Eric & Fernanda, 1219-1220 CE

by The Modern Typewriter

Eric de Clermont has spent the last fifty years overcoming the losses of his human life and coming into his own as the young son of Hugh de Clermont. Back in the 21st century, Addison has spent the last six months trying to make sense of her mind and the world around her. Finally getting back on her feet, the last thing she wants or needs is a trip to 13th century Spain.

6. The First Days of Winter

Chapter Six: The First Days of Winter

"If you have need of me, Jean Luc can—"

"I can manage well enough," Eric said reassuringly. "You need not worry yourself, father."

Hugh studied him for a moment through the space he had cracked in the doorway. He turned back into the room and murmured a quiet response to Fernando who had spoken too low for Eric to hear. He nodded his head and turned back to his son, fixing him with a concerned look and a tired smile that Eric matched with one of his own.

"Go," the younger said. "Be with Fernando. I can manage."

With one last searching look, Hugh finally closed the door. Eric stood there for a while before letting his shoulders fall back down from the rigid way he'd set them in for his father's sake. Without the worried eyes of his sire at his back he could sag blessedly into his momentary defeat. Shaking his head, he turned his back to the door of their chambers and prepared himself to face the day. Soldiering on through the messy bits as he had done so many times before in all the years he'd been living.

In the midst of chaos and disorder, Eric felt himself settle back into his own skin. His head was always clearest when he was caught somewhere on a battlefield. He hadn't expected to fall back into that headspace in the safety of his own home, but here he was. With a murderous vampire on the loose, his mate cowering in terror in her bed chambers, and his father and stepfather both out of commission for the time being, a battlefield is exactly what he'd found.

He made his way down the corridor, back to the other side of the estate where his study was located, calling on Jacqueline as he made his way.

"See to it that only human maids attend to Lady Fernanda," he said to the maid when she appeared beside him. "Tell them only to knock and announce that they've brought her supper. They are not to enter without her express permission."

"Yes, my lord," she nodded, following him as he strode across the expanse of the manor at a brisk pace.

"And impress upon them the importance of their discretion in all they do. She has suffered too much in these last few weeks, she need not suffer more in the name of assistance."

"I will see to it, my lord," the maid said again, dipping into a quick curtsy and moving on her way.

Eric didn't bother to stray from his course as she left him to see to her duties. He just pressed into his study and made his way to his desk. He noted Idir sitting, waiting for him in the corner of the room, but he didn't bother to acknowledge the other man as he grabbed up a handful of missives that had been left for him in his father's absence. Dipping a quill into an inkwell, he sat down heavily in his chair and prepared to respond to the first piece of correspondence he drew.

"Are you well, Eric?" Idir asked after a long moment's pause. He had worked his way through about half the stack in front of him before the elder vampire had chosen to speak.

"I am," he said and even to his own ears the answer sounded hollow.

"Are you?"

He didn't pause in his script, but he did cast his eyes up to look dryly at the old Berber warrior who regarded him too closely. He went back to the task at hand.

"I only mean to say," Idir continued, unbothered by Eric's dismissal. "That it would be entirely understandable if you—"

"I said that I was well, Idir," he said, setting his quill down and sitting up straighter in his chair as though to demonstrate just how well he was doing.

"Yes," Idir said in a way that suggested he disagreed with Eric's assertion entirely. "I can see that. I only mean to say, if you have need of counsel, your young lordship has my ear."

Idir's words shook him out of his stupor then. Your young lordship. It was not an uncommon term, often an affectionate title in the world of noblemen. Or a condescending one if the company allowed. Idir meant it neither way.

He was a very old man, with a very old mind. It was a statement of truth. Eric was a young lord. Idir said it like he was speaking of the weather, and he meant it as harmlessly as well. But Eric remembered a time and place when he'd used such a term. With a hellish little lord who had a bad attitude and a disregard for knights and advisors alike. A violent little child who embarrassed himself and his family every day that he was breathing. He grimaced, sighed and shook his head.

Eric looked back up at Idir who saw him with ancient eyes that conveyed no particular feeling about what he saw in Eric either. It was always unnerving to spend too much time in the company of older men such as these. His father and stepfather, their friends and allies, his grandfather and uncles. They had spent ages perfecting the art of guarding their thoughts and emotions from the ever-changing world. They could meet with friends and enemies alike and none could ever tell if they were the former or the latter. They were blank canvases in the face of all he met them with, and now, looking upon Idir, Eric felt properly chastised. And the other man had barely said a word.

"I apologize," he said to Fernando's oldest friend. "It was wrong of me to be dismissive of your kindness."

Idir studied him for a moment before gracing him with a knowing smile.

"I accept your apology," he said. "Now, tell me, how can I assist you?"

Eric grimaced and looked about him, unsure where to even begin.

"Well," he said. "There is the matter of the farmer to attend to. I'd like to continue seeing to that personally. The death is directly tied to my family now, and I would prefer it if his surviving kin knew they had our support."

"I understand."

"I would appreciate if you could take the lead on the hunt for—" Eric bit down his ire at the vampire who had murdered the farmer. The blood raged savage that had left the corpse in his mate's path and stalked her until she'd fled in a blind panic through La Ithuriana's garden maze. "The killer."

Idir's eyes flickered at the request, but he nodded slowly, nonetheless.

"Of course," he said, not voicing his questions. Eric took it upon himself to answer them anyway.

"I don't feel it prudent for me to leave at a time when Fernanda is so vulnerable. I know my father and Fernando are still on the grounds, but they are indisposed, and she requires my full attention."

Idir nodded and his smile became a bit more genuine.

"I understand," he said. "I will focus my attentions on finding him then."

"My father advised me against writing to Philippe—"

Idir's eyes hardened, his mouth settling into a firm line.

"Did he?" he asked, whatever opinions he had wouldn't be expressed here. He was not a de Clermont. It was not for him to meddle.

"He did," Eric said.

He didn't know whether or not he agreed with his father's approach on this, but Hugh had assured him that he knew what was best in the present circumstance. Eric didn't feel he was currently in the position to disagree. He still felt as though he hadn't the full story.

The beast inside of him felt quieted. Tempered. He turned to his father and Idir. His body buzzing with the sensation of control. He was in control. If he were human, this feeling would have sent chills up and down his spine. Erupted his skin in gooseflesh. But Eric was no longer human. He was something more. So, he came back to himself as though he'd never left himself. Joined his father and Idir by the fire and accepted the cloth when Idir held it out to him.

He brought it to his nose though he could smell it from across the room.

Beneath the stench. Beneath the murder. Was another scent. Subtler. There were notes of dirt, earthen tones sunken into the fabric that spoke of the place where the man had surely been killed. He could pinpoint the spot in his mind's eye even now. And one unfamiliar scent. Unfamiliar and yet... he felt as though he knew it somehow. It was strong. Feral. Sick.

Blood rage.

His eyes snapped up to meet Hugh's. Disbelief clouded his features. It wasn't Matthew. He knew his uncle's scent, and this wasn't it. But whatever he was picking up on held similar traces that Matthew's scent had. He shook his head at his father, not understanding. Hugh's eyes were grave. Like he already knew what Eric himself was just registering. Like he'd been trying very hard to spare his son this knowledge.

A small pocket of rage opened up inside of him at his father's keeping of secrets. At his father's deception in the face of his mate's danger. This should not have been kept from him. He felt the urge to hunt come over him and he shut it down. Fell still and forced his slow breath out through his nose. Focused on the shuffle of the small creatures of the forest as they picked their way through the darkness. Focused on the clatter of the servants bustling about downstairs and in the empty rooms of the manor. Caught the scent of wine in the air and sourced it as one from the south of France. Caught the sizzle of meat on an open flame and knew the cook was preparing yet another meal that Fernanda would refuse to touch in the deepest throes of her melancholy.

When the urge to hunt had left him, Eric came back to himself once again. His father looked on him proudly despite the grim set of his features. He accepted the cloth when Eric handed it to him.

"What have you not told me?" He said, keeping his mind open to his father's explanation. Hugh rarely did anything without good reason.

"We will wait for Fernando," Hugh said. "So that I only have to tell the story once—"

Fernanda had reappeared that night for dinner. The first time in days that he'd seen her, and she seemed more fragile than he'd ever seen her before. All conversation on the matter had stopped in her presence. They'd moved on to more pleasant things. And had taken care to speak quietly and gently so as not to upset her any further.

It had been a pleasant meal, if only because he could practically see the color returning to her features with every bite she took and every smile she graced him. She had begun the state of healing just in time for Eric to spend most of his time away. Over the week she'd spent in convalescence, he had been off with his father, paying respects to the family of the victim. He'd been stalking the length of their territory, scouring the village and questioning the tradespeople and servants for any sign of the man who'd committed this vicious crime.

That night, Fernanda had gone back to bed, satisfied with having accomplished her first journey out of her chambers. Her first successful meal in the company of friends after days away in hiding. And the men of the household had gathered in the drawing room, Jean Luc standing guard outside the door to protect their conversation from the wandering eyes and ears of nosy servants who often saw and heard far too much for their own good.

They spoke in ancient Greek — his father's native tongue — and still his story had been vague, so grave a conversation it had been.

"Years ago," Hugh had said. "About a century before you were turned, Eric, the family was entrenched in a vicious fight for the Holy Land."

"This is known," Idir said with a raised eyebrow, impatient for the story to move along.

"What is not known," Hugh said with a raised brow of his own. "Is that while we were there, in the heat of battle and the fear of the exposure of our kind, a member of this family sired a son."

Eric felt himself draw back at this news. He'd been of the impression that he was the first of his generation. He'd been of the impression that he stood alone in his role. His mind flickered to the cloth. The stench. The blood rage. And he felt his heart sink in sudden realization. He shook his head against it. It couldn't be true.

"I don't understand—"

Hugh stared at him for a long moment, Fernando beside him sat unsurprised and grave. He hadn't ever asked his mate aloud, had never sought a confirmation of his suspicions, but he knew enough to believe this to be true.

"I am saying," Hugh said. "That you have a cousin. A vile creature even in his human life who, until quite recently, I thought to be dead."

"Dead?"

"Yes," Hugh said. "He was illegitimate. Unrecognized. Philippe ordered his execution quickly after he was turned."

Suddenly Eric too understood the gravity of his meeting with the de Clermont sieur some fifty years prior. The tense set of Hugh's shoulders. The dagger Fernando had hidden in his cloak. Eric had been born into a chasm. He'd been sired by a man exiled by his family. Eric felt something hardened and disbelieving sink low inside of him. A weight settled there, one that would never leave him — apit where his understanding of his life had once been.

He had been at risk of illegitimacy himself.

Philippe could have ordered his execution that night by way of Hugh.

When they had bent the knee before his thunder voiced grandfather and his many cloaked aunts and uncles, that could have been the moment he met his end. And they hadn't told him. Neither Hugh nor Fernando had said a thing. They'd taken him straight into the belly of the beast, and in his ignorance, he had sworn his fealty to the man who could have ordered him dead.

He stared at Hugh who stared back at him, knowing and grim. His father bowed his head for but a moment, still looking him dead in the eye —a silent acknowledgment of Eric's unspoken thoughts. A silent acknowledgement that this had been a blow.

Would Hugh have done it? Turned him into a manjasang just to turn around and kill him on Philippe's command?

He didn't know.

As he sat there, stunned silent, he studied his father. He could not read in him an answer to this unspoken question that hung now between them.

He couldn't bring himself to ask. Hugh would never answer.

He shook himself and cleared his throat.

"Who received the orders?" Eric asked through gritted teeth.

He knew, but he needed it confirmed. His father stared at him, hard edged and grim lined.

He said nothing.

"Who—"

"It matters little," Hugh said and waved his hand dismissively. Everyone in the room knew that to be a lie. It mattered more than words could ever say. It mattered above all else.

