Bodyguards (9 page)

CHAPTER TEN

Beyond The Shields

Bradan knew what his brother must
be thinking even before he reached Aedan. This was the woman they had sworn
their lives to? The future ruler for which they’d sacrificed so much already?
Bradan knew what Aedan was thinking, because the same thoughts were running
through his mind, as much as he tried to quiet them. For years, he had dreamed
of the moment when they would bring Vivien back to Foh’Ran and restore her to
the throne that was hers by right. This was not how he had imagined things
would go—far from it.

He couldn’t give up on her, though.
She was upset, and he could understand that. Everything she had ever believed
about herself had been turned on its head, she had been thrust into an
unfamiliar place, and the one person who had been there for her as she was
growing up had been taken by her enemies. All things considered, she wasn’t
doing so badly, given how grim things looked for her at the moment. If he could
only show her that it wasn’t all war, fear, and pain...

“Did she come out at all?” he
asked, leaning back against the wall next to Aedan.

Aedan shrugged. He never looked
away from the corridor. Vivien’s door was just twenty feet away. “She opened
the door long enough to take her dinner. Would you call that coming out?”

“At least she’s eating.”

Considering that Vivien had
skipped lunch, calling out through the door that she wasn’t hungry, this had to
be progress. How was Bradan going to get her out, though? How could he get
through to her?

“Remember when she was...what?”
Aedan’s brow furrowed as though the memory were escaping him. “Four? And she
refused to eat anything but roseberries for a week?”

Bradan did remember, but he wasn’t
sure why Aedan was bringing it up. Aedan explained himself soon enough, though.

“She is just a child. She does not
understand what is going on, how important she is. How can we trust her with
the future of Foh’Ran when she hides in her room like a little girl because
she’s afraid?”

Pushing away from the wall, Bradan
squeezed Aedan’s shoulder. “She’s almost twenty. She’s not a child. She just
needs time. I’ll try talking to her again. Why don’t you get some rest? You
barely got any sleep last night.”

“I’m not tired,” Aedan said. “But
you can keep an eye on the child if it amuses you.”

A slight smile softened the bite
in his last words. Aedan moved without a sound. In seconds, he had disappeared
down the staircase. Bradan remained there a moment longer, trying to figure out
how to approach Vivien. They’d never talked all that much—Bradan had always
been afraid to let something slip that he shouldn’t have—but he had watched her
closely over the years. She’d never been as relaxed, as happy as when she ran
in the woods. And he’d never believed that it was the running that soothed her.
Their kind wasn’t made to live in cities of steel and concrete.

His mind made up, he went over to
Vivien’s room and knocked twice.

“I already told you,” she called
before he could even say a word. “I don’t want to go to that lake or anywhere
else. I’m tired.”

“I want to show you something,” he
said, his hand pressed flat to the door. “Something that belongs to you. I
promise it’s not far. Will you come with me? Please, Vivien.”

Long seconds passed. He could hear
her inside, slow steps coming toward him as though she were hesitating. When
she finally opened the door, her eyes were red, but her cheeks were dry.
Something twisted painfully inside him. If only he could have protected her
from everything...

“What is it you want me to show
me?” she asked, her voice dulled by weariness.

“You’ll see.” He took a step back
to give her space. “Come with me?”

He’d been afraid she’d close the
door in his face. She didn’t and accompanied him instead.

He led the way down to the first
floor and out through the back door. The sky was already darkening with the
promise of the night to come. He started toward the shields, glancing back when
he realized she wasn’t following him.

“You said it wasn’t far,” she
said.

She looked down at her feet. When
he followed her gaze, Bradan understood. Her toes were bare in the grass. A
foot in front of her, however, the grass gave way to rocks, gravel and weeds.
She’d bruise her feet if she tried walking on the old path. Coming back to her,
Bradan didn’t let himself hesitate. If he went back in to find shoes for her,
the moment would pass. He scooped her up into his arms, smiling when she
replied with a quick, surprised laugh. She looped her arms around his neck and
gave him a small smile, almost shy.

