Hedda was crying, holding Hywel’s hand as Yorwrath sat on the other side of the cot holding a bloodied bandage over the child’s stomach. Hywel was screaming with good reason. With the amount of blood soaked through the bandage the child had to be in excruciating pain.
“About bloody time, Dy’ne,” Yorwrath snapped at me.
“What happened?” I asked as I fetched my cure-all ointment from the shelf.
“Knights of the Morning Lily,” Yorwrath said, giving me a long look that didn’t accord with the situation at hand. “We killed some, but the child didn’t listen. He thought because he’d a few weeks training with a sword he could help. He’s lucky about the angle of the wound. Most slashed like that end with their intestines in the dirt at their feet.”
Wonderful.
I sighed and gathered linen, a needle and thread, and the cauterizing iron. I held it for a moment and looked down at the shiny new metal. The last time I held one that had barely been used was when I treated Aneurin. The thought made me pause before setting the iron on the fire. I placed everything else on the little table next to the cot and slipped beside Yorwrath. His clothes and face were spattered with blood, and I could tell from the pattern and placement that none of it was Hywel’s.
“Are you okay?” I whispered to him before I lifted the corner of the linen Yorwrath was pressing to the child’s stomach. It was a nasty wound, but it probably wouldn’t kill the boy. But it would need to be cauterized to stop the bleeding. I glanced up at Hedda, and Caoilfionn stepped in the room.
“Just a few scrapes, maybe a bruise or two.”
“Grwn?”
“The same. We would have had them all had it just been us.”
“And now?”
“What do you think, Dy’ne? Once you’ve tended to Hywel, I’m going hunting tonight with some of the others from town for big, dumb, slow animals that have swords and not antlers.”
Caoilfionn brought the leather roll over and started brewing tea. I could smell the herbs in the satchel in his hand—it was something to ease Hywel’s pain and help the boy sleep. After the tea steeped Caoilfionn forced the boy to drink. Hedda shoved the bit in his mouth, and Yorwrath held him down as I pressed the hot iron across the seeping wound at his stomach. While the scent of cooking meat filled the air and the iron charred the flesh, Hywel mercifully passed out.
“He killed his first,” Yorwrath added, as I applied ointment to the wound and wrapped a fresh bandage around it. “Had you let him train with Grwn when he was three like he should have, he wouldn’t be lying here wounded, Dy’ne. Look well on your son; this is your fault,” Yorwrath snapped at Hedda.
Bleary-eyed, Hedda scowled and lunged at him across her child, but Yorwrath was too quick for her. He moved out of the way and she connected with the floor hard enough to shake the house. Grabbing her by the hair, he pinned her against the wall. She went limp and sobbed as Yorwrath whispered something that reached me as a murmur before releasing her and snatching up his cloak.
“Bye,” I called to him, glaring at his back. He paused and turned around.
“I don’t know how long I’ll be gone…” He stared at me for a moment before closing the distance between us to brutally seize my lips in a rough and desperate kiss that left me light-headed. “But when I get home, I’m going to destroy you, Dy’ne,” he growled softly into my ear, before nipping the lobe.
“Be safe, Elf.”
“I promise nothing, Dy’ne,” he called to me before closing the door.
Hedda glared at me as Caoilfionn and I started cleaning up. Oh, an argument was coming! I could feel that thick angry tension building to a head. She wiped her eyes and sat at her son’s side. Part of me believed Yorwrath was right. She was pretending here. Her son would face more obstacles in life than she and Grwn did. Morwenna wouldn’t because she looked like an elf. She could go into the forest and have the protection of Grwn’s family. Hywel, however, looked neither elf nor human completely. He had the somewhat rosy pale complexion of an Erslander and ears that came to the slightest of points. When he became a man, his life would be a struggle if he left the shore.
“Do you even know what that word means?” Hedda finally spoke, pulling her shawl tighter around her shoulders.
“Yes. I do.”
“He doesn’t love you. If he did, he wouldn’t use that word, and he certainly wouldn’t use it to refer to you. You’re a sweet girl, Valentina. A kind person. You could do so much better than that…monster.” I let her ramble as I washed my hands of Hywel’s blood. “Do you really think he’s going to come back if that’s all he sees you as? He probably has a whole harem full of women waiting for him when he gets bored with you. What makes you think he’ll come back?”
