Defiance: The Umbra Chronicles Book 2 Read online

  ‘I didn’t even know he had a sister,’ I said.

  ‘He was looking towards the future, I suppose. What use was there in going over the past again? What did it hold for him?’

  Sparrow stroked my hair again to get my attention. She smiled encouragingly. ‘We should look for him,’ she suggested. ‘Hawk ‒ we could find him. Would that make you happy?’

  ‘It would make me happy,’ I whispered. I sat up. I didn’t want her hands in my hair anymore. ‘But there’s no point, he’s dead.’

  I’d turned away from Sparrow and was looking at Cuchulainn. His expression was… odd. He didn’t look sad to learn that his son was dead. He looked confused, even furtive, if the quick way he smoothed away the frown was any indication.

  ‘Oh, Emer, I’m so sorry,’ Sparrow cried, slapping a feathered hand over her mouth.

  ‘Not that you give a shit,’ I snapped, eyeballing Cuchulainn. ‘He didn’t exactly make a big difference in your life, did he?’

  His expression was completely bland now. Caradoc had tried to do that with me many times, to smooth away any expression or indication of what he was thinking but he’d been totally rubbish at it. You could practically read his mind from halfway across the country. It was a skill he hadn’t inherited from his father. Cuchulainn’s face was so smooth he might as well be asleep.

  ‘I barely knew him,’ he said, with less passion than Caradoc had used to describe the weather. ‘The boy you describe only existed for a few short months. Before the revolution he wasn’t even a human being under the law. He was only a tool, an object to be used by the Meistri army, expendable and interchangeable. For a short while he made his own decisions, chose his own companions, planned to make a life and maybe even believed it might happen. He was a fool to think life would ever be any different. Camiri lives mean nothing. Not here. The Empress made sure of that and the White Queen followed step by step in her footsteps.’

  ‘Are you taking my dear mother’s name in vain, Cuchulainn?’

  We all turned to face Aoife but when I saw the smug look on her face, I was sorry I’d given her the satisfaction. ‘Bach Chwaer,’ she crooned, drawling the name out into a little song. ‘Gotcha!’

  I told her, very briefly, what she could do with herself, should she find it anatomically convenient. It earned me a quick lick of fire across my bare feet, but at least it wiped the smile off her face. I would have gladly stuck my own feet in the fire if it would ruin her day.

  She stepped back from the cage. ‘Bring them,’ she snapped to the guards behind her. ‘Bring the painted one and the famous Bach Chwaer. It’s full moon tonight.’

  Cuchulainn threw himself at the bars. ‘Why can’t you leave her alone?’ he shouted, sounding more like Caradoc than he ever had. He grabbed the bars and shook them with all his might. ‘What did she ever do to you? She never took anything from you that you really wanted!’

  Aoife stood there calmly. ‘You should know more about what I want by now, Cuchulainn.’ She turned her head to speak to the guards but kept her eyes pinned on Cuchulainn. ‘Once we’re done with the girls, you can bring him to my chamber tonight.’

  He dropped the bars like they burned him. ‘No,’ he whispered, his face going even paler than before. ‘It’s been years. What possible use-’

  ‘Well, it’s clearly not as fun as it used to be.’ She looked him up and down and it was with a dawning sense of horror that I realised what she was talking about. ‘Still, if it upsets either of you, it serves its purpose. And what if I want another child? The line of succession can never be too secure.’

  She deliberately swirled her cloak out behind her when she left. And she’d accused me of being a showman.

  The guards took me and Rhiannon after her. We all struggled but we never had a chance. We were taken to her Sanctuary. Neither of us had been under the moon long enough to gain much more power, but Aoife didn’t care. Harvesting us wasn’t about taking our power, it was about reminding us that we were powerless.

  Afterwards, they took us back to the cages. Gwydion sat next to me and I wept.

  I hid my face against his shoulder, turned away from the others so I was looking out of the cage and while they might hear my sobs and see my shaking body, none of them could see me cry.

  Gwydion just had a hand heavy on my shoulder, as though he knew I was close to turning myself into some small thing and slipping between the bars of the cage so I could fall to my death. It was as though he knew I needed holding down. It was the only thing that kept me from going over the edge.

