21st April 1103

“Well now, you don’t look sleepy at all princess,” Lochan cooed to his daughter who was smiling up at him with wide eyes.

Eallair was standing silently by the fireplace. Lochan could barely look at him. In the past month his cousin had changed in ways that Lochan could not even begin to fathom. He knew he should be pleased that Eallair was finely showing signs of taking up the reigns to his struggling kingdom. Garrick couldn’t have been happier. Lochan felt as though he had lost a friend.

“I just can’t believe that was the end of it Lochan. Where did the warrior come from? Shouldn’t there be some repercussions from her death. I just feel like this isn’t over,” Eallair sniffed with a scowl.

“Your Mama certainly won’t be pleased if you’re still wide awake little sparrow. She’ll say that papa didn’t do his job properly and I’ll get a sound talking to.”

Yvaine nodded up at him still smiling all newly cut teeth and gums.

He knew it wasn’t true. In all likelihood mama wouldn’t even notice if Yvaine were still awake when she retired. She was so exhausted these days even her daughters whimpering cry would not wake her. And so Yvaine grew more and more silent, almost as though, aware that her crys could do no good she had decided against bothering anymore. Lochan would sometime find her, fat, silent tears running down her soft cheeks as she sat ignored in her crib.

He had taken to having her with him during the day when he could. When he was working she would sit with her back warm against his booted calf playing quietly with her dolls. If he went riding out to the farms she was tucked cosily into his tunic, lying still against his chest her wide eyes gazing in wonder as the fields sped by. But of course he couldn’t take her everywhere so there were days she spent with her sickly mother. Lochan had asked Maeve to keep an eye on her when she had Yvaine but Maeve couldn’t be everywhere at once.

“You had better get sleepy fast little miss. Because it is most certainly after your bedtime.”

He glanced at Eallair and was unnerved to see him staring at Yvaine. He didn’t like the predatory look his cousin was giving her, like a fox that had crept into the chicken coop and was gazing down into a nest of downy, yellow chicks.

He carefully deposited her into the crib. She smiled up at him and he thought his heart would stop from the sheer, overwhelming force of his love for the tiny girl. He bent down to kiss her forehead and searched around for her doll.

“Go to sleep now princess,” he murmured as he pulled the blankets over her. She lay silently, her dark, dark eyes unblinking, “Go to sleep.”

He strode across the room, uneasy with Eallair’s presence. He still hadn’t mentioned why he had come to visit at this time of night. He began to put away some books that were lying messily on his desk. Eallair followed, so that Lochan was cornered between his desk and the bookcase.

“Can I do something for you Your Majesty?”

Eallair did not correct him as he usually would when he called him majesty. Lochan swallowed, trying to clear the lump that was fast forming in his throat.

“Yes, Lochan. There is something you can do for me. Not just for me. For the Kingdom,” Eallair was gazing at him mournfully. He looked older than Lochan had ever seen him, his face had somehow hardened and set like drying plaster so that Lochan almost expected to see cracks forming.

“I almost died Lochan,” Eallair murmured.

Lochan felt his heart stutter. It was the thought that woke him sweating and panting in the night, the nightmare that stalked his dreams. The ultimate failure, the death of his young cousin, his failure as the older and wiser to take care of his friend, of his Kingdom. He sucked in a long shuddering breath but Eallair was not finished.

“A man gave his life for me Lochan. He died… for me,” for a moment Eallair looked helpless and frightened, the mask he had worn more and more often the last year, “ and all I could think about was my son, my tiny son handed my Kingdom at the age of a year. My baby son.”

Lochan thought he knew where this conversation was headed and he was suddenly desperate to forestall the conclusion, “ It would have been alright Eallair. Garrick and I, we would have taken care of him, helped. And Madlenka, she’s tough woman and she knows how to rule. If something happened, God forbid, we know what to do.”

It wasn’t true. If Eallair died the people on Mhalwae’s spirit that had already sunk to such low depths might have been irretrievably crushed, like a tiny chick’s body under the boot of a farmer as he rushed into the coop to find the fox’s carnage.

“But Lochan, I almost died and left him with nothing. No plan. Nothing to help him. Nothing. What did Sigurd leave for his son? Did he leave him with some plan to manage the lands he would inherit? Did he plan a wife for his son? What did he leave him?”

And there it was, Eallair had said it. Lochan knew what would soon follow.

And yet when his cousin said the words it still felt as though he had been slapped in the face, “What I wanted to ask you Lochan, my cousin, my friend is if you would do me the honour of granting your daughter’s hand to my son, Kendrick, Crown Prince of Branwhuld and the island of Mhalwae.”

The fox glanced up, its muzzle stained with blood and tiny yellow feather plastered to its fur. Lochan saw that its eyes were grey and sad.

He tried to speak calmly but found he could not, “But Eallair, she’s only a baby!”

He saw his daughter, her tiny body grown, breasts budding from the top of a corset, flowers in her long, brown hair, he saw roving grey eyes following her every sway as he walked her down the aisle. He saw her maids stripping the gown from her pale body, those wide eyes peeping frightened from above the blankets as a man with grey eyes pulled them from her clutched fingers. He saw the man, pushing his daughter, his little Yvaine down on the bed as tears of pain ran down her pink cheeks.

“She’s only a baby Eallair,” he whispered.

“So is Kendrick. He’s only a baby. But he deserves to have a father who has planned for him and so does Yvaine. There isn’t a better match for my son, nor one I desire more. I know that Yvaine will grow into a beautiful, gracious woman and I sincerely hope that my son will be a good man, a good ruler though perhaps it is too much to ask for with a father like me. Please Lochan. Won’t you please do me and my son this honour?”

Eallair’s face was hopeful and questioning in the candlelight, the closest thing to a smile that Lochan had seen in a month tentatively flickering at the corners of his mouth.

How could he refuse? He would have done anything for this man. Anything. He would have thrown down his life to protect him. He could not refuse him his daughter.

“Yes,” he choked, fighting back hot tears, “The answer is yes okay.”

With a sudden and brilliant grin Eallair threw his arms around his cousin pressing him close against his chest.

“Thank you Lochan. Thank you.”

Murchadh, The Royal Family