Page 26 of For an Exile’s Heart (Ancient Songs #2)

T he fury of the combat faded from Adair’s blood but slowly. Only rarely in the past had he taken part in such contests—battles during training or at times when the high king summoned his father’s men, when he marched out under his da’s banner.

Nothing ever so personal as this. So immediate, when staring into the eyes of his opponent—a man he knew—he saw that man desired, with all his being, to kill him.

Instinct had overtaken him during that fight, an ancient sort of instinct that cast his emotions to the background.

For the amount of time it took him to kill a man.

And now—now that man lay dead, and Adair did not at all know whether they did right to flee. Flight argued he had done something wrong. He had not, only defended the woman he loved.

And yet Mican surely would not see it that way, as Earrach had not. In their eyes, Adair had no right to defend Bradana. Her father might, and her stepbrothers might, but she’d been betrothed to Earrach.

Until she’d dissolved that betrothal. Renounced it. She had that right.

How would Kendrick see it? Part of Adair—a large part—thought he should stay and find out. The rest of him…

Och, the rest of him heeded the look in Bradana’s eyes. He had beheld terror there when he challenged Earrach. By the gods, he had felt her fear. He could feel it even now as they mounted the ponies Kerr brought and started away inland, leaving the settlement behind.

She feared she would lose him, and that thought above all others possessed her mind.

So perilous was love.

He could not doubt that she loved him, this woman made up of half beauty and half courage. No doubt that he loved her. Whatever bound them one to the other had been strengthened when they made love last night. Bound to one another tight.

He understood full well why she’d been unable to go to another man.

The world—their world—would not understand it. Nor why he’d slain that man for her sake.

As they started off, their two ponies with Wen alongside heading for the wooded slope above the settlement, he wondered if there was anything he would not do for her sake.

Back there facing Earrach, he’d been willing to die for her. He must now live for her. Was bending his honor any more difficult?

Still, he did not like it, and he glanced back toward the settlement as they climbed the slope of the land, all laid out behind him. He could see his own small boat hauled up on the shore, and hoped Nolan and Flynn would follow his instructions and leave.

In front of the hall the wedding guests still gathered, looking like so many dark blots—perhaps insects. Even as he watched, the blots broke apart and began to spread out.

Discussion over. Would pursuit be far behind?

“As soon as we are safe awa’,” Bradana said, “we will stop and look at your shoulder. I have bandages in my pack. Is it bleeding much?”

It was. The right side of his tunic was heavy with wet. He could smell his own blood. “I do not know.”

“We will camp a couple nights and then, once tempers ha’ cooled and perhaps Mican has left, we will go back, if ye want.”

He did want. He’d been taught to stand on his feet and face his actions.

Yet he could hear the terror still in her voice, and when she glanced at him, he could see it in her eyes.

Spending a few nights out on the land was no great matter. He had done so often enough with friends, back home in Erin.

But this was not Erin, the land he knew and loved. It was Alba, deep and dark, dangerous at its heart. A place where the trees whispered and deer gave a man his direction. Where he might lose himself.

Would this place that was not his own accept him? Reject him?

Bradana led the way, her cream-colored pony eager enough to be away. His own mount followed hers, and Wen gamboled alongside. The trees closed around them, and all too soon, just as when Toren and Kerr had taken him hunting, he could no longer glimpse the sea. So fully did Alba swallow them up.

For some distance, they rode in silence. It felt strange and isolated, not knowing what happened behind them. When they came to a small stream, Bradana halted her pony and swung down.

“Here is a good place. Sit there.” She pointed to a flat rock. “Let me look at ye.”

Adair dismounted, his every muscle screaming in protest. A score of scrapes and bruises had he collected during that battle. Only the one at the shoulder worried him. The steady pain there had passed into numbness. He could barely feel his right arm.

Bradana went down on her knees beside him, bringing her face close. He watched her as she pulled the sodden cloth away from his skin to expose the wound, and he traced the movement of emotions across her face.

Distress. Worry. Terror.

Her eyes came up, wide, blue, and bottomless, to meet his. “’Tis bad, this.”

“Aye.” He knew it.