  #

  When I finally stopped crying long enough to look around, I realised I was facing another cage. In it, Rhiannon was watching me, sitting on her own apart from the rest of us, her face, patterned with a permanent sorrow sign totally unreadable.

  I lifted my head from Gwydion’s shirt and he gave me a reassuring thump on the shoulder, the same kind of gesture I could imagine him making to his dog or his horse if it had been a good girl.

  ‘I think you owe me an explanation,’ he said. ‘Aine would never tell me much about you. For a long time, I actually thought you were Aoife. Aine didn’t ever tell me your name, or that you were the famous Bach Chwaer I went to Meistria to investigate.’ He shook his head. ‘You don’t look a day older. You look barely more than a girl.’

  ‘She went back in time, idiot,’ the Fool snapped, still not bothering to turn around. ‘Then she came back here to her own time. It should be obvious.’

  Gwydion was never the type to get flustered. And yet, somehow, we were related. I suppose, having been raised as a prince gives a person the best possible basis for good self-esteem. ‘Tell me your story, Bach Chwaer.’ He looked around then gave me a grin that hadn’t lost one iota of its boyish charm. ‘You can start with your name ‒ or even earlier than that, you can start with your mother.’

  I tried to smile, because the kind of grin he was giving me requires a smile in return, but it came out all wobbly. I caught Sparrow’s eye and she turned up one side of her lips in a quick quirk of sympathy.

  ‘We didn’t actually have names,’ I said. ‘Or we had so many names that names became irrelevant, take your pick. Every winter solstice our Guardian would take us back to Caillen. We’d have a ceremony and they’d draw lots for who got to be our new Guardian for the coming year. We’d be given new names by our new Guardian. Sometimes they listened to our preferences, sometimes we’d have terrible names.’ I tried to grin at Sparrow. ‘Remember the year you got saddled with Uxoria? This solstice I was named Emer, the same name I had when I was thirteen, because it was the same Guardian who won the draw.’

  ‘Maldwyn?’

  I frowned because it wasn’t Sparrow who’d said it. Sparrow’s gaze had swung over to Cuchulainn too. ‘How do you know that name?’ she asked.

  Cuchulainn looked from Sparrow to me. The sun was rising, touching his white hair with gold and giving his pallid skin a tinge of colour. He sighed, but his gaze didn’t leave mine. He looked so sad that I nearly crossed the cage to take his hand. How could he have known that name?

  I’d told Caradoc more than once what Maldwyn did to me. I’d loved Caradoc and he’d loved me. He’d had to deal with the fallout of my experiences with Maldwyn. He’d struggled with the knowledge that I’d been hurt, nearly as much as I struggled. He hadn’t been in contact with his father the whole time I’d known him, though. There hadn’t been any time when he might have told his father Maldwyn’s name. He wouldn’t have spoken with anyone about it, anyway.

  I’d tried to fool myself. I looked so much like my mother I could have been taken for her in a good light, and I had been taken for her when I’d gone back into the past. Why shouldn’t Caradoc have been the spitting image of his father? Perhaps he was, but the man sitting before me wasn’t Caradoc’s father ‒ it was Caradoc.

  I threw myself across the cage towards him. He jerked away from me, making the cage swing violently. ‘Caradoc!’ I cried. I held out my hand to him, but I di
dn’t go after him again. I wasn’t going to crawl after any man who didn’t want me. Even the Fool was looking.

  ‘No,’ he said, but it was Caradoc who said it. ‘My name is Cuchulainn now, like the guard dog I am. I’m not the man I was. That person is dead now.’

  ‘To hell with that!’ I cried. ‘I thought you were dead ‒ I thought I saw Aoife kill you! Don’t give me that melodramatic bullshit, come here and kiss me!’

  He tried to stay angry ‒ by now, I could tell what was going on behind his mask ‒ but he couldn’t. Against his will his lips quirked into a smile ‒ and there he was; the man I fell in love with. That smile was mine. I sat back, confident enough to be gracious, even as I conquered.

  And then the bastard shook his head. Shook his head, I say! ‘You have no idea Emer.’ He even smiled a little like the memory of me was pleasant, but no longer relevant. ‘You’re barely more than a child. I was idealistic when I was your age. I believed in happy endings. But the truth is, it doesn’t work out that way.’