"There could be only one, father—" he bit out. "You and I know it to be so."

"And yet they will not be named here," Hugh's voice was a heavy weight over the room, his words clamped down on the back of Eric's neck like the clamp of his teeth had done in the early days, when Eric was untried and young.

Eric opened his mouth to disobey but closed it just as quickly, nostrils flaring with the urge to hunt. To rage. To break something. To disobey his father and find the sick—

"What you need to know is that you have a cousin—"

"He is not my cousin," Eric bit out.

"In some ways he is, and in some ways, he is not," Hugh said in a sage voice that aggravated the younger de Clermont beyond belief. "But now the young pretender has come to your doorstep."

"Why?"

"Who could say," Hugh shrugged, but Eric saw through it.

This was his father's way. It was his preferred move on the chessboard of life. He opened his mouth to say so, but Hugh's sharp eyes caught his rising defiance and cut him quickly back down. With a look, Hugh brought his son to heel.

"It matters little whether it is in pursuit of some twisted idea of justice, or in pursuit of a challenge. Perhaps he seeks to rob you of something important. Perhaps he seeks to rob me. After all, you and I are the first and second in line to a very old and powerful family. The family who robbed him of all that he had. We are the representatives of all he has spent his life hating and seeking to destroy. Perhaps that is reason enough. Or perhaps he is simply bored and sees this as a bit of fun."

Eric cursed and stood from his seat, pacing over to the window to stare out on the quiet grounds of La Ithuriana. Out there somewhere was a man he'd never known. A cousin he had not known existed in the world until now. And he'd come to Eric's home. Hunted his people. Thrown down the gauntlet right there at Fernanda's feet.

It was a cowardly move. One that spoke of who he was beneath his violent veneer — to prey upon the weak as a means of destroying those in power. He had little time or respect for men such as this one, and yet here he was.

In a way, this made sense to Eric. In some roundabout way, he'd always felt like he'd had a shadow. Some other figure that accompanied him silently as he passed through the world. A weight that had hung behind him, walked beside him every step he took in this life after death. He didn't know how to explain it, but standing here now, in the silence of the drawing room, surrounded by his father's admission of some great and terrible truth, it all settled into place in his mind. He felt more grounded for it, as his father paved yet another foundation beneath him. Another secret packed itself resolutely into the ground on which he already stood, and he steadied himself against it. Planted himself more firmly as he had been raised by Hugh to do. In the wake of this revelation, Eric simply accommodated the change and clicked himself forward along the path he had chosen to take in this life.

"Eric," Hugh said. "He's here. Whether we like it or not. He is not of sound mind, no matter what he'd have the world believe. He has been twisted by sickness, hatred and neglect. We must deal with this quietly and resolutely. There's no room for a single mistake. He is just as cunning as he is unwell."

The youngest de Clermont turned back to his father and for the first time in the presence of these men, he commanded the room. All eyes regarded him. All eyes deferred to him.

Hugh watched his son closely. Wary and resolute. Silent he watched him grapple with the weight of an invisible crown that had been placed upon his head.

The board was set.

White had taken its turn and made the first move. It was cunning. It was underhanded.

But now Black had the board.

The de Clermont had the floor.

A black cloak for a black mood, Eric wandered over to the chess board in the corner. He picked up the Black Queen and turned her over in his fingers. Once, twice, three times she turned.

"Tell me," he said, eyes flashing up to meet his father's. Hugh's eyes glinted in the firelight. Father and son traded looks, equal parts vicious and grim.

"Does this cousin of mine have a name?"

In his study now, with his father seeing to Fernando who had withdrawn in the wake of his daughter's terror, and Idir resolutely by his side, the youngest de Clermont contemplated his next move.

Winter was here. The snow was high and fierce, but he knew it wouldn't deter this cousin of his. He knew that that this hunt of Benjamin's had only just begun.

This was personal. This was vengeance.

But it was blind.

Eric was confident that his cousin's judgement was clouded by a world of red.

He himself was clearheaded and clear sighted. The ground was his to command. It always would be. And Benjamin, the young pretender, would rue the day he'd knocked Eric's mate from her place on his own solid ground.

It was an unforgivable act.

One that begged to be corrected.

---

Eric entered the quiet corridor that separated Fernanda's chambers from the rest of the house, allowing himself to let out a long, tired sigh.

The last few days had been a disaster and neither Gonçalves had emerged from the corners they'd found in the wake of their hasty retreat. Father and daughter had sequestered themselves off on opposite sides of the house, and neither seemed keen on being the first to recover from the blows that had been dealt in the wake of Fernanda's discovery.

He took one look at his mate's tray of untouched food and shook his head, walking over and scooting the offending object off to the side. He slumped down in its place, sitting on the floor with his back against the wall.

"I'm back again today," he said and paused.

He heard her heart jolt. Heard her hands rub against the fabric of her dress. And the nervous shuffle of her body as she tried to determine what was best for her to do.

"If you do not wish to speak to me still, you need only knock twice on the wall and I will leave you alone," he said and once again paused, listening for a knock that didn't come.

He smiled a grim smile and nodded.

The first day he had received two timid taps of her fist on the wall by her bed. And so, he had informed her that he would take his leave. He bade her a quiet good day and did as she'd requested.

The next day he'd come upstairs to find her food untouched. A maid met him there, shifting nervously from side to side outside her door.

"She won't allow me to enter, milord," the maid said. "And she refuses to eat."

He had waved her off politely and assured her he would do what he could.

"I've come to check on you again," he said through the door. "I hope you don't mind. Before we carry on, I want you to know that the maids that come to your door are human. They are no threat to you, Fernanda. And they leave food here, just outside your door."

Silence.

He cleared his throat awkwardly and raked a hand through his hair, suddenly overcome by the urge to fidget with something.

"No one will bother you if you wish to eat," he said. "No one will bother you at all. I give you my word."

A small hitch in her breath and his nose burned with the salt of her tears. His lips pressed together in a thin line. He had to look away from the door that stood between them, calling on that stillness his father had instilled in him when the world became a deafening roar.

"If you'd like me to go, you may say so, love," he said. "Or knock twice on the wall."

Two taps on the wall by her bed.

He looked down to collect himself and turned away. At her request, once again, Eric left.

On the third day, she did not send him away. He dropped down, tired, in the corridor. With his back to the wall, he told her the truth before he could muster up the courage to ask if she wanted him to leave.

"You know, the first time I saw you I—"

Well, he thought she was dead, but Eric had a feeling that wasn't what she needed to hear from him right now. He skipped over it quickly.

"You were in a patch of the mud on the ground, face down," he chuckled. "Now, I didn't know what in the hell you were doing, but all I could think about was helping you back up again."

He paused in remembrance of the panicked little spitfire that had scrambled away from him like a wounded hellcat.

"But you—" he started. "Well, I knew I cut a fearsome figure even then and you weren't having it. I could tell you were afeared. I didn't want to startle you, but lass," another chuckle. "You were blocking the road."

He couldn't help the grin that spread across his face at the memory of her. He leaned more comfortably back against the wall.

"I can't say I blame you, mind," he supplied, almost as an afterthought.

"Malvina—" he paused. "Do you mind if I call you Malvina? I like the name Fernanda, don't get me wrong. You wear it well, but I think you'll always be Malvina to me, even after all this time."

He waited but got no response.

"I just wanted to know that you fared well," he said. "I'll admit, I thought you beautiful and strange and—well even at times I was inclined to think you a creature from another world. A faerie or a muse or... Christ, I don't know. I would go about my days, trying my best to mind my own business and then you would flit across my mind, and I would be driven to distraction wondering. Wondering who you were and how you'd come to be in Arregathel. If you had family. If you had all that you needed."

There was a shuffle from the other side of the door, and he paused, waiting for her to settle. He didn't bother hoping she'd open the door today. It hadn't worked any other day so far.

"And then Ailios brought you to Castle Sween," he said. "I was so shocked to see you there, my heart near leapt from my body at the sight of you. It was like watching her pitch you to the wolves and I—I was at a loss for what to do. Even then, I didn't know if I had the right to care for you. To fear for you the way I did but I couldn't seem to stop my mind from worrying—"

He brought a hand up to rub at his eyes and down his tired face.

"Anyway," he said. "If you'd like me to go, you know what to do."

He stood up —was halfway to the stairs when he realized the telltale knock hadn't come. Eric froze. Turned back toward the door; eyes boring into the wood there. Willing it to open. Willing it to reveal the person he most wanted to see in all the world. The one person who always seemed to find a way to go just beyond his reach every time. The one person in the world who was beyond him in every way.

She hadn't knocked.

She hadn't asked him to leave.

Slowly, disbelievingly, he made his way back to the spot he'd claimed on the floor. Leaned up against the wall once more, he settled in and began to tell her his side of their tale.

"Right," he said returning to himself and the place he'd occupied outside her chambers every evening for the last handful of days.

"Where did we leave off?" he asked just loud enough for her to hear, turning his ear slightly to catch the rustle of fabric being pulled from her bed.

He grimaced.

So, she was still on the floor then. And she was cold too.

He wondered if she'd lit a fire in the hearth at all. There had to have been some wood remaining. It had snowed fiercely for the last four days, and Fernanda had cloistered herself away so quickly no one could prepare her chambers properly for the arrival of winter when it came.

He gently pressed his hand to the ground, near the opening beneath her door, closing his eyes in grief when he felt the cold from her chambers seep through the crack and ice its way over his skin.

There was no way she wasn't freezing.

Part of him wanted to damn this charade. It was an exercise in futility. Wanted to rip through her door and warm her chambers himself. Wrap her up in quilts and throw her into bed and be done with it already.

But if he didn't earn her trust today, he'd never rid himself of her fear. It didn't matter how much the tether right at the very heart of him lurched and tugged in agony to know of her suffering. And it didn't matter that he'd done nothing these past few nights but desperately try to keep the beast inside of him at bay. It didn't matter how his muscles were always tensed for some battle that had yet to come, or the way his ears were always poised to hear her call for him should she have need.

She didn't feel safe with him.

His mate did not feel safe with him.

And so, there was nothing he could do to help her. If she didn't permit it, anything he did in the name of her wellbeing would be perceived only as a threat. And it stung. Like someone had driven a hot blade straight into his gut and twisted, it stung.

Alone in the corridor, outside the chambers of the woman he'd always been meant to love, he allowed himself a moment to crack. Just slightly. He brought a hand up to rub at the place in his chest where she had left a lasting wound. The place where the fear in her eyes and the desperation in her words had dealt the final blow.

"You're not him," she said. "You're not mySorley."

Eric flinched from the memory, rubbing at the ache in his chest a little more fiercely.

"Please," she begged, turning back to him. "Please don't hurt me."

"I couldn't—"

"Don't lie—"

"I swear it—" his voice had cracked.

"I want out—"

He hissed like he'd suffered a physical blow. Closed his eyes and willed the memories to stop. To leave him in peace, but they held tightly to him and wouldn't let him go.

If Eric and Fernanda never survived this moment, he would wander the world for the rest of his days as a ghost. A half man with no way out but through. With no escape from one long hellish eternity and a love lost before its time had come.

He closed his eyes and pressed his head tightly to the stone wall. He became still in his grief. Preternaturally so. But he kept one hand pressed down on the floor. Kept it there where he could feel the remnants of the chill that had washed over his mate and left her frozen. The chill that had claimed her in a place he could not go. At least like this, he could suffer that small pain with her in the only way he could.

After a long moment of stillness. A long moment where he was more statue than man. Ears and eyes registering the smallest of sounds and movements. The barest of shifts in the world around him. The crack of the icicles where they hung from the eaves of this ancient manor home. The crunch of snow as the servants went about their days. The shift and hitch of Fernanda's person as she shuffled around and settled under her blankets, struck still on the cold stone floor. He stayed there, watching and waiting and breathing until the beast inside of him had quieted. He calmed himself in the face of his grief, but still felt the crack of something vital inside of him when her teeth began to chatter. From the cold or the fear, he knew not which.

