The Mammoth Book of Irish Romance Part 17

"Could you hurt me, la.s.s? In this forge full of iron? I lost my mate ten years ago. That hurt me more than anything in the world ever could. I doubt you could match that pain, no matter how many tiny spells you can throw at me."

"No?" Alanna asked, her voice ringing. "What about if you lost your cubs?"

Niall was across the room and had her pinned against the wall before the echo of her words died, the iron bar he'd just cooled in the water pressed across her pale throat.

Two.

The Shifter was stronger than she'd imagined, and the iron against Alanna's skin burned. The spell that her brother had grudgingly let his chief magician chant over her kept the worst at bay, but the bar felt white hot.

Odours of sweat, fire, smoke and metal poured off the Shifter called Niall. He'd sc.r.a.ped his black hair into a tight braid, the style emphasizing his high cheekbones and sharp nose, the touch of Fae ancestry that had never disappeared from Shifters. His hard jaw was studded with dark whiskers, wet with sweat from his labours. The whiskers and sweat made him seem so raw, so animal-like. Fae men were beardless, their skin paper-smooth, and she'd never seen one do anything so gauche as sweat.

Studying the Shifter's stubbled chin kept Alanna from having to look into his eyes. Those eyes had been deep green when she'd entered the forge; now they were nearly white, his pupils slitted like a cat's. He was a cat, a predatory cat bred from several species of ancient wildcats, and any second now he'd tear her apart.

And then his two sons would die.

Niall's towering rage held her as firmly as the iron bar. "You touch my cubs, b.i.t.c.h, and you'll be learning what pain truly is."

"If you do as I say, they won't be hurt at all."

"You'll not go near them."

"It's too late for that. They've already been taken. Make the sword, and you'll get them back."

The Shifter roared. His face elongated, and animal lips pulled back from fangs. He didn't shift all the way, but the hand that held the bar sprouted finger-long claws.

At that moment Alanna hated all Shifters and all Fae, especially her brother Kieran, who'd told her that subduing the Shifter would be simple. They will do anything to protect their whelps. We'll carry them off, and he'll whimper at your feet.

Niall O'Connell, master sword maker of the old Kingdom of Ciarrai, wasn't whimpering or anywhere near her feet. His fury could tear down the forge and crumble the cliff face into the sea.

"Make the sword." Now Alanna was the one pleading. "Craft the sword, and the little ones go free."

Niall's face shifted back into his human one, but his eyes remained white. "Where are they?"

"They will be released when you complete the sword."

Niall shoved her into the wall. "d.a.m.n you, woman, where are they?"

"In the realm of Faerie."

The Shifter's pupils returned to human shape, his eye colour darkening to jade as grief filled them. Niall's shoulders slumped, but though his look was one of defeat, the iron never moved from Alanna's throat. "Gone, then," he whispered.

"No," Alanna said quickly. "If you give me the sword, they will be set free. He a.s.sured me they would not be harmed."

"Who did? Who is this Fae b.a.s.t.a.r.d who's taken my children?"

"My brother. Kieran."

"Kieran . . ."

"Prince Kieran of Donegal."

"There was a Kieran of Donegal in Shifter stories of long ago. A vicious b.a.s.t.a.r.d that a pack of Lupines finally hunted and killed. Only decent thing the b.l.o.o.d.y dogs have ever done."

"My brother is his grandson."

"Which makes you his granddaughter." Niall peered at her. "You don't seem all that pleased to be running this errand for your royal brother. Why did he send you?"

"None of your affair." Enemies saw your compa.s.sion as weakness and used that against you, Kieran had told her. Kieran certainly used every advantage over his enemies and his friends as well.

"Back to that, are you?" Niall asked. "What a.s.surance do I have that you'll not simply kill my boys whether I make the sword for you or not?"

Alanna shifted the tiniest bit, trying to ease the pain of the bar on her throat. "You have my pledge."