  Gwydion grunted in agreement behind me. I couldn’t believe that the carefree, optimistic boy had become cynical and I couldn’t believe that Caradoc didn’t love me more than anything. He’d suddenly leap across the cage and throw his arms around me and kiss me senseless. This ‘I’ve changed and grown’ nonsense wasn’t going to last five minutes.

  ‘You’re still nineteen, Emer, I was twenty-three when I met you. I’m over forty now. I mean, look at me! I’ve even got grey hair! I’m old enough to be your father! If I saw a man my age making advances towards a girl your age, I’d call him a pervert and you would too.’

  I flinched. He saw it and didn’t even react.

  ‘It would be disgusting, Emer. I’ve had a disgusting life. The last twenty years have been filth poured upon filth. You still have a hope of a good life ‒ but not with me. I know you had a crush on me. And that was fine ‒ back them. I’m not going to taint you with what I’ve become.’

  ‘It wasn’t a crush!’ I cried, trying to keep my voice low, despite the fact that the others were so close. There was no way I could keep this humiliating conversation private. ‘I was in love with you. I am in love with you.’

  He smiled and tilted his head arrogantly in the light of the rising sun. ‘You’re barely more than a kid. You don’t know what love is, either. At that age, a biological urge is close enough.

  ‘How dare you?’ I whispered. ‘How dare you take what we shared and describe it so... so crudely?’

  He shrugged but didn’t reply. I sat back on my heels. He certainly was different from the Caradoc I’d known. He hadn’t aged well. As he’d said, his hair was grey and it must have been a long time since he’d looked in a mirror because that wasn’t the half of it. He’d lost the handsome bulk of muscle he’d had as a young man and now his skin hung from a gaunt frame. His cheeks were hollow and his eyes were tired. There was certainly nothing attractive about him now. No bright eyes or wild hair or swelling muscles under perfect skin. And yet, he was still my Caradoc. I still loved him. And even though he’d grown so much older, if he’d so much as looked at me with desire, I would have lain back in his arms and let him do anything he pleased to me.

  He’d described that love as perverted, disgusting, filthy. Every word hammered its way into my brain, striking directly at my most precious memories and dreams. I sat back on my heels.

  ‘How did you survive?’ I asked. ‘I thought I saw Aoife kill you?’

  He shrugged again. ‘I don’t know what you think you saw but clearly I didn’t die. I was just knocked unconscious. When I woke up, you’d already had your famous battle with Darragh. The Empress was dead and Aoife was about to be crowned queen. Aoife said that you were dead, but it wasn’t long before a rumour started that you hadn’t died at all, maybe you’d gone through the Portal back to your own time, like Umbra. I hoped ‒ of course. As the years went on, well, I’m sorry, but considering what I suffered, the birth of a little girl wasn’t actually going to change anything.’

  ‘You don’t have to keep pushing me away,’ I snapped. ‘I’m not going to throw myself at you.’

  He just shrugged again. For those few, wild moments I’d started to think of him as Caradoc again, but already that notion was fading. This man might be biologically the same man I’d fallen in love with, but he was right. He was a different person now. My Caradoc was lost forever. Already I was thinking of this man as Cuchulainn again.

  ‘How did you come to be called Cuchulainn?’ I asked.

  ‘It means guard dog,’ he replied. ‘I spent a long time as Aoife’s captive. At one time she held me chained up outside her door and told me to bark if anyone approached.’

  What a repulsive image. I tried not to show it on my face.

  ‘You’d still bark if I tell you to.’

  Cuchulainn and I were both startled to hear Aoife’s voice. She must have come silently up the long stairs to the Eyrie. She might have even flown up on her own wings. Or she might have done as I had done only a few days ago and listened in on our conversation in the form of a bug. I shuddered at the thought. I had some small satisfaction in the realisation that even though Cuchulainn could use words to me that Caradoc would have killed a man for using, I could still command his attention.

  I turned to Aoife and spat through the bars. It fell far short, but it was worth it to see the look of disgust on her face. ‘Why people think you’re the Queen and I’m the imposter has always remained a mystery to me,’ she drawled. ‘I’ve decided that I’m going to be the adult here. I am, after all, old enough to be your mother!’

  She tittered and it made me shiver. I hated that we were related. I hated even more that I could so easily be her.