"The wedding."

The tether in his chest gave a wild tug. It took but a second to come back to himself from the state he was in. His eyes snapped open, and he stared down the corridor in disbelief. Had he imagined it? Had he imagined her voice, or had she truly spoken?

She cleared her throat and coughed as her body once more gave way to a bout of shivers. His heart lurched and then fell.

She'd fallen ill.

He opened his mouth to beg her to let him in but kept silent. Spread his fingers out on the cold stone ground beneath him and pressed his palm firmly into the cold to keep himself from pushing her too far.

He cleared his throat.

"Thank you," he said, and he wondered if she could hear how much he meant those words, inadequate as they were. They could never express to her all he felt.

What he would give to find the words to tell her how much it meant to him to hear even her voice. For the smallest of moments — the smallest of things — had such a profound effect on him. He could live and breathe happily knowing she was somewhere out there gracing the world with a voice she so rarely used in her past life. He could live and breathe happily knowing that she had graced him with such a sound. With her voice and her words, and hopefully someday again with the absence of her fear as well.

"As I mentioned before," he started. "Lindon had planned for years, our escape from Suibhne's territories. I had made a reputation for myself as someone who stuck his nose in the business of others. And Lindon swore up and down that it was bound to get us into trouble sooner or later—"

A quiet laugh from behind the door, and he felt momentarily renewed.

"And with our situation being what it was—" he laughed. "Well, mo chridhe, we were on borrowed time you and me. I was so worried — so worried that you hadn't known what you'd agreed to. Worried that it would suddenly dawn on you that I wasn't the kind of man you wanted in a husband or— well I don't know. And then I heard you stumbling through the underbrush in the dark, clinging desperately to Lindon's side as he guided you through the trees. You looked like a fae creature even then, even when you couldn't keep your feet beneath you. You'd always felt to me like you were not entirely of this world, and that night only confirmed it. But you were... You looked so tired. Like you had been to hell and back in the time we'd been parted. You needed rest. I wanted to call it off until the morning. Wanted to send you home to bed. God knows you needed it. But we had not the time— we never had the time—"

Eric couldn't help the way his voice cracked at the admission, at the thing that had been stolen from him. From them. Time had not been on their side back then.

"Gods," he said. "How I just wanted to make it better. I wanted to hold you. I wanted to— I don't know"

He stopped and shook himself. He wasn't telling it right.

"You were," he started. "Christ lass, I don't even know how to describe you. I had this feeling in my chest. Tight and nervous. I couldn't breathe. You had sucked all the air from my lungs and I— I felt strung up on some invisible string just waiting for you to meet me on the other side of the flames. Just waiting for you to take my hand."

He looked down at his palms, tingling with the distant memory of her touch. He laughed quietly to himself.

"I could still tell you every vow. Even now after fifty years apart. I thought for a time that I had forgotten. Losing you—" his voice hitched. "Losing you cast me into a void. I didn't know what happened. I woke up in the morning, prepared for battle. And found, when we rode out, that Ailios's hut was gone. I couldn't register what my eyes had seen. A pile of ash where a home once stood. Your face, it wasn't among the crowd and— and I—" He shook, cleared his throat, curled his ice-cold hand into a fist at the memory.

Inside her chambers, Fernanda had fallen still.

"Mo chridhe," he said after a long stretch of silence. "I can never apologize enough for how I failed you that night. I should never have left you to such a fate. It has haunted me every day for the last fifty years. Even when I tried to forget, I know now that I carried you with me always."

A sniff from the other side of the door. He opened his mouth to speak again but closed it just as quickly when he tasted the salt of her tears on the air.

He tried to find the words. Tried to find something to say to fill the space between them after his confessional. But he knew not what kind of words could achieve such an impossible thing.

He didn't notice at first, so lost in his thoughts, that the earth had shifted ever so slightly in their wake. Didn't hear at first the fall of heavy, quilted fabric. The shuffle of nervous feet across a cold stone floor.

He heard the hitch in her breath though. And his ears were quick to tune back in to her rapid pulse and her timid steps.

The latch turned and he listened in quiet disbelief.

When the door opened, he was afraid to turn her way. Afraid to look upon his mate and see her dreaded fear. But another sniffle and cough, and Eric felt his concern overpower his dread.

He shifted, slowly so she could see his every move, and brought his eyes up to look upon her.

She hadn't changed. In the last four days, she'd not changed from that same blood-stained gown she'd worn the evening she fled.

Her nose was red and running. Her eyes had shadows beneath them, dark like bruises. Her cheekbones were still too prominent in the wake of her poor eating habits. She'd spent so much time these last couple of weeks hiding away in her room. First from the fright of finding a dead body in the garden maze. From the fear of being hunted, though he was sure she had no idea how close she had been to danger that day. And then from the trauma of her discovery just four days prior.

La Ithuriana had taken her toll on the tired young Fernanda.

His heart ached for her.

Fernanda's hands nervously twisted about each other, clasped tightly in front of her person as she regarded him from the door. Her eyes were just as molten as the first time he'd met her. Just as doe like and weary. And he felt himself falling a little further, in both grief and love, at the sight of her standing there before him, even still after all she'd been through.

He opened his mouth to say something. Anything. But suddenly nervous, he knew not what to say. She looked as though she too wanted to speak but he could smell the fear rolling off her in waves. She seemed quite frozen even after coming all this way.

"Mo chridhe," he said.

The silence and cold had stretched too long between them, and the words broke up the ice as best that they could. He felt them sitting in the air between them. Felt them in his bones. My heart. His heart. It had been his name for her so many years ago. In life and in death, and it had followed them into this life that came after all of that too. She had been his heart then. She was his heart now.

Mo chridhe. He'd said it like a whispered prayer. And he didn't know if he was saying it to love her or beg her mercy. Didn't know if it was meant to comfort her or to ask her for peace. But he'd said it all the same, and it was there for her now to do with what she wanted. He was startled to realize that here, ducked low before her, with his back to the wall and an ache deep in his chest, that he felt fear. Fear that she had so much power over him. Fear that she could turn him away. That she could do away with him with only a look, with a word. That she could take those things he loved most about her, her eyes and her voice, and use them as weapons against him now. And he felt resignation around that fear too because by Christ he would let her. He would let her do away with him all the same.

She looked down at him. Tired and afeared, wan and fragile. And she'd never once appeared more brave or strong or becoming. A strong wind could knock her to the ground, but still she stood before him. One with her fear, she looked upon him with more trust and caring than he'd felt he'd ever deserve from the likes of her.

She pursed her lips, and he registered the metal scent of blood on the air as her teeth bit down hard on the skin of her cheek. He watched her throat work around some barely contained emotion. Watched her swallow a few times to quell her nerves. When she opened her mouth to speak, he thought for certain she'd choke on her fear, so strong was the stench of it as it permeated the air of the corridor.

But she managed, somehow. One small broken word. Quiet and raspy, her voice was fatigued from disuse and terror. But she managed as she always seemed to once again to send him spinning.

"Gallowglass," she croaked.

And then, Fernanda retreated.

Fast and nervous she pulled back into her chambers and made her way to the far side of her bed. Between the mattress and the bedside table, she hit the wall with her back and slid all the way down to the floor.

But she'd left the door open. So, he stood.

He lingered in the doorway. Unsure if he was welcome in. He couldn't see her from this angle, but he could hear her breath coming shallow with fear and her heart pounding loud even to his ears.

He cleared his throat.

"May I come in?" He asked.

Silence. Shallow breathing. The rapid pulse of her fear. Her room was thick with it, and cold. As cold as the snow that piled high on the ground outside. It was a miracle she hadn't yet turned blue.

He felt his gut churn with anxiety over the state of her health.

When she said nothing, he tried again.

"How about," he said, cautious. "Will you allow me to at least light a fire in the hearth, mo chridhe? It's too cold in here. It's making you ill."

Another shuddering breath and the salt of her tears.

"I'll need you to tell me, love, if I can come inside." He said this slowly so as to not intimidate her in his haste. "This is your space, Fernanda. No one will intrude upon you here. Not even me. Not without your leave."

Another long pause and one small whispered, "okay."

He nodded resolutely, reached down to her tray to snatch up a bit of bread and a bowl of still steaming broth. Eric strode into the room before she could change her mind.

He went to her table, slow and cautious, not wanting to break the fragile accord they'd reached only moments before. She near jumped out of her skin when he entered her line of sight, but he did his best to keep himself small as he held up the bowl and the bread for her to see.

Liquid metal eyes watched him, wide and owl like from their place curled up on the floor. He placed the items on the table before holding up his hands and retreating back to the hearth. He lit the fire quickly. Desperate to do something — anything — that would make her well again. To beat back the chill that had invaded the last safe place she thought she had in his manor home.

Once he had finished the tasks that he'd set out to do, Eric risked one last glance at her. She hadn't moved from where she was cloistered away but he was relieved to note that her shoulders had lost some of their tension and her hands were hanging loose in her lap rather than clenched into anxious fists in the hems of her skirts.

He lowered his eyes. Not wanting her to feel threatened by his gaze should he linger too long.

"I'll leave you now, mo chridhe," he said, his voice soft. And when he got to the door. "Please sleep in the comfort of your bed tonight. The floor is too cold and too hard. No one will bother you here once I close this door behind me. You have my word."

She didn't respond. He stepped back out and closed the door anyway.

Then to the closed door, "I'll be back tomorrow. Sleep well, Fernanda."

---

Progress. He had made progress with Fernanda. Four days and now she had allowed him to enter her rooms. Had permitted him to light a fire in the hearth, and to bring her food. He knew not what tomorrow would bring, but today was a good day.

He couldn't help the smile that stretched across his face as he made his way re-energized to the other side of the manor house where Hugh and Fernando remained cloistered.

He bypassed their chambers where he knew they remained, and instead made his way to Fernando's study. Jean Luc had taken up residence at Fernando's desk by the other man's leave. All remnants of the blood spilled in Fernanda's terror was gone. The ruined maps had been either repaired or replaced respectively.

The room looked as it had always been. Cozy and contemplative, a place worthy of a steward such as his stepfather. And Eric felt himself relax a bit as he entered the room, even despite the horror it had presented to his mate four days ago. Even in spite of the memory it still held for her and her father.

Hugh's squire, a tall blonde man with a neatly trimmed beard, was as kind as he was efficient. And in his father's absence, Jean Luc and Eric had split the duties that it took to manage and maintain an estate such as this, as well as the affairs of the world as they were passed on to Hugh. Jean Luc was buried in a handful of royal missives and requests, as well as one very large scroll graced with a papal seal, and a handful of coded messages from a series of Knights of Lazarus that were stuck on this side of the Pyrenees until Spring. Hugh may have been an exile, but no one in the world doubted that he was the heir of Philippe. Hugh himself has never contested such a thing, and so in the absence of Philippe this side of the world deferred to Hugh.

And now, in the absence of Hugh—

Jean Luc noted his arrival and stood, stepping away from the work in front of him and offering a small, but deferential bow. Eric waved him off with a wry look that had the older man breaking his usual composure to give him a smile of his own.

"Tell me," Eric said, gesturing to the pile on the desk in front of him as he took the seat Jean Luc had offered.

And tell him, Jean Luc did, taking the time to apprise him of every intricate detail that the notices and missives held, updating him on financial matters he'd been ignorant to during his time up the mountain working for the Knights of Lazarus, as well as complaints and requests from servants, villagers and tradespeople alike. Between the two of them, they concluded how best to operate the estate in Hugh's stead, acting in his capacity and falling quickly into the role they'd been trained in. Deftly, though sometimes a bit a more slowly than usual, they did their best to balance the scales of the western world, until such time that its proper steward returned to the table.

