“That wolf of theirs had better not be in the house,” Malcolm said. “The dogs will throw fits when I get home. I don’t need Iylaine guessing where I’ve been.”
Bertie lifted a brow and looked over at him as they crunched their way up the frosty hillside. “She told my Ma she wouldn’t mind having one of the pups. What would your dogs say to that?”
Oh, she wouldn’t, would she? Malcolm supposed Iylaine planned to surprise him with the fait accompli one of these evenings, doubtlessly after Duncan had already fallen in love with the thing. He would just forbid it explicitly beforehand, and see whether she would defy him.
He muttered, “Same thing I would say myself.”
Bertie laughed and guessed, “Woof woof woof?”—barking great puffs of frosty breath around his head like a respectable mastiff.
Malcolm responded with a curt, “No.”
Bertie shrugged as he walked and flapped his arms against his sides. “I don’t know, but I guess I wouldn’t let a wolf anywhere near my kids either. Anyway, like my Ma said, somehow it doesn’t seem Christian.”
The clang of iron striking iron resounded through the icy air, and Malcolm’s hand fell to his knife. Then, with a creak, a line of yellow light flared out of the hulking shadow of the barn above them. It broadened as the door opened until a golden half-arch framed the insolent silhouette of an elf.
Malcolm tapped his finger against the butt of his knife as he walked. He was already breathing deeply from the brisk walk uphill from the road, and now his heart was pounding, too. A few steps farther and he recognized the shadow as Osh. But that only meant that Vash was hiding out of sight inside.
“Good evening,” Osh said to Alred, bowing slightly at the waist. “Again.”
“Glad to see you, again, sir,” Alred replied.
Then Malcolm stepped up behind the Duke, and Osh turned to him and greeted him coolly in Gaelic: “God be with you.”
Malcolm went rigid with outrage. He did not know whether it was with his appropriation of Gaelic or of Christianity that Osh meant to goad him, but either served.
Osh tilted his half-shadowed head just enough for a shaft of light to spill over the bridge of his nose, making his other eye glow a lurid blue.
“God and the Blessed Virgin be with you,” Malcolm replied stiffly. Osh put out his hand, and Malcolm took it, determined not to be outpolited.
Osh turned then to Bertie with a friendlier greeting, and Malcolm spied Flann behind him, peeping out into the dark yard with an unaccustomed shyness. The tint of her blushing cheeks made the simple candlelight seem a sunset aureole about her, and her hair was draped softly over her shoulder, so unlike Cousin Girl-Flann’s severe knots of old. Malcolm was smitten. She looked less like her hoydenish self than like a premonition of Cousin Condal as a pink-cheeked bride, receiving him with shy pride in her quaint new home.
Malcolm stepped past Osh and over the threshold to greet her. The sight of two tall elves behind her doused his fancies, but he had been expecting them there, and he strode smoothly up to Flann without a second glance.
“Welcome, Cousin,” she said.
Malcolm laid his hands on her waist and leaned in to kiss her on both cheeks. Both times he peeked at Vash through slitted eyes. The elf looked queasy.
“Good evening to you, Cousin,” Malcolm purred. “Where’s the wee one tonight? Don’t I get a kiss?”
“Ach! The wee one’s abed already. But you shall have a kiss owing to you, if you promise to kiss Duncan and Maud for me later. And give Connie a good, big kiss for me! I fancy she’s needing one!”
She saw the darkening of his glare, so she hurried to take his hands and swing them gaily side to side. Her bust was so deeply bared that it rippled when she laughed, making her voice seem to warble up from deep in her breast. Malcolm was entranced.
“I daresay she isn’t getting kissed as much as she ought,” Flann said pertly, “with dour Cousin Malcolm standing guard.”
Malcolm raised his attention by a few inches and smirked at her. “Dour? What am I become, a priest?”
“Fie! You’re worse than the father of us. I was never shut in for the crime of being fourteen.”
Malcolm stopped smirking. “Aye, and look where that got you!”
Flann yanked her hands out of his. Lately their every conversation ended the same.
“Ach, Bertie!” she called past him. “How do you do?”
She stepped aside to lift her hand for Bertie to kiss. Malcolm’s agitation flooded back over him as he saw the last obstacle between himself and the elves removed.
Then his friend Bertie strode up and stopped at his side. He kissed Flann’s hand, but he made her only a polite greeting. Nor had Bertie—ordinarily jovial and talkative himself—played much part in the banter that Osh and Alred were still carrying on behind them.
Bertie had not come to pay a friendly visit either. He had not been invited, and Alred had refused to say what Vash wanted from Malcolm, but Bertie did not believe it had anything to do with Lasrua. And he was, as he had said, the closest thing to a brother that Iylaine had.
Malcolm hooked his thumb over his belt and squared himself at Bertie’s side. Any elf would have to get through the two of them.
