It was hard to breathe in the face of such unfaltering decency.
“Marcus, why
do
you stare so at that wolf?”
Marcus Ulpius Aquila started at his half sister’s exclamation. The silver wolf figurine slipped though his fingers and fell to the scarred surface of his worktable with a thud.
He swung his head toward the door with a scowl. He hadn’t even heard her enter the smithy. “By Pollux, Bree. Must you sneak about so? You’re disturbing my work.”
Breena snorted and tossed her head. She’d made a valiant attempt to tame her wild russet locks, but the ladylike coils she’d pinned at her nape were already beginning to unravel. Marcus couldn’t suppress a chuckle. Having passed her fourteenth year, his little sister thought she was a woman.
“You’re hardly working. The furnace is cold.”
Marching past him, she peered around the wooden screen that shielded a rumpled bed from the rest of the room. It was the only soft place in a building constructed of stone, slate, and heavy timber. “You slept here again last night, didn’t you? You
know
Mother hates it when you don’t sleep in the main house. And she’s so fretful about everything these days.”
That was certainly true. His stepmother was with child, more than halfway through her term. The pregnancy had been a shock, both because of Rhiannon’s age—forty—and the fact that she hadn’t carried babes easily, even when young. Breena had been the only child she’d managed to carry to birth, a month too soon, at that. Three other babes had not survived past their quickening.
“I wasn’t sleeping.” At least, not more than an hour or two. Whenever he closed his eyes, he saw the wolf. “I was drawing. I didn’t want to disturb the household by coming to bed.”
Breena eyed the fallen figurine. “What is it about this wolf, Marcus? Every time I come out here, you have it in your hand.”
“It’s nothing,” Marcus mumbled, scooping up the wolf and setting it on the shelf with its companions. Making animal figurines out of scraps of silver, iron, and bronze left over from more functional items was a hobby of sorts, begun when Breena was young and Marcus was just discovering his passion for working metal. He’d made most of the figures for her.
Except for the wolf. He’d fashioned that piece last spring, upon his return from Avalon.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” The words came out sharper than he’d intended. His habitual good humor was in short supply this morning.
But Breena had never been one to take quick offense. Her smile was suspiciously sly as she held up a covered redware bowl he had not noticed earlier. “I brought you this.”
He eyed the offering with grave mistrust. He’d heard the gate bell ring, but hadn’t thought much of it at the time.
“Please
do not tell me that’s another of Lavina’s cream puddings.”
Breena set the bowl on his worktable. “Aye, brother, it is. With honeyed figs this time.” She gazed at Marcus thoughtfully. “Do you think perhaps she wants a portly husband?”
Marcus swore under his breath. “Is she still here? Is Mother demanding I greet her?” Rhiannon never allowed him the luxury of avoiding a female visitor.
“Luckily for you, Father took Mother to town to visit Morwenna and her new babe. They were gone when Lavina arrived. I told her you’d gone to town as well, but I’m not sure she believed me—she gave a
very
hard look across the yard to the forge. If there’d been smoke curling over the roof, she would have marched out here to investigate.”
Marcus rose abruptly. “Why can’t the woman understand I don’t wish to marry her?”
“Perhaps because you haven’t told her?” Breena suggested with characteristic sarcasm. “Really, Marcus, even I had begun to think you were considering the idea. You’re never anything other than friendly to her.”
“What else am I to be? Rude? It’s not as if I dislike her. It’s just that I don’t wish to marry her. She looks at me as though I were her next meal.”
Breena burst out laughing. “Oh, come now, Marcus, don’t pretend to be the shy virgin lad. You know what to do with a woman.” Her tone turned a shade darker. “You and Rhys certainly spend enough time at that broth—”
“Stop,” Marcus interrupted, holding up a hand, as if such a gesture could halt one of Breena’s tirades. “Stop talking now, Bree. I will
not
discuss brothels with you.”
He frowned. “In any case, one has nothing to do with the other. Brothels are entertainment; marriage is … not. Getting married would change my life.”
“For the better, in my opinion. Ever since Clara chose Owein over you, you’ve barely glanced at a respectable woman.”
