Silver Hollow (54 page)
“Everything worked the way we planned it
,
” she said, determined to speak before he asked her. Though he said nothing his fingertips pressed deeper and his patience encouraged her candor.
“We shall rest a moment here.”
“Shouldn’t we keep going? The others are going to worry about us.”
But when she tried to pass him he clasped her waist and whispered, “Please wait.”
Heat rushed up and clawed its way through every one of her nerves and Amie couldn’t say no. He hung his head so his nose brushed the top of her forehead and a shudder racked his composure. She pulled back, longing to feed the fire inside her, needing the assurance of his touch. Instead Amie choked on her words and gasped, “What’s wrong with your eyes?” A dark liquid was slowly collecting and pooling in tiny trickles along the bridge of his nose.
“Amie
,
I’ve tried to tell ye at least a hundred times what really happened that night. At first I wanted nothing to do with you. They told me you were the cause of all my sorrow, don’t ye see
,
love?”
She captured the thick liquid and pulled away when it smeared gold. “Blood?” It burned hot and cold at once on her fingertips. When she looked at him again he had already recoiled. Shoulders hunched, he hung his head and rubbed his hands over his face.
“You know that dress I gave you belonged to my wife. She was murdered almost an age ago now by
your
father. When she died the last of our hope died with her.”
“She was carrying your baby,” Amie gasped, clutched her chest and touched the beginnings of her scar with his blood.
“We were trapped here by a curse crafted by Nimue after this and willingly we came
,
”
he said, s
taring past her
. H
is face fell and revealed his brokenness. “Where else could we run to? Certainly not your world where
he
had taught them to fear us. I grew bitter, watching how the
Sidhe and the
w
ights
played war with the humans and Exiled. They sought me out, knowing my hatred of your family, told me where you were and all but gave me the order.”
“I don’t understand…” Amie began to shake her head in denial. Already she knew his words before they fell from his lips. How long had she known? Since they first met and the scar on her chest burned a white
-
hot fire?
From his belt Dearg slowly pulled a long jagged
-
edged dagger captured in bone at the hilt. “This was the blade I chose when the Exiled
contacted me. It was
her
blade. Slaine told
me I was sick with madness and
I could nay see how I was playing into their hands. But I knew if you came back to claim your birthright they would kill the last of us to protect you or we would be prisoners forever unless your father’s bloodline ended. I told myself Caoimhe and my son would be avenged.”
“It was
you
!” She stepped closer to him when she should have run away screaming.
“Amie
,
you need
to
hear the truth! I didn’t car
e when first you came, but
’
t
was before I knew you! I have been sleeping the better part of a thousand years until you fell into my shed.”
Sobs escaped her chest rather than words, her hands rose in defense and her emotions fell forth in violent jabs of energy. Each attempt she made, every outpouring of her anger and sorrow, he simply absorbed. She could see from the crease of his brow as he took the full brunt of her power, the agony in his expression, how much he loved her.
Eventually she sank onto the hard cool floor in a heap of skirts, pushing the loose tendrils of her curls aside. “This is so messed up
,
” she said and laughed.
Crossing his legs beneath him
,
Dearg sat close in front of her, fingers twitching from an effort to keep them still. Amie at last understood his hesitation with her, the conflict she had so often seen in his eyes.
He’s still punishing himself
.
“You could have killed me instantly,” she said.
“I’ve killed enemies without a thought countless times, but when ye looked at me I knew I was wrong.” He followed every brush of her hand as it wiped away her tears.
When she saw this Amie shut her eyes and sighed. “You’re the first person in this place to be completely honest with me. That’s what makes you different from them.” She smiled and his lips parted he was so baffled.
“You are so…”
“Mental?” Amie laughed.
“
Human,
” he admitted. After another shake of his head he lifted his chin, posture rigid as he listened to the stones around them. “Come, they have reached the stables. I need to get you to Xcalibure.”
…
He waited for her outside the other cave entrance.
Water
had broken through the clouds in a torrent of rain that would last the rest of the night. Steam rose off his skin in thick waves, but the luster of his golden eyes never wavered. She stood beneath the protection of the rock over cropping, glancing at the lights through the trees behind him.
“These caves were our first home
,
but there is more to them than I showed you,” he told her.
Amie nodded, and took the first tentative steps in the rain with him. “I know.” The sleet bounced off of her tiara and weighed down her hair and skirts.
“I can nay come with you
,
Amie, but should our plans fail, you only need enter the caves and speak my true name to find me. Remember, the truest name holds the greatest power. I’ll come to fetch you hopefully when the threat has been squashed.”
She took another step, saying, “And is Dearg your true name?”
Swallowing thickly he nodded. “Aye, but in my true form, I was known by another.” He scowled in afterthought, saying, “It was because they learned my name they were able to enslave the remnant of my kind.”
Amie surprised herself when the answer fell from her lips, a name stolen from an ancient text. “Grrathgar…”
Smoke billowed through his nose at her words. A new gleam filled his eyes, reshaping the pupils into reptilian slits. He leaned towards her but held himself back. When Amie took the last step separating them and grabbed his hand, he clenched his strong jaw. Even she felt his pain and it echoed her own familiar ache. Only now she had accepted him, grown used to it, even come to crave it.
His voice cracked with his words, sounding much more dragon than man. “Amie, why do you hurt yourself so?”
