Elphame's Choice
Chapter Twenty-Six

He stepped from the shadows, wings folded neatly against his back. His skin and hair seemed to draw down the silver light of the rising moon, highlighting the ridges and planes of his body, silhouetting the velvet darkness of his wings. He moved to her with the soundless, gliding stride that was unique to his father's race. Elphame did not step back from him, but he was careful to halt just barely within an arm's length of her.
"I felt that you were near, but I would not let myself believe it."
"Then you heard me call your name?"
"Yes, it came to me on the night wind and I followed the sound of it to you."
Elphame felt flushed and nervous. She wished she had something to do with her hands.
"Would you like to go for a walk?" she blurted.
"It would be my honor." Lochlan held out his hand.
She hesitated. In the moonlight his hand looked ghostly and unreal.
"We have touched before, Elphame."
She looked from his hand to his eyes. Then, slowly, she laced her fingers through his. His skin was warm, and where their wrists brushed against one another she could feel the steady beat of his pulse.
"The cliffside is just through those trees." He pointed over her shoulder. "If we walk there the light will be better. It will be easier for you to see."
Elphame nodded numbly. Now that he was there, she felt completely unsure of herself. She couldn't even seem to make her legs move - she just stood, hand clasped with his, silently staring at him.
The white glint of his feral smile matched the teasing light in his eyes. "Or would you rather that we ran?"
His words broke the spell of awkwardness. Her lips twisted. "Not at night and not through this forest."
Hand in hand, they began walking together. "I have definitely learned my lesson. Another fall and Cuchulainn would never let me out of his sight, which would be almost as inconvenient for him right now as it would be for me."
Lochlan picked up the thread of conversation. "I would imagine Cuchulainn is very busy with the rebuilding of the castle. It would be difficult for him if he felt that he needed to keep a constant watch over you."
"Not to mention he's in love."
Lochlan's eyes widened momentarily in surprise. When he spoke his thumb traced lazy circles on her hand. "I do understand how love can complicate things."
"Do you?" She felt childishly giddy.
They stepped from the forest. The moon played on the sleeping sea, turning it shades of silver and white.
MacCallan Castle stood in the distance, a dark chaperone, partially obscured by the tree line.
Lochlan turned to face her. "Yes, I do."
She was trapped in the intensity of his gaze. His eyes were filled with mystery and the seductive allure of the unknown. Suddenly, she was afraid that if she loved him she would be lost to herself, forever changed, and she wasn't sure she was ready to relinquish herself to any man - especially one who was so different from anything she had ever imagined. Elphame pulled her hand from his. With Lochlan following her, she walked restlessly to one of the many boulders that dotted the cliffside. She sat on it, trying to order her thoughts.
"Tell me." Instead of looking at him she stared out at the moonlit sea. "Explain to me how it is possible that you exist."
Lochlan knew what he said to her would set the course of their relationship. He kept his gaze on her strong, familiar profile and sent a silent prayer for aid to Epona.
"The question of my existence is a complex one. In truth, I do not know exactly why I exist. You know as much as I about the events that led to the Great War. More than one hundred years ago something cataclysmic happened within the Fomorian race. Their females began dying. I've often thought it must have been Epona's will that a race so demonic die out, but then if it was her will, why did she allow the war to take place at all?"
Without looking at him, Elphame answered with words that echoed those she had heard her mother speak many times. "Epona allows her people to make their own choices - she does not want us to be slaves, she wants strong, free-thinking subjects. With that freedom comes the possibility of mistakes -
mistakes that sometimes lead to evil. If the warriors at Guardian Castle had not become lax about their duties, the Fomorians could not have entered Partholon and begun stealing women."
"But they did. My mother explained it as the way they set about repopulating their dying race." He shook his head and breathed out a sharp, frustrated breath. "You would think that mixing with human blood would weaken the demons, but it didn't. The race thrived, so much so that soon they were ready to invade Partholon." He paused, reordering his thoughts.
"Until my mother's time, no human woman had survived the birth of a child fathered by a Fomorian," he continued, choosing his words carefully. "She was young and strong, but she always insisted that her strength had little to do with it. She said that she survived because I am more human than Fomorian." He paused and drew a breath. "My mother was a part of what was, at first, just another of the large groups of women who had been captured, raped and impregnated by the Fomorians. They were being held captive until it was time for their demonic fetuses to be birthed. A human woman's impregnation by a Fomorian meant a death sentence for her; during the birthing process her body was always fatally torn."
