Claiming Her

She felt shocked that he would think such a thing. The falling-away sadness of a moment ago, the empty, foundationless slippery feeling of loss, was gone entirely, replaced by a spark of anger.

“I am not going anywhere, Aodh. You did what you did, and had your reasons. I did what I did, for my reasons. But the queen, she had no reason. She assumed the worst of me. A lifetime of giving over, and giving up, and pressing on, all as the queen willed it, and she simply…turned on me. As she did on my father. As she did on you.”

She straightened her back and let the message flutter from her fingers.

“The queen gave me no choice, Aodh. You did.” She snapped her attention to Ré. “Is there still no word from The O’Fail?”

Ré went a careful sort of quiet. Everyone turned to Aodh.

“What?” she said, turning to him too.

Cormac examined the room and the ensuing silence, then threw up his hands. “We’ve not sent anyone to the O’Fail tribe, ma’am.”

“Not sent anyone… Why not?”

The men exchanged another silent look.

Aodh felt Katarina looking at him, felt everyone looking at him. “He cannot be trusted,” he said in a cold, clipped voice.

She glanced around the room, then came forward and stood very near him. “How do you know that?”

“I know him.”

“Oh. What happened?” she asked quietly.

He shook his head. “I know Keegan O’Fail. He will not aid us.”

“How do you know?”

“He did not come to battle when called. The entire O’Fail clan betrayed us, left us to die on those fields.” He kept his words simple; no need to describe the carnage. But when she didn’t argue, just let the silence linger, he added, “All my uncles died on the field that day. My cousins, my friends. My father and grandfather were taken and tortured. The O’Fail destroyed my family that day, betrayed us all.”

“Betrayed you.”

Aye, himself. He’d been fostered at the O’Fails’, had trained with his warriors. Indeed, Keegan himself had taught Aodh to whittle, made him a little horse Aodh had kept on the mantel of his home until the English burned it to the ground with Aodh’s mother inside. Keegan had been more than a decade older than Aodh, but they’d been foster brothers, friends, closer than blood. And Keegan had not come to the battle that day. And Aodh’s family had died.

Katarina bent nearer. “Aodh, I am sorry.”

“We are all sorry,” he said coldly, not in the spirit for being comforted.

“But you do not know what forces were at work.”

“I know he did not come. I know he took an oath, and I know he turned.”

“As you have asked me to do?”

He looked up sharply.

“Aodh, it was a long time ago. If Keegan O’Fail promised, then he should have come. Maybe now, he knows that.” She gave a little shrug. “Maybe now he is sorry. Maybe we could at least…see?”

He heard his men waiting, boots shuffling.

“He has many men at his command, Aodh,” she urged. “Perhaps near to a thousand. It was his summons that raised five hundred for a hosting several years ago, and by it almost decimated the English forces. He has droves of supporters. Is it not worth at least inquiring?”

He was not inclined to grant this request. Beg for an alliance with a worm?

In the background, Ré shifted and said quietly, “We do not know where The O’Fail is at present, my lady.”

Katarina’s head lifted. “He itinerates constantly. Like as not he is at his keep of TorRising, for Easter is nearing, and that is but a long day’s ride from here. Still”—she nibbled on a fingernail as she stared across the room at one of Aodh’s tapestries—“we ought to send messengers to Pike’s Deep and the glen at Dark Lough. He often visits there.”