Marcus was silent. True, Clara Sempronia had declined his offer of marriage in favor of a Druid handfasting with Rhiannon’s younger brother, Owein. Breena had latched onto the idea that Marcus was still brooding over the rejection, and Marcus hadn’t denied it. But the truth was, he hardly thought of Clara these days. An entirely different woman filled his mind.
He turned away. “I’m not interested in marrying. At least,” he amended, “not right now.”
“Lavina is pretty, and kind, and intelligent. You could do far worse.” She stuck a finger in the bowl and brought a dollop of cream to her lips. “And you must admit, she makes a lovely pudding.”
“Once she realizes I’m not going to marry her, she’s liable to leave out the figs in favor of belladonna,” Marcus grumbled.
Breena laughed and pushed the bowl toward him. Marcus ignored it. He watched as his sister crouched to retrieve several balled-up sheets of papyrus he’d thrown on the floor.
“Leave those,” Marcus told her.
She only shook her head as she gathered the trash and pitched it into a barrel he’d reserved for that purpose. “Really, Marcus, the pig barn is neater. How can you think while surrounded by such clutter?”
“I
like
clutter. Neatness stifles my imagination.”
“I suppose you must be right, since you seem to thrive amidst chaos.”
“Just as you thrive in Father’s library.”
She crawled under the worktable for another crumpled drawing. When she resurfaced, Marcus snatched it out of her hand and tossed it in the air. Breena jumped to catch it, but missed. The wad landed on the ground and bounced under the worktable, coming to rest very close to its original position.
“See? That drawing knows where it belongs, even if you don’t.”
Breena laughed then, and he laughed with her. The vast difference in their preferences for neatness was a long-running joke between them.
Still smiling, she settled herself on Marcus’s stool and smoothed her skirt over her knees. Pulling an uncrumpled sheet of papyrus across the table, she bent her head to examine it.
Marcus gave a sigh of mock exasperation. “Don’t you have work to do?”
“Of course. We live on a farm. I always have work to do.”
“Then go do it.”
“In time, brother, in time.” Leaning close, she peered at the drawing of a sword and its accompanying notations. “What’s this? A new commission?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
Marcus shrugged. “It’s just an idea.”
Breena’s eyes lit up. She loved his “ideas.”
“Tell me,” she demanded in the imperious tone she’d perfected when she was five years old.
He chuckled. “It’s a new type of sword, Bug.”
She shot him a dark look but didn’t comment on his use of her childhood nickname. “But it’s so oddly proportioned! The blade is too long.”
“It’s not a
gladius.
Or a Celt sword.”
She looked up, interest kindling in her eyes. “Then what, exactly, is it?”
“A new design. My own.” Her enthusiasm sparked his. He reached for a second and third sketch and arranged them on either side of the first. “This is a
gladius,”
he said, pointing to the drawing on the left. “It’s short, light, and easily maneuvered. The Celts prefer a longer blade.” He tapped the drawing on the right. “But with length comes increased weight, making the weapon harder to control.”
“But your new sword is even longer!”
“Yes, but it’s thinner as well. That will make it easier to handle. It will have the reach of a Celt sword, but weigh no more than a Roman sword.”
Breena’s brow furrowed as she compared the three designs. Marcus watched her with true affection. His half sister was no typical girl. Her interests were not anything one might describe as womanly. She could read and write both Latin and Greek. When she wanted entertainment, she did not shop for imported silks and shoes. She studied Aristotle and Euclid.
“It won’t work,” she declared after a moment. “The slender blade won’t be able to counter the strike of a heavier blade. It will break.”
Trust Breena to focus on the heart of the matter. “It won’t,” he told her. “Not if I succeed in smelting bright iron.”
Breena’s blue eyes fixed on him. “Bright iron? I’ve never heard of it.”
“It’s the latest talk at the blacksmith’s
collegio.
A very hot furnace produces a stronger, brighter iron. The new metal is properly named
chalybs,
after an iron-working tribe in Anatolia.”
“If this
chalybs
is so wonderful, why aren’t all swords made of it?”
“It’s extremely difficult to smelt. The heat that’s needed is incredible, and must be sustained for hours.”
“Ah,” Breena said, reaching for yet another drawing. “Now I understand what this is.”
She smoothed the wrinkled page, which bore a diagram of a furnace. She squinted, trying to read the notations Marcus had scrawled in heavy, messy letters.