“Is this all right?” he asked,
wishing he had thought of asking first.

She nodded. Holding her close to
his chest, one arm under her knees and the other at her back, Bradan carried
her beyond the shields and to the cliff. He looked at her as she took in the
scene, wondering if this would jog her memory.

* * * *

Vivien’s mouth fell open, and she
gasped softly. Only a dozen yards in front of them, the backyard ended abruptly
over a cliff. Her arms instinctively tightened around Brad’s neck. He walked
right to the edge of the cliff, and when she looked down, she could see a
valley.

Fields of gold, woods of the
deepest green, prairies of wild grass and wilder flowers of every color
imaginable stretched down below. Far in the distance, the sun was slowly
slinking down toward the horizon amid a symphony of reds and oranges. Here and
there, volutes of smoke rising toward the darkening sky marked the presence of
people.

“It’s...beautiful,” Vivien
whispered.

“And it’s yours,” Bradan replied.
“Your world. It always was. I know how strange it must be for you to find
yourself in this new place, how upsetting. But you’ll find more than pain and
death and the cold stones of this house. We have beauty here, too. Life. You
only have to look to find it.”

Vivien looked at him. His face was
so close to hers, she could have counted his eyelashes, even in the fading
evening light. So close, she would only need to shift a little for their mouths
to brush together. His lips looked soft and firm. He caught her gaze and
blinked, as though surprised that she was watching him rather than the
spectacle he was offering her. Vivien’s face suddenly felt too warm, and she
looked away again, down into the valley, trying to find something to talk
about. She was acutely aware of how warm he was everywhere they touched.

“Did you miss it?” she murmured.
“You had to leave this place to come to...to Earth. To a whole other world.
Wasn’t it hard?”

A few clouds drifted in front of
the sun as it started to disappear beyond the curve of the horizon.

“I came back when I was too
homesick,” Brad said softly. “A couple of hours during the night there meant a
day here. Enough to see my brother, to practice using the Quickening, to just
be Bradan instead of Brad. No one ever knew.”

Despite the small smile on his
lips, he sounded a little wistful. It hadn’t been as easy as he made it to be,
had it? So why would he go through this?

He had mentioned something
before...

“You said... You said you took a
vow?”

“Aedan and I did, yes.” He tilted
his head as though he knew she had another question and was inviting her to
continue.

“How long ago was that?”

“We were eleven.”

She struggled to wrap her mind
around that. Eleven... They’d been children!

“How could you even know what that
oath meant when you were so young? How could you decide to leave your family?
How could they let you do it? Didn’t your parents have something to say about
it?”

She realized suddenly that she was
clutching his shoulders tightly, but she couldn’t let go, not when Brad was
looking at her with such a grave expression.

“We knew what the QuickSilver Oath
meant,” he said slowly, holding her gaze. “Our father explained it to us when
we were small children, and we watched him live and breathe that oath every day
of his life until he died trying to protect Dame Eleoren.”

Vivien’s heart felt as though it
skipped a beat or ten.

“Our mother...” Brad’s voice
cracked for a second before hardening again. “She understood how much this
meant to us. She came to the Otherworld with me. Anabel helped us learn how to
live there.”

Try as she might, Vivien could not
fathom any of it. All of this, going to an entirely new world, starting over,
for her?

“What about Aedan?” she asked. “He
didn’t come with you?”

“Aedan stayed here with Dame
Eleoren’s cook. She was the last of the staff. She refused to go anywhere. He
kept her company, and she took care of him. My mother visited him while I was
at school, or we went together in the evening or on weekends. Aedan came to
visit sometimes, too.”

Darkness was thickening around
them, an echo of Vivien’s muddled thoughts. The more Brad explained, the more
difficult it was to grasp it all.

“But you said time here passes
faster,” she protested. “Wouldn’t he have grown older a lot faster than you?”

“He did.” The ghost of a smile
brushed against his lips. “I was born first. A couple minutes only, but I used
to take that very seriously. I was Aedan’s big brother, and I was proud of it.
And then I turned twelve. And he was sixteen. When I turned thirteen, he was an
adult. It was the strangest thing.”

