Once Every Never (16 page)

“You honour us with your presence on this occasion of joyful sadness,” she said in a deep, harsh voice like the call of a crow. Somehow, the way she said “honour” made it sound like an insult. She thrust the torc at him again. “Take this—
paltry
an offering as it may be—as a token of our friendship to your Claudius from Prasutagus’s queen, who reigns after him. A gift for Rome on the occasion of my husband’s death. From one ruler to another.”

Even from that distance, Clare saw the Roman flush beet-red beneath his helmet. The queen continued to hold the king’s neck ring out to him, the muscles of her arms taught beneath her pale skin. After a long, exceedingly uncomfortable moment, the Roman took the torc, bowed perfunctorily to the queen and, pivoting on his sandalled heel, led his men down a path that led away from the town, their armour rattling like tin cans as they went.

Connal’s expression, when Clare turned to look at him, was exceedingly grim.

“Um. What just happened there?” she asked hesitantly.

“I think Boudicca just started a war.”

Clare opened and closed her mouth. She didn’t understand what he meant by that, and even if she had, she really didn’t know what she would have said—especially when Connal had no way of knowing just how right history would prove his guess to be.

With a look of disgust, Connal gazed down at the sword in his hand and sheathed it in the hanger at his belt.
Well … that was progress
, Clare thought. At least it seemed he wasn’t thinking of killing her outright anymore. She turned back to the door to see Comorra dart forward and place a sheaf of herbs and flowers on the shield covering her father’s chest. Then Boudicca took a torch from Llassar and thrust it into the logs. The pitch-soaked wood caught almost instantly and flared, casting a lurid orange illumination over the macabre scene. The flames began to lick at the edges of the dead king’s cloak and soon he was engulfed in their fiery embrace.

The whole tribe burst into a frenzy of mourning, the women tearing at their hair and howling, the men beating on their shields and shouting cries of grief at the sky. Boudicca’s rigid stance finally seemed to crumple a bit. Her shoulders slumped and her daughters hugged her tightly from either side, as if they knew she might fall if they didn’t. The three women stood there, clinging to each other, an island in the middle of the whirling, wailing sea of Iceni.

Clare blinked rapidly as tears of sympathy spilled down her cheeks. The Iceni didn’t seem to think it was embarrassing to weep openly. Or even unmanly. Clare saw more than a few big, hairy tough guys sobbing like babies, tears running into their beards. Eventually, the grieving Iceni began to drift away up toward the great hall perched on the top of the hill, where Clare could already hear wildly beautiful, spine-chilling voices raised again in keening song. Finally, the last of the people left the clearing and Boudicca and her daughters stood alone by the funereal bonfire.

Clare let the curtain fall and turned away, her heart aching. She knew how this whole story was going to play out. She knew that what she’d just witnessed was the beginning of the end of the Iceni as a free people. The end of a way of life for the tribe. It made her unexpectedly, ineffably sad.

“You weep,” Connal said quietly. She’d almost forgotten he was there.

Clare brushed the back of her hand over her cheeks and sniffed. “Yeah. So what.”

He crossed the space between them and put a finger under her chin, lifting her face upward. He wasn’t that much taller than she was, but he was so close she had to crane her neck to look into his eyes. He smelled of pine needles and fresh-cut herbs and clean air. Another tear spilled down Clare’s cheek as she stared up at him. He caught it on the end of his finger and touched it to the tip of his tongue—as if to make sure the tears were real. “I did not think the Fair Folk wept.”

“I guess you thought wrong.”

Clare felt her heart start to hammer in her chest. Of course it was in fear, she told herself. It had absolutely nothing to do with the extreme proximity of the tanned and muscled, wildly handsome young man cupping her face in his hand. He was close enough that even in the dimness she could tell the colour of his eyes—rich, dark brown—and make out the intricate, swirling patterns on the tiny gold earring he wore. Her heart pounded even harder.

Almost as if he’d heard it, Connal touched the pulse point under her jaw. Then his fingertips traced a path down her throat, opposite to where the searing sting of his sword had made her bleed, and he flattened his palm against her skin just above the neckline of her summer dress. She waited, breathless, as he cocked his head, listening to and feeling the pounding of her heart.

