Jan Delima - Celtic Moon

A slight hesitation. “I have.”

“Is he well? Every time I go near him . . .” Her voice broke, revealing her emotions.

“Cormack needs time. He needs to learn how to be a man. He doesn’t know how to walk on two feet, let alone speak.”

“I don’t care about him being a man.” She sounded like a pouty teenager but she truly didn’t care. She missed Cormack. She missed her friend more than the air that she breathed.

“He does,” Luc said with an odd tone to his voice. “For you, sister, he cares.”

THE FOLLOWING NIGHT, WHILE HIS WIFE SLEPT IN THEIR bed, exhausted with grief, Dylan returned to the White Mountains alone. Normally, it was a four-hour drive, but on this night he didn’t obey traffic rules, and it only took three. Math’s home was located in Avon, New Hampshire, an hour north of the more touristy areas, and, unfortunately, closer to Maine. Dylan often sent one of his guards to Avon to pose as a vacationer, to fish and secretly gather information. In passing, the townspeople described Math as an “eccentric recluse” and “a generous man”—meaning he donated large sums of money to the local government and charities to be left undisturbed.

The Guardian’s home, aptly named Castell Avon, or the River Castle, sat in a section of forest effectively surrounded by two separate rivers. Unlike the rivers in Maine, these were shallow but wide. Only one bridge allowed pedestrians access to the island. A carriage house built of stone and iron secured the entrance to the bridge, guarded by Math’s men.

Dylan traveled farther north, where he had found Sophie, and crossed the river on foot. He carried an oblong pack that held his sword and a change of clothes. Once dry, he discarded his pack and wet clothes within a rotting stump. With sword in hand, he finished his journey in the shadows of trees. Castell Avon soon came into view. It sat within a section of cleared forest, as ostentatious as the Guardian who lived inside its stone walls.

Too easily, Dylan found the graveyard his wife had described with the hidden passage. A foreboding chill crawled over his skin while skirting around the rows of neglected tombs, like the hands of a dark witch bartering potions for a favor. Bodies of dead slaves, he assumed, were massed in the unmarked graves—poor souls who had suffered under the Guardian’s control, only to end up rotting above ground in their afterlife.

A dull ache began to form around his joints and limbs as his inner wolf growled, sensing danger or, more likely, the residual of misused power.

Focusing on his objective, he gained access through the concealed tunnel, wary once again that Rosa had shared this weakness of her home. Not for the first time, he questioned what Math’s wife was about, what her demands would be for freeing Sophie, and how she had known of the gathering. He suspected one of the leaders had leaked her information, but did not discount the possibility of a spy among his people. Either way, he wasn’t pleased and would uncover the traitor.

The air inside the castle reeked of mildew and discontent. Guards in street clothes walked the halls, eyes heavy and easily distracted, faithless and uncaring of their master’s safety. Complacent.

Only a single woman noticed his approach, cleaning before dawn, pausing as she swept below the staircase. She wore modern clothes but watched him with the eyes of a slave, hooded yet sharp. She had survived a fire or something worse, unable, he assumed, to shift and heal afterward. Scars ran along her face and neck. Her hair grew in clumps, exposing bare patches of scalp with knotted flesh over destroyed follicles. She quickly looked away, too broken to shout an alarm, or too afraid of being the bringer of bad news.

Inwardly, Dylan sneered at the very idea of keeping slaves, the Hen Was , descendants of their kind who couldn’t shift, as vile in modern day as in medieval Cymru.

The bedchambers were easy to find. Sounds, sexual and aggressive, came from a door at the end of a long corridor.

“It’s locked,” a feminine voice whispered.

He turned to see the slave lurking in the shadows, having followed him in silence and without detection. His initial assessment of this woman immediately changed. If she was going to raise an alarm, she would have done so by now. Yet, if her spirit was broken, she wouldn’t have followed.

He shrugged. This was a minor obstacle for what he’d come to do. “A single slave and a locked door won’t hold me.”

“You are Dylan ap Merin.”

“Yes.”

A curious glint sharpened her glare. “I see death in your eyes, warrior, but also honor. Is it Math you’ve come to claim, or our Rosa?”

“Math.” Denial, he sensed, would only delay his intent.

A contorted smile turned the unscarred side of her mouth. “Then you are correct . . . this single slave and a locked door won’t keep you from your task. But I will have your word you’ll not harm our mistress.”

“Or what?” he challenged.

“ For what,” she corrected, holding up a stainless steel key, an oddity amongst a manufactured illusion of medieval grandeur. “Take who you’ve come for, warrior, and leave the others be.”

“Agreed,” he said, and accepted the key as the slave hurried away. The lock was new and well-oiled, turning without detectable sound, even to his ears. The visitors to this room came often and were not meant to be heard.

Dylan slid into the chamber, not overly surprised by what he found. With Rhun now gone, Math was one of the eleven remaining Original Guardians; old when he’d been gifted by the Goddess and even older now, with a rumored preference for beautiful men.

Those rumors were correct, it seemed, since it was a young man, and not Rosa, who was being thoroughly and joyfully buggered by Math.

The young man, thin and elegant, was bent over the back of a chaise longue, his eyes squeezed shut and his head thrown back in openmouthed pleasure. Math knelt at the foot of the chaise, gripping his lover’s long red hair like reins, his eyes glazed and unfocused in feral joy, pounding, bare-assed, pasty and wrinkled and unaware.

Without remorse, Dylan used their distraction to his advantage. Walking silently behind Math, he raised his sword, balanced his weight, and swung.

“For my wife,” he said as the Guardian’s head toppled to the side and his body remained suspended until his lover fell forward, tangled in hysteric disbelief.

With a gurgle of horror, the man scrambled to the floor, wide-eyed and knees drawn, trying to hedge backward like a spider without its web. He opened his mouth, chest rising with frantic breaths.

Dylan pressed the bloodied sword to his throat. “Make one noise to alert the guards and you will die.” The man swallowed his scream. “Give the Guardians a message. I am Dylan ap Merin, leader of the Katahdin territory. Whoever comes to my territory with ill intent . . . will die. Whoever brings danger to my family . . . will die.”

Dylan left without further incident. The lover did not scream nor did the slave hinder his departure. He arrived back at Rhuddin Village around seven in the morning, with his wife still abed. He settled in next to her, molding her soft body against his chest, and placed a kiss on her exposed shoulder.

She sighed, half awake, snuggling into his warmth. “Where have you been?”

“Fulfilling a promise,” he whispered. “Go back to sleep, my love.”

THREE DAYS LATER, ON THE FIRST CLOUDLESS MORNING since the gathering, Dylan stood next to his wife and son as Francine’s casket was lowered into the ground next to her husband’s. Dylan shook his head with reverence, wondering if the woman had convinced her angels to harness the sun to shine down upon her own service.