Shadows and Light (2 page)

“These are the jewels for me,” she finished just as quietly, unsettled enough to feel dizzy.

“Would they be enough?” he asked, a strange, strained note in his voice. “If they were offered each day, would they be enough?”

“They would be precious,” she murmured. “Priceless.” She bent her head so that her hair would fall forward, hiding her face from him. Her heart beat oddly. She couldn’t seem to draw in enough air to breathe properly. She felt as if Aiden were holding a treasure she craved just out of her reach.

“Would they be enough for you to accept one man as a friend and lover? As an …exclusive mate?”

Pushing her hair aside, she studied his face, baffled by the uncertainty in his eyes. “Are you asking if I’d be willing to accept you as an exclusive mate? As a —”What did the humans call it? She knew the word as well as she knew her own name. But she couldn’t remember either at the moment.

“As a husband,” Aiden said softly. “Yes. That’s what I’m asking.”

Tears stung her eyes. She pressed a hand against her mouth, not sure if she was going to laugh or cry. There were too many feelings spinning through her.

She drew her hand away from her mouth, let it rest on her throat, and felt her pulse beating wildly. “The rest of the Fae will say we’ve been contaminated by spending so much time in the human world.”

“These are our lives and our choice,” he said, sitting up so they were eye to eye. “Do you really care what the rest of the Fae will say or think?”

Lyrra shook her head, reached for him.

He pulled her into his arms and held her tight.

“Yes,” she whispered in his ear. “Yes, I’ll take the jewels of love that you offer, and, giving them back in turn, I’ll accept you as friend, lover, and husband.”

When he tried to kiss her, she pressed her head against his shoulder and wept.

“Lyrra,” he said, alarmed. He shifted her until she was sitting on his lap and rocked her. “Why are crying? If you want this as much as I do, why are you crying?”

She made an effort to hold back the tears, since they were making it impossible to speak. “When I was at Brightwood over the winter, I read the journals the women in Ari’s family had left behind. This is what they wanted. This is what they
had
once and wanted to have again. This is what Ari never would have gotten from Lucian. I met her only that one time, but I liked her. It seems so unfair that, because we met her, I’ve gotten my own heart’s wish and she —”She swallowed the tears. “And she got nothing more than whatever kindness Morag gives to the spirits the Gatherer takes to the Shadowed Veil.”

Aiden rocked her for another minute. The storm of emotions that had battered her was fading now, leaving her limp and exhausted. Comforted by the movement and the feel of his arms around her, she began to drift toward sleep.

“We all have secrets,” he said quietly. “Things we know that we don’t share for one reason or another. We all have the right to have thoughts that are private. But I’ve noticed that, among humans, it usually is not considered breaking a confidence when something is shared between a husband and a wife.”

“That’s part of love,” she replied.

He took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Lyrra, sometimes words can lie even when they tell the truth.”

“I’m aware of that,” she said, a little prickly. “After all, I
am
the Muse.”

“Ari is gone.”

She felt the tears sting her eyes again. He didn’t need to tell her the obvious. Wasn’t that what she’d been talking about a minute ago? Ari had been captured by the Inquisitors, and Morag had told Dianna and Lucian —

She sat up slowly.

Sometimes words can lie even when they tell the truth
.

“Ari is gone,” she said, watching Aiden’s eyes, seeing the silent message in them: there was something under the words being spoken that she needed to pay attention to. Over the past few weeks, they’d gotten very good at giving each other these silent messages as they sang and told stories and listened to what the villagers and farm folk said — and didn’t say.

“Morag told Dianna and Lucian that Ari was gone,” she continued. Truth and lies. “And because Morag is the Gatherer, they assumed Ari was dead. But she never actually
said
that. She just said Ari was gone.”

“Yes,” Aiden agreed, “that’s all she ever said.”

Lyrra thought a moment, then shook her head. “She
did
take two spirits up to the Shadowed Veil.”

“Yes, she did.”

“Then —”Lyrra paused. Ahern, the Lord of the Horse, had been killed in the confrontation with the Inquisitors when they came to Ridgeley — and Brightwood — last summer. Had there been someone else at Brightwood? Someone none of the Fae but Morag had known about? “What happened to the young man Ari was going to wed? What was his name? Neall. Yes, Neall. Morag . said he was gone.”

