“It is not that. Someone has to take them on, and the gods know no one else relishes the task. They seem to favor ye. Everyone favors ye.”
Adair eyed his brother again. Was this jealousy speaking?
Mayhap so, for Baen went on, “Including Father. The favored son returns, is that the part ye play? That is how all the old stories go. Just so long as ye know, it does not wipe out your carelessness o’ the past.”
“I am not playing a part.”
“Are ye not? The bright star who returns from Dalriada with failure and a stolen woman, but nevertheless makes himself out to be a hero.”
“I never claimed to be a hero.”
“Have ye not?”
“And when it comes to it, ye too failed in your task in Alba.”
Baen sniffed with disdain. “I am to be chief here one day. I should never have been sent on so menial a task.”
“Ah, too good to fulfill your duties, are ye?”
“As ye have always been.”
Adair drew a breath. “Brother, if ye do not want me here in Erin—”
“So long as ye make yourself useful, I have no objections. Just remember to whom this land belongs.”
“It belongs to all o’ us.”
“And that one day ye will swear fealty to me.”
Adair said nothing.
Baen began to turn away but swung back. “And be aware, Adair—if the high king calls for warriors, ’twill be ye who leads our forces.”
Because he was expendable? That was the implication, and it felt like a slap in the face. Adair’s high spirits, earned while training the lads, evaporated in a poof.
He watched Baen walk away and wondered at such ill feeling in a brother. He kept wondering even after he went home and shared supper with Bradana. And later, when he, Bradana, and Wen went walking through the soft, gentle evening.
Bradana glanced at him once or twice as if sensing his mood, but said nothing of it. They spoke in murmurs, relating the events of their days, and watched Wen frolic over the hillside and down to the stream.
Not until they sat together on the side of the brae—a favorite place to watch the sun go down—did Adair ask, “Bradana, are ye happy here?”
He caught her sharp look before she treated him to her profile and said, “I am happy anywhere ye be.”
“Aye, so.” He knew that, down to his soul. And it had been at her insistence, as he reminded himself yet again, they were here. He would have stayed and fought beside her grandsire.
He would have stayed.
“I do wonder how they fare,” she said softly after a moment. “My grandsire and Morag, and all the others. And I wonder, is my mother all right?”
“Aye.”
“But I will mak’ a place here wi’ ye.”
She reached out and captured his hand, threading their fingers together tight.
He marveled again at the strength of this thing between them, almost terrifying in its depth and intensity. They sat quietly for several moments while the sun sank in the sky. Peace should have found Adair then. For he was here, was he not? In the land he loved, with the woman he loved. What mattered Baen’s ill feeling or the uncertainties of the future?
He had known always he was naught but a third son, if one who received a certain measure of favor. Mayhap Baen was jealous of that. Or mayhap he meant only to use Adair to best purpose when his day as chief came. Adair had no ambitions to reach farther, had he?