His voice took on a faraway tone as he repeated the story his mother had told him countless times. "The Fomorians saw human women as expendable, only a temporary encumbrance, a necessary means to attain their goal of the repopulation of their species. The hybrid females were especially prized in the hopes of rebuilding the race, but all the children were necessary.
"As Partholon united and the tide of war turned against them, the Fomorians attempted to escape into the Tier Mountains. Some did. They divided the women amongst them, planning to elude the army of Partholon while still keeping their means of procreation. But the Goddess had other plans. The demons grew ill with the same plague that had decimated the core of their army. Heavy with child, my mother led the women of her group in revolt. Then she and her sisters in arms searched within the mountain passes for the others, destroying the Fomorians as they weakened. She should have returned to Partholon and her home then, so that, surrounded by the comfort of their families, she and the other impregnated women could await their inevitable end. That was what she and the women intended. But then the unexpected happened. She survived my birth."
Elphame was unable to look away from him any longer. She turned her face to his. Lochlan's expression was fixed and tight with emotion.
"And then another mother lived through the birth of her mutant child, and another and another."
His words made her heart ache. "You are not a mutant."
"I am part-demon, part-human. What else does that make me?"
She answered his question with one of her own. "I am part-centaur, part-human. Does that make me a mutant?"
"It makes you a miracle."
She held his gaze. "Exactly."
He continued recounting the story of his life with the ghost of a smile on his lips. "Almost half of the women survived. My mother had no explanation for it except to say that Epona's hand was at work."
His eyebrow cocked. "That was always my mother's explanation for any question she could not answer.
But whatever the reason, there was suddenly a group of young women who had winged infants at their breasts." Lochlan's expression softened. "And they loved their children with a fierce protectiveness. They knew they couldn't return to Partholon with their babies, and leaving them was an option they refused to consider. So they made their way through the mountains and into the Wastelands beyond. Life was hard there, and our mothers longed for Partholon, but we survived, even thrived. And our mothers taught us to be civilized. To be human."
"Over a century ago..." Her words were a sigh. Even with him standing there beside her, winged, living and breathing, it was hard to accept.
"I admit it is a long time." He made an offhanded gesture, as if he didn't know what to make of his own longevity. "None of our mothers had much knowledge about the Fomorian race, but it was apparent early in our lives that we matured quickly and that our bodies were extraordinarily resilient. Aging appears to be just another thing our dark blood protects us against."
Elphame thought about what she had read in her mother's extensive library. "Fomorians had an aversion to daylight, but I've seen you in the light of day. It doesn't seem to harm you."
"It does not harm me, but I am stronger at night. My vision is better, my sense of hearing and smell are more acute."
Spreading his fingers, he held his arms away from his body. Elphame thought that he looked like the winged spirit of a shaman making ready to evoke the magic of a goddess.
"The night sky calls to me."
"Can you fly?"
He smiled, dropping his hands to his sides. "I do not think of it as flying; I think of it as riding the wind.
Perhaps some day I will show you."
To glide through the air wrapped in his arms...the thought left her breathless.
"This doesn't seem real. You don't seem real," she said.
Lochlan moved closer to her. He lifted a thick strand of hair that hung over her shoulder and let it fall like water through his fingers.
"Twenty-five years ago I had a dream. If I live an eternity, I will never forget it. In my dream I watched the birth of a child. She was born of a human female and a centaur male. When the centaur lifted her and proclaimed her a goddess, I knew that that wondrous child would somehow irrevocably alter my future.
You have always been real to me, Elphame. It is the rest of my life that was only a dream. You are my destiny."
Elphame let out a long breath. "I don't know what to do about you."
"Can you not simply do as my mother did? Just allow yourself to love me?"
Everything within her - heart, soul and the blood that filled her veins - cried, Yes! Yes she could! But logic and years of enmity cautioned her to be reasonable.
"I cannot. I'm not just a young maiden. I have been named The MacCallan. My people swore an oath of loyalty to me. My first responsibility is no longer to myself, it is to my clan."
Lochlan's face broke into a joyous smile. "Ask me my mother's name."
"What is your mother's name?" she asked, surprised by the sudden question.
"She was called Morrigan, named by a doting father after the legendary Phantom Queen. She was living at the ancestral castle of her clan, where her eldest brother presided as Chieftain. She had just completed her education at the Temple of the Muse, and she was enjoying her sojourn by the sea while she awaited the date of her wedding - a wedding which never took place..."
" - Because MacCallan Castle was attacked and she was taken prisoner. Her brother was The MacCallan," Elphame finished for him, feeling a supernatural prickle along her skin.
