Page 6 of The Splendor of Fire
“Is Taya your wife?”
He repeated the name, his accent thickening. “Théa. Yes. My wife.”
Moira’s stomach dropped and she settled beside Father, clinging to his goodness. What had she done? The Lord would surely smite her for allowing a married man to kiss her.
His eyelids blinked hard and struggled against sleep. “Wasmy wife. She died two years ago in childbirth.”
Her heart clenched at the brokenness in his voice. Léo was a widower. And what of his child? What became of the bairn? A brief memory of black sea, sucking waves, the hoarse cries into the void of night assailed her and made her shudder.
“I thought—” Léo’s eyes rolled back in his head. “Thought I saw her. But it was another girl. The girl from the prophecy…my dream…the flames.”
Prophecy?Moira felt herself inclining forward, eager to hear more before realizing Léo’s eyes were beginning to roll. He was talking feverish nonsense, poor man.
Sleep threatening to take him under, he struggled to keep his eyes open, thrusting his hand in the air, groping, before taking her hand in his own.“Will you be here when I wake?”
Moira studied her tanned hand enclosed in his roughened fingers, wishing she could speak, wishing she could press a kiss to the back of his hand, to provide him comfort when he’d lost so much.
“Aye. Moira and I will be sitting right here until you wake again. Then we’ll give you more broth.”
Soft snoring rumbled from Léo’s chest. Father removed his Psalter from his bag and angled it toward the fire, wetting his finger with his tongue and flipping to the page he last read. “Poor lad. Lost to the world.”
Poor she, lost in his kiss, and now lost to him, forever.
Chapter 3
CRÀDH PRISON - MARCH 1, 1384
One, two, three, four, five, six.Léo stopped at the wall and turned right.One, two, three, four, five.Wall.One, two, three, four, five, six.Wall.One, two, three, four, five.Wall.
The fire in the hearth baked the tiny room but he dared not extinguish the flame. Without it, he would plunge into total darkness. The walls of the tiny chamber inched in on him, and his wound crawled. For hours he’d repeated the perimeter walk, around, and around, and around.
According to the ticks on the wall indicating his daily meals, today marked two months of captivity in Cràdh, and the isolation and confinement was beginning to affect his sanity. Each day he had nothing to do but wait for the guards to bring him a small portion of oats and a new pail of water. He had to get out of here. He needed to see the sun. He needed fresh air. He needed to stretch his legs and run.
No, there was nothing to do in the tiny chamber but wait. Wait to live, wait to die. His only escape was sleep—and the nightly revisitation of the prophecy. The tormenting prophecy that had haunted his dreams each and every night at Cràdh just as it had when he was a lad. In it, Dun Ringill Castle loomed high upon the rocks looking over theharbor, and he, Niall, Fingon, Elspeth, and Malvina, his stepmother, stood upon the battlements. Amid the stormy night, they circled each other, challenging each other for survival.
The first of the siblings to fall was Elspeth. With a scream, the dream would launch into motion as she lost her balance and toppled over the edge, disappearing onto the rocks below. Lightning then streaked across the heavens and struck the rafters, igniting the old castle walls. The building shook with the thunder of heaven as balls of lightning dropped from opened skies, racing around the battlements and consuming everything in their path. From above, an eagle dipped down from heaven—fire erupting from its beak as it dived after Niall, trapping him in the center of the balls of lightning.
To save himself, Léo scrambled upon the parapet, planting his feet firm upon a rock, and watched as one-by-one his brothers and stepmother were consumed by the fire. In the end he stood alone, the only survivor of his father’s children, Chief of the MacKinnons.
Beside him, the eagle landed upon the rocky tower, slowly transforming into a breathtaking woman. Her hair was tendrils of burnished gold, her eyes the color of the sea. He should have been afraid of her, but instead she placed her hand in his own, imparting peace and love into his heart. Her voice spoke, and yet her lips did not move, and he realized he could hear her thoughts.You’re not alone.
What a stupid dream. At seventeen he’d been foolish enough to share it with Niall and Fingon, believing it to be just that—a dream. But something had been planted in his brothers that day, ripening into a bitter harvest when his father and mother mysteriously fell ill the following week.
Léo’s life, from that moment on, was nothing as it was before. He’d been taken to France the evening of his father’s death, abandoned in Calais, and forced into his uncle’s army, headed straight for the front lines of Pontvallain. Where, had it not been for Hector MacLean, he would have died within the first ten minutes of combat.
For a few years, as the dream had occurred and reoccured to him every few nights, he prayed to God that he would triumph over his brothers and be restored to their clan. He simply wanted peace in hisfamily and time to develop relationships with his brothers as men. It was the one thing he had consistently prayed for, and yet, had never gained.
One, two, three, four…He stopped and walked to the middle of the room, his weakening chest constricting, the endless hours at the mercy of dozens of horrible memories making him feel as if he were about to crack. Holding his hands over his mouth, he bent forward, screaming into them in rage, trying to spend some of his energy.
Tears formed in his eyes and he cried out into the silent chamber to God, unsure if he was listening or if the Lord had ever heard him. “God! Are you listening? Do you think this is funny?”
The silent response made rage snake up his spine. Once again, the Lord had abandoned him to a fate worse than death, and he was sick of it. In anger, he picked up Father Allen’s heavy iron cauldron and flung it across the room. “Where are you? Where have you ever been? What have I ever done to you to deserve this?”
The clatter of the cauldron continued to echo around the empty chamber as it rocked on its side, reminding Léo of just how alone he had always been. “Why did I never dream about being locked in prison? Why did your prophecy never reveal to me that I would be locked away for the rest of…” Tears choked his throat but he sucked in a breath, forcing them away. “For the rest of my God-forsaken life? And that’s what I am. God-forsaken.”
The slat in the door opened. “Are ye all right in there? What was that noise?”
Forgetting his rage for moments, Léo rushed over to the perpetually shut door, drinking in the faint glow of natural light behind the guard, desperate for a hint of the outside. “Oui. I’m fine. It was the cauldron—I—I was just…”