She held on to him, even when the pain intensified like a fresh burn. “Why does it hurt so much to touch you sometimes?”
“Your
Seelie
soul fights me because of what I did to you
.
” His golden blood pooled and fell in streams down his face. “Amie, what are ye doing?”
“Forgiving you,” she said as she slowly she pushed her sodden dress down, revealing her corset and most of her cleavage.
The knife’s trail nearly split her chest in two halves and Dearg flinched when he saw but couldn’t look away. Her source shone brightest here, making her pale skin seem transparent over a violet glow. With her fingers locked around his wrist, she brought his hand to the jagged tissue until he covered it. Both of them breathed heavily out and in again as a flash of light lit the trees around them and dissipated.
We’re stronger together than apart.
Pulling his head down to meet her, she first brushed his tears away with her lips and
then
kissed him.
Dameri was waiting for her in the forest with a heavy lantern held in her tiny hand. “Come!” she urged in her whimsical voice. Amie still glowed from the fire Dearg had breathed into her chest before their parting, wondering
at
the
invasively cold
downpour
.
“Hurry,” Dameri urged, graspin
g for her fingers. The rain
,
which
had turned into sleet
,
was now coming down in chunks of ice
pelting their heads and scraping
their cheeks. Amie watched Dameri’s fingers turn bloody while hers quickly healed. Absently she realized they had the same shaped hands.
“Your guardians have been beside themselves
,
Jessamiene. You and the
Freargde
were gone too long.”
Before Amie could recall who her guardians were, they had arrived. Xcalibure’s orchard was plunged in a foreboding light and she sensed the darkness that had come over Wenderdowne wasn’t going to stop there until it had claimed everything. The back door was shining like a lighthouse beacon ahead. Already she felt warmer for approaching it and saw the anxious diminutive Elise waiting behind a column. From the curtains above the first floor a figure watched in ghostly white undergarments.
Amie realized Dameri had been speaking to her and only then clued in to her mystic message.
“…but you have a power the Sidhe alone do not, Jessie.”
Amie blinked and in that brief darkness knew she remembered that name, the special name only her real parents had used.
The second they entered, the doors and windows barred shut behind them. Unlike last time, the vines and roots and hanging flowers had withered to reveal some of the house’s original charm.
Amie fought the urge to reach out through her father’s ring to check on Wenderdowne’s defenses. Nothing could be done until Ben gave her the signal. She could only pray the enemy hadn’t discovered Dearg’s caves and the others had found safety.
Dameri led her to a well-lit guest room. Together they managed to pry Amie loose of her sopping wet ballgown.
“Such a pity. I had hoped to salvage this,” Dameri said as she carried the stained pile outside the door. She froze when she noticed Amie’s shell-shocked stare. With another sigh she returned to her side and wiped the tearstains from beneath
Amie’s
eyes. “You poor dear…what troubles have befallen you. Should I have been strong enough, I would have done a better job in my quest to protect you.” A bold fire brewed in the set of her brow, the determination in her narrow chin.
For the first time, she saw herself in her mother’s face. “But you did once, didn’t you?” Amie asked. Dameri gasped, released her hold to clutch her hands together. Amie’s voice broke as she continued, “I remembered. Drustan tried to erase my memories, but I remembered.”
At her words, the ageless human princess sank against the bedpost, clutching the dark wood. For the first time Amie saw the pressing of time on her face, the first real tell of her eight hundred years.
“So you know enough…but not everything?” More emotions crossed Dameri’s features in so short a time, than Amie had seen reflected in any being of her new acquaintance. Complex emotion was another human trait according to Emrys. Only humans had the capacity for so much
feeling
, he claimed.
“I know you’re my real mother,” she said. “I know Henry’s my father, but besides that I don’t remember much of anything else.”
Dameri hung her head, her chest hitched on mention of her father’s name. “I cannot tell you everything. Only he has the right to tell you the whole truth of how it came to pass.” Unshed tears gleamed in her eyes, a soft smile ghosted her lips as she whispered, “But yes, you are mine.”
Amie held her breath without knowing the reason why. Maybe it was because she had been through too much, had seen so much in so short a time.
“I was born to Arthur Hawkeye Pendragon and his Queen Gwyny
d
d a thousand years ago,” her mother began.
“You said you were eight hundred,” Amie blurted.
“You were not paying attention. Now please do not interrupt.”
“Sorry.”
Dameri’s smile tilted slightly higher in one corner. “I was born a princess, but to a very violent kingdom. War came to us when Myrddin the
Tuatha
came to our court. He was the last of his kind, and he wanted us to be safe, warned us of a hidden magical kingdom that would destroy everything we had worked to build. My father trusted him implicitly because he had been his tutor and protector from a young age. One might say the Merlin is the reason Arthur became King.”
Her
dark brows came together in a frown.
“How did you meet my father?”
Dameri’s eyes flickered to hers, stricken, and gathering her courage, she continued. “The dragons woke from their sleep soon after. We learned later Merlin had been part of their waking. It seems
the Tuatha and Freargde have been ageless enemies, long before our people or the Seelie came to these shores. We also learned Merlin was not as free as he wanted u
s to believe. He was already a w
ight by that time, a dark spirit bound to Wenderdowne. He was willing to commit the vilest of sins to
free himself from the curse.”