"My lord de Clermont," a footman said, knocking on the door of Fernando's study and pushing in. "The young boy from the village is here to call upon you — the farmer's son. He claims it is a matter to do with his father's death."

Eric nodded when looked up from the steady flow of paperwork he and Jean Luc had cut through, feeling considerably grimmer than he had moments before.

The boy in question was not yet ten. The eldest of three, with a mother who was now a widow, he had taken on a great amount of his father's responsibilities in the wake of the man's murder.

He stood.

"Show him to the drawing room, I'll be there momentarily."

"Sir," the footman bowed and retreated.

Eric turned to Jean Luc.

"Find Idir."

Jean Luc nodded his head and retreated after the footman in search of the other man.

Eric took a moment to collect his thoughts before making his way out of Fernando's office, taking care to close the door quietly behind him, and making his way down the corridor to the grand staircase. On his way down he paused by the nearest maid and requested that she bring refreshments to the drawing room for his young guest.

She curtsied and scurried quickly back the way she came.

In the doorway, Eric saw the lean figure of the boy who stood anxiously in the middle of the room, too uncomfortable to sit down in such a lavish place and yet desperate to rest his weary legs.

The young de Clermont walked, with a warm if solemn greeting.

"Master Peiro," he said and pretended not to notice when the child jumped out of his skin at his appearance. "Welcome to my home. I trust your journey from the village went unhindered?"

"Milord," the boy said, his voice more serious than it had been weeks before when his father was still alive.

Eric studied the child and saw the low set of his solemn eyes, the rigidness of his back, and the way he tried desperately to keep from fidgeting in place in the presence of other men. He was too young, but the world was harsh and there was little Eric could do to prevent the child from taking on his family duties.

"The journey was quick, sir, though the snow grows higher still. I fear by the time I leave here it will be up to my throat."

He said this last part nervously but offered a small laugh as though he was unsure if he was supposed to joke about such things in the presence of important men.

Eric offered him a small, understanding smile and gestured to the sofa behind him.

"Please," he said. "Sit."

The young Peiro looked behind him at the sofa, startled and uncertain. Eric took up his place in his father's usual seat, lounging casually and doing his best to show that the boy need not fear repercussion from him. Not at a time such as this, when he had done nothing wrong.

Peiro swallowed before cautiously making his way over to the fine piece of furniture. Reaching up absentmindedly to snatch the cap he wore off his head, and glance guilty back at the de Clermont across from him. With something now to clutch in his anxious hands, he found the courage to sit down.

The maid entered then. She brought with her warmed leftover bread with butter and honey, and a stash of dried apricots, as well as a modest cup of mulled wine to warm the child after his long journey through the snow.

Once his guest had been served and the maids had left them once again, Eric leaned forward while the boy tucked into his refreshments.

"Now," he said. "I've been told you have news of your father. Perhaps information regarding the circumstances of his death?"

The boy swallowed hard around a piece of bread and looked up at him earnestly.

"Aye, milord," he said. "I do."

He set down his plate of food on the table beside the sofa and reached into his pocket, fishing around a bit before finally withdrawing and presenting a chain with a pendant on the end.

Eric reached out and accepted the item as it was offered to him. The boy's heart had kicked up a bit as he released the chain into Eric's care. The de Clermont looked down at his guest with curious eyes.

"Did this mean a great deal to your father?"

Swallowing, the boy's eyes shifted to the windows. He shook his head.

"No," he said. "Not at all, milord."

Eric didn't say anything, merely quirked his head and waited.

"It was meant for you—"

"For me?" Eric asked before drawing the chain up once more to study it.

It was a ruddy, silver thing, with a pendant on the end, not much larger than a pilgrim's badge. He looked more closely at the figure carved there. Where there was usually a rudimentary cross on the flat end of the badge, this design was far more intricate. And far more telling.

"Yes, sir," the boy cleared his throat.

The design was of a man. A man rising from his coffin and stepping away.

Lazarus.

Eric looked up at the boy with sharp, disbelieving eyes.

"A man came to my home, milord," Peiro said, and he could not hide how his voice wavered. "He told me to deliver this to you."

It took every ounce of control he had in his person to keep from snarling in front of the boy. His eyes shuddered at the news of this most recent turn of events, and he turned his gaze away from the child to study the pendant more closely.

It was a badge similar to those possessed by his brother knights of Lazarus, but this one differed for one significant detail. Lazarus, as he stepped from his coffin, had an ouroboros wrapped around his throat. Strangling him.

Lazarus was dying.

He clenched the badge tightly in an unforgiving fist and turned back to the child.

"Did he say anything else?" His voice was the cold edge of a frozen blade and the boy blanched under the sting of it.

"N-No, milord. He said to deliver this to you and— and he," the boy's voice cracked and his eyes leaked bitter tears.

The room was flooded with the stench of shame as the boy trembled and tried to collect himself, tried to recover his dignity and respect for his family name in the wake of this tragedy.

"He's taken my sister, milord. The littlest one. I could not stop him, sir. I— I tried."

The only sound in the drawing room was the crackle of the fire, and the sound of the boy's labored breathing as he desperately tried to recover himself and hide his grief. Eric de Clermont had fallen still; his teeth clenched tight in an effort not to growl and scare the child.

His cousin was goading him even now. He would continue to do so, and it was all Eric could do to keep his head and not react. He only held the board if he refused to be provoked.

It was his move. It would continue to be his move. This was only Benjamin trying to gain more ground.

Eric knew this of course, and he had learned his father's lessons well enough to remain relatively unmoved by his cousin's brutality, but that didn't mean he was unaffected by the thick, heavy coat of shame that flooded the air around him.

The boy's shame was quickly becoming his own.

If he could not protect the child and his family, then Eric did not feel he deserved his name and title. If he could not do this thing, then what was it all for? What was this power he held if it did not protect those who were in his charge?

Benjamin had nothing to lose.

Eric had everything to lose.

And they were fighting their battles accordingly.

But this boy— this boy and his family, and his little sister who was now in the hands of her father's killer. She was in the hands of his family's own greatest shame. A crack that had become a chasm. Philippe had warned him of such things, and now one had been revealed before him and lain at his feet. His face fought to twist into a savage sneer, but he held it back, instead adopting the most compassionate expression he could muster.

"There are no words to express the grief I feel at this news, young man," he said and kept his voice as gentle as he could.

Peiro sniffed and looked up at him with swollen red eyes, and a nose that always seemed to have a smudge of dirt on it. He twisted his cap in his hands nervously as he looked up at the de Clermont, desperate for the young lord to make it all better somehow.

Eric reached over to his side table and rang the bell that sat there, calling the footman back to open the door. The boy shot up from the sofa, blushing and bowing, and trying to find the words to speak, but Eric cut him off before he could begin.

"I will accompany you to your home," he said, and the boy looked up at him as wide eyed and hopeful as he was tired and confused. "My men and I would like to see the place where this crime happened ourselves, if you think that would be acceptable?"

He asked this, though it was not a request, deferring to the child in a hope to bolster his ego once again. The boy nodded solemnly.

"Of course, milord. We would be most grateful. My mother—" he winced. "My mother would most appreciate this gesture of kindness."

Eric nodded at him and brought a steadying hand down to rest on his shoulder as he led him from the drawing room. Back in the entrance hall, Jean Luc and Idir were waited for them. Peiro cowered a bit in the presence of these giant men.

"We ride for the village at once," Eric said, his voice stern. "A child has been taken."

He tossed the chain with the blasphemous pilgrim's badge to Jean Luc and shot him a grave look. "See to it that reaches my father's hands immediately."

Jean Luc bowed and made for Hugh and Fernando's chambers.

Then, Eric turned to Idir and nodded for him to lead the way to the stables.

"Do you know how to ride, Master Peiro?"

"Not well, milord." The boy said and sent off another staggering wave of shame.

"Not to worry," Eric patted him on the back as they left the warmth of La Ithuriana and ventured out into the cold. "You can ride with one of us then."

"You are too kind, sir," the boy stuttered but Eric shook his head and silenced him with a look.

"It's the least that I can do," he said. "Now, come. Let us make haste."

---

Darkness fell on La Ithuriana by the time Eric and Idir had returned. They'd picked up Benjamin's scent of course. Done what they could to console the family. And collected as much evidence and information they could muster but refused to react all the same. Refused to be provoked by the killer's escalated baiting.

They entered the drawing room and accepted the goblets of blood Jean Luc had passed them when they came through the door.

Hugh's manservant quietly murmured to Eric an update on the comings and goings of La Ithuriana while he had been away in the village. Eric thanked him, urging both of the men to take their seats as they discussed the latest news.

After a time of quiet counsel amongst the family's most trusted men, Eric's thoughts returned to his mate.

"Jacqueline," he called, neither too quiet nor too loud,

The maid appeared in the doorway no sooner than he had finished his call. Her eyes were keen, and her face was bright despite the solemn set of her features.

She stepped a few paces into the room and adeptly averted her eyes, glancing up at the group from beneath thick lashes and dipping into a practiced curtsy.

"My lord," she said.

"What news of Fernanda?"

"She is much the same as this morning, my lord," she said. "She has not emerged since you left her. She has not spoken, and I fear she has developed a cough in her time alone."

Eric nodded, he quite agreed with the maid.

"Thank you," he said. "Please let me know if you notice any change."

"I will, sir," she said and left with another curtsy in their direction.

The door closed softly behind her, but her departure was interrupted by a shout from the courtyard, the scrambling of footmen and the cry of horses as they thundered toward his home.

Eric shot from his seat and made for the door. Idir quick on his heels. Jean Luc, just a step behind them.

They made haste into the entrance hall where Jacqueline and a pair of maids had frozen at the commotion coming from the other side of La Ithuriana's great oaken doors. He brushed past them, waving a hand for Jean Luc to corral the women and draw them further from the entrance and whatever waited for them beyond.

The man did as his young lord silently commanded, and Eric did not look back to see that the maids did as he had instructed them to do.

Idir's hand was on a blade he kept always strapped to his hip. Eric's mind filtered to his own blades, tucked away on his person and the claymore he kept stored away in his chambers. He knew they had a small armory in one of the rooms in the corridor that led to Fernanda's chambers. He could get his hands on an axe before their visitors even blinked.

The footmen inside the doors watched him anxiously, despite the way they kept their faces carefully blank.

A guard outside on the step called out in warning, but Eric did not wait for a response.

He nodded to the footmen who quickly hefted open the great oak doors, letting in the first blast of hard winter chill. The entrance hall flooded with the wail of the high pitched mountain wind. Despite the brutality of this winter night, he pushed through the cold. As though it barely fazed him, he emerged on the top step of his ancient manor home. His shoulders were drawn back and rigid, his hands loose at his sides but ready for any threat, and his eyes were sharp and leonine as he took in the bleak landscape.

Three figures emerged from the fog and the falling snow, approaching him quickly. They were ducked beneath heavy woolen cloaks, and he could not see their faces.

They moved at an inhuman pace, and he knew his kind when he saw them. Manjasang. Two men. One woman. He turned his face to catch their scent on the wind as it whipped past him and flooded the warmth of his familial home.

Balder.

His brother knight.

He pulled himself straighter, surprised. The man was meant to be in the pass with the monks until the following spring. He held up a quelling hand for Idir who was poised still for battle. He glanced back at the older man and shook his head.

The other scent was Guillaume. The third of their party who had bunkered down on the French side of the Pyrenees until the snow melted so as to ward travelers off the perils of the pass.

What were they doing here?

He stepped forward.

Held out his arm when they reached him and Balder clasped it with a steady hand.

