Page 27 of Iron Blade

She recoiled, as if I had raised my hand to strike her.

The door slammed shut, hiding her away in that dark room. I could hear the faint humming of her voice on the other end. It was a melancholy tune that she had put nonsensical words to. It was a strange, creepy melody that made my skin prickle.

“Eoghan!” Malinda, another redhead, came flouncing up the stairs in the black sheath dress that was the uniform of all the maids.

I almost backed away from her, remembering our last encounter, and feeling the guilt welling in the pit of my stomach.

She had stopped calling me Mr. Green, and was bold enough to call me by my Christian name. I didn’t have the heart to correct her.

“Your father wants to speak to you at dinner,” she said with a smile. “It’ll be served in two hours. That leaves some time to…”

I knew what that left time for. She was rather shameless in her attempts to seduce me, wanting to recreate our past encounter.

But I was an honest man. A taken man.

“Thank you, Malinda,” I said, walking past her trying not to make eye contact as I headed straight to my room. “That’ll be all.”

I slammed the door behind me, leaning against it like it was a safety net.

I shouldn’t have stuck my pen in the company ink. Not with her.

Malinda had roots as deep in the land as I had. Roots that extended all the way back to Ireland. Her uncle was in my father’s guards. Her mother was the head housekeeper, and she was likely to take over the job after her.

She was pretty and available. I was lonely. She asked me to draw her, and I obliged her seduction, as unremarkable as it was. After the post-coital cigarette, I was just as lonely as before, and still unsatisfied.

The memory of her felt dirty now, with Kira on my mind. If I had just waited, then that blemish wouldn’t be on my soul. Another week, and I would have met my Muse, and not had the complication.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t change the past. We could only move on from it.

I looked around my room. Dark, mossy green walls were bisected by mahogany board and batten. Floor to ceiling bookshelves framed large windows that led to a balcony, facing my mum’s beloved rose garden.

Paintings covered much of the green walls. There was a portrait of my grandmother by Grandpa Cillian. The old man had a singular focus in his paintings - every heroine bore my grandmother’s face and hair. I used to think it was silly, until I met Kira, and felt the same impetus to paint her as every great woman in existence.

My grandparents had lived to a good, healthy old age, and he had the same reverence for my grandmother when she was gray and pale, as when she was young and rosy-cheeked. I admired that. So had my mum.

“You’re a lover. You get that from me,” Mum used to tell me. “You will love so deeply; it will take over every cell of your body.”

“When?” I asked, impatiently.

At the time, I thought being a husband was the greatest thing a man could be. That was how my father always referred to himself. Before he was in charge of the New York Irish, and before he was the CEO of Green Fields Enterprises, he was Isla Green’s husband.

How different those times were from now.

Those memories lingered like ghosts. I could see them, like apparitions, when I walked through the darkened halls. This old house wasn’t haunted by specters. It was haunted by happiness that it would never have again.

I walked to the adjoining room, where the remnants of my studio were strewn about. The smell of turpentine and paint tickled my nostrils. There was stagnant water in glass jars with diluted paint, holding neglected brushes. I had moved to the City years ago, so my old studio was a neglected little shrine to a better time.

I had no need to paint here anymore. My better easels and brushes were in my penthouse, closer to my Muse - the woman who made me itch to put pencil to paper.

A life-size portrait of her, holding a bouquet of multi-colored orchids, in a bed of the same flowers would look great on the wall at the foot of my bed. I’d paint her nude, with her hair over her naked form like the Venus De Milo, standing on a bed of vibrant flowers, with a silken breeze.

I was lost in the images of how I would paint Kira Kekoa when the grandfather clock in the foyer chimed, filling the whole house with its ominous sound. Breakfast, lunch, and dinner, it beckoned everyone from their rooms and into the dining room so we could go through the farce of a family meal.

My father sat at the head of the table, his high-backed wooden chair like a medieval throne. His wife, Aoibheann sat to his right. On his left was an empty seat. The one my mother used to sit in. I was on the other side of that.

At the door were my father’s guards, Tanner Brock and Blaine Flanagan.

Flanagan was the father of my old friend, Sinead, who disappeared six years ago. It was a wonder how the man had done absolutely nothing to find his eldest child. He didn’t ask us to deploy our various resources to find his daughter. He had just allowed it to happen. It made me wonder why, but I also didn’t pry.

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