Shades of Avalon (37 page)

Our noses touched gently as I brought my lips to hers. I brushed the plump, pink flesh of her mouth with my own. Amanda’s warm breath shuddered in the non-existent space between us.

“I do—” she began, almost gasping the words.

“No,” I cut her off, knowing she’d try to excuse my clumsy declarations the way she always did. “You’re the best person I know. Everything I am, everything I have…
you
are everything…”

Amanda’s eyelashes quivered, creating fine shadows over her smooth cheeks. She tilted her head back and met my gaze, her eyes glassy with emotion.

I groaned heavily. “I’m not good with words.”

“Oh, I think you do just fine.”

Meals had become a group event. We ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner around the long table in the dining room. In fact, a weird normality had taken over the atmosphere at the Brier, as though our motley crew had always been in residence. Even some of the ground staff had returned to the estate, although not to the immediate vicinity of the house. All anyone knew was that John was out of the country on business and only reachable by e-mail. Emma dealt with any immediate business with Samuel’s help. His centuries of subterfuge, falsifying documents, and his level head in a crisis came in handy.

I scooped fried eggs from a chrome platter on the serving table along the wall and added them to my plate, already piled with bacon and grilled tomatoes. I slipped into a seat beside Amanda and took a large gulp of the orange juice she’d poured. We were the last down this morning. Even Merlin was self-segregated at the opposite end of the table. He tucked into a bowl of salted porridge with a side of hot apple pie and cheese while scrolling the screen of an iPad beside his bowl.

Joshua did most of the cooking, assisted by whoever happened to be free. It seemed unfair at first, until I realized he enjoyed it.

He didn’t shy away from training, but his real talents lay elsewhere. Caleb’s older brother was a born organizer, seeing his role as preparing the rest of us. He made sure we were fed, had clean linens, and knew where we should be at any given time during the day.

I sopped up some still runny yoke with a piece of toast when the sound of Samuel shuffling his newspaper brought my attention to Caleb sitting beside him. Merlin had been right. Caleb suffered no permanent damage from his time locked away. Triona brushed a stray crumb from his chin with her napkin and he winked at her. A happy sigh accompanied her smile before she caught herself and swallowed, glancing to Emma sitting on her other side. Triona wanted to be happy, but it was as though she was always on her guard. I didn’t doubt her love for Caleb or that it had been easier to be with him those months without John’s shadow looming down on them.

“How are you today, Caleb?” I asked brightly. Triona flashed a warning glance, which I ignored.

He stiffened, and his blue eyes consciously avoided looking at Eila. His jaw worked as he chewed, and a moment later gulped his food. “I feel myself again, thank you. How are you, Ben?”

Triona’s lips flattened into a straight line, and she rolled her eyes. Amanda pinched my leg, the same as every other morning. I inhaled a deep breath, ignoring the fishhooks embedding themselves in my thoughts. Soon they would retract, dragging the answer from my brain. I paid attention to thoughts that itched and attempted to dislodge, and formulated a truthful response to the question. White hot needles stabbed my tongue, and I pressed it against the roof of my mouth as long as I could stand. “I haven’t been sleeping enough, and I’m slightly disgusted at Merlin’s breakfast choice.”

Merlin huffed, Amanda pinched me again, and Caleb smirked. Regardless, there was a reason for our concern that went beyond pleasantries. I had long noticed Samuel and Annice’s ability to pause before answering a question in Eila’s presence. The answers spewed from the rest of us like a mouthful of scalding coffee. Caleb and I devised this plan as an exercise. While everyone else either read or made innocuous small talk minus questions, Caleb and I practiced selective truth.

“What are your thoughts on our scheduled training today, Ben?” Caleb asked, arching an eyebrow in challenge.

I concentrated as the hooks set in and sipped juice to occupy my mouth. My fingertips trembled against the glass, but still, a mischievous chuckle vibrated in my throat. Caleb obviously considered himself clever, perhaps even psyching me out and attempting to pry my weakness directly from my brain. This question I had anticipated and prepared for. “I’m confident my strength will match your experience.” I smiled.

It was the truth because I couldn’t lie, but my answer made it sound like I expected to win when I wasn’t entirely sure strength would be enough. I’d watched Caleb train. He was startlingly fast and flexible.

“How do you feel about facing me in training, Caleb?”

Triona’s fork clattered to her plate. “Is this question and answer game necessary every morning, Ben?” she demanded in irritation.

“Yes,” I responded plainly since I didn’t need time to think it over.

Caleb smoothed his fingers over the back of Triona’s hand and engulfed it in his grip. She met his cool eyes, her bottom lip immediately losing some tension. “And I feel confident today’s training will prove most amusing, Ben.” He never broke their gaze as he drew her hand up to his mouth and kissed it lovingly.

Triona frowned, and Caleb ran his thumb across the lines as though he might erase her worry. He gave her a lopsided smile before turning his attention to Eila over his shoulder.

“Besides, Eila doesn’t mind,” he added, his tone dripping in charm.

“Not at all.” Eila broke her conversation with Annice and Carmel farther up the table to answer and quickly dismissed us with a graceful smile. “It will be nice not having my family desire to flee the room whenever I enter.”

