious joy cut through me. 
Good
, I thought,
I hope that stuffy lady in waiting finds it first
.

I dressed in a clean set of clothes from my duffle bag as Cade waited outside my door.  I relished being in my own clothes again.  I glanced at the dress one more time and for some bizarre reason, I was reminded of the prom and how I planned to ask Cade to go with me.  My stomach flipped over as I remembered the events of last night.  He had taken care of me after my mother’s grand announcement.  If I asked him now, would he merely say yes out of pity?  That’s the last thing I wanted.  I wanted him to go with me because he chose to, without sympathy driving his decision.  I huffed in slight exasperation.  There was no rush.  I could wait a little longer to ask him.