"Has something happened?" he asked, nodding to Guillaume and the mysterious woman before urging them quickly inside.

But neither of the men answered him.

He drew them into his home and the footmen closed the doors with force against the violent winter wind. In the entry, warm and safe from the elements, silence rung loud and shrill among them. Balder kicked his boots against the wall, clearing them of compacted ice and snow. Guillaume, simply drew his hood back and let it fall, exposing his delicately featured face and his long, unkempt hair. He was as serene as he'd always been as he studied the interior of the Eric's less than humble abode.

The woman they escorted drew her hood back as well. Held out a hand for Balder to remove her gloves and did not seem to notice the knight's glower in her direction when she did.

She was old. Perhaps of middling age when she was turned into a manjasang, and he could tell by the sharpness in her eyes and the pursed set of her lips that she was of a more traditional make and matter. He looked on his new visitor and saw in her the same viciousness and propriety that he saw in Verin. An air of old money, entitlement, and a staunch regard for proper rules and decorum.

She had eyes only for Eric.

"My lord de Clermont," she said and curtsied low. "I apologize for my delay; I came as soon as I received your father's missive. I am Bourgine de Prudhomme, former lady's maid to the Lady Louisa de Clermont, and practiced tutor in the art of comportment."

Eric held out a hand to greet her but found himself at a loss for what to do when the staunch old lady's maid stayed ducked down to the ground for a ghastly amount of time.

"Thank you for coming," he said when she finally rose. "My father will be most pleased to see you. How were your travels? The pass can be unforgiving this time of year."

"Nonsense," she claimed and looked up at him fiercely. "When the de Clermont calls, one must always answer. We are made of sturdier stuff than the warmbloods. The pass was nothing but a nuisance to the likes of our kind."

Eric nodded politely, catching Balder's arched eyebrow. Following the other man's glance in Guillaume's direction. The other knight for his part had the same serene expression he always seemed to have on his face, as though he was unfazed by the weather, the presence of the intense old lady's maid, and just about anything else that came his way.

Absently, Eric noted that he still had ice crystals hanging in his beard.

Not wishing to linger further on the matter at hand, he turned away.

"I'm sure Jacqueline can show you to your chambers," he said and gestured for the manjasang maid who stood politely off the side.

She was accompanied by two other maids who were grumbling quietly to each other about the ice Balder had knocked from his boots onto the once clean floor. Jacqueline sent a sharp look to the two human girls, reminding them to hold their tongues while they were within earshot and in the presence of a de Clermont.

Then she stepped forward with a practiced ease, gave a small curtsy and a reserved smile.

"If you'll follow me, Miss Prudhomme" she said and kept her eyes cast down as she did so.

The lady's maid in question, appraised the younger vampire girl with a stern eye before pressing her lips together and nodding. She turned back to Eric, offered another deep curtsy that lasted too long, and then instructed Jacqueline to show her the way.

Once they had retreated far enough down the hall, Eric gestured for his brother knights to follow him to the drawing room so the maids could get to work cleaning the mess their new visitors had made in the entry.

Guillaume watched the women go with a long look and a soft hum of appreciation.

"La belle Jacqueline," he murmured and shook his head in wonder.

He looked back at the other two men and was met with a dry look from Balder, and a faint glimmer of amusement from Eric. Guillaume only grinned back at them and gestured for the young de Clermont to lead the way.

---

When the dust had settled and Eric was assured that the new additions to their winter household had been properly attended to, the sun was high in the sky and waiting for him to properly begin his day.

He stood now, outside his mate's chambers as he had done for the last five days.

He picked up the murmured voices of Fernando and Hugh, across the house, and quickly tuned them out. They were entitled to a private conversation no matter how hard such a thing was to truly come by in households such as these. He could hear Balder sharpening his blades in his chambers, and Guillaume silently chanting to himself as he meditated on a crucifix in the servants' quarters. He could hear the maids downstairs giggling amongst themselves as he did.

Eric huffed and rolled his eyes at the oddness of his fellow man and the female attention it drew him, but quickly turned his attentions back to the matter at hand.

"I'm back again today, mo chridhe," he said and ambled lazily over to the place on the ground he had occupied every day since she'd locked herself in.

He heard the creak of a mattress, the rustle of fabric, and felt something in him lighten a bit at the sound. She was in her bed. Eric allowed himself a small smile.

He opened his mouth to continue telling her about his perspective on their lives as Sorley and Malvina, and perhaps some tales from his time as a wandering vampire youth as well. Idir had confided in him her love for his stories, and Eric had those in spades. He remembered a particularly funny one and made to tell her when he heard the thump of her feet on the cold stone floor, and the soft pad of her steps as she made her way to the door.

She paused there. And he could sense the soft pressure of her forehead as she pressed her face against the surface that sat between them.

Then after a few shaky breaths and nervous turning of the latch, Fernanda opened the door.

He stood automatically, feeling suddenly caught and exposed by her.

She'd opened her door.

She'd opened her door and he knew not what to say or what to think. He knew not what to do.

She was in the same dress that she'd worn for the last five days. The blood stains were a dark brown now and they carried with them a lingering aroma. Sour and spoiled. Her eyes were just as uncertain as they were bronze, and Eric thought to himself not for the first time in his long life that he loved her.

She cleared her throat, wrung her hands in anxious thought, and then retreated once again into the depths of her chambers.

Eric stayed there, suspended in the doorway, about to ask her for permission to enter as he had done the day before, but she stole away any lingering doubt. Interrupting the war that was waging inside of him with one quiet, "come in." His ears rung with the sound of it, resounding in the silence of the dark corridor, and then he crossed the threshold and did as she so gently commanded.

---

He hadn't stayed long on the fifth day. Rather quickly he'd been called away to see to the matter of Benjamin and the dead farmer. He hadn't known how to interpret the look in her eyes when he told her he had to leave so soon after arriving, but he did his best to convey his regret as he turned to go. Jean Luc had been apologetic, but it had been necessary, and Eric had waved his apologies away. He'd been raised to tolerate inconvenience. This was, for better or worse, the nature of his role.

The next day — the sixth day — Fernanda had called for him to enter without rising from her bed. It had been a quiet, timid request but he had obeyed, nonetheless. Pulling open her door and peeking cautiously in, Eric couldn't help but melt a bit at the sleepy eyes that peered back at him from beneath a thick pile of coverings.

"Do you mind if I have some firewood brought up for you?" He asked her and rejoiced a bit when she shook her head.

"I don't mind," she'd croaked and then coughed miserably into her pillow.

He nodded and turned just in time to see a maid appear in the corridor, a young manjasang who eyed him nervously, and deposited both a basket of the requested wood and a tray of broth and tea. He had forbidden the presence of other vampires in Fernanda's corridor, and the maid's arrival there was against his express command. He supposed she thought she'd be in trouble, but he only nodded at her in silent forgiveness. Fernanda's needs being met were far more important to him right now. Her risk had been necessary. Her eyes relaxed around the edges at his acknowledgement and quietly she melted away from the corridor as though she'd never been there at all. He retrieved the items rather quickly from the floor, and closed the door behind him, turning back to his mate and her freezing chambers.

He could feel her eyes on him, wide and owl like, taking everything in. Every move he made. Every twitch of every muscle. He could feel her gaze tracing him over and over as though she was trying to measure him up, and suddenly Eric was reminded of another time, long ago, when he'd been subjected to her gaze. Another time when he had stood beneath the weight of her measure and relished in the feel of it, allowing her to drink her fill. She'd been stumbling across the ice to retrieve water from a well, and he'd been just inside the open stables tending to his steed.

She had eyed him nervously and suspiciously back then, but there had been a warmth to her as well. An intrigue. Malvina, the muse, indeed. He shook his head and tossed a log into the fire, watching with satisfaction as the hearth lit up bright and crackling.

It cast the room in a warm, golden hue.

"Is there tea?" she asked him, and he felt something inside him soften and become more malleable than he had ever known he could feel.

"Oh aye," he said and sent her a gentle smile. "Would you like me to bring it over to you?"

She kept silent for a time, watching him as he set about righting things in her room, occasionally poking at the fire and giving her the space to decide what she wanted him to do.

"Could you bring the whole tray please?"

"Of course, mo chridhe."

Now, on the seventh day, he had not been able to call upon her until evening fell. She'd left the door unlocked for him, and at her word he pushed in.

They were sitting side by side on the cold stone floor. He had protested. She had insisted.

Naturally, with only her timid adamance, she had won their battle of wills rather quickly.

They had tried their hand at small talk for a time, but Fernanda still jolted and stuttered far too much in his presence for him to feel anything but regret and concern. This simply could not go on. He couldn't bear to play witness to any more of her fear.

Gently, he reached for her. Hesitating when her heartbeat quickened in her chest. Fluttering and nervous, like wild but captured prey. He studied her. The wide set of her eyes. The rapid rise and fall of her chest. And then slowly, ever so slowly, he took her hand in his own.

Her breathing slowed in anticipation of some great and terrible fear, but he held her hand through it and hoped she would see. Her pupils, blown wide. Her body drowning in a fresh wave of fear.

By all accounts she should have sent him staggering, but the flood of emotion was met only with compassion and understanding. His prey drive should have taken control of his mind, but Eric felt only concern for the wellbeing of the brave lass sat beside him.

Eric de Clermont was calm.

This was easy.

Far easier than he'd ever anticipated. He had feared the temptation, but now as he was at risk of losing the person who he held most dear to him in the world, he felt only peace and determination. Fernanda was not in danger of him here. She never would be. He lived and breathed by way of her.

Eric wondered if his father had known this about him all along.

In the quiet way realization sometimes dawned on people, he thought that this must be what it meant to find one's mate. The desire to possess her was there, to have her forever by his side. To pursue her as one did on the hunt, but not with the intent of harm. Far from it, for the hunt he had in mind had a far sweeter taking than that of her life's blood.

Stronger even still was the desire to comfort her. The desire to see her well. He wanted to show her all of himself. Even though the memory of her fear caused his doubts to worsen, and the remnants of it now haunted him still.

She had a great many things to fear in this world, and once again he found himself on the wrong side of them. So, with little else to do, he did his best to make himself small before her as he had done in another life, when he was another man. And he gently took the hand still held loosely in his own and drew it to the base of his throat.

If anyone else were to touch him here it would have been jarring, aggravating. It would be an intolerable act of aggression. His instinct would be to lash out. To correct their err in judgement.

But with Fernanda — with Malvina — he closed his eyes and felt only the deepest urge to purr like a feral cat starved for affection.

They stayed that way.

Fernanda was frozen and watching him in confusion, but he could feel her fear abating in the presence of his unanticipated gesture. They stayed that way. Waiting, though she knew not for what.

He watched her. And she watched him. Her hand pressed to his throat, and his hand keeping her there.

And then his heart gave a slow, single beat.

She jumped, startled and fascinated, turning her eyes from his face to the place where her hand resided against his skin. And she leaned forward, just a little closer to him than she had been before.

Together, they waited for it to beat again.

"My heart beats, Fernanda."

"You're not..." She grimaced, her skin darkening in mortification. "Dead?"

Eric shook his head. "No, mo chridhe, I am not dead. I'm just a different kind of alive than you are, I'm afraid."

"And you don't want..." she stopped and tugged her hand away. He let her go. "You don't want to hurt me?"

His eyes cast down in sorrow. Once again, Eric shook his head.

"Never. I never want to hurt you."

"But what about my..." Again, she cut herself off. Unable to say it.

"Your blood?"

She grimaced. He reached out and gently tapped her chin.

"I may be young—"

She couldn't help the snort that escaped her at that. If Sorley had been almost thirty, and fifty years had passed... well, almost eighty was not, by her definition, young.

He felt his lips tug into an easy grin.