“Your heart beats as mine does. Your blood flows beneath your skin. And yet you are not of this world.”

“Not … exactly,” Clare whispered, her mouth gone sandpaper dry.

“But you are very beautiful.” Connal moved his hand up to her hair, running his fingers through the golden-brown waves. He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. “You smell like flowers,” he said.

I smell like Pantene Pro-V Extra Volume
, Clare thought faintly. But she didn’t think that would translate into Iceni.

Outside, in the distance, she could hear Prasutagus’s funeral pyre begin to crackle loudly.

“Connal … that’s your name, isn’t it?” Clare needed to break the tension of the moment somehow. She just might snap if she didn’t find a way to make him back off a step or two. Saying his name out loud seemed to do it.

“How …” he almost asked the question. But of course Clare was a creature of magic and mystery for him, and so why shouldn’t she know his name? She didn’t tell him that it had been plain old eavesdropping. He bowed his head a little. “Aye. That is what I am called.” Then his eyes flicked back up to her face and a small smile tugged at one corner of his mouth. “May I be so bold as to ask what I should call you? Perhaps if we became better acquainted—if I knew your name—I would be less inclined to thrust a sword at you the next time we meet.”

Uh …
Clare blinked.
Is he
flirting
with me?

Not that it mattered—whether he was or not, Clare already felt herself answering his smile with a shy one of her own. “I’d like that,” she said. “My name is Clare. Clarinet, really.”

Dude
, said a small, disgusted voice in the back of her mind.
Telling him your full name? I don’t even know you
. She silently told the voice to shut up. Even though she might have secretly agreed with it. She certainly didn’t recognize herself as she stood there making small talk with a guy dressed in buckskin who’d just drawn a sword on her for the second time. But then, Clare wasn’t used to a lot of what had happened to her in the last few days. And Connal was absolutely magnetic. Probably why she couldn’t seem to move away from him …

But when he reached a hand out to touch the floaty material that gathered in a ruffle down the front of her dress
(in curiosity, sure, but still—hands!)
Clare shook herself out of her trancelike state and spun around, intending to walk briskly toward the door. She needed space. She needed air.

Connal put a hand on her shoulder and she froze in her tracks. It wasn’t his grip that stopped her—it was gentle—it was the mere fact of his touch. “Come by the fire, Clarinet. Please.”

No. No no
… Fire was not air. Fire was farther from the door. Farther from the air Clare so desperately needed.

“Please,” he said again, leading her unprotestingly—
why
wasn’t she protesting?—back toward the couch by the little sunken fire pit. “I have been terribly inhospitable and I have hurt you. Let me make amends. I do not want the Fair Folk angry with me. I do not want
you
angry.”

“I’m … I’m not …” Clare murmured. She wasn’t what? Angry? Well … maybe not anymore. When he’d first attacked her, sure. But that was pretty understandable. And really, for a first-century barbarian in a savage, untamed land, Connal was being pretty civilized at the moment. She watched as he stoked the fire back to life and swung a small cauldron on a metal arm over the flames. Then he crushed a handful of herbs from the bunched sheaves hanging from the rafters into a shallow bronze bowl. He fetched a clean scrap of cloth from a basket, tore it in two, and pressed a strip of it to the cut on her neck. It came away stained bright red and Clare felt a little queasy at the sight. Connal folded the scrap of linen carefully and set it aside. Then he poured warm water from the cauldron over the herbs in the bowl and soaked the other piece of cloth in the infusion. A soothing, medicinal fragrance filled the little room.

Clare realized that her eyes were closed when she felt the heat from the wet cloth seeping into her skin and heard Connal murmuring words in a sing-song chant under his breath. She caught the gist that they were an incantation of sorts—a healing spell of some kind—and it reminded her that she was sitting in front of a Druid. A magician. A sorcerer. It made her curious.

“How did you know?” she asked as his hands moved deftly along her skin. “In the grove that night—Comorra’s celebration—how did you know I was there?” She opened her eyes and found him staring at her intently, as though he was trying to read a sign written in a foreign language. “I thought Comorra was the only one who could see me.”

Connal dropped his gaze and shrugged, frowning faintly. “I do not know. I am Druiddyn and we are trained to be sensitive to the spirit world. I just … felt your presence. As if there was someone standing in a crowd—someone I knew—who was staring at me.”

