Niall lived here on the edge of this human village called Baile Icin, because the other members of his pride and clan had died out. Shifters married into other clans, but there weren’t as many females as males anymore, and other clans were few and far between. The Shifter race was diminishing.
"You’ll make the sword then?" Alanna asked, breaking his thoughts.
She didn’t have to sound so eager. "I don’t have much bloody choice, do I?"
Her eyes softened. "I am sorry."
Sympathy, from a Fae? Had the world gone mad today?
"You will be, lass. If my cubs are hurt in any way, you’ll be the first to be very, very sorry. Your brother, now, he’ll be even sorrier still. So show me this damned silver and let’s be getting on with it."
Chapter Three
Forging a sword was a different thing entirely from the usual practical ironworks Niall produced for the humans of the village. Niall never asked Alanna why he’d been chosen for this task, because he already knew.
Once upon a time, Niall O’Connell had been a master sword maker, before Ciarrai had been made an Earldom by the bloody English. He’d created beautiful weapons used for deadly purpose in the last Fae-Shifter war. The Shifters had won that war, though Niall knew much of their victory had been due to luck--the Fae had already been losing power in the mortal world, and the Shifters had only made their retreat into the Faerie realms inevitable.
It wasn’t often that Shifters from different clans and species worked together, but at that point, Lupine, Feline, and Bear had fought side by side. The Fae had conceded defeat and vanished into their realm behind the mists.
Well, conceded defeat was too strong a phrase. The Fae had gone, killing, burning, and pillaging behind them. Fae didn’t care whether their victims were children, breeding mothers, or humans who just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Niall still had his sword-making tools kept safely in a chest at the back of the forge. He hadn’t touched them in years. He shook his head to himself as he laid out his tongs and hammer, grinding stone and chisel. This sword wouldn’t be good, strong steel, but soft silver, which was daft, even if she claimed it was spelled to work like steel. He could craft such a thing, but it would only be good as a trinket.
He briefly considered mixing a bit of iron into the hilt to debilitate any Fae who touched it, but he knew such a trick would make his sons’ deaths even more certain. Not that he believed the Fae prince would let Niall live either, in any case. But Niall would take out the Fae bitch when they came for him. Prince Kieran would watch his sister die before he killed Niall.
Niall glanced at Alanna as he pounded out the bar of metal she’d brought him. She’d found a stool and seated herself on it near the fire. She did look cold, the silly woman, probably not used to the harsh clime of the Irish west coast. The Faerie realms, he’d heard, were misty and soft all the time, which was why she wore flimsy silk robes and let her braids flow. Fae women didn’t have to bundle their hair out of the wind.
After a few quick looks at her, he realized that Alanna wasn’t staring sightlessly at the forge, or watching him beat the blade. She was studying him.
Her gaze roved his bare back and the muscles of his arms, as though she’d never seen a half-clothed man before. She probably hadn’t. Fae were cold people, not liking to be touched, preferring robes, jewels, and other fussy things to bare skin. They rarely did anything as crude as coupling, bodily seduction being almost as distasteful to them as iron. Shifters, on the other hand, loved breeding and loved children, children being all that more precious because so few survived.
"Are you a virgin, then, lass?" Niall asked her.
Alanna jumped. "What?"
"A virgin. If it doesn’t hurt your pristine ears for me to ask it. Are you?"
"No."
Interesting. Fae women didn’t lie with males unless they absolutely had to. "You have a lover then? A husband?"
"No." The word was more angry now. "It is none of your affair."
"You like to say that, lass. Did you have a gasun?"
"A child? No." Again, the chill anger.
"I’m sorry, love."
"Why?"
"That must have hurt you."
When a Shifter woman was childless it was an impossible sorrow to her. As dangerous as breeding was for Shifters, females were happy to risk it to bring in cubs. "I imagine ’tis different for a Fae woman." The Fae were so long-lived they didn’t bear many children. Fae women who did like children often stole them from humans, rather than bearing their own, raising them to be their doting little slaves.
"It did hurt me," she said.
Niall saw the pain in her eyes. She looked so out of place, sitting in his forge, her strange, elegant robes already soiled from the dust and soot. He never thought he’d feel sorry for a Fae, but the sadness on her face was real.
"Did your lover not want a child?" Niall asked gently.
"My lover, as you call him, died." Alanna’s jaw was fixed, rigid. "We tried to have a child, but I don’t know whether it was even possible."
"Fae do breed. I’ve seen your wee ones." Even crueler than the adults, unfortunately.
"My lover was human."
Surprise stilled Niall’s hands. "A human man? Let me guess. A slave?" He couldn’t keep the disgust out of his voice.
"He had been captured, yes." She met his look defiantly. "But not by me."
"Oh, that makes it all right then. Whose slave was he? You’re royal brother’s?"
"Yes. It was a long time ago."
One of her brother’s slaves, made into her lover. A typical story of Fae cruelty except for the grief in her eyes. He wasn’t imagining that.
He bent over his task again. "How long ago?" he asked.
"One hundred years."
"And you loved this man? Or pretended to?"
Her silence was so flint-hard that Niall raised his head again. She was glaring at him. "Did you love your mate?" she asked in a sharp voice.
"I won’t apologize for my question, love. You are the one coercing me into helping the bastard who stole my children. I’ll answer yours--yes, I loved her more than my own life."
"My answer is the same."
She met his gaze without flinching. The pain in her dark eyes wasn’t false and neither was the loneliness, and Alanna didn’t look ashamed of either.