Elphame's Choice (19 page)

“Oh, Brenna! It’s perfect. It’s like you got inside my mind and saw what I saw.”

Brenna blushed. “You’re just good at describing what’s in your mind.”

“No, you’re really a wonderful artist.” Before Brenna could stop her, Elphame began to leaf through the sketch pad. There were preliminary drawings of parts of the castle and some close-up studies of hands and feet. And then there was Cuchulainn—page after page of Cuchulainn. Elphame felt a little start of surprise. Well, she thought,
that
was how it was. The drawings of her brother were tenderly rendered, and they captured several of his different moods. She lingered over one of him looking sad and tired in which he appeared to be a decade older than his true age.

“This was how he looked the day of my accident,” Elphame said.

“He’s—he is—I just wanted to—” Brenna paused, swallowed nervously and started again. “Your brother is an interesting study. He has all those proud, perfect lines in his face and so many differing emotions.”

Elphame couldn’t look away from the lifelike rendering of her brother that so clearly showed his love and concern for her.

“You capture him perfectly.” Finally she glanced up at Brenna, who looked quickly away from her. “May I have this one?”

Brenna’s eyes shot back to meet her friend’s. She gazed intently at Elphame. She saw no pity in her open expression, nor did she see any reproach.

“Of course. You may have any of them you desire.”

“Just this one. The rest are yours.” She met Brenna’s timid gaze and smiled warmly, thinking how very much their mother would approve of Brenna.

The sound of pounding hooves surprised both of them, and, as if thinking of him had conjured him into their presence, Cuchulainn thundered up. Brenna instantly read his expression.

“An accident?” she asked, already climbing down from her perch.

“Angus was cutting a new section of raw timbers and the saw slipped. I’m afraid it’s a rather nasty wound.” Cu leaned down to offer his hand to Brenna. Without any hesitation she placed her small hand in his and he lifted her behind him. He gave his sister a stern look. “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be back to get you soon.”

“No need for you to hurry. It feels good to be out of captivity.” Elphame shooed him away with an impatient gesture.

Cuchulainn frowned at her before kicking his gelding so that they raced back to the castle. El watched Brenna’s arms tighten around her brother’s waist and Cu reach a possessive arm back to steady her and hold her more firmly against him.

Yes, that’s how it was—Cuchulainn and Brenna—her instincts had been right. She wondered if either of them realized it yet. Probably not. For all his experience with women, Cuchulainn would be as unprepared as his sister for love.

“Unprepared,” Elphame whispered. That certainly described her. But how could she have been prepared for Lochlan? Had he been a hallucination? No, he couldn’t have been. There was tangible evidence that he had been there—the boar was dead—her wound was packed with moss. But did he really have the wings of a Fomorian? She shivered and her gaze turned from the castle to the forest. She hadn’t been
afraid of him, she did remember that much. Why hadn’t she been?

Because his presence had Felt right. She already knew that answer—she’d thought about it over and over again during the past five days. But was she being a fool, depending on an ability that had recently fledged within her?

“Lochlan,” she said, unable to keep from speaking his name aloud. An unexpected breeze caught his name, and Elphame felt the skin on her forearms prickle. For a moment Lochlan’s name seemed to hover, frostlike and almost visible, before the playful wind whisked it up and sprinkled it into the waiting forest.

She shook her head, ashamed of her overactive imagination. A lover’s name didn’t become visible when spoken aloud. And Lochlan was not even her lover.

“That bump on my head is making me imagine things,” she said, lifting the wineskin to her frowning lips.

“What is it you are imagining, my heart?”

Elphame sputtered in surprise, gagging on the half-swallowed wine. Eyes wide, she peered into the forest.

Like an enormous bird, the winged man dropped from the concealing boughs of a pine, mere feet from where Elphame sat. He remained within the shadows of the forest while his wings tucked themselves neatly along his back. His smile was tentative.

“I did not mean to startle you.”

“By the Goddess, you
are
real!” Elphame blurted, and then instantly felt like a fool.

“Did you truly doubt it?”

Elphame nodded vigorously. “Constantly.”

Lochlan laughed, a sound so honestly joyous that Elphame smiled and felt some of her nervousness slip away.

“I understand your confusion. My mind was clear and uninjured, yet in the five days since, the memory of our meeting seems to have become a thing that belongs to a different realm.”

“Like a dream,” Elphame said.

Lochlan shook his head. “No, my heart, our dreams are something unique, something unlike anything else.”

Elphame felt herself blush but she had no desire to look away from his penetrating gaze. Lochlan stepped from the tree line. Even with his wings held tightly against his body he moved with a feral grace that mesmerized her; for a moment all she could see, feel or hear was Lochlan. And then her mind began working again and realization flooded her. What if someone saw him? She thrust up one hand, instantly causing him to halt his approach.

“I want you to explain all of this to me. I want to know who you are and what is happening between us.” Elphame looked around nervously. “But you can’t be seen. I haven’t even told Cuchulainn about you.”

Disappointment darkened Lochlan’s expression, but he nodded tightly and retraced his steps so that he stood back within the opaque semidarkness at the edge of the forest.

Elphame felt a rush of shame, followed by a flood of irritation. Days of boredom and frustration had her nerves on edge and suddenly she wanted to lash out at him and shout that she had just met him, and that he was nothing to her except an intriguing stranger. But the false words wouldn’t come. Elphame stared into his storm-colored eyes and knew with an almost terrifying certainty that she was seeing her future.

With a clear mind, she remembered that Cuchulainn’s own words had foretold him.
I know you meet your destiny at MacCallan Castle. I know that destiny is tied up in your lifemate
….