Vivien’s confusion was thicker
than ever. Aedan didn’t look a day older than Brad. “So how come—”

She never got to finish. A yell
rose from somewhere on their left, and they both turned to watch a group of
people running toward them, the moonlight glinting like lightning on their
swords.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Blades by Moonlight

From the moment Aedan watched
Bradan and Dame Vivien disappear past the shimmering wall of the shields, his
entire body locked, tension tightening each and every one of his muscles until
he was aching everywhere.

On the one hand, he understood
what Bradan was trying to do; Vivien had once played in this yard, and looking
over the edge of the cliff had been a favorite game, with a barrier channeled
by Dame Eleoren keeping her safe. Would looking down to the valley remind
Vivien of her younger years?

On the other hand, Aedan and
Bradan had agreed that she needed to remain within the shields at all times. 
What was Bradan thinking, taking her outside their protection? No one knew she
was here, but it was still a risk, however small.

It didn’t help that, for the first
few minutes, Aedan was unable to join them. When the sun finally went down, he
warred with himself. Every instinct he had screamed at him to join them outside
and make sure Dame Vivien was safe, but should he?

She had made it clear how little
she appreciated his presence, and Bradan was with her anyway. She seemed to
have no issue with him. Aedan began to ease the knives out of their sheaths
before letting them slide down again; he remained by the door, watching,
waiting.

At long last, they reappeared
inside the shields, but before Aedan could even begin to relax, the alarm
blazing through his bond with Bradan told him something was wrong. Bradan set
Dame Vivien down and immediately turned back, holding both hands out toward the
shields, the same way he had when he had set them up. He was channeling, but to
do what?

There could only be one reason.
Anger flashed through Aedan and flowed through him like blood once had, pushing
a growl to his throat as he rushed out, his knives at the ready. He should have
joined them. He should have made them come back in sooner.

“Inside!” he yelled at Dame Vivien
as she lingered at Bradan’s back.

She threw a startled look at him.
He glared that much harder. Couldn’t she see the danger she was in?

“Get inside!” he said again as he
rushed toward Bradan to fight at his brother’s side.

In truth, his anger was directed
at Bradan just as much as Dame Vivien. He’d been foolish to take her outside
the shields, and she was foolish to remain so close to the danger now. There
would be time for reproaches later, however. For now, Aedan needed to make sure
the threat was eliminated and that Dame Vivien was safe.

Safe, however, would have required
that she go inside, like he had told her twice already. Why couldn’t she
understand something so basic?

Sheathing one of his knives again,
he used his free arm to grab Dame Vivien around the legs and hoist her over his
shoulder. She shrieked, legs and arms flailing to kick his leg and strike his
back. Bradan threw them a quick look but soon returned his full attention to
his channeling.

“What are you doing! Let me down!”

Ignoring her protests, Aedan ran
toward the house, glancing back twice to check that Bradan was still holding
their enemies at bay. He would have to use his sword soon. Aedan hoped to be
back by his side by then.

He finally reached the house and
rushed in through the open door. He set Dame Vivien down none too gently and
pointed a finger at the floor as he growled, “Stay. Inside!”

She glowered right back at him.
“I’m not some useless—”

But Aedan didn’t want to hear it.
He stepped back outside and banged the door shut behind him, wishing he could
lock it. He wasn’t sure he trusted Dame Vivien not to be foolish enough to come
out again.

A knife in each hands again, he
ran back to Bradan.

“How many?” he called out to him.

“Six, I think.”

Two teams, then. It wasn’t just a
random reconnaissance team lucking out. They’d known someone was there. They’d
been waiting for someone to step out so they could strike at the shields at the
one moment when they were vulnerable to an attack.

“Two of them channeled just when
we were coming through,” Bradan said, slightly out of breath. “Their Quickening
mixed with mine. I can’t hold them off anymore.”

Aedan thought fast. They needed
the shields to hold. Dame Vivien’s safety depended on it.

“Then let’s go out and fight. We
only need to disable the channelers, then we can jump back behind the shields.”