Flann said, “Bertie, you’ve met my friends Vash and Shus, haven’t you?”
Her friends! She was lost to the family, as far as Malcolm was concerned.
Vash spoke up at last, asking, “How do you do?”
Bertie said only, “We’ve met.”
Behind them, Alred handed his coat off to Osh and rubbed his hands briskly together. “Lovely to come in to such a snug house as yours, my dear. Shall we have a seat? Pardon me, Bertie.”
He tried to squeeze past Bertie into the narrow sitting room. Bertie looked to Malcolm, awaiting a signal.
Malcolm said, “No, my lord, begging your pardon, we shall not have a seat. Vash may say to me whatever it is he wished to say, and then I shall decide whether I care to have a seat and talk it over. I daresay I shall not.”
Vash blanched, and Malcolm smiled grimly to himself. Vash must have realized his mealy-mouthed elven amiability would avail him nothing here. Malcolm was no Egelric to fall under his spell. Bertie was no Alred to be charmed by a well-chosen snippet of antique poetry.
Malcolm said, “Speak, elf!”
Flann whispered, “Cousin…”
Malcolm shouted, “Speak!”
Malcolm, Bertie, and Vash were still, but the fidgety discomfort of the others had almost come to a boil.
Alred cleared his throat and began, “Now, gentlemen…”
Then Vash spoke a curt, “Yes.” The others simmered down.
For a moment Malcolm thrilled to the idea that he had forced Vash to assent. But Vash started tossing glances around—at Shosudin, at Flann, past Malcolm to Osh and Alred in the entry—and everyone moved according to his unspoken whim.
Shosudin stepped back and folded his arms. Flann slipped meekly past Bertie to join Osh in the kitchen. The Duke stopped where he stood, though obliged to look over the shoulders of men taller than he. Then Vash looked at Malcolm.
The elf seemed to think himself the lord here. Vash seemed not to have assented to his demand but to have chosen to humor him. Malcolm seethed with a molten fury that only lacked a vent.
“What do you want?” he demanded. “What?”
“I want to ask you,” Vash replied smoothly, “do you remember, last summer, when Iylaine was unbound from me?”
Malcolm hated the very word—binding, unbinding, as if marriage were not a matter of hands freely clasped in love, but of ropes and chains. Iylaine had never consented to be bound.
“Aye. And? What? Didn’t it work?”
If it had not? If that was why Iylaine was so… whatever she was? Malcolm was struck breathless by a newfound hope.
But Vash replied coolly, “No. I believe it did. However, myself, I was not unbound from her. You understood that.”
Malcolm breathed deeply and glared, mistrustful.
“Now, I wish to be. I have learned how it may be done. I wish…”
He did not turn his head, but Malcolm saw him leaning his upper body back towards Shosudin. Shosudin was as still as a tree.
“…for it to be undone,” Vash concluded softly. “I wish to be free.”
Bertie leaned his shoulder against the wall and looked a question at Malcolm.
“And what did you want to ask me?” Malcolm demanded. “To warn her this time? Why? Will it hurt her?”
“It will hurt her,” Vash said. “I must make a small cut on her hand. Very small—”
“You must?” Malcolm cried. “You must? Never!”
Vash opened out his hands. “There is no other way. My blood is in her.”
“You expect me to let you see her? Never! Never again!”
“I do not want to see her again!” Vash pleaded. “I want to not want! I want to be free…”
Alred laid a hand on Malcolm’s shoulder. “Malcolm…”
“He’s lying! He’s lying! He’s going to—to rebind himself to her! Or something else!”
“Malcolm, come here.”
Malcolm had obeyed Alred’s soft-spoken commands for so many years that he turned to him out of habit, even now. Alred led him over to the door.
Malcolm whispered, “I am not about to let him injure my wife!”
“He will not injure her, Malcolm. She has been injured more gravely when she has been bled for fevers. I understand that you do not like the idea of him seeing Iylaine. I would be no more willing to let Leofric near my wife. But he is asking you a favor, as a gentleman, to help him undo a cruel and thoughtless thing that was done to him as a child.”
“I had nothing to do with that! Let him ask the elves who did it to him!”
“Only you can help him, however. The elves cannot. He did as much for Iylaine, out of kindness to her and to you, even though it increased his own suffering.”
“Let him suffer! Haven’t I?”
Alred grabbed Malcolm’s shoulder and sank his strong fingers down into the muscle. “He saved your life, Malcolm,” he whispered. “At risk to his own. If he had the least bit less honor, he would have let you die there. Had he none at all, he could have killed you a hundred times by now. By God’s name, Malcolm, I believe you owe him this.”
“Iylaine does not.”
“Iylaine does, because she has him to thank if she still has you. Little Maud could never even have been thought of if not for him. He only wants what you have—his own wife, his own children. He cannot have that unless he is free of the tie that binds him to Iylaine. And, Malcolm… I’m not Egelric, but I think we both know what he would say.”