“Ye have lost much blood.”

Dispassionately, he looked down at himself. Earrach’s blade—the tip of it—had caught him as he turned. His own movement had torn the flesh, removed a chunk of skin and muscle the size of his fist. If that blade had caught a vital blood vessel, he could well bleed to death.

But…

“’Tis slowing now,” he told her.

“Ye think so?”

“Aye. Pack it and we will go on.”

He could hear no sounds of pursuit from behind them. Could hear nothing but the songs of birds, Wen’s huffing, and a kind of curious murmuring from the trees overhead. It seemed as if the three of them had fallen out of the world, to this other place. An endless stretch of rock and forest.

Alba breathed .

That thought came from nowhere. He found he could not dismiss it. He must be lightheaded from loss of blood.

“There, now.” Bradana made a neat bandage and tied it off. Her hands lingered upon him as if she could not bear to draw them away, and she leaned closer.

The kiss came so sweet that it curled his toes and stirred the desire inside—let him know, all over again, how much he loved her.

Slowly and reluctantly did she pull her lips from his to say, “Adair, I was so afraid. If I lost ye—”

“You have not. Am I not here?”

Her gaze flicked to the bandage, betraying her worry. “Aye.”

“Bradana”—he held her with his uninjured hand—“I must go back after a time. Face what I have done.”

“After a time.” Disconcertingly, her eyes filled with tears. “No’ yet. I canna lose ye.”

“What makes ye think ye will?”

“Unjust punishments have been imposed before this. Kendrick, aye, is a fair man. But what if he decides to place all blame on ye in order to salvage his ties wi’ Mican?”

Wen, who had been lying beside them, suddenly got to his feet and looked back the way they had come.

Pursuit?

Hastily, Bradana tied up her bundle. “Come—we must ride on.”

*

“D’ye know where we are?” Adair asked as night began to fall, gathering like a gray blanket beneath the trees. Night came late at this time of year. That and Adair’s bone-deep weariness told him they had traveled far.

She shook her head. She had deliberately lost them, steering a course through the thickest part of the forest and over stony ground.

He must have faith she could find her way home again. For he never would.

The trees here towered around them, and the ground rose steadily. They had climbed the mountain—no hill this, like the ones back home—and now skirted the summit. He could sense, if not see for the dark, that a drop opened on their right. Wen, who followed him, kept away from it, making a barely visible gray shape against the upward slope.

Traveling near blind in such country was surely madness. When Bradana drew her pony up in the midst of the trees, he felt nothing but relief.

“The animals need rest.” She slid down from her mount. “So do we.”

So did he, she meant. And aye, as he too dismounted, he had to admit that his strength flagged. He’d lost much blood, and to his dismay, his head swam a little when his feet met the ground.

Instantly, Bradana was at his side. “Come. I will mak’ ye a bed.”

They had little in the way of supplies. Bradana unpacked it all and spread the blanket out for Adair before urging him down.

“How bad is the pain?”

“No’ bad.” He did not mention that both his arm and hand still felt numb.

“Ye need water to replace all that blood ye shed. I ha’ a flask and can hear water nearby. Let me bring ye some.”

He caught her with his left hand. “Be careful, love, in the dark.”

“Love?” She froze an instant there in his grip. “So do ye call me?”

“Aye, for surely that is what ye are.”

“Until the day I die.”

She moved off silently and Wen went with her, which made Adair feel only slightly better. If trouble caught them, what use would he be to her, his sword arm so sorely hampered?

He stretched out on the blanket and listened to Alba breathing all around him. The sigh of it through the trees. The song, aye, of the water rushing nearby. He was half asleep when Bradana returned to kneel down next to him and tip the flask to his lips—cold, sweet water to sustain him.

“Thank ye, Bradana.”

“We have nay food,” she said starkly. “None for us or Wen.”

“No matter.”

“I will take the ponies to water and return.”

He was far more than half asleep when she came and lay beside him, wound her arms around him, tucking up the side of the blanket about them both. Wen lay down on Adair’s other side, a bulwark of protection.

There in the arms of his lover, on Alba’s breast, he slept.