"—compared to others of my kind," he continued. "But I am a good deal old enough to not go around biting everyone that crosses my path. You must not—" he stopped himself trying to find a better way to phrase it.

He wanted to say that she must not fear him. But it sounded too much like an order and her fear was hers to do with as she wished.

"It would... be the greatest honor to me... if you did not fear me. You do not have to love me, if you do not wish. You do not have to act toward me in any way that displeases you. All that I have ever desired of you, in any lifetime, is the absence of your fear."

---

Addison wasn't sure what to think about Eric. He'd told her everything, all the things she had silently wondered about him in her quiet life as Malvina. With every word he had shared, her mind was overwhelmed by the memory of a hard stone wall and the grief-stricken tally marks she'd carved into its surface. With every word, she felt the cold and the fear further cement itself in her bones and remind her anew of who she had been and all she had lost.

Her throat burned now with the memory of the illness that she had succumbed to the year before in the coming winter, and the villagers who had avoided her for fear of catching their deaths right along with her. Every cough and sneeze caused her to shudder with the memory of how near she had once been to death and served as a reminder that she was still far closer to death than she would ever be in the twenty first century.

Gallowglass's heart had beat strong and slow beneath the weight of her hand. His heart had beat and she had nearly jumped out of her skin at the sensation of it. He took a breath to speak, and she watched in fascination as his body expanded to make room for the air he took in. Felt her fingers tingle with the sensation of his vocal cords as they vibrated to make noise, to form words, as he spoke.

He wasn't dead. He wasn't at all what she'd imagined him to be when the truth finally clicked into place in her brain. Her stomach still had a pit in it, with worry and doubt and the anticipation of another lie. This could all be a lie. This could all be some vampiric seduction.

But she was tired. And she was cold. And she was sick.

Addison missed him. Her body hurt with the memory of his company. Loneliness had gripped her anew over the last week she'd passed in hiding. She missed all of them, but even more she missed what it was to feel safe in their company.

She wanted to trust Eric. She wanted to trust him like she'd once trusted Sorley.

She had seen him once, when he was a human, returning to the village from battle and now her choices back then seemed so much easier than the ones that laid before her now.

He came and went a lot. Once, he had gone for days. When he returned, he hadn't stopped to greet her as she had expected him to. She had stood alone on her little hill. Watched him ride past, wide eyed and flooded with horror at the blood and gore that coated his skin.

He had spared her a glance. Ducked his head away. His face far graver than she'd ever seen it.

She did not see him again that day. And the image had haunted her all night. She knew what he was, of course. But she'd never seen the evidence of it in blood. And it made her question. Made her doubt the trust she'd placed in him. Could she really trust a killer the way she trusted Sorley?

She had laid awake that night, mind turning over and over again in exhausted contemplation. But it felt so simple now to Addison. Of course trusting Sorley was nothing compared to the situation she was in now, with her as Fernanda and him as Eric.

Back then, as Malvina, she had chosen to forgive him the horror he came with. She had chosen to trust him because of how he had acted toward her, rather than for the actions he took against others in a world she did not yet understand.

But this was a different kind of horror. A different kind of fear.

And she didn't know what to do.

Addison had been conflicted that day. Hadn't known where to settle her mind, where to place Sorley in how she viewed and valued things in this world.

She'd known what he was.

Had imagined what he was capable of. She had seen hints of it in the way the other knights often skirted around him when they knew they'd done wrong. Had seen it in how he handled Rupert when the man had attacked her. Had seen it in the scars that littered his body. She hadn't known where to store this new piece of information — maybe she never would — but she had settled on what she did know, what she trusted.

She trusted Ailios. And Lorna. And Beatrix. And they all trusted Sorley. In her moment of doubt and fear — fear that she could be so vulnerable with a man capable of such violence — she leaned her faith most heavily on the set of his shoulders as he approached her then. Rounded and low, as though he could make himself even smaller still.

She focused on the memory of him, elated and helpful as she desperately stumbled over her attempts at Gaelic. She focused, not on the memory of the gore that had dried to his skin and hardened on his armor, but on the gentle way he'd held her hand when she told him her story in a language he didn't know.

Could it really be so simple still?

He wasn't who he had been.

In fifty years, time had made the man she cared for into someone else entirely. Eric de Clermont was Sorley no more. And yet... Addison's eyes stung with unshed tears when she looked up at him.

Before her he sat, earnest and full of sorrow. His shoulders were drooped low in some sort of silent defeat. But his hands sat before him, palms up and open, in a quiet display of faith and hope. He seemed almost vulnerable sitting there before her. And she didn't know what to make of that — the idea that one such as he could be so easily vulnerable with someone like her. She didn't know if she deserved that. She didn't know what to do with his sadness or his faith, or the easy way he placed both of them right there at her feet.

Addison was scared. Terrified. Even now she felt her heart in her throat and her spine itch with the urge to jerk away from him. To break away from this place and run as fast and far as her body would allow. She bit down on her lip hard to keep it from trembling and she watched as he tracked the move with quick, piercing eyes. He was sharp minded, Eric was. Sorley had been too. And she could see how he'd gotten even sharper with age.

He was Sorley still in his own way, perhaps.

He wasn't the man she knew, but that man was in there somewhere. And that terrified her. It froze her in place.

Who was this man? Who was he really? Who had he become in the wake of the one she had known in the little village at the edge of the woods? What does one become after they had already been a knight who returned home covered in the gore of just another day's labor?

A vampire.

He was a vampire now.

There was a little checklist she kept always in the back of her mind. One that tracked all the ways she was likely to die here in the annals of history. She gently nudged that checklist now. Tempted to review for the millionth time this week all the ways she was likely to die here in the past.

Starvation. Cold. Pneumonia. Babies. Violent men.

Vampires.

Addison shuddered and snapped the checklist resolutely closed in her mind once again. Pulling herself up taller at the idea that this man could one day be her killer. She shook her head. No. No, she didn't want to believe that. Truly, she didn't.

Something inside her cracked at the possibility that in the end it could be Sorley. At the idea that it would have been Sorley that took her from the world.

The man in front of her didn't seem so scary but looks were notoriously deceiving. She shook herself, blinked a few times as though it would help her clear her mind.

He was watching her, patient and kind and understanding. He looked as though he'd forgiven her already for every thought she hadn't voiced.

Addison cleared her throat, pushing past the urge to cough once again. Eyes watering with the effort to suppress the illness that had overtaken her body this winter as it had done in the last. It could kill her too, she supposed. She wondered if vampires were bothered by sick people's blood, perhaps he didn't like el sabor de fiebre. Maybe that was poor vampire's food. The de Clermonts were rich after all. They could afford to drink healthy blood.

Addison cringed and shut down her unwelcome train of thought, choosing instead to reach down and pluck at the threads of her spoiled gown, grimacing at the week-old blood stains and the less than pleasant smell. She was a wreck. The evidence of it was everywhere. In her unchanged dress. In her greasy hair. In the mess her chambers had become in the wake of her terror. She should probably change. She sniffed and grimaced.

In lieu of making up her mind about the enigma that was Eric Sorley de Clermont, Addison decided to change the subject from the fate of their relationship, whatever that was.

"And you don't—" she paused.

She didn't even know what she intended to say. Her mind was blank in the face of all this fear and uncertainty. She just wanted to go back to how things were, but the trouble was she didn't know which version of 'how things were' she wanted to go back to. Did she want to go back to last week when she trusted Eric and Fernando, Hugh and Idir. Or to when she was Malvina, and Sorley was her only way out of a horrible, terrible, violent world? Or back to the twenty first century where Lala had forgotten her name?

The flash of a smile, lined in bright red lipstick. The call of her name from somewhere behind her as she climbed the jungle gym at the park. Addison remembered her mother singing — singing and dancing with her to old country songs when she was very small. The cold wet strands of her mother's hair against her cheek, the smell of her shampoo. Being held tight in her warm embrace as they twirled around the living room wrapped up in towels and robes.

She closed her eyes to beat back a wave of fresh tears that washed over her at the memory of a mother she barely knew. Her nose burned and she had to swallow a few times around this wave of childish grief. A great gaping wound opened up inside her once again and she turned her face away from the song that played in her head on a loop now that it had been dragged up to the surface. The one her mother sang to her when she was young and little and wholly unaware of the challenges the world could throw her way.

She wanted her mother now. Ached for her in a way she hadn't in quite some time.

She opened her eyes, forcing herself to continue a conversation that she didn't know what to do with. She watched Eric trace her tears with his eyes as they fell down her face.

A deep, inexplicable anxiety came over her. Her stomach and skin were jumping with an overabundance of energy she had no idea how to release. She needed to say something. Anything. To change the subject and distract her mind from her spiraling thoughts.

"Tell me about Hugh," she croaked, and she didn't even know what she was saying.

It's not that she didn't want to know about the man who had welcomed her into this bright new terrifying world, but she didn't currently care about him all that much either.

"Or Fernando—" she said. "Or— or— I don't care. Just talk please."

She brought her hand up to clasp at her throat and she didn't know if she was trying to keep something in or protect it from all the terrible things on the out.

She couldn't meet his eyes as he regarded her. A short moment that seemed to stretch for all of eternity passed between them before he nodded. Eric settled in again with his back to the wall.

"Hugh..." he started and then paused thoughtfully.

He cast a quick glance down at her from the side and offered a barely-there smile.

"Well, I'll admit he has his eccentricities but... he's a good man. A good father. It's all I can do to live up to him someday," he said.

Addison nodded, trying to focus on his words rather than the thoughts spinning around in her mind.

"But Fernando," he continued. "Well, I've always felt a kinship with him. He's a bit rough around the edges as I'm sure you've noticed," he laughed and was heartened when she laughed with him, her body jolting with the sound, her head ducking down a bit to hide her face from him as she did.

"He only ever wants for the people he loves to be okay," Eric told her. "It's a tough job he's taken on with this lot. And I know since you've come here it's been much the same with you. I don't want to overstep— or— I can't change how you feel about this — about me or any of us really. But if there is anyone in the world that does not deserve your fear, it's him. He cares for you, mo chridhe. We all do. I certainly do. But Fernando... he doesn't love lightly. Whether he'd admit it out loud or not I couldn't say, but I can see it in his actions every day he's with you. He sees you as his child. You're his daughter now, if you'll still have him that is. And with someone like Fernando, I've found, you've got him for life. He doesn't know how not to love you once he's let you in."

---

She didn't know how long they sat there, her and him. Time had always passed differently inside the walls of La Ithuriana. And it passed differently now too. Darkness had long since fallen. She could hear the harsh winds battering the sides of the manor house as they swept across the craggy mountainside. Even with the fire burning in the hearth, and a blanket wrapped snugly around her, she could feel the chill seeping through the small cracks in the walls of her temporary home. Could feel the cold seeping through the glass of her clear paned windows, trying with all its might to reach her despite Eric's best efforts to keep it at bay.

Sitting here, like this, watching the firelight cast pleasant shadows onto the walls of her bedroom. Side by side with the man she wanted desperately to trust but was still so scared to, her mind flickered back and forth between the now and the many, many befores that seemed to stretch behind her. A different time and place. A fire burning bright in the dark of the woods. Lindon at her side. Ailios at her back.

She couldn't look down now. Not now that she was locked on Sorley. She'd spent so long fearing this moment, dreading her own vulnerability, dreading yet another impossible fall from which she may never get up.

He was silent beside her, and though his eyes faced forward she knew he was alert to her every move. Watching and waiting for her to decide their fate.

But the shadows flickered, and Addison felt warm for the first time in a long time. Her throat tightened in fear and sorrow, resentment and a desperately suppressed, almost dreaded sensation of love.

Intoxicated by the heavy weight of Sorley's gaze, Addison couldn't help but feel all her fears dissipate into the darkness as she left it behind. If she fell, he would be there to pick her back up again. Of that there was no doubt.

