Warrior’s Redemption by Melissa Mayhue Read Free Book Online

“Meaningless.”
    If only his denial could lift the heavy mood he wore this day. With forced determination, he strode into the great hall, ignoring the voice in the back of his head urging him to make for his destrier and ride.
    “Good morning, my laird.” Patrick sat at the small table he favored away from the dais, his back to the wall near one of the great fireplaces. “Rest well, did you?”
    Malcolm snorted his response, noting the dark circles under his brother’s eyes. “No better than you, from the looks of it.”
    Patrick shrugged, lifting a hand to signal for a serving girl. “At least I had a good reason to have missed my sleep. Join me?”
    With a nod, Malcolm slid onto the bench next to his brother, also facing out to look over the room. Too many years as a warrior to feel comfort in exposing his back, even in his own castle. Perhaps especially in his own castle.
    “What ails you this morning, Colm? You’ve the look of a hunted animal about you.”
    Malcolm held his tongue as a young maid arrived at their table to deposit two large servings of porridge, waiting until she was well away from them.
    “Naught but bad dreams,” he muttered around a mouthful of the thick porridge. Hardly heroic for a grown man, a clan laird at that, to admit to being troubled by dreams as if he were but a wee bairn. “Though ‘hunted animal’ is a fair description of how I feel. It’s as if I’ve a need to run. A need to set off for the forest to find . . .”
    He let his words die in the air, filling his mouth with another bite to prevent himself from talking. He sounded like a man gone daft.
    “To find what?” Patrick stared at him, his own food untouched.
    This time it was his turn to shrug. “I canna say.” That was part of the nameless anxiety that gnawed at his gut. “I dreamed of a ring of standing stones, but I’ve no memory of where. Of a woman’s voice, but no her words. Of an urgent need to act, to be somewhere in particular, somewhere other than here, but I canna tell why or what it is I’m to do.”
    He opened his fingers, allowing the bread he’d used to scoop his porridge to fall to the table. The food had no taste this morning, dropping as it did onto the huge bubble of unease gurgling about in the pit of his stomach.
    “Do you think it possible—”
    Whatever Patrick might have thought to suggest was cut short by the arrival in the great hall of Elesyria.
    “What are you doing here?” she demanded.
    Malcolm found himself fighting the urge to beat a hasty retreat as the woman stormed toward the spot where he sat, stopping at last in front of him. Hands on her hips, she repeated the question she’d hurled at him from across the room.
    “What are you doing here?”
    Beside him, Patrick lapsed into a comfortable slouch, his back tipped against the wall behind them. “It is his hall, Elf. Who has a better right to be here than he does?”
    Her eyes narrowed, the glitter of her irritation turned fully on Patrick. “I’m not questioning his rights, Northman. Only his good sense.”
    The glare moved from his brother to him, and once again Malcolm fought down the urge to make good his escape.
    “Well? Was the Goddess herself not clear enough in her instructions?”
    Instructions from a Goddess? Malcolm shook his head. Elf, Faerie, whatever this woman chose to call herself, she was clearly brainsick.
    As if she could read his thoughts in his expression, she threw her hands into the air, casting her eyes upward. “You see? You see what I’m forced to deal with?” On an exaggerated huff of breath, she dropped onto the bench across from him, pinning him with a look.
    “Do you mean to tell me there’s nothing more important you feel you should be doing this fine morning than sitting here shoving that sticky mess into your mouth?” She wiggled her finger toward the food in front of him, her gaze never leaving his face. “Nowhere else you feel you need to be?”
    Malcolm schooled his