Aedan stood by Bradan’s side,
close enough that their shoulders pressed together, and he could have sworn he
could feel the surge of Quickening as Bradan gestured at the shields one last
time before drawing out a Quickening sword. Maybe what Aedan felt was his
brother’s blood pulsing through him to the rhythm of the Quickening. How Aedan
missed that feeling...

He pushed the thought away with a
shake of his head, and they stepped through the shields together. With one
quick look around, he put a name to each of the guards, mentally ranking them
by how dangerous they were. He’d planned to take on the channelers right away,
but he couldn’t give the vampires a chance to strike first. Serlin in
particular was much too good; he’d taught Aedan to throw his knives and never
miss. And then there was Ciara…

Aedan charged at Serlin with a
roar, his knives raised in front of him. Bradan was only a step behind him,
guarding his back—as was only right.

* * * *

Vivien had never been as
infuriated in her life as when Aedan carried her inside and pointed at the
floor when he ordered her to stay, as though she were a recalcitrant puppy. She
would have shouted at him, but he only made things worse by slamming the door
in her face.

She was not going to let him treat
her this way. She wouldn’t let anyone treat her this way. She wasn’t a child,
she wasn’t defenseless, and she refused to hide behind anyone.

Muttering under her breath, she
ran through the hallways, back to the armory. She put on some armor first, her
hands trembling in her haste as she set the chest and back plates over her
shoulders. She fumbled a little to tighten the leather straps. The armor had
been made for someone taller—for a man—but it would do for now.

She grabbed a helmet, too. When
she slid it on, the back pressed against her ponytail uncomfortably enough that
she pulled it up again, tugged the elastic off to free her hair, then lowered
the helmet again. Her peripheral vision was practically nonexistent, but she
could work with that. The metal felt cool against her forehead; solid. It
strengthened her decision. She picked up a sword from the hooks on the wall,
choosing the same thin, long blade as she had that morning; it resembled her
old épée closely enough, she hoped. She wished Brad had practiced with her when
she asked.

She ran back with the weapon at
her side and her heart beating to the steady rhythm of her determination. When
she first stepped outside, she lost her breath. It was completely dark now, and
she couldn’t see Brad or Aedan anymore, or even the fighters she had glimpsed
outside the shields before Brad had taken her back in.

The shields… That was it! They had
to be outside the shields!

She hurried forward, pausing only
briefly before she stepped through the shimmering curtain of magic. Earlier, in
the evening light, it had looked like a wall of sunlight; now it was like a
sheet of cascading dark water. In seconds she reached Brad, with Aedan a small
distance away. She took a moment to survey the fight. Opposite the twins, three
men and a woman were all dressed in the same black uniform as the men Aedan had
killed back in the woods. Another man lay on the ground, face down and immobile.

Aedan was battling one of the men
and the woman. She wielded knives liked Aedan did, while the man fought with a
sword. The weapons gleamed under the light of the full, oversized moon,
flashing like strikes of lightning, ringing like heavy wind chimes in a storm.

Brad was also confronting two
opponents, but he seemed to be having a harder time of it. That morning, he had
sparred with two swords against Aedan’s knives, but now he only held one as he
danced back and forth between his adversaries’ knives and sword, expending more
energy to stay out of their reach than to disable them.

Vivien had no clue how to fight
against knives, but she could do sword on sword—or at least, she hoped she
could. Was she fooling herself, thinking that her fencing experience would
transfer through? She had to try, though; she couldn’t let Brad get hurt on her
behalf without at least trying to help.

Brad threw her a quick glance when
she stepped next to him and parried the sword that was slashing toward him. In
that brief instant, she could see the deepest of worries in his eyes and
furrowed brow, and she was sure he would order her to go back inside the house
like Aedan had. Instead, he pushed back his knife-armed adversary, giving
Vivien more room to fight the swordsman.