She cared for him.

And she was terrified.

That voice inside of her, the one so desperate to keep her alive, was screaming at her still to keep her wits about her. To keep her eyes peeled for the danger they all presented her. She was their natural prey. They were unnatural, violent creatures. They feasted on the blood of others.

But Eric had a heart. It had beat for her, just there beneath her fingertips. If she closed her eyes she could still feel the pulse of it tattooed on her skin. Like it had become a part of her person. She rubbed her fingertips together in quiet contemplation at the memory of his breath, the vibration of his vocal cords as he began to speak.

When she drew close enough to touch, Sorley reached out for her. She took his hands in her own. Held him fast in an inviolable grip that would have taken anyone but Sorley by surprise. His eyes twinkled in the firelight as they drifted down to study the hold she had on him.

She'd never regret that moment. Even now, unsure how to move forward, the memory of that night drifted over her like a dream and something inside of her felt settled, warmed at the thought of him. At the memory of his hand in her own and the way her skin tingled under the gentle weight of his gaze.

"Will you tell me what I promised you?" Her voice was smaller than it should be, nervous, but still impossibly curious.

It turns out, the prospect of learning what had been happening in his mind when he was Sorley was just as seductive to her as the prospect of picking Malvina's brain was for him.

Eric smiled down at her and nodded his head with pleasure at her words.

"How about I tell you what we promised each other?"

Addison regarded him for a long moment before feeling her lips stretch into a smile of her own, small and reticent, but genuine.

"Please," she said.

"You cannot command me, for I am a free person, but I shall serve you in those ways you require," he rumbled lowly.

Addison felt herself shiver as his voice took on the same loving tone he'd spoken with in her memories. The one meant only for her. Tentatively, she reached out and threaded her fingers through his own. She couldn't meet his eyes, but she saw in her periphery as his mouth and eyes softened as he spoke. He gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

"And the honeycomb will taste sweeter coming from my hand," he continued.

You cannot possess me, she had vowed to him, for I belong to myself. But, while we both wish it, I give you that which is mine to give. She looked up at him in shock when he'd said these words. They were— she didn't know how to describe them. They were not what she'd expected of a medieval marriage ceremony. She had not expected a man in this time to accept such a thing. It was— it was almost defiant, and Addison— she felt liberated by the words he spoke to her now.

"I pledge to you the first bite of every meal, and the first drink from every cup," he said, looking down at her with a wink and a smirk.

Addison couldn't stop the smile that forced its way across her face or the laugh that jumped out of her before she could clamp it down. Her mind flashed to their first breakfast together in this life, when he'd handed her slice after slice of pear. And how she had accepted each bite gratefully. She didn't know why her heart fluttered at the memory. At the thought of him keeping this small, silly promise, but it did. And her face warmed with pleasure.

I pledge to you my living and my dying, and all the many moments in between. She had said these words to him, ignorant in a past life to what she had been promising. Her gut twisted uncomfortably now, unsure of what to make of their meaning.

Seeing this, Eric gave her hand another reassuring squeeze and moved along.

"I shall be the shield at your back, the sword upon which your enemies shall fall," he said.

And Addison couldn't stop herself from turning to face him when he said this. Heart thudding hard against her ribcage. It was a promise of safety. Of protection.

She flashed back to the way his voice had cracked around his apology. As he had told her he would never be able to forgive himself for not being there for her that night in Ailios's hut. She slammed a wall down in her mind around the memories of Rupert, and Allistor and the rogue knight Colum McCrae. Felt her nose burn with the memory of the fire blazing high and out of control. Bit her lip against the sting of more tears.

She felt that little spool of thread deep down in her belly begin slowly to unwind from the tight coil it had kept itself in these past days and weeks. Felt it spin, slowly at first and then more quickly, reaching out once again for the man in front of her. For Eric, and for Sorley, it spun, weaving itself around him as though it had always been that way.

She brought a hand to the place where it resided, pressing gently, trying to keep the thread in. But it only spooled faster in response. The thread found a way. Through the spaces between her fingers, straight through her desperate hands, it reached for him now and she was helpless to stop it.

He continued as though nothing had changed. He hadn't noticed the grief-stricken way she desperately tried to keep that small piece of her from reaching out for him through the haze and the darkness of this new life she was living.

She had promised not to slander him, and he had promised the same. He had promised to honor her above anyone else in the world. She had promised to quarrel with him only in private, and he had vowed to lay his grievances at her feet in her presence alone as well.

Then he said something that had Addison's heart jolting into her throat. Her head snapped up to his in disbelief, still clutching desperately at the spool and its traitorous thread, she stared at him and shook her head. No. It wasn't possible. She couldn't quite believe—

For Eric had spoken to her words that she'd never said aloud a single day. Not once in any of her lives had she said those words that had played over and over in her head.

"Forever and a day," he said.

And his eyes bored into her own, watching her head spin at the mention of this small, significant thing.

"How—"

He tilted his head, curious, as she tried desperately to form the words.

"I've never said those words to—to—" she stuttered. "I never said those words to anyone."

His eyes were knowing and intrigued. He looked pleased, and—

"Neither had I, mo chridhe," he said with a small smile. "Neither had I."

---

The night seemed to stretch for an eternity, but Addison was not tired. He'd left her for a moment, said he had something he'd like to give her. She'd let him go. Her mind still reeling from the many turns the evening had taken. She still didn't know what to make of the odd state of her new little family. Was not sure whether she should trust them or not. Part of her warring mind screamed at her an adamant no, the other part of her had already woven itself so tightly around Eric it denied that he could ever do her any wrong.

When he returned, he knocked gently before cracking the door and peeking in.

She was still sat on the cold stone floor, her back to the wall, her head dipping lazily. Tired, despite her spiraling thoughts. She looked up at his entry and nodded for him to come in, fixing him with a small smile.

Watching him scale himself down as he approached her, and the soft look he had in his eyes, Addison felt some of her anxiety fade. She unwound her arms from her blanket and reached for him as he approached, quietly content when she saw his shoulders relax and his gait soften.

He joined her on the floor, giving her hand a squeeze before releasing her and setting the chest between them.

"My father—"

"Hugh?" she clarified.

He nodded.

"Hugh went back to the village after—" he paused. "After he turned me into his son."

Addison liked the way they phrased these things. Hugh had turned Sorley into his son, not a vampire. Not a monster. But a son. She knew it was a matter of semantics, but it settled something inside of her. The idea that they saw themselves as a family. It softened the blow that came with the horror of the truth.

"He wanted to salvage what was left of my life as Sorley," he continued. "It's common practice enough, many manjasang parents do the same for their young."

He looked at her, nervously, as though acknowledging the truth of what he was would startle her and send her running once again. Addison had to admit, she wasn't the most comfortable with the concept of this truth, but she did her best to swallow her nerves and fix him with a look that said she was fine. That this was fine.

He studied her for a moment before turning back to the chest.

"Beatrix was waiting for him — she'd seen him coming — and had gathered what was left of our belongings—"

He told her everything. About Hugh and Beatrix, and the items safely preserved in the chest. She had reached out with shaking hands and unlatched the clasps, carefully lifting the lid.

Here was the proof. Here was the evidence that she had in fact been Malvina. That she had been a serf girl trapped in another time. Even now, living as Fernanda Gonçalves, in the walls of an ancient manor home sometimes she felt as though the rest had been a dream. Felt as though she had made it up somehow still. Addison did not always feel like she was in full possession of her own mind.

But the clasps unlatched, and the lid flipped open and there — just there — sitting small and humble and innocent and old was a chain of handfasting cords, woven lovingly and carefully by the old midwife Beatrix. There was the dagger he had given her once, when he'd left her alone in the servants' quarters of Castle Sween.

He looked up at her — piercing blue eyes, lion mane hair — and demonstrated how to hide the dagger in his own boot, before removing it and holding it back out to her. He pointed from the dagger to her boot clad feet.

She reached for it now, mind deftly skimming over the place she'd left it when she fled from Rupert and Colum McCrae. It was as good as new, as though it hadn't been touched at all by the flames. She ran her fingers over the worn leather sheath, the intricately carved metal handle. She traced the small design on the side before releasing the dagger and reaching for a small bit of parchment that had been carefully folded and sealed. She plucked it up, minding that it was quite aged now and flipped it over in her hands curiously before glancing up at him.

A silent question. He regarded her with an unreadable expression on his face. He gently took the parchment from her hands. She jumped when he broke the seal and held it up for her to see. He smiled down at her, reassuring and calm.

A letter.

"I wrote this to my father," he said.

"Hugh?"

"No," he laughed. "My birth father, Ragnall. I was born on an island off the coast of Scotland, in a place called the Hebrides."

She quietly murmured this piece of information to herself, trying to store it away for later. She had always craved to know more about him and now with a common tongue between them he gave her all the information she wanted rather freely.

"I asked him to care for you—" he started and stopped, looking away from her.

"Care for me?" she pressed.

"Aye," he said. "It was the day we were to be handfasted, and I knew I was destined for battle the following morn. I wish—" he hesitated. "I wish I could offer you more. Back then and now. I wish I could be a man of peace, Fernanda. I wrote to my father and gave the letter to Beatrix for safekeeping. I wanted to be sure that you would have a home among my family if I were to fall in battle. I wanted him to care for you if I were not able—"

Addison didn't know what to say. He wouldn't look at her as he spoke, his eyes instead staring hard and bright into the crackling flames of the hearth across the room.

"I cannot promise you that I'll ever be a perfect man—" he said. "Or even a good one, but I—" he cleared his throat, his voice thick with emotion. "I don't know what to say but to say that I care for you. I want you to be well and I hope one day, someday— I hope that you'll find a way to forgive me."

"Forgive you?" she asked, her own voice thick from his display of grief and emotion. "For what—"

"Och I don't know lass—" he said but she had a feeling he did know. She got the impression he just didn't know how to voice it yet. "For not being something else for you. For being a knight then rather than a blacksmith or a baker. For being a— for being what I am now instead of being a human—"

She didn't know what to say, but her chest was tight with grief for him and for her. She couldn't deny that part of her wished he was a human baker too. He'd be far less terrifying, to be sure, but she also thought quietly to herself that the world itself was terrifying and it didn't matter really if he was a knight or a baker, a vampire or a human, she'd be scared of everything either way.

He was Eric. He was her Eric, she thought though she could not voice this out loud. And speaking with him now was to speak with Sorley in a way she never thought she'd be able.

He'd been her leap of faith. Sorley and Malvina would be okay as long as they were together, and Addison was beginning to believe the same could be true now for Eric and Fernanda too. Maybe he was all the wrong things, maybe on paper he was someone she should run from screaming and never look back. But perhaps— perhaps he was more than those things too.

She hadn't trusted Sorley, the errant knight. She had trusted Sorley, the man who saved her from brutality. She hadn't come to care for Sorley, the man covered in blood and gore. She had come to care for Sorley, the man who carried her buckets of water up stair after winding stair.

She hadn't chosen to confide her deepest secrets in a man who had been trained to kill. She'd confided in a man who'd given her a view of the world she'd never have been able to see without him. He gave her fresh air, and the sun and the sea. Had held tightly to her when she'd been a breath away from pitching herself from a tower in search of freedom and release. He sought her out when she thought for sure she'd never see him again. Gave her flowers when others threw their fists.

And Eric—

She hadn't known what to make of him at first. Hadn't known what to think of the odd turn of events that had brought them together again. The universe had an odd sense of humor, it seemed. But in her deepest throes of grief and fear, Eric had come to her and humbled himself, sinking low down to the floor and keeping her company instead of leaving her alone in her fear.

He made himself a lifeline as she fell to pieces in terror.

