King's Warrior (Renegade Lords)

Fáelán swung a leg over a bag of coin, still polishing his sword, a faint smile on his lips. “Time to find your fortune then?”

Tadhg swallowed and shook his head, severing his ties with these men he’d fought with, bled with, cared for, and loved to the last.

Rowan sat up straighter as his words sunk in. “What are you going to do instead?”

“I have enough money to join the tourneys on the continent. I look old enough.” They were silent at that. No one handled a sword as Tadhg did, even at fifteen. He wasn’t as strong as he would be in years to come, but he had a warrior’s innate eye, the knowledge of a blade was in his body, in his heart.

He could see it now. Knights in armor and ladies in fine gowns, banquets and shields and pennants, glory and honor. Honor and glory were the thing.

“Tourneys? You, a great Irish knight?” Rowan threw his head back on an outright bellow of laughter, and even Máel smiled. Beneath the din of amusement, Fáelán smiled too, but it was cold. He looked at the sword he was polishing and gave it another wipe. “You’ll not find it, you know, Tadhg,” he said quietly.

“Find what?”

“What you’re looking for. It isn’t out here. What you want does not exist.”

“What do I want?” Tadhg demanded coldly.

Fáe shrugged, still looking down as he wiped his hand along his now gleaming sword. “Glory, great deeds, renown.”

“It exists,” he retorted fiercely, because he desperately needed it to exist. He needed something that mattered to exist. Something uncorrupted by greed and dishonor. “At least, there has to be something better than this, for this,” he swept his hand around the cave, “is not greatness.”

Fáelán followed the gesture and shrugged. “To some it is. ’Tis better than starving to death. Or licking the spittle off someone else’s boot.”

“I will not lick spittle,” he said fiercely. “I will fight. There are great men, doing great things. I can do them too,” he explained swiftly, as if convincing them would make it so. “Someone will notice me.”

Máel shook his head. “Who’s going to notice a little Irish nub like you?”

“Maybe a king,” he snapped, then clamped his mouth shut. He hadn’t meant to say it, but at least it stopped the laughter, cut it in half as if it had been cleaved by a hatchet.

“The English king?” Máel said slowly. He was on his feet now, his starry-dark eyes cold and glittering on Tadhg, the younger ‘brother’ Máel had teased and taunted and taken under his wing, taught everything he could of warrior skills and stone cold fury.

Half of it had taken.

The other half stared at Tadhg now, bent and betrayed.

Tadhg looked his dark-haired, dark-hearted brother in the eye and claimed his secret dream. “Aye. Mayhap.”

Even the air felt the finality of Tadhg’s statement. The English king had stolen their lands, their titles, their lives. But Tadhg had none of that to steal. He was Irish, aye to the flesh and bone of him, but still, he’d seen the English king and understood what the others did not.

That, that was greatness.

This, this was depravity. And it was in him, would become him if he didn’t leave now.

He was going to get far away from the blood of his past and the dirt on his hands and the mud in his soul, so far he’d forget where he came from.

“How will you do this thing?” Rowan asked, still not believing. “The English king thinks the Irish are dogs to kick.”

And living the way they did gave no one any reason to think different. But his brothers would never see it that way, so Tadhg bit hit tongue.

“There are wars and lords seeking soldiers,” he said instead, with a shrug, as if his heart were not ripping open at the thought of life without these men who were his family. His broken, black-hearted family. “No one is better with a blade than I. Someone will notice me—”

With a snap of his arm, Fáelán swiped his sword out and knocked the blade from Tadhg’s grip.

It flew across the cave, clattering off the damp walls of the cave, then fell with a muted thud, landing almost silently on the sand.

Tadhg stared down in disbelief. A thin ribbon of blood droplets rose up on the heel of his hand. He lifted his head, a lock of dirty hair falling across his face as stared at Fáelán, who met his gaze, cold and level.

“There is always someone better than you, little brother. Of especial, when you’re bent on betraying them.”