Page 34 of Iron Blade

Kieran repeated the words as the blood trickled from his palm, down his pinky, before falling to the earth.

“I shall fight to defend those who pledge to our family, above all laws of man. We are one blood.”

My father grabbed the knife from Kieran’s hand and grabbed my wrist. He stabbed my palm with the tip, much harder than was needed. I clenched my jaw to keep from crying out, as an angry line formed, and my blood gushed out.

No weakness. Show no weakness.

It was twice as deep as O’Malley’s, matching the boy drop for drop as we stained the black earth scarlet.

“We are one blood,” I said my part, clasping O’Malley hand in mine so that our bleeding palms touched and mingled, squeezing our handshake to release more crimson to the earth.

“Blood of my blood,” I said in awe, as I felt the change in the air.

The pain of the wound shot through my arm, but I kept my face neutral.

If pain was weakness leaving the body, then my father was setting me up to be Ironman. If there was pain to be dealt, my father dealt it to me. Resentment coursed through me as I looked at my smug, sadistic father, who had the gall to bear the face of a man I once loved.

The things that I had thought were fun about him had taken on a sinister edge. When he had once taken me to the woods as a boy, and we searched for signs of fairies in the trees, I thought we were on a grand adventure. But now, those stories of witches and spirits loomed like dark shadows overhead, painting everything black in its wake.

Or maybe there was something more at work…

I swear I could hear something whispering in the trees, echoing among the sound of the grass as it danced in the breeze. There was a voice in the rustling of the leaves above, whispering that they accepted this strange, ethereal oath, and would punish anyone who dared to break it.

Or maybe that was just me. My mind, my heart, my imagination, making something out of this game of make believe that we all played.

The oath meant nothing, if I did not honor it. The oath meant even less, if we did not punish a person who broke it. The oath had meaning, because we gave it one.

Each of us had bled here, letting our essence stain the ground red. We were the dislocated Irish, sent here by famine, poverty, or war. Each of us, in turn, spilled a bit of ourselves to make this land our new home.

But I would not do it the way my father did. Since my mother died, my father made sure to choose war over peace, and death over life. But I knew that was not the way toward a future.

I was to beat our swords into plowshares and take us from the dark ages. To bring the Greens from the shadows and into the light. Like the Kennedy’s before us, we were expected to rise.

That was my burden…

I looked at my father, who stood with his wrinkled lips pursed, and his eyes graying with age. He looked at me and O’Malley like a man who was mad with power, and he collected soldiers like a miser collected coins.

This is my burden… but first, I must let the past die.

For now, my time was better spent in the city. Driving all night to sleep in my own apartment was better than spending another night in this Godforsaken place.

Chapter thirteen

Liberty Leading the People

Kira

Idon’t know why I felt the need to watch the 25th Anniversary of Les Miserables. Maybe it was my recent fascination with Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People. The red, waving flag of the barricade scene as the students raised their rifles and fists to their doomed cause filled my small apartment.

In the silence that followed after the applause, I realized that my phone was vibrating on the end table.

I picked it up without looking, placing it to my ear. “Hello?”

“Hello, Miss Kekoa.” Eoghan’s accent seemed slower.

Had he been asleep?

I looked at the clock - it was almost 1 AM.

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