Lyon's Gift Read Free

He had grown up an outlander, didn’t they know
it; his father was a king and his mother a whore.
    And while his mother had slept in a different bed
many a night, Piers had slipped away and curled beneath a pew in
the chapel to close his eyes and dream of all the things he wanted
in life. And he had wanted so much!
    He had wanted to go away and study in one of those
places he’d only heard speak of... He’d wanted to read until his
eyes went blind... He’d wanted to learn things, and do things, and
see things.
    He’d wanted to know why the sky was so blue and the
grass so green. He’d wanted to know what stars were made of, and
why they burned so brightly. He’d wanted to know why his veins were
blue while his blood was red. He’d wanted so much more than a bed
on a cold, hard floor and to stand alone behind invisible doors...
watching other children at play.
    Though, in truth, why should he have cared if the
other children were outside playing and laughing? Thanks to his
mother, he’d been able to study with the Archbishop of Canterbury
and that had been no trifling thing. He’d had every reason to be
grateful and no reason at all to yearn for something so negligible
as dirty knees or silly games.
    “ Damn it all!” he exclaimed,
lifting up his pen and rapping the quill’s end upon the wooden
table. “We’re going to show these bloody Scots that we can feud
with the best of them!”
    And enjoy it every bit as much.
    That’s what it was going to take to win their
alliance, he surmised.
    Or not.
    Either way, he would relish the sport.
    Though at first he’d been taken unawares by their
unanticipated raids, some part of him reveled in this honest form
of warfare, where one’s enemy stood up to be counted, and one’s
friends openly declared they’d as soon pluck out your eyes if they
could profit from them. There was something particularly heartening
in that unrelenting honesty.
    Aye, he was perfectly pleased to play their
games.
    “ These savages will not run us off
this land!” he vowed. “Damn you for a witless arse!” he reprimanded
Baldwin, though he knew his eyes didn’t quite conceal the smile he
hid. “I should take the price of those beasts out of your hide, you
realize?”
    Color returned to the tips of Baldwin’s ears. “I
wouldn’t fault you for it, Lyon,” he said, but neither did his
smile vanish either. “So what would you have me do?”
    “ What else?” Piers grinned. “We
steal the buggers back—and a few more for good measure!”
    Baldwin smirked. “If I didn’t know better,” he said,
“I’d think you were enjoying this.”
    Lyon lifted a brow. “And you would probably be
right,” he returned, rising from his seat and taking his sword from
where he’d placed it upon the table before him. He slid it into his
scabbard and winked good-naturedly at Baldwin. “Now, let’s go teach
these Scots how to commit a proper thieving!”

 
     
     
     
     
     

CHAPTER 2
     
     
    It was a raven, no mistaking it.
    Its blue-black wings pummeled the air in obvious
distress though it made not a sound as it flailed about the rafters
searching for escape. Within the silence of the chapel its flight
for freedom—like a soul fighting to be set free—was a cry that
stirred Meghan Brodie’s heart.
    She had cast open the shutters to the bright summer
day and the poor bird had flown inside as though it had been
anticipating her appearance at the window. It had startled her,
certainly, but Meghan wasn’t the least bit superstitious, else she
might have considered it an evil omen.
    Certainly, her grandminnie Fia, would have claimed
it to be so.
    The last time she recalled a bird flying into their
home—and it had been a sparrow that time, not even a wicked raven
as this was—her dear grandmother had taken great pains to make it
fly out the same way it had flown in, so that it might take with it
whatever curse it had brought into their home. Else, old Fia had
explained, the sparrow would