Nay, it was not the air, the death was in him. He stared at the mind-aching arch of the sky, but his eyes were blind. He fought for breath but it was the ragged sound of her breathing that made him turn.
She lay just as he did, staring at the sky. Her fine clothes were a mess, rumpled, gaping off her body so that he could glimpse the small fineness of her underneath, thin skin and small bones exposed to the biting air. He had done that.
Her hands were white-knuckled fists locked at her sides, the fingers bunched round the thick summer grass and the stems of some flower-starred plant, tearing at it. She shuddered. The whole of her slight frame seemed racked by the need to gain life-giving breath.
Through the deadness inside stirred the familiar, aching threads of the protectiveness that had been so strong it had taken all, mind and duty and honour.
Honour. He did not know how she had managed to force that word past her throat when she had lain in his bed at the monastery. Honour was gone. For both of them.
He watched her fingers twist in the long-stemmed plant. Vervain, subject of endless old wives' tales. He could see the pale purple flower heads. Her fingers slipped, the knuckles white, uneven, shattered and without strength.
He did not even know how that had been done to her.
It was impossible to summon the rage that had sustained him for so long.
Just as it was impossible to call back lost honour. Impossible for anyone to live by it in this world.
If you admitted that—
"Alina."
She looked not at him but at the mangled plant in her hand.
If you admitted the truths you did not want to see—
He watched the averted head and the undernourished body of the woman he had failed to protect.
He sat up.
You had to deal with what was. Not with how you wanted things to be.
She had to' know that she did not have to fear him again.
He took breath. The coldness of the air struck like ice in his lungs. But its sharp clearness spoke of the north, of home.
Lindwood
. He closed his mind against charred ruins. Not yet.
"Alina."
She flinched.
The cold air settled on his skin. It was not as cold as guilt.
"Alina, look at me."
She turned her head. But not before he had seen the struggle for control. It seemed the most bitter thing he had ever witnessed.
"I am sorry," she said.
"What?"
"I am sorry," said her voice again. "For…for all this." The long-broken hand made a sweeping, help-less gesture that seemed to encompass the entire world. The sum of all the things he did not understand about her or what she did.
The kind of understanding he wanted was far beyond his reach. It made no difference to what he had to say.
"Alina, what happened now was not your fault. It was mine. I was wrong in what I did. No." He stopped whatever she would say because the guilt would not allow it. "What was so wrong was to think that the past has any hold over the present that…that there was still something that bound us. It is over. The past is dead."
"Dead." Her voice sounded like the thinnest thread, one that would snap for breathing on it.
"Aye. The past is dead between us." he said again, as though chanting his way through some spell that would have the power to end what he could not. "All that was done is buried. I will not follow its path again and neither will I hang its weight on you like some endless burden."
"Dead."
Her hand ripped at the small pale flowers turning to seed. The lamed finger snagged uselessly at a thickened stem, unable to break it. His hand covered hers before she did herself harm. Impulsive, reckless gesture. But the impulsiveness seemed embedded in him where she was concerned, the urge to act with a speed that did not negate thought, but merely outstripped it.
Pain jarred down his injured arm and her hand stiffened under his. She must not even want to suffer that much contact from him. But he knew what was right. She would cause damage to herself.
"Let go of the stem. You cannot break it."
"No." She stared at the crushed plant, at her hand, anywhere but at him. "I do not want to let it go." Her eyes fixed on the woody stem and the nondescript flower heads as though that provided her only anchor to the earth.
"Then just stay still." He kept his voice steady the way he would with a wild colt. The hand under his stopped moving. "That is better. Just stay still." He opened his hand when he was sure that she would not move. So that she could be free of him. "I will—"
She let go of the plant and caught his hand, still not looking at him, but moving fast. Her fingers scrabbling at his, clumsy and uncontrolled, like someone blind seeking their way by touch.
He watched her fingers, stunned, and then he realized why she would touch even him. She was so alone; her only kin the predatory creature Cunan, and she had such dangerous choices to make. Cunan would, of course, make her choices for her given the chance. But Cunan played for his own gain, not hers. Did she realize that? That her kin would betray her?
Cunan wanted to get her to Goadel. He would do it by stealth or by force if he could.
He stared at the fragile half-clothed form, the thin hand clutching at his. Her consent would be unnecessary to Cunan, her painfully made choices irrelevant.
She said she had chosen Modan's life. She must want to hold to that because she had also made the choice to warn him that their watcher was back. It seemed that in this she was true.
Life would be so much easier if she were true.
He heard it. With a hunter's training. Duda's teaching overlying an instinct that was deeper than thought's reach. He did not think it was Goadel's watcher who sought the chance to come on him unaware. Not this time.
There was no doubt who it was. He was already moving with casual speed when both parts of his mind furnished another truth, beyond what he could believe.
Alina did not know.
They were fools.
Oblivious. The silence with which he had achieved his aim had been masterly. He had forced his way through the trees with a stealth even the disgusting dog-eared Saxon peasant set to guard him would not have been able to match. And he had found them.
The low sun showed him the Northumbrian. On his feet. Light caught skin. His sight could not take it in. The carved handle of the knife dug into his palm. But his hand was shaking so much he could not unsheathe the blade.
And then he saw. The man was still half-clothed. The last of the sun's rays picked out the whiteness of the fresh binding on his arm where the wound was.
Cunan forced his hand to relax. The woman was not even close to him.
There would be time enough to deal with the debaucher. Just let them cross the border into Northum-bria.
She was sitting on the grass in her green riding dress. She was fully clothed but her dark gleaming hair streamed over her back, its abundance shamelessly uncovered before the Bernician.
