Page 76 of Iron Blade

I settled us so that my arms, my body, and my heart felt strong, and full. What was more masculine than taking care of your woman? There was no greater honor than caring for another soul.

My wife fell asleep in my arms, her back on my chest, my arms around her waist. Her forehead was tucked neatly into the side of my neck. Her legs were tucked up across the seat, as she reclined into me. Her wavy hair cascaded around her shoulders, her crown of orchids and leaves still pinned securely in place. If I had a choice, her crown would stay on. My queen of the forest. The queen of moonlight, and stars.

This was perfect. Bliss, in every sense of the word. A man, holding his wife, as she rested in his arms. It was a trust I would not take for granted. Not if I wanted to value myself as a man, and a husband.

Dairo drove us to the little country house, at the deepest end of Green property. It was outside the Green compound, where the soldiers trained in the forest and cameras pointed in every direction, keeping it secure from invasion.

This little hideaway was my mother’s own little secret garden. It was still alive, after a decade of neglect. Vines climbed the red brick walls, toward the sharp, black iron blades shaped like pikes that pierced through the bloom of black roses.

It was a cottage that looked like it came straight out of a Thomas Kincade painting. It was in the last gasp of evening, when the stars near the horizon began to disappear, washed out by a light blue that would turn pink once the sun peaked its head above the Catskill mountains.

Dairo idled the car in front of the cottage steps, as I cradled my wife to me. I pulled the latch of the door and kicked it the rest of the way open.

“Two days, Eoghan,” Dairo said, bringing down the divider, his head turned slightly to the side. “That’s as long as I can hold off your father. Then I’ll come back and bring you to the big house.”

“He would rather you take my place anyway,” I grunted. “Maybe she and I could just disappear, and you could become his heir.”

It had been a fantasy I had nursed for so long in silence, I felt strange saying it out loud. But maybe…

“No,” Dairo laughed. “You couldn’t pay me enough to come back to this life. This is your crown of thorns, cousin.”

So fucking dramatic… this was the problem with the education my father had paid for. He insisted that our rise in society would force me and Dairo into an echelon far above the station of our birth. He made sure we knew the classics and hired tutors to make it so. With the best schools, the most dedicated tutors, Dairo and I learned far too much about useless things.

My father prepared us for a one percent that wasn’t half as educated as he thought they would be. Where he had seen nobility, there was nothing but spoiled dilettantes. It infused us with a flair for drama that did not match the blood we regularly soaked our hands in.

“But I’ll take care of Morelli, in the meantime,” Dairo said, with a slight smile.

My cousin could be a bit of a sadist. We both could.

We were monsters by birth, but we hid it behind our fancy suits.

“Thank you, mate,” I said, as I positioned my wife in my arms.

Dairo was covering for me, for sure. He knew what kind of menace would happen when I brought Kira home. But he would keep my secret until I was ready to reveal it. That was all that mattered. A few stolen moments, before my father let loose the dogs of war.

I stepped out of the car, my wife in my arms, her long train barely grazing the moonlit ground.

I heard the whirr of the driver’s side window rolling down.

“Eoghan!” My cousin called from the driver’s seat.

“Aye?”

“You deserve happiness,” he said, his somber, blue eyes looking at me with a sadness that was unusual. “But for God’s sake, warn her. Warn her of everything, or you’ll lose her anyway.”

I clenched my jaw, knowing what he meant.

My cousin drove away in the car, leaving me isolated and alone in the middle of the woods. When the sound of the car disappeared in the distance, it was replaced with the croaking of frogs, and the soft rippling sound of the creek nearby.

My wife moaned in her sleep, adjusting then settling back into my arms, as I walked over the cobblestone drive to the stairs that led to the little wooden door.

The cottage was made of stone and plaster, the roof wasn’t thatched anymore, though it once had been. The thick walls were a relic from a time before electric heat and central air, with the small windows bisected by black metal.

The door was unlocked, needing only a little nudge to open.

The thing didn’t lock from the outside. But it could be bolted from the inside, if needed. The heavy wood door creaked open into the small living room, with an adjoining kitchen. There was a hearth and fireplace, and a single room further back. Easels and paint, glass jars of water, and other art supplies lined a wall. They were my mother’s, and now they were mine. I didn’t place my wife in the bedroom. Not yet.

Instead, I placed her on the grand sofa, and lay her head down on a soft, deer hide pillow.

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