Lochlan was that lifemate.

Then, unbidden, the rest of what Cuchulainn had said played through her mind…
but when I try to focus on details about the man I get only fog and confusion.

At least now she knew why her brother’s vision had been
incomplete, and she couldn’t help but think that the Goddess had been wise in hiding Lochlan’s visage from Cu. If he knew that her lifemate was the son of a Fomorian demon…Elphame didn’t even want to finish the thought.

“This is going to be very difficult,” she said uneasily.

Her words made Lochlan smile. “My mother would have said that then it must be something that is worth doing.”

The warmth in his voice when he mentioned his mother touched her, evaporating her irritation.

“You loved her very much,” she said.

“She gifted me with humanity, and then she taught me what that gift meant. She never saw the monster, she saw only her son.”

“You aren’t a monster,” Elphame said emphatically.

Lochlan’s smile was bittersweet. “No, I am not a monster, but I do have the blood of a race of demons within my body, and that is something that neither of us can ever forget.”

“Should I be afraid of you?”

“I cannot answer that question for you.” One of his hands lifted as if to touch her. “All I can tell you is that I would rather die than harm you.”

The thickness of foreboding clogged her throat. Her mind and her heart felt like a kingdom in civil war. She should demand that he leave. She’d give him an honorable head start before she informed Cuchulainn that a creature of Fomorian descent had entered Partholon. She needed to stop thinking like a romantic fool. He was nothing more than a dangerous dream.

“I will leave if that is truly your wish,” Lochlan said solemnly.

“Must you read my mind?” she snapped.

“I cannot, I can only read your face and your eyes. I have dreamed of you since you were born. It was enough time to learn the expressions of your face and to understand your moods.”

Elphame’s eyes found his, trying to ignore the sadness she saw there. She could do it—she could send him away. It was her destiny to be Clan Chieftain, The MacCallan, and she had been touched by the power of the Goddess. She was a being set apart.

As is Lochlan,
her mind whispered.

She looked at him, making herself see the truth of the creature that stood before her. His body was very human. He was tall and muscular and well-formed. But men didn’t have down-lined wings that tucked against their bodies, and they didn’t have skin that seemed to glow faintly as if it had been lit from a pale light within. She couldn’t remember ever seeing any man who had eyes that slanted such a stormy shade of gray. Her reflective gaze slid slowly down his body. His feet—they were bare and looked odd. With a little jolt she remembered that she had thought the same thing when he had been standing in the stream after his battle with the boar.

“Talons,” Lochlan said, following the path of her eyes. He lifted one foot from the green of the forest floor and shrugged. “I have talons. You have hooves. If I had my choice I think I would rather have either than the feet of a normal man. I cannot imagine liking to wear shoes.”

Unexpectedly, Elphame laughed. “This is the first time I’ve ever admitted it aloud, but I have often thought the same thing. You would not believe the small, tortured contraptions my mother lashes her feet into. When I was a young girl it made her sad that I couldn’t wear frilly little stockings and silly, awkward shoes, so she used to buff and polish my hooves until they glistened. I tried to explain to her that it didn’t matter, that I liked my hooves, but she never seemed to understand.”

He smiled back at her. “My mother simply told me to keep my talons trimmed because she was tired of mending my bed linens.”

He was easy to talk to. When she stopped dissecting his
humanity, and simply reacted to him as a woman to a man, she found that it was already easy to forget that he was so different. By the Goddess!
She
was different. Her heart said that he could not be a monster, but could she trust her heart?

Do you trust her, Beloved?
Epona had asked.

Yes, I trust her.
Her mother had answered with calm certainty.

Elphame had trusted herself when it came to restoring MacCallan Castle—and that had been the right choice. How was this any different? Lochlan was just another life-altering choice she had to face. Perhaps it was time that she grew up and began to truly trust herself.

Waiting within the shadows of the pines, Lochlan showed no outer sign of his own inner turmoil as he watched her struggle silently with her conflicting emotions. What could he say to her? He couldn’t ask her to accept him. How could he? What if he could find no other way but through her blood to fulfill the Prophecy? He should leave her—now. He should turn and flee, and never see her again, even if in doing so he was damning his people to eternal madness.

He could feel the ever-present pull of the demon that surged deep within his veins. Steal her, the currents of his dark blood murmured erotically, take her and do with her as you will.

No!
Lochlan welcomed the pain that was always the response when he suppressed the demon in his blood, the pain that was causing his people to lose their humanity and slowly embrace the madness and the never-ending blood lust that was at the core of the Fomorian race. Pain was the price they paid for striving to be more than their demonic fathers. They had been born different, unique. In their mother’s womb each of them had somehow been altered. Instead of being fashioned after the race of Fomorians, they had evolved into something that was almost human. But the call of their dark heritage was an
ever-present lure they struggled against. A lure filled with dreams of death soaked in the maddening scent of blood.

How could killing Elphame save his people from the violence that was destroying them? How could the Goddess ask that of him? It made no sense. There had to be another way for the Prophecy to be fulfilled.

She was so near. No longer an insubstantial woman from his dreams; she lived and breathed and was standing mere feet from him. He couldn’t leave her, not yet. He’d spent a century fighting darkness; he would not retreat now.

Slowly, Elphame raised her eyes to meet his, and Lochlan read the confusion and the questions there, which mirrored the turmoil within his own soul.

“I do not have all the answers you need. There is much happening here that I, too, do not understand, but I swear to you that my heart, perhaps even my very soul, is linked with yours. If you are not by my side, I will ache for you until I cease to breathe,” Lochlan said.