Blood Feud [COMPLETED]

CHAPTER FIFTEEN ☽☀︎

As he had a brother, he said, they would not hesitate to kill him. He was not the only heir, after all.

She left him in the fairy fort after they let the sunken structure sink once more, helped by Erik's earth affinity. She still marvelled whenever he practised it. His muscles rippling, bearing a weight she could not see, burdened as she was holding up the sky, he sank the earth.

A brief kiss was how they departed. She hurried back to her town walls, anxious to see her brothers and tell them of her news. She would be married by the end of the summer season, now on the horizon. But it would not be to that old Nob, Tiarnan. 

She was betrothed to another, who matched her mind and might with his own.

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Perhaps if his heart was not beating so loud and so fast, he would have paid more heed to his surroundings. The unnatural stillness of the meadow.

His mind was on his Irish queen, telling her everything of his day and everything he wanted to do with her after it. He was bubbling with the exciting prospect of marrying her. Something he dare not let himself believe, that he would be hers forever.

It was because of all these roaming thoughts he did not know he was moving towards his doom.

And then, crouching down and entering the fairy fort, too late he realised the bouncy red curls in there did not belong to his love. Too late to rally any sort of defence, to fight off his attackers before his world went dark.

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Tara ambled up the grasses to the fairy fort, legs quickening to reach him faster. She was elated. Thoughts of another secret evening together, just the two of them relishing in each other's company and the thrill that always came with it.

Her brothers were off on some hunt, said their servants. She had no popportunity to proclaim her arrangement with Erik. It did not matter. They could try and stop her but they would fail. How could you prevent two people as powerful as her and Erik from being together? She would gladly give up the torques to marry him and in return get the chance to roam abroad. Free.

She was running now, her thoughts egging her on faster. Clambering up the hill, she wandered through the familiar trail amongst the weeds, pulling on roots to leverage herself up. Reaching the hole in the ground, she slid into the ancient chamber beneath the soil.

But Erik was nowhere to be seen.

"That's curious," Her eyes adjusted to the dark. There was no space to hide in and scare her, but she looked anyway.

On the earthen bench Erik had formed, she found a clue. Whittled crudely out of wood was a tiny tree, an oak. It was not as beautiful as the usual workings that he often modelled for her during their nights in dreams, but she assumed he was in a rush.

"The great oak forest," She murmured to herself as she left. "He wants to meet me at the great oak forest."

The excitement was quickly turning to concern, her stomach sick with anticipation. She hurried to the woods, losing daylight fast. The great oak forest had charmed him. That was understandable. It fascinated her too as a child and comforted her whenever she wandered it.

But it was not as concealed as a hidden fairy fort, and her sensibility did not like the thought of meeting Erik anywhere they could be caught. As newfound betrothals, they were not supposed to meet up alone, but her rank and desire dismissed that.