Total pages in book: 126
Estimated words: 116749 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116749 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 584(@200wpm)___ 467(@250wpm)___ 389(@300wpm)
Elysia shook her head. “I can’t leave him yet. It is too soon. I need to see how he fares through the night if he is to have any chance.”
No one said a word and Odran fought with himself. His da needed his wife, and his wife and bairn needed rest.
“I will rest at one of the tables and you will wake me, Lendra, when necessary,” Elysia said.
Odran preferred his wife get a good rest in their bed, but she had offered a compromise and he wisely accepted it. He walked with his wife to one of the nearby tables and they had barely sat when Dorrit placed a tankard in front of her.
“Chamomile,” Dorrit said and walked away.
“You will drink it, then sleep,” Odran ordered curtly.
“Your tongue has been sharp tonight, husband,” she said and took a grateful sip of the hot brew.
Odran took her hand gently in his. “I worry over you and our bairn.”
She rested her shoulder against his arm. “I know that is a worry of yours, but I sense something more disturbs you. I heard something in your voice tonight that I have never heard—intense fear.”
That his wife should think him fearful about anything annoyed him and that an ember of fear had escaped him annoyed him all the more. His tongue was once again sharp. “I fear nothing, I worry over my da, that is all.”
“I know you well, husband, and it was more than that,” she said softly and squeezed his hand that held hers. “Tell me.”
A sharp bite remained to his tone. “There is nothing tell.”
“I think there is and I think it is time you finally speak about it,” Elysia encouraged, seeing the pain that mingled with anger in her husband’s eyes.
“You don’t need to hear it,” he argued.
“But you need to speak of it,” she continued to encourage.
“Let it be, wife, and rest,” he ordered and yet her urgings poked at him encouraging and tempting him.
She shook her head slowly. “I can’t let it be or rest when I see how much pain it causes you.”
“Enough, Elysia,” he said more harshly than he intended. “I swore I would never speak of it and I won’t.” His own reminder had him clamping his mouth shut tight.
Her chin shot up. “Then I will.”
His head swerved to glare at her. “You cannot speak of something you know nothing about.”
“True, but I can, from the snippets that I’ve heard and seeing how you reacted with what happened to your da, surmise the truth.”
“Don’t,” he cautioned.
She didn’t heed his warning. She continued talking, her voice soft and gentle. “You didn’t kill your brother. You saved him from a horribly painful death and when you saw your da covered with blood, you feared you might have to do the same for him. I cannot imagine how difficult it must have been for you, for my heart pains with just the thought of having to make such a heartbreaking decision for one of my sisters. However, I have seen enough men wounded in battle to know how horrendous his pain must have been, and I imagine he begged you to end his life. And you would have only done that if there was no chance to save him.”
“I could have been wrong,” he said, the doubt that he may have made the wrong decision, stabbing at him as sharply as the day he had taken his brother’s life.
“If your brother had been sliced open with the slash of a sword, his insides spilling out, then there was nothing you could have done to save him.”
“He was screaming my name, the battle near ended, and when I reached him and saw—” Odran shut his eyes for a moment, the memory painful. “He pleaded with me between his screams. Then he told me he’d do the same for me without remorse if needed. His words were meant to leave me with no guilt. My roar of anger echoed over the dead and dying on the battlefield as I drove my sword into my brother’s heart to kill him instantly.”
Elysia slipped her shoulder under her husband’s arm, pressed her face to his chest, and hugged him tight. Then she did what he couldn’t do, wouldn’t allow himself to do—she wept for him.
Odran wrapped his arms around his wife tightly and held on to her, needing her there in his arms, needing her love. He wouldn’t cry, he couldn’t. His brother wouldn’t want him to, wouldn’t expect him to.
“Thank you, my son.”
Odran’s head snapped to the side and Elysia raised her head to see his mum standing near the end of the table.
“Thank you for saving your brother from dying a hideously painful death. It took courage to do that and I am as proud and grateful that you had such courage just as Tynan would be.”