“I would appreciate it if you didn’t talk about my relationship in front of your children.”
“Did you know what he said to me? He said if you weren’t here he would have beaten me like the bitch of a Dy’ne I am.”
“He was angry, and he was right, Hedda. The boy needs to learn to defend himself.”
“So you’re just going to excuse him?”
“Yes, because I know him. I know he loves me and would kill his own to defend me—even kin.”
“I know him too. I know what it’s like to have his knife pressed to my throat, know what it’s like to have him force himself inside of me.”
“And that’s how you met Grwn, right?”
“No, this was years before I met him.”
“When I first met Yorwrath he attempted the same thing within moments of meeting me, after forcing his way inside my home. I know what he’s capable of, Hedda. I’m not oblivious to who he is. But I also know he’s out there going after the men who hurt your son. I know that he’s drawn steel against his own brother to protect me. I’m not dumb enough to think he’s changed toward the rest of the world, but he does love me. I’m sorry about what he did to you but…things are rarely as simple as they seem.”
“Say what you will but I’ve seen it before, Valentina. He won’t come back at May Day or even midsummer. I like you, Valentina. I don’t want to see you hurt.”
“Caoilfionn will treat Hywel for the rest of the night.”
“I will?” Caoilfionn said, raising a brow as he turned his attention toward me.
“Mhm, I’m going to read for a bit. Call me if you need me,” I added before I walked up the stairs, wiping my hands on my trousers—I didn’t want to look at Hedda anymore.
For the rest of the night, I sat in my bedroom, curled up in a chair, reading by candlelight. At some point, I fell asleep there, and the herbal I was studying fell from my hands to the floor. When dawn came, I was woken by the softest of kisses on my throat.
“Mmm,” I groaned as my eyes fluttered open. Yorwrath was kneeling at my side. He had washed for bed; his skin was still wet with the rosewater. The gambeson had gone, and he only wore those leather trousers that hugged his legs and hips like a second skin. I stared at him for a moment as he knelt there, my eyes tracing over every scar—and there were quite a few of them. “Weren’t you going to destroy me?” I asked groggily with a smirk.
“I’m too tired.” He chuckled and rubbed his face against the rough linen at my shoulder. “Happy Yule.”
“Gwynfydedig… Byrddydd Gaeof.”
Holy fuck I hope I said that right
. He responded with a long, beautiful, soft-whispered monologue in the elven tongue, but I had no clue what any of it meant. “I only know how to say ‘happy winter solstice.’ I’m sorry, ‘blessed winter solstice.’ Morwenna was very clear that it doesn’t mean happy.”
“That one is going to be trouble in a few years. Hedda’s going to hate me for it, but Morwenna’s going with Grwn to be raised by his sister in Dryslwyn Tanllyd.”
“Well, Hedda and her feelings can sod off for all I care,” I grumbled as I started to stand. He grabbed the front of my bodice preventing me from standing.
“Is this about what I did when that Dy’ne lunged at me? ‘Cause she’s lucky I didn’t smash her head like a baked apple against that wall.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about it. I had it dropped on me twice yesterday. Right now I just want to go back to sleep.” I moved to stand, and he pulled me down to seated again.
“What did she say?”
“You’re starting to get on my nerves, Yorwrath.”
“Really, Dy’ne? So sorry for having a care when someone angers someone I love,” he snapped at me.
“She said you’ll go back to your whores, and never return.”
“Of course she did. I’m far better looking than Grwn, and you’re far…far prettier than she. She’s a jealous old maid with a husband she sees two times a year. All that type does is gossip, Dy’ne.” He slid his hands down my legs to my boots, pulling each of them off. “Don’t listen to them; I’ll come back at Beltane or Nos Galan Mai, or—as I was raised to call it,
Hirddydd haf—
your midsummer.” He kissed my neck. “Samhain.” Sliding his hand up my bodice he tugged the string from the bow tied at the bottom. “I’ll return around harvest and keep you warm until the thaw.” He pulled the laces on my corset with those deft digits and the string loosened in an instant.
“I thought you were tired,” I snarked out with a giggle.
“Trust me, Dy’ne, I am. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to see you naked.” Smiling at him I stood, and he held fast to my loosened bodice, pulling it down my body. Stepping from its shadow I untied the string of the shirt I wore and pulled it over my head. He was there in an instant with his hot lips on my neck again, his teeth gnashing at the soft flesh, coaxing pleased purrs from my throat. Those strong, hard, callused hands of his passed over my skin and with one hand he seized my breast possessively as his other caressed my flat belly down to the ties of my trousers.