She shifted in the shadows. For one moment of blackened rage he thought that she was adjusting her clothes. But then she turned and he realized she must have been repacking the saddlebag that held the cures.
He forced breath into his lungs. She was not looking at the lecher. In fact, she seemed to avoid it.
He let the breath go.
Alina was not like her mother with that show of untouchable coldness hiding secret debaucheries. She was frail, yes, foolish and in want of correction after what she had done. But there would be someone to do that. Soon. Someone who had the right.
And this time she would be loyal to her kin. He knew it.
She looked up even as the certainty formed in his head, as though his thought had called her. Her gaze seemed to drift over him and then away.
His own gaze followed Alina's.
The Northumbrian was throwing on his shirt.
Such an ordinary thing. But as the linen sheeted over the other man's flesh, he saw what lived in her eyes.
Alina stared at the dying embers
of the fire and beyond it at the dark hunched shapes that were sleeping human forms: Cunan, Duda, the rest of Brand's men. She slept slightly apart from them. Near Brand. It might have looked like a sign of possession, of connection. To someone who did not know.
She huddled tighter, and the coldness and the isolation wrapped round her, familiar to her as her own skin, as inescapable. The fact that he was there, a hand's reach away from her only made the isolation more complete. She could not feel his warmth. Not now.
She closed her eyes and her body trembled. But not from the familiar cold. From what she had done with him. And what she had not done. What she could not do, and what she had wanted. And not wanted.
The thoughts would kill her, in the silently breathing dark. They were like madness.
He was not hers, the frightening, lethally beautiful creature lying beside her. The fierce, knowing body and the mind that was so ruthlessly direct, the heat and the anger and the terrifying gentleness were not for her. If they belonged to anything, it was to memory, to an image of a woman who was no longer her, who never truly had been her.
In four or five days, it would be over, this enforced closeness that was no such thing. She would be at Bamburgh and King Cenred would send her to Craig Phádraig. If she was lucky.
Brand would have the place that he belonged to, beside his king, with land and wealth once more at his back, and this time unthreatened. He would have peace. That was worth more than gold. Perhaps more than love.
Certainly more than the terrible kind of love she could offer.
He had said the past was over.
It was.
Her body ached for him.
Duda was missing his leather jerkin.
Brand watched rags twitch and resettle as though their owner wished some other covering were there.
So did Brand.
He suppressed an urge to twitch on his own account, in case his half-dressed henchman saw it. Or anyone else who might be watching. Or not.
So far, his men had not trapped Goadel's spies. All he had were snatched words overheard in the dark. He had no idea whether the stolen words meant what he believed. But it was all he had, the only time anyone had got close to Goadel's men.
The unknowing was likely to drive him moon-mad. He was not made for it.
The horse lunged, answering instantly to the unconscious urging of his body.
Patience was not something he had.
He curbed the stallion, slid a hand over the thick neck, the quivering muscles. It was like fighting him-self, the urge to release, power dammed too long into action, pure, direct and unstoppable.
He watched Duda and, without the consciousness of thought or impulse, or even will, Alina.
Patience was something life forced on you.
Not yet
— Something changed in the air. He was not even looking at the crowding shadows of the trees. Yet he knew.
It would happen. Now. After two days of uneventful riding. While they were still in Mercia, entering the narrow stretch of land between the high hills to the west and the marshlands of the east coast.
It was so clear that Brand could not understand the obliviousness of those around him. The air pulsed with the knowledge. Fate's web. He watched Alina and, more closely, Cunan. Nothing could be seen in either face. Or in the faces of his men.
Yet the danger was there, something tasted. His blood surged. The response instant, familiar, burning him with the need to take the danger head-on, conquer it.
The fierce, double-edged joy of the risk lured him, spoke in a siren voice to the place inside him that was empty, the part that sought danger before it came. Because life held nothing else, certainty least of all. But he never gave in to the lure completely. It was something to be used to slake the emptiness, but its power had to be controlled.
It would not master him. If it did, it would take all he had and it would be worse than death.
His men knew what to do. He had made sure of that.
He told Duda the jerkinless, with one flick of his eyes, caught the flash of irritation in return. He crashed the reckless grin. It was worth a purse of silver to know before Duda did.
Yet the knowledge was uncanny.
Duda worked with a hunter's senses that were more finely tuned than most men's. But Brand's knowing had sprung from something else. Something that he had not acknowledged before the moment he had been aware, without reason, that his brother was still alive.
His mount sidled, catching the fire from him. He steadied it one-handed.
Athelwulf had said what had happened had been
wyrd
. Destiny. Athelwulf, who worked only in the realms of intellect.
The web of fate, spinning out.
Alina.
He did not look at her, at the soft green gown that had come apart under his hands, at the maddeningly fluttering stream of her veil, the dark rippling mass of her hair beneath.
He watched, keeping his eyes fixed ahead.
Duda moved closer to Cunan. The man with the shield slung across his shoulder moved closer to where Alina would be. What shocked was the primitive force of the urge to knock that man aside and place himself next to the Princess of Craig Phádraig.
It is you who should be afraid. It is you who are in danger.
As ever, she was right.
The danger was to him, not her, and his closeness could only bring a threat to her that would not otherwise be there.
He forced his mount to drop farther back, slowing its pace and mastering its eagerness. He let himself droop slightly in the saddle as though he were weary and the wound still troubled him. The pretence was less difficult than he would like.
He curbed every impulse, both instinctive and trained, to fight, to seize the initiative, to defend if not attack. Even to move. He held still, kept to the sunlight where he could be seen. Looked ahead, where the threat would not come from.
Nothing happened. While he waited, like a pig for the spitting. His mind could feel it. The bite of fire-hardened iron penetrating his body, splitting muscle and sinew.