“He gave her kindness, courtesy, respect, and loyalty,” Aiden sang softly.

Unable to sit still, Lyrra scrambled off the bed to pace the width of the small room.

You’re the Muse. He’s the Bard. He expects you to be able to hear what isn’t being said. Just as Morag had expected
him
to understand what she hadn’t said
.

He’d gone to see Morag one last time before she left Ahern’s farm. Why would she have told him anything? Because he had grieved Ari’s death — and the loss of a Daughter of the House of Gaian.

“He got her away from them,” Lyrra said, more to hear the words spoken than to speak to Aiden. “Somehow, Neall got Ari away from the Inquisitors. And then took her away from Brightwood, as well.” She pressed her hands against her face. “If the Lightbringer and the Huntress ever learn that the last witch from Brightwood still lives…”

“They would search for her until they found her, and they would bring her back to Brightwood, regardless of what Ari wants,” Aiden replied. “Dianna would bring her back so that
she
wouldn’t have to stay in the human world and be the anchor that keeps the shining road open and her Clan’s piece of Tir Alainn intact. And Lucian would bring her back to have Ari as his mistress because he lost her before he tired of her — and because his pride wouldn’t tolerate the truth that she’d chosen a human male over him.” He paused. “But that is merely speculation. Morag said Ari is gone, and the Gatherer would know that better than the rest of us.”

“Mother’s mercy, Aiden.” Lyrra sank down on the end of the bed. “Let’s hope they never realize that what Morag said wasn’t what they assumed she meant.” Then she turned and gave him a brilliant smile. “Ari is gone. Isn’t that wonderful?”

Answering her smile with his own, he held out a hand. When she took it, he tugged her toward him, lying back so that she was stretched out on top of him.

He played with her hair and said, “When humans wed, there are speeches and customs that are observed to seal the bargain. We’ve spoken words to pledge ourselves to each other, so there’s just one other thing to do to seal the bargain.”

He looked at her with eyes full of lust and laughter.

She gave him a soft kiss, then wiggled her body just enough to get a hard response from his.

“Vixen,” he said, wrapping his arms around her.

“I am not!” She paused. “Well, yes, I am. Some of the time.”

Laughing, he rolled until she was under him. “Come, wife. Let’s seal the bargain.”

This time, when they gave each other their bodies, they also gave much more.

Aiden stared at the ceiling. Lyrra slept peacefully beside him.

Yes, husbands and wives kept secrets, but there were some secrets he
had
to tell her now, for her own protection. If something happened to him, she had to know where to run — and what places to avoid at any cost. It wasn’t safe for a woman to travel alone anymore along the eastern border. In some places, it wasn’t safe to
be
a woman, now that the Inquisitors had come to Sylvalan and somehow convinced the eastern barons — and through them, other men — that women were lesser creatures who had no purpose, and no value, except to provide men with comfortable homes, sex, and offspring.

Aiden rolled over and tucked himself around Lyrra, needing the closeness.

He’d missed her over the past year with a fierceness that had made him ache. And even though he’d worried at times that the Inquisitors might come back to Brightwood, he’d been grateful she’d stayed there — until he’d returned to see her and discovered Lyrra hadn’t stayed by her own choice. Then the anger and frustration he’d been feeling toward his own kind had turned on Dianna, who was the Lady of the Moon, the Huntress, the female leader of the Fae. She and Lyrra were the only Fae at Brightwood who had some aspect of power in them that made it possible for them to anchor the magic in the Old Place and, with
enough other Fae present, keep the shining road to Tir Alainn open.

Last summer, after part of the Clan had come down to the human world, Dianna had asked Lyrra to remain at Brightwood a few more days while she went to Tir Alainn and took care of a few things before coming back to live in the cottage that had belonged to Ari’s family. Dianna returned to Tir Alainn — and stayed there, leaving Lyrra with the choice of remaining to anchor the shining road or putting an entire Clan at risk if she left.