“I thought you were going to rip them off, Elf,” I teased, reaching my hands back to rub his hips.
“I’m exhausted, Dy’ne. Keep up,” he growled into my ear.
“Obviously n—” My breath caught as he slipped his hand into my trousers and he sought my pulsing, needy, moist sex with those expert fingers.
“Say it, Dy’ne.” His gruff voice rumbled in my ear. I moaned in response, my back arching and my hips thrusting my bottom against that eager pulsing flesh trapped by the leather of his trousers. “Say it.” He groaned as my hips rubbed back against him. I knew what he wanted me to say, it was those three small words I had demanded from him not so long ago. Still, I was just as stubborn as he was… He was going to have to work for it.
“I’m too tired to say it,” I half giggled, my voice only a bit breathy from that building pleasurable warmth. His hand fell from my breast, and I felt him shift his hips as he untied his trousers.
“Say it…or I’ll take you against the wall like the whore Hedda thinks you are to me.”
“Oh, that’s a little dark.”
“Is it, Dy’ne?” He pulled my trousers down and pushed me forward, and I found myself bent over the kitchen table.
Well, this is almost familiar.
The air of the room was cold against my hot, needy sex. As he forced himself into me, the air was knocked out of my lungs in a softly moaned gasp. “Mmm, that’s right. You like it rough like this, don’t you, Dy’ne?” He snarled into my ear as he bent over my body. He slammed into me hard again, and I clawed behind me at his hips as he pressed his body flush against my backside. “Say it, or I’m not moving.” I moved to elbow him, and he grabbed my arms, pinning them to the table with his. “I mean it.” I attempted to move my legs, and he pinned them too. Then reality set in: he had let me win all those times; he wasn’t really trying to fight with me. Bent over me as he was, he held me fast against the table like an immovable vice that was touching all the spots deep in my body that made me tremble. He leaned his head against my cheek. “I could do this all day, Dy’ne. You know that struggling of yours makes me harder than steel.” I sighed playfully, smirking with my cheek against the table.
“I…lo…lost a… Oh fuck.” My words were taken from me as Yorwrath thrust his hips against me again, bottoming out inside of me completely. He rocked his hips from side to side, cackling darkly as my eyes rolled in the back of my head and nonsensical babble left my lips. “I love you, you little sheepfucking shit,” I groaned as he wagged his hips again and my toes curled against the floor.
“I love you too,” he purred as he eased off me long enough to flip me onto my back and pull off my trousers. “And you know damn well there’s nothing small about me, Dy’ne,” he whispered, before finding my lips again with his. The sun rose behind him, making his eyes glow and that dark brown hair of his seem almost bloodred. He rode me hard, thumping the table against the floor.
His eyes seemed to swim with an inner light as the fire at the hearth waxed and waned with every breath he took. My legs locked behind his torso as he pulled me further down the table so my bottom was hanging off it. I swiped my hand out across the table, knocking over everything Caoilfionn had set out for the day. My hands desperately needed something to hold on to as he dug his hand into the flesh of my plump backside. He leaned over me with one hand beside my head keeping him at the perfect angle, so that with every hard thrust he caressed that achingly sensitive kernel of flesh.
It didn’t take long for him to bring me to the height of pleasure. I dug my fingers into his back until I felt my nails sink into the taut flesh.
“That’s it, Dy’ne. Come for me,” he practically roared, as my body fought against his to arch against the table. I cried out, loud enough for it to echo in the small room. With a chuckle, he kissed me again, eating away at every pleasurable noise that escaped my throat. Once I finished twitching, he pushed me up further on the table and slammed into me hard. It had clearly stopped being about me the moment he felt my body stop clenching down hard on him. He rested on his elbows with his hands in my hair as he slammed into me, staring down at my face as I half cried out with every brutal thrust. The table thudded as it hit the stones in front of the hearth. We had moved it a good six feet.
A bead of sweat dripped onto my lips from the tip of my nose when his body finally jerked, and he buried his face in my neck as he spilled his seed within me with a small gasp, as the hearth and the candles around the room all instantly snuffed out. He purred groggily for a moment before placing the softest of kisses on my collarbone and then working his way to my throat.