Amanda and Triona exchanged a fleeting glance that hinted at frustration since Amanda shook her head.

“I don’t know who’s worse.”

“Oh, please,” Triona added, running her palms along the sides of her mug. “There’s no contest. This time last year, Ben still thought it was funny to stick his tongue out and show everyone his chewed up food.”

Emma grimaced. “That’s disgusting.” She tried to hide it, but I saw her cheek twitch in an effort to hold a smile back.

I waited until no one was paying attention to me, caught her eye, and stuck my tongue out childishly. Without the masticated food. Emma ducked her head, her shoulders trembling with her quiet laughter. Amanda turned to me with a questioning look, but I just shook my head, keeping the moment between Emma and me.

“Okay,” Caleb started, wiping his mouth with his napkin. “I’ll meet you out by the lake, Ben, Arthur.” He pushed his chair back to stand, the wood squeaking over the floor, and I noticed worried eyes following his every move.

Annice, Triona, and even Joshua didn’t seem convinced Caleb should be exerting himself. Caleb appeared to ignore their expressions, but if I noticed, so did he. He bent down and cupped the back of Triona’s head when he kissed her cheek. Her fingers lingered a beat longer than necessary on the fabric of his T-shirt. Triona would never presume to insist Caleb should restrain himself from what he considered to be protecting her.

I pushed my chair back too and squeezed Amanda’s hand. “I’ll see you at lunch.”

Drizzling rain and wind didn’t make for ideal conditions outside, but I wasn’t about to be the first one to run from a little water. Thick cloud cover blocked out any sky and appeared to settle over the trees in the distance, closing us in. The weather had been reasonable over the previous few days, so in a way, we’d gotten away lightly up to now. Spring had set in, and the land was transforming before our eyes. Tiny buds had begun to emerge from bare tree branches, and patches of colored wildflowers poked out of the earth in the woods on the estate. The green grass had deepened in color too and taken on a lush sheen. The world was starting over, and it came with a certain melancholy. No matter what happened over the next couple of days, this time next year the world would start over again, with or without us.

Arthur handed us both a sword—a real sword, not one of the blunted training swords. These were one-handed weapons, two inches wide, the blade easily longer than my arm, with a valley down the center on each side. The hilt felt like smooth, coiled steel ropes under my grip. They were topped with a blackened pommel, well-worn despite the fact both swords were brand new and especially commissioned by Samuel. Each one carried a name. Apparently, it brought luck. This one bore the name,
Lasair
, meaning flame, in elegant Celtic script beneath the guard, while Caleb held
Díoltas—
revenge.

“I imagine you’re looking forward to this.” Caleb smirked regarding our first encounter. We’d both been training but not with each other.

My expression seemed enough to confirm his presumption. I tossed the heavy metal between my hands. Arthur moved back up the hill to where he could observe us without getting in our way. I expected some blood.

“You’re good at pretending once in a while, but I know you’ve never warmed to me, Ben,” Caleb said with a frown as we began to circle each other.

“That’s not true. I thought you were my friend once. But I didn’t know who you were,” I spat across the empty space between us. “You tore my sister’s heart out. When she forgave you, when I gave you another chance, you tried to push her away again because you thought she should be with a human. You lied to me over and over, Caleb. I trusted you, but you didn’t trust me.”

I lashed out first, forgetting for a moment what Arthur said about forcing my opponent to slow down. The world around me blurred into a streak of colors as I spun, like a paintbrush swiped across an oil canvas. My sword met no resistance, and I knew I’d missed Caleb. He landed in a crouch another foot away, laughing. He’d jumped over my blade.

“You’ll have to try harder than that, boy.” He extended his arm, and the talons on his ends of his fingers glistened in the drizzle.

“Boy?” I echoed. Caleb had never referred to me that way although he had almost a century and a half on me. “Try this on for size, grandpa.”

I pulled my sword up, careful not to leave myself open to attack and came at him, swinging from my shoulder. Caleb’s sword met mine with a flash of sparks, but he spent no time on defense. He went straight for assault, and grunting with each swing, I met him with equal force. Then he made his move, and his free hand swiped, but he needed to arch his body to reach my torso. I lost my head, and a second later his flesh tore beneath my nails as bile worked its way up my throat. I staggered away from Caleb’s back, and
Lasair’s
tip stabbed into the mucky grass. The vibrations forced their way up the bones of my arm. My growl of discomfort mingled with Caleb’s.

He turned to me, panting, with
Díoltas
pointed at me and an angry red slash leaking down the sharp angles of his cheek and jaw. Fury and shock twisted his features as he touched his already healing face and pulled his hand back to examine the crimson liquid before rain sluiced it away.

“First blood,” he said, backing away. His tone made it sound more like an accusation—as if I wasn’t fighting fair, but weren’t we supposed to use every weapon at our disposal?

The rain was coming in sheets now, and I raised my sword from the ground, grunting out hard breaths. We were soaked to the skin, and my heartbeat thundered through every organ in my body so it seemed my pulse was everywhere at once.