The man’s sword was broader than
her own, but shorter, and of the two of them she was the only one wearing
armor—or so she told herself to try to calm her racing thoughts. She’d never
fenced at night, never fenced barefoot on slippery grass, never with actual weapons
designed to kill, or with the intention of really hurting someone. It took only
two seconds for her to realize how new this was: as long as it took her
adversary to take a few steps to the side. Of course; they wouldn’t be fighting
in a straight line. What else would be different? She’d have to remember that
there were no points to rack up now. Allowing him to touch her so she could hit
him too was a no-no.

Had she made a mistake stepping
in?

She chased the thought away with a
deep, deliberate breath. She didn’t know if she could do this, but she was
certainly going to give it her best. The image of Anabel, kidnapped, captive,
maybe hurt or worse, reinforced her resolve, so that when the man lunged at
her, she was ready.

Her adversary’s sword slashed
straight down at her. She parried the blow, trying to redirect the blade to the
side. A basic move for her, but the weight of the sword made it trickier than
it ought to have been and her grip on the hilt wavered a little. The man
noticed, and in the light of the moon, she could see his amused smile.

“This isn’t a game for little
girls,” he sneered. “Why don’t you just come with me before you get hurt?”

She recognized him,
then—recognized that sneer. He was the man who had backhanded Anabel, who had
made her bleed. Vivien’s blood felt like it was starting to boil.

“Like you hurt Anabel, you mean?”
she spat.

She lunged and her feet quickly
found their rhythm again. It had been a long time, yes, but she hadn’t
forgotten anything. She slipped back into the frame of mind that allowed her to
follow instincts taught to her by endless drills. She needed to anticipate and
gain that split second over him, that blink that would let her weapon hit.

For a few moments, they moved back
and forth, each testing the other and seeking the best opening. The man struck
again, and after deflecting Vivien hit back. Had she had her épée in hand,
Vivien had no doubt she would have touched him. She still had trouble adjusting
to the weight and balance of the sword, though. It didn’t help that her thighs
were beginning to burn as she called on muscles she hadn’t used so intensely in
a while.

His blows were all strength, hers
focused on speed, but neither was gaining the upper edge. She was beginning to
suspect he was actively trying not to wound her; his mistake.

From the corner of her eye, she
could see Brad’s and Aedan’s fights. One of Aedan’s opponents was dead. That
left the three of them with one adversary each. Somehow, Vivien found herself
wishing she’d finish her fight first and prove to them—prove to Aedan,
mostly—that she was far from the defenseless princess they seemed to believe
she was.

With a new determination filling
her, she cross-stepped, lunged, and flicked her blade around the hilt of her
opponent’s sword. He reacted, but too late: the point of her sword stabbed into
his wrist. She remembered winning a tournament when she’d earned her fifteenth
point with this exact move; the blood shining on her blade felt like no
victory, though. As angry as she was with that man, she realized at that
moment, she wouldn’t be able to hurt him, not truly, and certainly not kill
him.

He, on the other hand, didn’t look
like he would have a problem doing either thing anymore. He looked at his
bleeding hand, then back up at her. His eyes were blazing, and he all but
growled. As he raised the sword with both hands over his head, it seemed to
glow with an inner light, as though it were suddenly molten metal. Vivien’s
heart stuttered, and she retreated too fast, barely failing to fall on her ass.

“I’ll show you, you little—”

His threat ended in a gargle of
blood when Brad’s sword suddenly pierced his side, slipping right under his
raised arm. The man’s sword stopped glowing as he toppled forward. Vivien
hurriedly retreated so he wouldn’t fall on her. When he hit the ground, the
handles of two knives were sticking out of his back. Vivien couldn’t have said
if the sword or the knives had killed him, nor did she care.

For what felt like an eternity,
she couldn’t tear her eyes off him. Another person dead for trying to hurt her;
and to think just two days earlier her life had been so safe, almost boring...

“Get back behind the shield,
Vivien. Please.”

It was the pain in Brad’s voice
that pulled Vivien’s eyes to him. He was back to fighting his opponent, but
while earlier he had held his sword with both hands, now one of his arms hung
at his side, blood dripping from his fingers. Beyond him, Aedan was holding his
own against the woman; they now had only one knife each.