Clare felt a shiver run up her spine.
Freaking Druids
…

“I’ve only ever felt that sensation once before,” Connal mused quietly. He shook his head and smiled at her. “Never mind. There. The bleeding has stopped.”

Clare knew what other time he was talking about—the night in the forge when Llassar had finished making Comorra’s brooch. She remembered Llassar maybe sensing her, too—but not in the way Connal had. She decided not to mention it. She didn’t want Connal to think she spent all her time lurking around unseen in the Iceni village.

Connal reached for a small jar of something pungent and dabbed it on her neck. “This,” he said, “will help it heal without scarring.”

“Oh …” Clare hadn’t thought of that. How was she going to explain this to Maggie? That she’d cut herself shaving?

Connal laughed at her expression. “Unless you
want
a scar.” “I really don’t.” She laughed a little too. Explaining a mark on her neck would be the least of her worries when she got back. If she got back. She’d been gone for a long time, it seemed …

Her gaze drifted to the small metal bowl in Connal’s hands. It was decorated with the same sort of swirling patterns that Clare recognized from the shield, the torc, and Comorra’s brooch. He handled it carefully, she noticed. As if it were special. Powerful. Her neck barely felt sore at all anymore. Almost like magic.

“That’s pretty,” she said, pointing to the bowl.

“Thank you.” Connal inclined his head. “I made it.”

“Oh!” Clare was surprised at that. “You mean you’re a metal guy, too? Like Llassar?”

Connal’s gaze snapped up to her face. “You know the master smith?”

“Uh … I know
of
him.” She should really watch just how much she said.

“I’m not surprised that word of his talent has reached even to the lands of the tylwyth teg. He is among the most talented of the Druiddyn artisans ever to have lived,” Connal said reverently. “His skills at melding magic and metal are legendary. He was sent here by our order to serve Boudicca. Just as I was. We are both bound to her in loyalty and service for as long as the queen lives.”

“You’re not from around here?”
Me neither
, she thought silently.

“I was born a prince among my own tribe, the Dyfnient, in the mountains far to the west of here. A beautiful place, shrouded in mist and secrets.”

He must mean Wales, Clare thought. Her aunt had always described it as being something out of a storybook.

“May the sword and flame of Rome leave their lands forever untouched.”

“Why did you leave?”

“I showed an aptitude. With both metal and magic. So the Druid of my tribe sent me here. To learn from two masters. Llassar taught me how to shape metal and Boudicca taught me how to use it. And they both taught me how to use magic. How to call down the gifts of the goddess Andrasta.”

Boudicca? A Druid? A sorceress in her own right? Al had left that part out of the history lesson.

“I thought all Druids did was gather mistletoe and sing poetry and make potions. I didn’t know they ever really got their hands dirty.”

Connal laughed curtly. “Oh … we are quite capable of, as you say, getting our hands dirty. And bloody, if need be.”

He reached out a hand—a very gentle hand—to brush the hair away from her shoulders.

“Although I prefer to keep my hands clean,” he said as he ran his fingertips down her arms and lifted her hands toward his face. He turned them over in his own, running the pad of his thumb lightly over the lines of her palms as if divining her future. “Like yours. So clean and smooth …”

Clare held her breath as he raised her hand and pressed it to his cheek, which was rough with stubble. His nostrils flared and she wondered if he could smell the perfume she’d put on that morning. She wondered if he liked it, if he could …

“You have no calluses. Your hands have never held a sword, Shining One,” he murmured as he turned his head, almost as if he would plant a kiss on her wrist. “Are you not warriors in your world?”

Suddenly the leather flap curtaining Connal’s door was pushed aside and Clare felt her heart leap into her throat. Connal was startled too, but they both relaxed in the next moment as Comorra ducked through the door. The princess pulled up short in surprise at finding the young Druid with such an unexpected house guest. In such close proximity. Comorra’s eyes were bright with weeping and they flicked back and forth between Connal, who still held Clare by the wrist, and Clare.

“Comorra!” Connal rose swiftly and held out a hand for her, drawing her over by the brazier and sitting her down on one of the low stools. “Come. Sit down. I think you know my guest?”