With a rustle of wings, Lochlan dropped to his knees before her. He pulled his short sword from the scabbard strapped to his side and placed it at her feet.
"The blood of the Clan MacCallan runs thick in my veins. I invoke the right of that blood and I do hereby give you my oath and I swear fealty to you from this moment forth, even unto my death and, if Epona grants it, beyond."
Elphame stared down at him. The moon had climbed the sky and it sat over her shoulder, haloing Lochlan in its cool light. He was watching her with eyes that gleamed the bright reflection of what she suddenly accepted as her future.
He Felt right. She couldn't explain it rationally, but she had changed since she'd met him.
The old spirit had been right. She had found her peace at Lochlan's side. Elphame slid from her rocky perch so that she, too, was on her knees facing Lochlan. First, she took up his sword and offered it back to him.
"Keep this. You may need it to defend your Chieftain.
"Then you accept me?"
Reverently, she touched the side of his face. "I accept you, Lochlan, into the Clan MacCallan - as is your birthright."
The tension drained out of Lochlan's shoulders and he bowed his head.
"Thank you, Epona," he whispered.
When he spoke the Goddess's name, Elphame experienced a rush of preternatural foreknowledge. In a blinding flash she saw him on his knees, as he was then, but in the vision that was overlaid upon the fabric of reality, Lochlan was in chains, covered with blood...imprisoned...dying___
Her mind screamed, rejecting the vision. She would not let him be destroyed. The vision made her decision for her and she knew what she must do. If she accepted him, if she allowed herself to love him, it would alter his future - the death spell would be shattered. As his mother's love had conquered the darkness in his blood, her love would defeat a world's misplaced hatred.
"You say I am your destiny," she said.
It wasn't a question, but he nodded his head and spoke with a surety that closed the breach of time and blood.
"I love you, Elphame."
"Then handfast with me."
Lochlan's sharp intake of breath was the only outward sign of his shock. Handfasting was a marriage sworn to last exactly one year. At the end of one year, the couple could decide to continue the marriage, or, if either did not desire to remain together, the marriage was dissolved with no blame assigned to either party. But it was a binding contract - sealed by two people - witnessed by Epona. It was a sacred bond that could not be broken for the space of that year.
"Yes!" He grasped her hands. "Yes, I will!" And may the bloody Prophecy and the world be damned, he thought fiercely. Before second thoughts or hesitation could claim her, he began the timeless words of binding that had been taught to him by his mother, who had been taught them by her mother and her mother before her.
"I, Lochlan, son of Morrigan MacCallan, do take you Elphame, daughter of Etain, in handfast this day. I agree to protect you from fire even if the sun should fall, from water even if the sea should rage and from earth even if it should shake in tumult. And I will honor your name as if it were my own."
As she spoke the words, she knew she was choosing the right path - the path that she had glimpsed within Lochlan's eye - the path her own brother had foretold.
"I, Elphame, Chieftain of Clan MacCallan, do take you, Lochlan, in handfast this day. I agree that no fire or flame shall part us, no lake or seas shall drown us and no earthly mountains shall separate us. And I will honor your name as if it were my own."
"So has it been spoken," Lochlan said.
"So shall it be done." She completed the ritual.
They came together in a kiss that began as a tender consummation of their covenant. Elphame leaned into him and his arms went around her. His lips were soft -  so much softer than the rest of his body. His scent enveloped her. Once again he was the living forest, wild and male. She drank him in. He was her oasis in a life that she had thought would always be barren of the love of a lifemate.
And now he belonged to her and she to him.
The purr of his wings flexing and filling was seductive music to her already aroused senses. She leaned away from him just enough so that she had a clear view of them.
"Your wings," Elphame breathed, "are like living velvet. I want to wrap myself in them and have you carry me away."
She reached up and touched the downy, butter-colored underside. Lochlan's breath exploded from him.
He shuddered and closed his eyes. She pulled her hand back, and touched his face. Slowly, he opened his eyes.
"You have watched me for my entire life, so you must already know what I'm going to tell you. I am completely inexperienced in love. So, when you close yourself from me, I do not know why. You must tell me, guide me. When I touch your wings you act as if you are in pain, yet yesterday you begged me not to stop touching you. I don't understand, but I'd like to - I need to. Help me to understand, husband."
The endearment shook him to his soul. He was her husband. She was his wife. A sense of belonging settled over him. In gaining her, he had found his place in the world and no force would ever truly part them.
"My wings are an extension of my deepest emotions. They come to me from my father's blood, so they react with an elemental fierceness that is not always easy to control. When you touch them you touch what is most base about me."
"Do you think your desire for me is base?"
