"I swore a blood oath I would never return to it."
She touched his arm, almost timidly. "But in allowing me to live, you have already broken an oath. Your oath of loyalty to your chieftain, the most important one any warrior swears in all his life. Conn will know that."
"Aye, but Conn will also know what is waiting for me at Castle Daire."
"Memories?"
Images swirled inside his head. Gray stone rearing skyward, the courtyard churning with mounted warriors. His father bound, dragged astride a horse. Shame. Horrific, suffocating shame. And the screams—his mother's screams. His sister's.
Rage surged through him, the rage of the boy he had been, disillusioned, watching his world crumble about him. Rage at the twisted cruelty of the fates that left him no choice but to return to the scene of his worst nightmares. How could he explain to this woman, so shaken, so vulnerable? How could he let anyone glimpse the dark corners of his soul?
Perhaps Christian angels did mete out judgment, Niall thought, staring out into the storm. They had condemned him to hide Caitlin in his very own hell.
Chapter 6
Stark as a skull picked clean by the war goddess Morrigan, the lone crumbling tower of Castle Daire loomed against the sky. The setting sun cast a red glow across the walls until the stones seemed to bleed. For years, the castle had haunted Niall's dreams, a bleak home to the ghosts of a past he had struggled to forget.
Niall gripped the reins of his mount tighter and stared over the crown of Caitlin's head at the stone edifice growing nearer with every strike of the horse's hooves against the debris-strewn ground. He winced inwardly, remembering those first nights he had spent as Conn's fosterling. Sick with shame and loss, he had huddled beneath hiscloak, bedding down at the fire like one of Conn's hounds.
Sleepless, he had stared into the fire and dreamed of possessing the might of the legendary warrior, Cuchulain. He imagined hoisting the castle onto his shoulders, flinging it so far into the sea even the mermaids could not find it. He had dreamed of possessing the power of the sun god, Lugh, burning the walls with his gaze until the stones melted. A fiery blaze, wiping away every trace of the life that had been. Obliterating it forever, as if it had never existed at all.
Yet always, he had known Castle Daire was there, waiting to pull him back in his nightmares. But even when he had watched his dream-self ride up to the stone tower, he had always been alone, with only the arrow slits of the castle to witness the sick clenching of his belly, the sweat slicking his palms.
Never had he guessed that he would face this place under the gaze of a woman who had already probed deeper beneath his defenses than anyone he had ever known.
It made him feel as if all his weapons had been stripped away. He hated himself for that weakness. Hated her for making him aware of it.
Caitlin shifted in the saddle, and a dull achethrobbed in Niall's leg. He welcomed the distraction, transferring both reins into one hand, kneading the swollen knot of muscle with his fingers.
"I knew your wounds were paining you," she said softly. "I told you, we should have stopped long ago. Rested for the night."
"My wounds are my own affair," Niall snapped. "I need no woman to tell me when I need to get off my horse!"
She straightened. "Next time, I will say nothing. Merely watch you fall off. I wonder how proud and stubborn you will look facedown in the dirt."
He grimaced. Her words were true enough. Exhausted as he was, his bruises throbbing, it was a wonder he had been able to stay astride the beast so long.
What had possessed him to push himself so hard to reach their destination? He should have leapt at Caitlin's suggestion to make camp on a distant hillside—delayed returning to Daire as long as he could.
And yet he had learned on the battlefield that it was best to yank a javelin from flesh swiftly. If you hesitated, the pain came alive inside you, jeering at you as it held you in its grip. Nay,delaying would only make things worse. The sooner they reached Daire, the sooner they could leave it.
"We need to reach the castle as soon as possible." He did not know why he felt a need to explain to her. "Every moment on the road is a danger. If anyone saw us riding past, they might tell Conn once he begins searching."
"Niall, I much doubt they would remember me."
"With that face of yours?" he bit out more harshly than he intended. "Any man who saw it would be burdened with its image forever!"
She stiffened in his arms, and he saw the bright gleam of tears in her eyes before she turned her face away. He cursed her. Cursed the fates that must be jeering at him even now, dragging him back to this place. Most of all, he cursed himself for the change he had caused in her.
True, Caitlin of the Lilies would always have a face so rare and lovely it would carve itself into the memory. But it was not the same face that had glowed with pleasure, buffed by the sea wind. Those were not the same eyes that had blazed defiance and outrage when she had struggled with him at the druid stone—a warrior queen too certain of her strength ever to fear defeat.
Now Fintan's daughter knew that the worldshe had raced out to meet with delight could break her heart, if not her courage.
The horse stumbled, and Niall fought to hold Caitlin upon the animal as it scrambled to regain its footing. "Curse it! What was that?" he muttered, glancing over what had once been the finest castle yard in all of Ireland. His mother's pride.
The expanse that had once been banked with flowers was strewn with refuse, the tidy paths that had been laid out with tender care now overgrown with weeds. Splintered furnishings had been scattered about, and a cart leaned crazily on one broken wheel. The blossoms his mother had tended tangled wild across the debris, reminding Niall of a shamed woman attempting to hide the disorder with her cloak.
Niall's throat tightened, and he blocked out the image of his sister toddling through the blossoms, stubbornly trying to pick handfuls of roses, no matter how many times the thorns pricked her skin.
