The Faery Bride (The Celtic Legends Series Book 2) by Lisa Ann Verge

war–wound.”
    “Isn’t it now?” So, it was just as she suspected. “Then what the devil is it?”
    An odd light gleamed in Dafydd’s eyes. Grinding to a halt, he spat something in Welsh, and swung around with a snap of his cloak to stare up at the northern hills.
    “My brother needs a knock on the head.” His lips whitened into a grim line. “And if I had two good fists I’d be the first to give it to him. I should have known he would not tell you.”
    “Tell me what?”
    But Dafydd was gone, striding toward the stables, abandoning her in the bright open courtyard, not far from a cluster of girls feeding chickens from their aprons. Their curious whispers rode to her on the breeze, but she didn’t care.
    Now she knew for sure that she hadn’t been summoned to heal the three–legged dog she’d seen amid the hounds, or the falcon with the broken wing she’d glimpsed in the mews, or the young stable boy with the bloody linen upon his arm—the only signs of injury she’d seen among the people and the livestock of Graig.
    She was here to heal Rhys.
    And Rhys was too proud to admit it.
    ***
    Aileen and Dafydd approached the mound from the south, skirting the stretches of ground too boggy to cross. Despite the chill filtering through Aileen’s cloak, the morning mist had long dissipated in the valley. She saw a solitary figure standing upon the barrow, wheeling a falcon through its paces within a circle of ancient standing stones.
    She watched with scorn and more than a bit of horror. Wasn’t it like this arrogant lord to play at falconry within the confines of a faery–ring, as if he were the master of it? She’d mark it as stark ignorance if Dafydd hadn’t informed her that the place was called King Arthur’s grave, the resting place of a great warrior of ancient legend. Even ignorance couldn’t be used as an excuse, for in Ireland, such a circle of standing stones bubbled with invisible music, so much so that even those who were deaf to the ancient voices still veered away from the place, sensing what they could not understand.
    Yet there he stood, wheeling the bloodied lure over his head to tempt the falcon back down to the ground.
    When she reached the foot of the mound, she tilted her head, listening for the distant strains of faery music. She cast her gaze to the ground in search of footmarks in the mud. There should be some whisper of the Otherworld here…. She struggled with the odd sensation of entering a familiar place and finding something gone, and not knowing for sure what the thing was.
    Dafydd unwound the reins from his handless wrist, eased off the horse, and then helped her dismount from her donkey. “I’ll wait here for you.”
    She said, “You’re not coming?”
    “There are times, Aileen, when a man doesn’t want a witness.”
    She tugged her tunic off the back of the donkey and made her way up the muddy slope. She gathered her cloak in her arms so as not to drag it through the grass and mud, warning herself that she must watch her tongue. If she let it loose and told him exactly what was on her mind, he’d likely buttress himself behind that shield of pride and she’d be no better off than before. Better that she set to the matter straightaway, as if there was nothing wrong with his foolish silence.
    Oh, what lengths a woman must go to tiptoe around a man’s pride.
    She let her skirts fall as she reached the first of the standing stones. Such a cold, forlorn place, with the wind howling and the sky leaden above. That strange sensation gripped her again. Surely, the wind of her island blew just as frigid over the bare rock. Yet even on the rawest day, there had always been a whisper of laughter in the air or a patter of feet in the faery–place. Here, the ground did not pulse, the air did not sing—the pitch of the wind, the scent of the earth, everything lay so different, so silent, as if she’d stepped through time to return to a familiar place, now age–worn and