The Valiant (The Valiant #1)(7)

“No!” I shook my head desperately. “Father, you can’t do this to me.”

But just then Aeddan reached me. An even more thunderous shout erupted from the gathering as he spun me around and kissed me hard on the lips.

It was the second time that day that a son of Mannuetios had kissed me.

Only this time, it felt like poison pouring into my mouth.

I struggled to push Aeddan away, but there was nowhere to push him to. The throng was crushing. The women of the Cantii converged upon me with fierce embraces and well-wishing. Some of them burst into song, and others whirled and threw their arms in the air. If there was one thing every good Celt loved, it was love itself. They sang of it, fought for it, wept bitter tears into mugs of mead over the loss of it, and—if the slightest hint of a joyous union so much as wafted past on a breeze—seized the opportunity to celebrate it ferociously.

Over near the mead vats, there was a commotion as Mael struggled against the crowd toward Aeddan and me. I thought I might have actually seen him throw a punch. But then Aeddan blocked my view and forced me back a step. That close, I could see his face was flushed—with drink or desire or both—and his dark eyes shone. The crush of bodies, the brightly woven cloaks and jangling jewelry, the braided hair and painted eyes, lips, mouths, tangled tattoos and torcs and shouting, the stench of beer and bodies and meat . . . for the first time in my life, I thought that I might actually faint.

When the scuffle by the vats upended a large, foaming tub of mead, the crowd suddenly ebbed in that direction with cries of outrage and shouts of drunken laughter cheering on the combatants. In the ensuing chaos, I ducked beneath Aeddan’s arm and ran for the great hall doors.





III



LIGHTNING LASHED THE NIGHT SKY over Durovernum. In the time I’d been inside the great hall, black storm clouds had rolled in and the sky was pouring rain. I could barely see to make it back to my house.

Once inside, I stirred the banked coals of the brazier to sullen life. It did nothing to ease the chill that gripped my bones. Not only had my father as good as severed the sword-hand from my arm, he’d cut the heart out of my body. And then given it to the brother of the boy I loved. My father had betrayed me not once but twice.

I spat out a string of curses wrapped around Virico’s name and dropped to my knees in front of the fire. And then I began to slowly, methodically, remove all the ornaments I had so carefully chosen just hours before. The rings and the bracelets and earrings that marked me as a woman . . . the torc around my neck that marked me as a princess . . . even the dagger in the sheath at my hip that marked me as a warrior. Suddenly, I wanted none of it. One by one, I stripped them all off and dropped them onto the fire, watching as the pale flames licked the shining, precious metal black.

I wished, in that moment, that my father had never come home from Caesar’s camp. It was his fault Sorcha was dead. She’d gone to save him and died a hero. The kind of hero my father had just denied me every right and opportunity to ever be.

And I hated him for that.

For that, and for taking Mael from me. That morning, I’d turned down Mael’s marriage pledge, and for what? For the chance to seize a destiny that had never been mine to take in the first place. The brazier flames blurred before my eyes as I fought back furious tears.

“Drink with me?”

I spun around on my knees, blinking away the wetness, to see Aeddan leaning on my doorframe. He pushed the hood of his rain-soaked cloak back from his face and dangled a small amphora of Roman wine and two mugs with his other hand.

“Well, wife?”

“I’m not your wife.”

“Not yet.”

“Not ever,” I said. “And if you call me by that word again, it will be the last sound that ever worms its way between your teeth.”

He laughed.

“Come on,” he said through a grin. “Fallon, think of your father.”

I stood to face Aeddan, wary. My gown was soaked through from the storm and clung to my body, but I refused to hide behind crossed arms. Instead, I dropped my right hand to rest on the hilt of the dagger at my belt—except the sheath was empty. I had tossed the dagger into the fire. Aeddan’s glance flicked from my hand to the fire in the brazier, and he frowned faintly. He stepped inside, and the curtain fell closed behind him, shutting out the hiss of the rain.

“Think how much Virico wants—needs—alliances like this one,” he said.

“Surely he could have given me to your brother and still had his alliance with the Trinovante.”

“True.” Aeddan shrugged as he stepped further into the room. “Indeed, I think it was Virico’s first thought. But fortunately, I convinced my uncle to counsel him otherwise.”

The packed-earth floor of the little roundhouse felt as though it were dropping out from beneath my feet. I was so angry that I couldn’t even find words to hurl at Aeddan. My rage had me dumbstruck.

“Virico knows how close you and Maelgwyn have always been,” Aeddan continued. He moved across the room to a low couch and sat, placing the wine cups on a small table. “Close as brother and sister . . .” The shadow of a sneer curled his lip. “Your father—after a deal of convincing, to be sure—came to realize it. He came to see that it wouldn’t be fair to give you away in a match that was nothing more than sibling affection and no real love.”