He snorted. "And what worth is that to me?"

"My pledge that if your children are harmed, you may take my life. I wasn't just sent as the messenger, Shifter. I was sent to be your hostage."

Even through his pain, his grief, and his gut-wrenching fear, Niall couldn't deny that the Fae woman had courage. He could kill her right now, and she knew it. She offered her life in exchange for his sons with a steady voice, though she obviously knew that a Shifter whose cubs were threatened was more dangerous than an erupting volcano. And even though she'd said she'd been given a protective spell against iron, Niall knew the cold bar hurt her.

Slowly he lifted it from her throat. Alanna rubbed her neck as though it pained her, but the bar had left no mark.

Niall stopped himself having any sympathy. She and her brother had taken his boys, Marcus and Piers, who were ten and twelve as humans counted years.

He looked past her to the darkening night, to the mists gathering on the cliff path, to the Great Island silhouetted by the blood-red sky. "My youngest, Marcus, he likes to fish," he said. "The human way with a pole and hook. Will he be able to fish where he is?"

Alanna shook her head. "The game and the fish in the rivers are for Kieran only."

"My mate died of bringing him in, poor love. She was a beautiful woman, was Caitlin, so tall and strong." Niall looked Alanna up and down. "Nothing like you."

"No, I don't suppose she was."

Shifter women tended to be as tall as the males. They were fast runners, wild in bed, and laughed a lot. Caitlin had laughed all the time.

"Piers, now. He likes to craft things. He'll be a smith like me. He likes to watch the iron get red hot and bend into whatever shape he tells it. He'd love to have watched me make this sword."

Alanna said nothing. Niall knew what he was doing, why he was saying these things. He was letting himself start to grieve.

Deep in his heart, he didn't believe Prince Kieran would ever release his sons. Fae didn't play fair. Niall might be allowed to take Alanna's life in vengeance for his sons' deaths, but it would be an empty vengeance. He would have no one left. No mate, no cubs, no one left in his pride. Niall lived here on the edge of this human village called Baile icin, because the other members of his pride and clan had died out. Shifters could marry into other clans, but there weren't as many females as males any more, and other clans were few and far between. The Shifter race was diminishing.

"You'll make the sword then?" Alanna asked, breaking his thoughts.

She didn't have to sound so eager. "I don't have much b.l.o.o.d.y choice, do I?"

Her eyes softened. "I am sorry."

Sympathy, from a Fae? Had the world gone mad today?

"You will be, la.s.s. If my cubs are hurt in any way, you'll be the first to be very, very sorry. Your brother, now, he'll be even sorrier still. So show me this d.a.m.ned silver and let's be getting on with it."

Three.

Forging a sword was a different thing entirely from the usual practical ironworks Niall produced for the humans of the village. Niall never asked Alanna why he'd been chosen for this task, because he already knew.

Once upon a time, Niall O'Connell had been a master sword maker, before Ciarrai had been made an earldom by the b.l.o.o.d.y English. He'd created beautiful weapons used for deadly purpose in the last FaeShifter war. The Shifters had won that war, though Niall knew much of their victory had been due to luck the Fae had already been losing power in the mortal world, and the Shifters had only made their retreat into the Faerie realms inevitable.

It wasn't often that Shifters from different clans and species worked together, but at that point, Lupine, Feline and Bear had fought side by side. The Fae had conceded defeat and vanished into their realm behind the mists.

Well, conceded defeat was too strong a phrase. The Fae had gone, killing, burning and pillaging behind them. Fae didn't care whether their victims were children, breeding mothers, or humans who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Niall still had his sword-making tools kept safely in a chest at the back of the forge. He hadn't touched them in years. He shook his head to himself as he laid out his tongs and hammer, grinding stone and chisel. This sword wouldn't be good, strong steel, but soft silver, which was daft, even if she claimed it was spelled to work like steel. He could craft such a thing, but it would only be good as a trinket.