It was only when he’d returned that Lyrra had sent a warning through another of the Fae that she was leaving.
That
brought Dianna back to Brightwood. Lyrra refused to tell him what had been said before she left, but he imagined it hadn’t been a pleasant leave-taking. And the cold courtesy with which they were greeted whenever they went up a shining road to a Clan house in Tir Alainn told him that Dianna had been spewing her bitterness over having to remain in the human world to anyone who would listen. He and Lyrra were being blamed for putting Dianna’s Clan at risk and leaving
her
“exiled” at Brightwood.

The fact that no Lady of the Moon from another Clan had offered to come to Brightwood and try to be the anchor for the magic in the Old Place was telling. Perhaps that was just the selfinterest that came naturally to most of the Fae — or perhaps, despite being willing to condemn Lyrra for her decision, no one trusted Dianna enough to offer, not after she’d broken her promise to the Muse.

He could fight the Clans’ cold courtesy with sharp words, but he couldn’t fight what was happening in Sylvalan. What he’d seen in some of the villages he’d passed through last summer and autumn had chilled him. Women wearing something called a scold’s bridle that deprived them of the ability to speak. A woman being strapped in the public square, while the men witnessing the
punishment hadn’t been able to tell him what she’d done to be treated so badly, only that it was necessary to teach a woman modesty and pleasing behavior.

Those things had been bad enough. But something else had come across the river from Wolfram over the winter, something that made the men so uneasy they wouldn’t talk about it. Something that the eastern barons were ordering done to make sure women remained in what was now considered their proper place in society. A “procedure,” the men had muttered, to rid a woman of unhealthy feelings.

Shivering, Aiden snuggled closer to Lyrra.

He hadn’t been able to find out what this new danger was, but the fear of it was one of the things that had sent him galloping back to Brightwood.

Whatever was wrong in the human villages in Sylvalan was spreading. Even a village like this one, where nothing seemed out of place, made him uneasy. More so now, when the desire to protect Lyrra was stronger than his desire to survive.

Tomorrow they would head for villages closer to the Mother’s Hills, places farther away from the eastern border of Sylvalan. Maybe they would come to an Old Place and take the shining road back to Tir Alainn and rest for a few days. And try, once again, to convince the Fae that the human world was no longer a place where they could amuse themselves when they chose and ignore it the rest of the time.

Because if the Fae didn’t act soon to protect the witches and help the humans protect themselves from what the Inquisitors were doing to the people of Sylvalan, none of them — the humans, the witches, the Small Folk who lived in the Old Places, or the Fae — would survive.

S
tanding in front of the morning room door, Liam smoothed back his dark brown hair and resisted the urge to give the tops of his boots a quick polish on the back of his trouser legs. His mother knew he’d already been out working, had requested this appointment during the time when he usually came in to spend an hour going over accounts and correspondence and, lately, to reply to the black-edged notes of condolence. She wouldn’t expect him to look like anything but what he was — a man who tended the land that belonged to him and looked after the people who worked for him. The fact that he was now the Baron of Willowsbrook didn’t change anything. He’d been riding over the land for twenty years now, had started visiting the tenant farms on his beloved sorrel pony when he was barely seven years old. She wouldn’t criticize him for being dressed in clothes that were a bit sweaty and smelled of animals.

Maybe it was because she
wouldn’t
criticize his appearance that he had the urge to run upstairs and put on a fresh shirt before stepping into a room that was bright, feminine, and soothing.

Giving the door a light rap with his knuckles, Liam walked into the room. His mother, Elinore, stood at the glass door that opened onto a small terrace, no doubt watching the birds that gathered to drink and bathe in the stone basin that was scrubbed and filled with fresh water every morning. The sunlight made the strands of gray in her light brown hair shine like silver. She was a small, slim woman with an inner strength that had weathered all the emotional storms of her marriage.

He may have inherited his father’s looks — the dark hair, a face handsome enough to catch a woman’s eye, height that was a little above average — but he was glad he’d inherited his mother’s hazel eyes. Woodland eyes, she called them, because they were a brown-flecked green. Sometimes he wondered if, when she looked at him, she saw only a younger version of his father. At least when she looked at his eyes, she had to know there was a part of her in him, as well.