"No! Of course not. But sometimes the depth of it overwhelms me. When you awaken my need for you, the dark lust that pulses through the demon in my blood stirs, too. It can be raw and dangerous."
She thought of the bloodlust of the Fomorians and that Lochlan had admitted to her that the desire to drink her blood lurked within him. Elphame looked steadily into his haunted eyes; she saw no demon there, only the man who had been fashioned as her lifemate. "I believe your love for me is stronger than the demon within you.
He was wearing a simple, undyed cotton shirt. Her eyes stayed on his as she unlaced it and he pulled it roughly from his chest. The breath caught in her throat at his lithe beauty.
Slowly, she unpinned the chieftain's brooch that held her plaid in place and unwrapped the soft fabric from around her body. She pulled her fine linen blouse over her head. The cool spring night touched her naked skin, sending a delicious chill through her.
Except for his wings, Lochlan remained very still.
Pressing the tips of her breasts against the heat of his chest, Elphame reached over his shoulder to stroke his wing, letting her fingers caress the softness that made her think of velvet and cream. He shuddered, and took her into his arms. She molded herself against him, accepting his ferocious kiss. Her arms reached around him and she found the place where his wings met his body and let her fingers play a teasing game there, stroking and kneading and even allowing her fingernails to rake along his back.
With a sudden motion, Lochlan lifted her and then lay her back against the soft bed of grass and MacCallan plaid. He crouched beside her, wings unfurled, while he tried to regain control of his seedling emotions. She reached for him, wanting to feel his body against hers.
He intercepted her hand, laughing breathlessly.
"Slowly, my heart. Let me explore you. I want to learn your marvelous body."
She moaned as his palm found her taut nipple.
"Yes - " his voice was thick with desire " - you are my Siren's call, and I would follow you even if it led to my death." As he spoke the word death his fingers traced the slash that puckered the soft skin of her waist. "But I will never allow anything to harm you. I make that pledge with my life and I will defend it with the last drop of my blood."
It won't come to that, Elphame thought fiercely. Not now. Both of them would be fine. Her clan had to accept him. Then all thoughts but the heat of his caresses scattered from her mind as his hand moved from the curve of her waist to meet the smooth coat that covered her lower body.
"You are an indescribable softness," he whispered huskily as he caressed her thigh, "merged with sleek strength. I have wondered all these years what it would feel like to touch you, and to be touched by you in turn, never really believing that I would get a chance to know." Lochlan stroked the inside of her auburn-coated thigh. "It was why I finally found my way to you. I could not bear the thought of being without you any longer."
He slid his hand up until he found the core of her wet heat. Elphame moaned and moved her hips restlessly. His wings pulsed with life and the dark blood of his father surged hot and hard through his body. For an instant he saw himself violently taking her, pounding her against the ground while he fed from her neck in time to her screams, which echoed into the night.
No! Lochlan's rational mind rebelled against the image and he wrenched himself away from her body.
Breathing in ragged gulps, he sat beside her, trembling, with his head buried in his hands as pain cascaded through his mind.
This time it was she who knelt beside him. Elphame stroked his hair and murmured wordless sounds of comfort. When his wings began to close, she pulled his hands gently from his face.
"What is it you fear? Why do you pull yourself away from me?"
He looked into her clear, guileless eyes. What would she do if she knew that he had followed not just his heart to her, but that he had also followed a dark prophecy that demanded her blood? Would it matter to her that he had decided to betray his people and to refuse the Prophecy? "Talk to me, Lochlan. Is it that you regret the handfast?" "No!" he cried. "Never! It is you who should feel regret. I am a demon, barely able to control my impulses. I cannot make love to you without seeing violence and blood. And it fuels my lust, Elphame. Do you understand? Even as I love you and desire you above all things, my dark heritage yearns to tear and taste and ravage you." Elphame carefully controlled the finger of fear his words caused. How she reacted now would set their future. She could not love him without trusting him.
Lochlan was her choice. If he was not worthy of her, not worthy of her trust, would he be in such agony now? Elphame didn't think so. If he truly was a demon, there would be no struggle to retain his humanity
- he would relinquish his soul to darkness. She believed in him; she had to.
"When you make love to me, you think dark, violent thoughts?" Elphame asked.
"Yes." His voice broke. "I cannot stop it."
Elphame rose to her feet and Lochlan knew with a drowning sense of grief that she was going to leave him.
"Then I will simply have to make love to you."
Instead of turning from him, she straddled his legs and with a fluid, sensuous grace sank down onto his lap.