He briefly considered mixing a bit of iron into the hilt to debilitate any Fae who touched it, but he knew such a trick would make his sons' deaths even more certain. Not that he believed the Fae Prince would let Niall live either, in any case. But Niall would take out the Fae b.i.t.c.h when they came for him. Prince Kieran would watch his sister die before he killed Niall.

Niall glanced at Alanna as he pounded out the bar of metal she'd brought him. She'd found a stool and seated herself on it near the fire. She did look cold, the silly woman, probably not used to the harsh clime of the Irish west coast. The Faerie realms, he'd heard, were warm and soft all the time, which was why she wore flimsy silk robes and let her braids flow. Fae women didn't have to bundle their hair out of the wind.

After a few quick looks at her, he realized that Alanna wasn't staring sightlessly at the forge, or watching him beat the blade. She was studying him.

Her gaze roved his bare back and the muscles of his arms, as though she'd never seen a half-clothed man before. She probably hadn't. Fae were cold people, not liking to be touched, preferring robes, jewels and other fussy things to bare skin. They rarely did anything as crude as coupling, bodily seduction being almost as distasteful to them as iron. Shifters, on the other hand, loved breeding and loved children, children being all that more precious because so few survived.

"Are you a virgin, then, la.s.s?" Niall asked her.

Alanna jumped. "What?"

"A virgin. If it doesn't hurt your pristine ears for me to ask it. Are you?"

"No."

Interesting. Fae women didn't lie with males unless they absolutely had to. "You have a lover then? A husband?"

"No." The word was more angry now. "It is none of your affair."

"You like to say that, la.s.s. Did you have a gasun?"

"A child? No." Again, the chill anger.

"I'm sorry, love."

"Why?"

"That must have hurt you." When a Shifter woman was childless it was an impossible sorrow to her. As dangerous as breeding was for Shifters, females were happy to risk it to bring in cubs. "I imagine 'tis different for a Fae woman." The Fae were so long-lived they didn't need to bear many children. Fae women who did like children often stole them from humans, rather than bearing their own, raising them to be their doting little slaves.

"It did hurt me."

Niall saw the pain in her eyes. She looked so out of place, sitting in his forge, her strange, elegant robes already soiled from the dust and soot. He never thought he'd feel sorry for a Fae before, but the sadness on her face was real.

"Did your lover not want a child?" Niall asked gently.

"My lover, as you call him, died." Alanna's jaw was fixed, rigid. "We tried to have a child, but I don't know whether it was even possible."

"Fae do breed. I've seen your wee ones." Even crueller than the adults, unfortunately.

"My lover was human."

Surprise stilled Niall's hands. "A human man? Let me guess. A slave?" He couldn't keep the disgust out of his voice.

"He had been captured, yes." She met his look defiantly. "But not by me."

"Oh, that makes it all right then. Whose slave was he? You're royal brother's?"

"Yes. It was a long time ago."

One of her brother's slaves, made into her lover. A typical story of Fae cruelty except for the grief in her eyes. He wasn't imagining that.

He bent over his task again. "How long ago?" he asked.

"One hundred years."

"And you loved this man? Or pretended to?"

Her silence was so flint-hard that Niall raised his head again. She was glaring at him. "Did you love your mate?" she asked in a sharp voice.

"I won't apologize for my question, love. You are the one coercing me into helping the b.a.s.t.a.r.d who stole my children. I'll answer yours yes, I loved her more than my own life."

"My answer is the same."

She met his gaze without flinching. The pain in her dark eyes wasn't false and neither was the loneliness, and Alanna didn't look ashamed of either.

Niall went back to pounding. After a time he asked, "So what happened to this human male so worthy of the love of a Fae woman?"

"My brother killed him."

Niall stopped. "The very brother who sent you here? Why?"

"Because Dubhan dared to touch me."

"The man was your slave, love. He wouldn't have had a choice."