“Will building a deep furnace chamber within the existing chamber and increasing airflow truly produce enough heat for your purpose?”
Marcus grimaced. “I’m not entirely sure. A higher quality of charcoal will also help, I expect. I mean to explore all possibilities.”
Breena grinned, showing the gap between her front teeth. “You’ll do it, Marcus. I cannot remember one of your designs that didn’t come to life.” Her gaze drifted to the shelf above the worktable. “But that silver wolf you’re always playing with is more alive than anything you’ve ever made. Look at its face! It almost seems human.”
Marcus closed his eyes, his throat suddenly tight. The wolf
was
human. Memories, more than a year old but still as vivid as yesterday, flashed behind his eyelids. He was back in the dank, dripping cave, the dying light of his torch illuminating feral gray eyes.
The she-wolf snarled and leapt. But weak as it was, the attack fell short. The animal collapsed at Marcus’s feet. Battling every sane instinct he possessed, he bent and gathered it in his arms. The beast shuddered, sending vibrations up his arms. And then it began to change …
Until the wolf’s fur smoothed into a woman’s damp and feverish skin, Marcus hadn’t fully grasped the depth of the magic he held in his arms. Rhys called it Deep Magic. It was the raw power of the gods, a primal force that existed independently of any human notion of good and evil, Light and Darkness. It was a primitive and dangerous force. Unpredictable. So much so that Cyric, Rhys’s grandfather, had forbidden the Druids of Avalon from calling it.
Deep Magic. The refuge of the truly desperate, and the truly depraved.
Which was Gwendolyn?
The transformation he’d witnessed had been a perversion of nature. Why, then, had it aroused him so? What did it imply about his character that now, more than a year later, he still woke in the dead of night with his cock stiff and his stones aching for …
her.
For her magic.
“… do you think, Marcus?”
With a start, he realized he’d completely missed whatever question Breena had asked. “What?”
She gave a huff of exasperation. “See what I mean? You were gone again. Whenever you look at that wolf—”
“I’m listening now.”
She glanced at him and frowned, then looked away. Her earlier good humor had fled. Marcus’s attention was drawn to the circles under her eyes, more visible now that she was silent. Her freckles stood out starkly against too-pale skin. She hadn’t been sleeping. His heart sank. With Breena, that meant only one thing.
Her hand crept to her throat, fingering the silver pendant that hung there. It was a Druid charm, one that Rhys had given her. Marcus knew Gwendolyn had made it.
“I need to talk to you about Avalon,” she said.
“Breena, no. We’ve talked about it enough already.”
“But … Rhys says I must go. And I would go, if not for the babe …”
“Mother needs you here.”
“I know. I would not leave her, not now.”
“Even afterward,” Marcus said. “Avalon is no place for you.”
“But Rhys said—”
“It’s a primitive place, Bree. Do you really want to live in a hut of mud and straw? With nothing but a meager peat fire and a dirt floor? There will be no plaster, no tiles, no soft beds. No wine, no wheat bread. You can forget hot baths.” He paused, catching her gaze fully. “And if all that isn’t enough, consider this: no
library.”
He felt a grim satisfaction when this last pronouncement caused Breena to wince. Truly, he couldn’t imagine his sister without her nose in a scroll or codex.
“And another thing,” he continued ruthlessly, “the settlement on Avalon is illegal.
Druidry
is illegal. What if the Second Legion were to discover the existence of a secret clan of Druids? Every man, woman, and child would be put to the sword.”
“That will never happen. Rhys says Cyric has hidden the isle within magical mists.”
“Yet another reason to stay away. Who knows what dangerous spells the Druids have conjured?”
“None!” Breena stood so abruptly her stool tipped over and clattered to the stone floor before Marcus could catch it. “Rhys says the Druids of Avalon practice only the Light!”
Marcus retrieved the stool and set it upright with a deliberate thud. “Except that a little more than a year ago, Rhys’s own cousin called up the darkest form of Deep Magic, and nearly killed Clara and Owein. And Rhys himself”—Marcus flattened his hand on top of the stool—“Rhys is no stranger to Deep Magic. You know that as well as I do.”
“But that was only one time! Rhys said—”