  Aoife was still trying to convince me. ‘You’re nothing more than an angry child. People have spun stories about you that are pure fantasy. They’ve confused you with Umbra. So, I’m going to show them their precious Bach Chwaer. I’m going to show you to the people who call me the Imposter Queen and I’m going to let you show them what you really are. And when you’ve dashed all their stupid hopes for a folk hero, perhaps they can get on with their lives and I can get on with mine. Then I won’t even need to kill you, Emer, because you won’t matter anymore. You’ll be free to go back to crawling through the ruins of Cairnagorn with Maldwyn in hot pursuit.’

  I didn’t really understand what she was talking about, but I’d sooner die than admit it. I latched onto the end of her speech and filtered it for evil before speaking. ‘You’ll let me go?’ I asked. ‘And Elisabeth.’

  ‘Free as a bird.’

  I stood up. I ignored Cuchulainn’s whisper, ‘Don’t be a damned fool.’ What did he matter to me when I mattered nothing to him? ‘So long as you keep your word, I give you mine,’ I said. ‘I will go with you if you let Elisabeth go.’

  The cage lurched suddenly beneath my feet. I saw movement out of the corner of my eye and saw two soldiers working the winch that hung the cage over the void. Aoife didn’t have the grace to look grateful.

  ‘You would have done it whether you agreed or not,’ she said. She turned to the guards who were just now coming up the steps behind her. ‘Bring the featherskin and Rhiannon, too. I’ll harvest them along the way if I get in the mood for a little snack.’

  The cage reached the stone of the spire and words cannot convey how I felt to have solid ground beneath me again. The guards opened the cage and one of them held out a hand to help me alight from the cage. He might even have bowed his head fractionally when I took his hand. I’d stared to realise what Aoife had been talking about when she said she was going to show me to the people and prove to them that I was as frail as any of them.

  I didn’t know much of how the average person thought. I’d been raised separate all my life. Then again, so had Aoife. She hadn’t seen the city-wide mourning when they thought I was dead, nor the jubilation when I’d returned to them once before. I’d made an impression on them that had only deepened with the passage of time. I m
ight be selfish but I’m not a fool. I knew how to make these people adore me because I’d done it once before. Even Aoife’s own guards weren’t sure where their loyalties lay.

  ‘And bring the featherskin, I said!’ Aoife snapped. I looked back and saw Sparrow cowering in the corner of the cage. As I watched, Cuchulainn and Gwydion stopped in front of her. Hidden by their bulk, she was completely obscured. The guards hesitated. They looked at me.

  ‘Lay one bruise upon her and watch the retribution I take upon my enemies,’ I said. I didn’t bother to raise my voice because when you make a statement like that ‒ and mean it ‒ raising your voice only makes you look like you’re too weak to carry out the threat. ‘Elisabeth, come with me.’

  ‘Oh Emer, please don’t make me,’ she whimpered.

  Cuchulainn’s eyes bored into me. If he hadn’t cared before he hated me now. He deliberately turned his back on me. He stretched out his hands to Sparrow and she grabbed hold of him like she’d known him all her life. ‘Father, please don’t make me,’ she whispered.

  ‘Father?!’ I cried.

  Behind me, I heard Aoife laugh. ‘Didn’t you know, Emer? Elisabeth is my daughter ‒ mine and Caradoc’s. We were... blessed with several sons who died, so tragically, in their early days. Elisabeth was the only daughter Caradoc got by me.’

  I was so disgusted I nearly took a step back into the void. Aoife laughed again when I swayed. Still holding Sparrow’s hands, Cuchulainn walked backwards out of the cage. With a quick glance at me, the guards stepped aside to let them pass. Gwydion was close behind.

  Aoife’s lip curled. ‘Get back in your cage, dog,’ she snarled at Cuchulainn. Then, so quickly I hardly followed what happened, Cuchulainn took three quick steps towards the edge of the spire and, still holding Sparrow’s hands, flung himself off into darkness.

  Sparrow screamed. I screamed. Aoife screamed. The guards, forgetting any threats I’d made towards them, rushed to follow the pair and I was only a breath behind them. I could barely see them. They were far below us, but they weren’t falling. Caradoc had turned himself into a bird and Sparrow was a feathered darkness clinging to his back.