He told her stories of their past life together and brought her food and kept her warm. He was an open book for her now, like this. Every story he had, he gave her willingly. Every question she asked, he answered. He gave her back her past and he gave her the patience she most desperately craved in all the world.

Addison didn't know what to make of the anomaly her life had become, or the odd circumstances Eric had fallen into, but she thought that maybe — just maybe — as long as they were together, she might be able to figure out how she felt about all of those things.

As long as they were together, perhaps even still, everything would be okay.

"So," she said, laying her head on his shoulder as she fidgeted with aged handfasting cords.

If he was startled by the sudden turn in her mood, he didn't show it.

"Did these have any kind of meaning to them? Or were they just meant to be pretty?"

"Oh aye," he said, relaxing into their new position, lowering his shoulder a bit to accommodate their height difference. Once she was situated more comfortably he continued. "We each brought our items to her, Beatrix that is, and she read in them their meaning."

"How come?"

"To demonstrate which qualities we brought into our marriage."

"So... what did we bring?"

He chuckled softly and reached out to run a gentle finger through the cords.

"Well, there was gold for longevity," he started and looked down in surprise when she let out an ironic laugh. "And brown, that we remain grounded as we step into the future together as one."

He watched as she ran her fingers over each color as he explained them, her heart was steady and calm as he spoke and every once in a while, he caught her eyes drifting closed in desire for sleep, only to snap open again in defiance and turn back to the cords in her hands.

"Grey was a bit of an odd one actually," he said and watched her carefully. She picked up the strip of frayed linen that someone had torn from her old dress.

"It meant to return," he said.

Her head lifted from his shoulder. Curious eyes, two pools of melted bronze, stared hard into his as she processed the oddness of his words.

"Beatrix claimed," he continued. "That this color meant to return without repercussion."

She turned away from him to stare down at the cords in shock. Had this been meant to happen? All this time had this been something more than a coincidence? Had Beatrix truly known such a thing? Or— or—

Addison shook her head in disbelief.

"And blue?" she asked, choosing instead to move on rather than linger on things that were too complicated to understand. Her brain was tired. She didn't want to think anymore.

"Blue—" His voice was a deep rumble.

When she leaned her head back down on his shoulder, she couldn't help but sigh into the sensation of his voice as it moved through his body and filled the room.

"Blue was for patience."

Addison nodded and suppressed a yawn.

"And green?"

"For luck."

Addison snorted in disbelief and Eric couldn't help but join her with a bout of his own incredulous laughter.

She hummed thoughtfully, even as she leaned against him, half asleep. He couldn't help but glance down at her while her brain drowsily processed the old midwife's words.

"And she was really a—" Another yawn.

"Witch?" he laughed. "Yes."

Addison shook herself a bit and sat up, purposefully keeping her eyes open and fixed on him.

"People didn't just say that because she was old and unmarried?"

"No, mo chridhe, witches truly exist in the world, and she was a very powerful one."

"How do you know?"

"Well, we all had our suspicions back then, but it was not something that was spoken about publicly. Not when she'd afforded us such good fortune. And then of course my father confirmed it rather recently."

"Your father, Hugh?"

He hummed his confirmation and leaned back a little more comfortably, closing his eyes in the warmth of the room.

"What good fortune?"

"The babes," he said after a bit.

When she scrunched her face up at him, confused, he laughed and reached up a hand to smooth over her brow.

"Malvina," he whispered quietly to himself and shook his head. "The little ones. In all my years at Castle Sween, not a single mother or child died in birth. It's near unheard of, as I'm sure you know. But mothers were safe with old Beatrix."

Addison didn't know what to say to that, but she took an odd amount of solace from it. Even the powerless had been afforded that one small mercy. The kindness of a powerful witch, the privilege of her care. She felt heartened by it, however small a comfort it was.

"Sorley," she said and paused. "I'm sorry, I mean—"

"You can call me Sorley if you wish."

She looked up at him, considering.

"I think I need to tell you something," she said and wrung her hands nervously in her lap.

He sat up a little straighter and tried to rein in his curiosity, but it was difficult to hide.

"I don't know how to explain it," she said. "I'm not a— well— I don't think that I'm a witch..." she said, and her heart kicked up a bit at saying such a word in such a place and time as this. "But I'm not from here, Sorley."

"Well, love, I hate to tell you, but it is quite obvious you're not from Navarre."

"No," she said, and her eyes collected with nervous tears.

Her stomach began to ache, and she wrapped her arms around herself to protect her from this feeling. She'd told him once. In a different life, under a different name. Spilled her guts to him in the quiet of his chambers, when he was a knight, and she was a maid and she thought she was going to die in that horrid place. When he was all she had to keep the fear and sadness at bay.

"I don't mean it like that—" she croaked out, breathless from the prospect of voicing this confession. "Sorley, I'm not from here. I tried to tell you before when we were different people, but we didn't speak the same language. And then all of a sudden, we do speak the same language, but I couldn't tell you because I can't explain it. I don't have any reason for it. I don't know why this is happening to me. But you're a— a—" she closed her eyes against her disbelief and her fear.

"You're a vampire. And it's been fifty years for you—"

"And you—"

"No," she said, her voice firm. "No, it hasn't been. Not for me. Sorley I'm not from this time. From this age. For you it's been fifty years, and for me... for me it's only been six or seven months. Not even a year, Sorley."

She looked up at him and begged him with her eyes to believe her. Begged him to believe her and held tightly to his hands. If he were human, he would have lost all feeling in his fingers.

"I'm not crazy," she insisted as he regarded her in silence.

But Eric didn't think she was crazy. No, he believed her to be in full possession of her mind. And he didn't think she was lying either. A vampire could smell a lie from a mile away. She was nervous to be sure, but the words she spoke were not so unheard of. Not when his own father had speculated about her time spinning from the moment she'd arrived in their courtyard. Not when she'd appeared to them still young and untouched by the ages, neither witch nor manjasang, with an odd manner of dress and an odd manner of speaking.

It was absurd.

It was inexplicable.

But he was absurd and inexplicable too.

He should turn her away, in truth. Any other man would, but he believed her.

And having long since learned how to quit while he was ahead, Eric quietly decided that they need not solve the mysteries of heaven and earth on this night of all nights. It was enough to know and to believe her. The rest would come in time. He pressed a kiss to her knuckles and squeezed her hand.

"I believe you, mo chridhe," he said and pulled her closer when she let out a small, sad sound.

He held her tightly and rested his chin atop her head as she tried her best not to cry.

"I don't know how or why this has happened, Fernanda. I can't pretend to understand it, but let us rest for now, hmm? I believe you. Let us continue this in the light of another day."

She sniffed and nodded her head, unable to look him in the eye, as though his faith was harder to accept than his scorn. There was nothing he could say to repair that in her. Nothing he could say to make that feeling better. So, he closed his eyes and relished instead the sensation of her pleasant weight against his chest, cradled in his arms and waited until finally her body gave way to his comfort. She relaxed into his embrace with a sniffle and a sigh.

They would be okay, he thought quietly to himself, they just needed a bit more time.

---

She had drifted to sleep sometime in the night as they sat there, side by side, with their backs pressed against the wall. She felt him shift, just barely beneath her, and she resisted the urge to move as well. Her legs had cramped up there on the floor, and her hands were tense from where she'd clutched tightly to his hand.

Her eyes drifted open, lazy, and she blushed when she caught the look in his eye, so much like the way he'd looked at her the night they were handfasted. Soft and heated, so warm that it made her skin warm beneath it and her belly tighten and twist imperceptibly. She squirmed a bit beneath his gaze and watched as he quietly shifted away, giving her a bit of space as she adjusted. Now that they had come to an understanding of each other, though, she felt no fear.

"Do you think," she hesitated. "Now that we're on the same page and everything—"

He quirked his head at her odd turn of phrase but didn't interrupt.

"—could you maybe ask whoever has been outside of my window to leave me alone?"

A long pause. Another unreadable flash in his eyes. Some foreign emotion she didn't know what to make of. A wall slammed down around him.

"Your...window?"

"Yes," Addison cringed. "The eyes—"

"What eyes?"

His own eyes and voice had hardened at Addison's words. She stuttered, suddenly nervous that she'd said something wrong.

"Well, I don't know for sure— I've never seen them or anything, but I can feel them sometimes. I thought I felt them in the maze when I found the— the—"

She couldn't say it, but she didn't need to. The farmer's body. He knew. Eric nodded and she was relieved that he'd let her breeze past the part she didn't want to talk about.

"Well, the hair on my arms stood up and I felt a funny feeling on the back of my neck. And... I don't know... it happens sometimes when I'm alone in my room."

He stared at her a long moment before he stood.

Back on his feet, he strode over to her curtains, ripping them open and looking out on the trees that stretched far and wide. In the darkness, she would not have been able to see, but from him nothing could hide.

Not even the shadows could obscure the figure he hunted.

If he was out there, Eric would find him. And yet looking out on the dark mountainscape below, not a single rock or tree was out of place. The wind swept through the land. Every animal and creature of the forest had hunkered down in retreat from the harsh elements.

Addison stood to go to him. To ask him what it was he could see but stopped just as suddenly as she started. Uncertain of herself at his sudden shift in tone and mood.

"Idir," he said so quietly she almost couldn't hear him when he spoke.

The man in question appeared instantly in the doorway, Addison jumped and jolted back, but Eric came back to her side.

"Gallowglass?" she asked him quietly.

He reached for her hand, and she let him take it, shifting herself just behind him, back out of view.

She couldn't look Idir in the eye. Memories of laughing with him and looking at his sketches, and listening to his stories about his travels, collided with the knowledge that he had lied to her. Collided with the terror that came with being someone else's natural prey. Idir was a vampire. She could see it now even as she hid from his view. The way his eyes seemed to stare too long without blinking, the way his chest barely rose or fell with his breath or his pulse. The way he had so quickly appeared, as though he had been waiting in the wings rather than downstairs or across the house.

Idir remained silent and ready. For what, Addison didn't know. Neither man spoke to her or acknowledged her presence now, and for once she was grateful. Eric's hand gave her a gentle squeeze, though nothing about the rest of him was gentle anymore. His eyes were hard. His voice was cutting. His shoulders were rigid. And the ground beneath him seemed to tremble with the force of some unvoiced thing that now hung in the air around them.

"Take Balder and Guillaume," Eric said, impervious now to the stench of her fear, or the tremble in her hands. She would calm back down with time.

His father's words came back to him in way he now understood with new meaning. He had argued once that she needed to feel safe in his home. Hugh had agreed but asserted that what was more — what would always be more — was Fernanda's need for actual safety.

"Someone has been hiding in the trees outside of Fernanda's chambers."

She couldn't hear Idir's response, but she felt the shift in the room at Eric's words.

"You know what to do," he said.

When Eric turned back to the windows, leaving Addison exposed in the middle of the room, she was startled to find that the doorway was empty.

Idir was gone.

In his place the dark of the corridor outside her chambers loomed long and foreboding. The mouth of a void she'd floated in more times than she could count, strung up on some invisible thread, pulled taut across the stretch of one long eternity. With darkness before her and darkness at her back, she felt herself retreat toward the only safety she'd ever known caught up in the tides of history. She reached for Gallowglass, and he reached back, drawing her resolutely to his side. Tucked tightly against him, Addison stared at his chest, bringing her hand up to rest at the base of his throat, and waiting.

Watching the man before her, waiting with him, as he watched and waited for the darkness outside to reveal to him the stranger in the trees.

They stayed that way for a long while until the black of night turned to a dawning blue, and the shadows of the forest lost some of their mystery. Eric stood, steadfast, in her chambers watching time lapse and life return to the world with the rising sun, and Fernanda clung to him, one hand resting gently at the base of his throat, head laying tired against his chest, until finally his heart gave one solid, resounding beat.

Addison closed her eyes.