Malcolm closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the door. An icy draft knifed through the gap between the boards and cooled his burning cheek.
His mind recoiled in pain from the very name of Egelric, though his heart persisted in yearning for him. Malcolm knew what he would have said, but it was not the same as having him here to say it.
His mind hurled the thought away, and Malcolm shoved himself off from the door, whirling about to stride back up to the elf.
“What about me?”
Vash drew back his head. “What about you?”
“Aye, what about me? I’m filled to bursting with your blood! What about me?”
“Oh… I meant to ask you about that.”
“Ask, then! I’m right here!”
“Yes. You see, I have never attempted this before. I thought I could start with you, to… to…”
Alred suggested, “Practice…”
Malcolm said, “Practice on me! I like that! Would be a pity if there were an accident!”
Alred laid his hand on Malcolm’s arm. “Malcolm…”
“No, no, no! I like that! For Christ’s sake, let him practice to his heart’s content before I ever let him anywhere near my wife! Let’s do it! How do we do it?” Malcolm thrust out his hand.
“Yes,” Vash said. “First, we need a fire.”
“Excellent! Flann has a fire right here, crackling away in her kitchen. What else?”
“I… I need to prepare,” Vash said. “For this much blood, I believe we should do it outside. We cannot do it all tonight, of course. I shall have to come again.”
“No, all of it! The devil! I want your filthy blood out of me!”
“We cannot do it all!” Vash pleaded. “It is too much. You were dying!”
“Aye, but you didn’t fill me up, did you? You didn’t replace everything I lost, did you? I was weak for a month afterwards!”
“No…”
“If you could afford to lose that much, then I can!”
Shosudin said gravely, “I do not believe it would be wise.”
“Who asked you, henchman? Was I speaking to you?”
“Vash is an elf.”
“And I’m a Scot! And by God’s name, I’ll have nothing but Scots blood in my veins!”
Malcolm whipped out his knife.
Shosudin reacted to the flash of steel by shoving Vash down onto the floor in a tangle of long legs. Alred caught Malcolm by the wrist, but too late: he had already drawn the blade across the palm of his left hand, slicing deep enough to snap taut nerves and tendons like harp strings.
Pain engulfed him in fiery billows. He heard himself cry out, and when he found he could not silence himself, he howled all the louder, twisting it into a cry of victory. Blood erupted from his hand, as if it had been dammed up all these years and finally found a vent.
Osh vaulted over the kitchen table and snatched the knife out of Malcolm’s hand as he jumped onto the couch beside him. And Vash leapt up at Malcolm like a wildcat and bowled him over.
“Get off me!”
Malcolm flailed and fought, and Vash struggled to catch the hand that was slapping blood all over him.
Vash snarled, “Stop that!”
“Out of me! Every fucking drop!”
Vash lunged for the bleeding hand, and in so doing drove a sharp corner of his pelvis into Malcolm’s groin. A second roiling wave of pain eddied countercurrent to the other, and Malcolm was forced to bang the back of his skull against the floor to stay sane.
Vash caught the bloody hand and twined his fingers between Malcolm’s. The pain multiplied the sense of pressure until he was certain his hand was being crushed to jelly.
“Tonight!” Malcolm panted.
“We dare not!”
“Tonight! All of it! Swear it!”
Hot droplets ran down his temples into his hair, and he did not know whether it was blood, tears, sweat, or some salty mixture of them all.
“Swear it, elf! If you lie, I shall take my family to Scotland and leave you to die!”
Vash’s frantic expression hardened into a grimace of animal hatred. Malcolm banged and banged his head against the rug. It was the one part of his body Vash had not wrestled under his control.
“Or kill me and say it was my fault for insisting! Ha! Here’s your chance, Vash! Let us see how very honorable you are!”
This chapter had me a little frightened. I would’ve thought that Malcolm may have embraced any attempt at eliminating the last vestiges that holds Vash in their lives. I hadn’t expected Vash to offer experimenting with him first, even though it makes perfect sense. That reaction, however, frightened me as I mentioned. Alred’s arguments were completely sound, plus knowing what Egelric would’ve said should’ve made him agreeable, but only seemed to tip him further over the edge. His hatred seems so immense.
) but he has so much dammed-up frustration, unhappiness, and jealousy. Malcolm is usually quite a master of his emotions, but eventually he was bound to erupt. It’s more strain than he can bear.
Chapters
Regardless of Malcolm’s opinion, I do think Vash has made the right choice here. The whole thing with Iylaine has gone on long enough, and if Vash actually wants a shot at being happy, then all the power to him.
Not that you can blame Malcolm’s behavior, of course… but this love triangle has wrecked enough lives already, and if it keeps going on for years and years, then the casualties are just going to keep coming. Think of the children, Malcolm!