The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) by Lisa Ann Verge Read Free Book Online Page B

of his words and did even more than that: It disarmed her. She didn’t want to fight, anyway. She needed to get out, even if it meant putting up with the curious looks of outsiders. She needed to take stock of her surroundings, find out how well she was guarded, and get an idea of how difficult it would be to slip out under the cover of night.
    She snatched her mantle off a cask. “Pots, pans, and tempers—I’ve made them fly. But never a broom. At least, not yet.”
    She strode past him into the bright day, and then staggered to a stop. She’d never get used to a horizon that began so high that she had to arch her neck to look at it. Dizzying, it was, all those jagged blue peaks, they left her weaving in a state of unbalance that had her thankful for the hand Dafydd curled around her arm.
    But only for a moment. As soon as the dizziness eased, she pulled away from him. She let him lead her around the perimeter of the yard. The llys, as he called it, consisted of a circular enclosure of wooden palisades set in a clay–and–earth bank. Wattle–and–daub houses lined the inside edge—storage, Dafydd told her, for grain, hay, wood, weapons. One long shed sheltered the horses, another the butter and cheese. The mead–hall loomed in the center, a large building of slate–thin layers of stone. The roof was thatched with reeds.
    She turned her eye to the people. A swarthy folk they were, dusky haired, light eyed, and she felt as if the sun set her bright hair afire amidst them. The blacksmith’s clanging faltered as they passed. The stable boy lifted his head from where he worked polishing a harness. The chatter of the kitchen servants ebbed to a whisper as they moved on. A workman wattling a hole in the palisades wobbled on the ladder as he caught sight of her. Dafydd barked something in Welsh and curled a hand around her arm.
    “Forgive us.” He led her across a muddy trench. “Living so far from sea or road, rarely do we have visitors. Even more rarely, visitors from so far afield. The people of Graig are curious about the healer in their midst.”
    “Your mother should have birthed you first.” She sidestepped a pile of tinder just outside one of the huts. “Had you been Lord of Graig, there would have been no woman–theft, I’d wager.”
    “Ah, but my lady, I am the eldest son of Gruffydd, the eldest of all his sons.”
    Nay, it couldn’t be…not older than him. Those hazel eyes gleamed with too much wickedness, that smile came too easily. He looked ten years older, twenty years wearier.
    “In Wales,” he explained, “a father does not pass his wealth to the oldest son. He divides it equally among all his sons and dies praying they’ll not kill each other over it. Gavelkind, it’s called. The scourge of Wales.”
    “Then why does Rhys hold the title? Doesn’t that go to the eldest son?”
    “Sometimes.” He lifted his other arm. Scarlet silk drooped over the knobbed wrist. “But it wasn’t for a man like me to rule.”
    By the ease at which he used the stump, she guessed that Dafydd had to have been born without it. That would explain why Dafydd was not the Lord of Graig. A maimed chieftain cannot rule, not in Ireland, either. It was an ancient law, older than even Da knew, rarely spoken but always followed. Many an Irish warrior–chieftain had been unseated from power because of a disfiguring war–wound. A maimed man was thought of as less of a warrior. A sick or disfigured one, bad luck to the health of the land.
    Then she remembered Rhys’s mask.
    “That arm of yours shouldn’t make a bit of difference,” she said, setting out to finish their circuit of the yard. “Your brother manages to rule with that war–wound of his.”
    “War–wound?”
    “The one on his face.” She traced on her own features the line of his mask. “How is it that he rules and you cannot, when he is just as disfigured?”
    A strange expression flitted across Dafydd’s face. “That’s no