Elphame pulled him to her with infinite gentleness, and kissed his lips and caressed the underside of his wings while they pulsed, instantly beginning to fill once again with his desire.
"Elphame, you don't know - "
"Shhh," she pressed a finger against his lips, stilling his words as she worked the tie on his pants and pulled his erection free.
He stopped breathing as she explored his hardness, and when she lifted herself to place his throbbing tip against her wetness, he could only brace his hands against the grassy earth and fight the urge to sink his fingers into her soft waist and impale her.
"Open your eyes, husband. Look at me."
He opened his eyes to meet her luminous gaze as she sheathed his hardness within her. And all he saw was her, his wife, his heart - the visions of bloodlust abated as her soft heat enveloped him and she began to move up and down with excruciating slowness.
She did have to stretch to accept him, but after the initial shock of feeling him enter her body, the desire that had been simmering in her dreams and fantasies ignited. She rocked against him, feeling the tension build. When Lochlan thrust up to meet her, Elphame threw back her head and increased her body's tempo. Over them, she saw that Lochlan's wings stretched fully erect. They blotted out the sky and the forest, making him her entire world. When he cried her name as his hot seed shot into her, Elphame rocked forward and held him close while her own body exploded in a spasm of release.
They were very quiet as they made their way back to the entrance of the tunnel. The sky was already beginning to lighten. Elphame could hardly believe that so much of the night had passed. It had seemed that she had only spent a brief moment in his arms. She tightened her grip on his hand. He smiled and lifted her palm to his lips.
"You're sure that I did not hurt you?" he asked again.
"Quite sure. Now stop asking me. I am not a delicate fainting maiden." Her lips twitched. "Actually, I'm not a maiden at all anymore."
"It is such a miracle to me. I did not think I could ever control..." He paused, clenching his jaw as he remembered the hunks of grass and dirt he had ripped from the earth during his orgasm. What if his hands had not been resting against the ground? What if they had been on the curve of her waist, or the swell of her breast, or the delicate indention of her neck?
"Lochlan." She spoke his name sharply, deliberately breaking through the self-loathing that was written on his face. "Nothing bad happened." She touched his cheek. "Can you not just enjoy the pleasure we shared?"
He pulled her into his arms, resting his forehead against hers. "Forgive me, my heart. It is just that the demons are within me, so it is difficult not to do constant battle with them. The truth is that you have brought me great happiness tonight, and I should not allow anything to taint that."
"You haven't tainted it. Nothing could taint tonight."
Lochlan bent to kiss her, hoping desperately that her words were true. They walked on into the forest until they came to the upturned lip of ground that disguised the entrance to the tunnel. The two lovers halted before it.
"Let me go with you," Lochlan said suddenly, cupping her face in his hand. "We are mated, and I have sworn my oath to you. Surely we can make them see that my love for you is stronger than the blood of my father."
Elphame covered his hands with hers. "And so I just thrust this marriage on my family as if they are so unimportant to me that I do not respect their right to know before strangers? Lochlan, it would wound me terribly if Cuchulainn suddenly announced that he had chosen a mate without first taking me into his confidence. Do you understand that I cannot do that?"
"You love your family very much. I understand that."
"It's not just about love. It's about trust and respect and loyalty. And it is nothing less than I have pledged to give you."
"I know that, my heart. It is just that I do not know how I will bear being parted from you."
"I'll send for my parents. When they arrive I will tell them and Cuchulainn together. Then we will all figure out how to explain us to the rest of Partholon." Elphame's voice sounded much more confident than she felt.
"How long?"
"I'll loose the carrier pigeon today. Once she gets the message, Mama will make certain that they waste no time in coming. She'll be thrilled that I asked them to come to MacCallan Castle - she's probably been brooding about not being involved in the decorating and she'll come bearing wagonloads of beautiful, shimmery things." Elphame's smile reflected the love she felt for her mother. "It will only be seven days, perhaps a little longer." She searched his eyes for understanding.
"I have waited twenty-five years for you - a few days more is really a little thing to ask."
Elphame hugged him. "I'll try to come every night. You will be here, won't you?"
"Always, my heart," he said into her hair, "always."
Reluctantly, Elphame left his arms. She didn't look back as she climbed down into the tunnel, but she felt him behind her, watching as she left him. The torch sputtered and cast a feeble light that reflected her sadness. Wearily, she reentered her chamber and closed the secret door. As she curled into the thick comforter she could still smell her husband's scent where it lingered on her skin like a fleeting caress.
Before sleep enfolded her, Elphame sent a heartfelt prayer to her Goddess. Please, Epona, help them
to see the man and not the demon.