Child of the Loch (Child of the Loch Series) (3 page)

When the stare down ended with a draw and no blows, I felt a bit of lightning like a jolt from the charged carpet. The men seemed to be unaffected; they nodded to one another and disappeared upstairs. I heard nothing but small echoes of the sharp words that went back and forth. The language seemed familiar but nothing that I could understand.

They were still battling over whatever it was and the tension rolled through the house. My dad was really broadcasting. Pain, fear, rage, disbelief and disappointment rolled over my skin like scalding hot water from a shower. I knew we were in trouble so I started up the stairs but my mother stopped me. She knew something more than what I could ascertain but my mother would not interfere nor would she allow me too.

Only minutes, which seemed like days, had passed when they both stomped down the stairs. The hunk was looking at me like he knew some private joke and was wearing dad’s clothing, which fit him quite well despite their difference in height. The only reason that I could think of for the wardrobe change was that the man’s outfit stood out like a sore thumb.

I mentally chastised myself for the billionth time that day. There I was concentrating on clothing, while my father emitted a mixture of anger, defeat and desperation. With him beside me I had to concentrate harder on blocking the surge of emotions. I’d never felt them coming from him so strongly before.

My mother was stoic but I felt her own emotions boiling beneath the surface. There was also an odd elated emotion that I did not recognize, maybe because it wasn’t coming off either of my parents. I knew their expressive patterns like I knew my own. It had to be coming off the hunk.

In the words of Alice, “
Curiouser
and
Curiouser
,” I thought turning to my mother whose mask had dropped to reveal her true thoughts on the situation at hand. Things must be worse than I could imagine, she looked like she did the time I swallowed a mini-matchbox car… sick and worried. I didn’t know what to do, so I just waited. Nothing could have surprised me more than my father’s words.

“This is James and you’re going to marry him.”

He presented me with a scroll labeled the last will and testament of
Misha
McDonnell II, ruler of the Loch. I really wished I had been psychic. It would have made things so much easier and why in the heck am I receiving the ruler’s last will? Where was the Loch? I’d never heard of such a place.

While I was fussing with my own thoughts, my father seemed to force those horrifying words through gritted teeth and his yellow cheeks burned like the sun. I could almost feel the heat. In fact, I was sure the room rose a few degrees. Sweat poured down the back of my neck and spine pooling at the top of the waistband of my jeans.

My father turned and trudged up the stairs the weight of his news on his slumping shoulders. It wasn’t long before he came down the stairs like a man marching to his death with an aged box of mementos that I had never seen before.

I was keen to notice that on one of the sides of the box was the perfect imprint of a male hand charred into it. He covered the mark with the lid and from the box he lifted a worn photo. I snatched it from him and to my eternal surprise; it was the man, a king, who occupied my dreams in better days.

My heart sank. I grieved for the man I knew and loved from beyond the veil. I dreaded what new things I was about to learn about the Loch and where I was going to fit into them. Things were happening and I didn’t have one bit of control over them.

“Oh crap!” was what I said, but “Oh four letter word” was what I said when it dawned on me that I was to marry this James or John…Heck his name could have been Steve and I would still be beyond irritated. This was big trouble; I could feel my face cheeks burning. Color was starting at my neck and rising into the hair follicles on my head. I knew I looked bad but I didn’t care I only knew that I couldn’t decide whether I was more enraged or appalled. Now my beloved father was straight out choosing my future for me and a grandfather I didn’t know existed was dead and buried.

I can’t even say how much time passed. Whether it was minutes, hours or weeks, it didn’t matter. I stepped toward my father, laid my hand upon the back of his hot and much larger one. I drew it back jerkily as the skin on my fingertips singed. The blisters healed immediately and I searched his eyes. My father only closed them and ignored my searching gaze.

I said in my calmest voice, “What do you mean?”

I was white-knuckled and nearly hyperventilating but I had to be calm. If I wasn’t calm I was going to explode. I could feel the rage welling up in my stomach. I couldn’t even be sure these were my own emotions yet. I would not be responsible for the death and destruction that would ensue. I breathed in and out slowly, petting Hank’s large head with my free hand. I thought I was ready but my boots and jeans couldn’t prepare me for what my dad was about to lay on me.

“I didn’t go fishing a few months ago.” He gestured to my mother, “We thought it best to keep it from you, so you would have a chance to make up your own mind without my influence. A messenger came and told me that my father,
Misha
McDonnell, King of the Loch, was going to the Land of Light.” I started to interrupt but he raised his hand in a stopping gesture. I pursed my lips in frustration but kept silent.

“I felt duty bound to go and make my peace with him and the Loch. Stubborn even on his death bed, he wouldn’t even see me until I pledged to do whatever he asked, no matter what it was. I gave him my pledge. I didn’t know that in doing so I was pledging you to a man who my father chose. He said in time he would send news of his choice for you, after my word was already given. I did not know that it was James he chose for you. I am sorry, child. I did not think that my father would stoop to such a level of deceit but what’s done is done.

Shortly after my visit, I tried in earnest to allow you to meet a man of your choosing in that time. I brought all the young, eligible men from work to eat dinner with us. Youngling, I would have taken my dishonor, if only you had chosen someone and would be happy, but now the time for such decisions is done. Please, do as I ask and marry James, you have not met anyone else.” His voice slipped deeper and deeper into the thick brogue of the Loch.

“My father was a wise man, who knew you well from our letters and pictures. He thought that you could be happy with James. Though I am unhappy with the way this coupling is to come about, I must agree with my father, because I gave my word. However, it must be your choice. You must choose him now or…” He glared at James.

My father could not finish his thoughts and his eyes were so sad, but there was more to be said and more to be learned about the Loch. If he hadn’t been so sad, then I would have told him all his meddling drove me away from the suitors. I opened my mouth to tell him the truth many times that day, but never did. He mistook my silence for agreement and went on with his tale this time his words were thick with emotion.

“I am from the royal line and I was set to marry another who would make a land treaty. The woman thought I was her true mate, even with all evidence to the contrary. We were not compatible and I ran from my responsibility. It was my responsibility to marry but I wanted love which I found with your mother.
Misha
disowned me. You are the last of the pure McDonnell line but without your marriage to James you are not to be named heir.”

He closed his eyes in shame. The history lesson was done. I knew that if I wanted to save the Loch and its people from a sad fate, then I would be forced to take James as my king. I, also, knew that if I didn’t want to rule then my father’s family name, my family name, would be irreconcilably and irreversibly blackened, because I was the last of us, the only one with the lineage to restore us.

For someone hell-bent on doing the “so-called” honorable thing I was scared. More scared than I’ve ever been in my life. I didn’t know if I could make the right decision for us.

I struggled to make my decisions and the words “heir” and “Princess” jack hammered into my forehead causing a migraine. The words didn’t mean anything to me when I read books. Now they meant I was to be a ruler of a land and a symbol of hope to them. I was to be a queen. This was almost too much to absorb. Huge tears flowed down my cheeks but it was my father’s sadness that sealed my fate and broke my heart.

His voice was just a whisper as he pleaded, “You are a daughter of the Loch and were pledged by your king. Please, you must try to do what is necessary to save the Loch. The others will make the
Lochoa
suffer, but you, my child, will be a great leader and love the
Lochoa
as all the
McDonnells
have before you. That McDonnell blood that flows through your veins will make you strong enough to do what is necessary for you and your people.”

His voice cracked, like he was a prepubescent boy on the verge of tears, and I knew he wanted nothing more than to champion his people and reclaim his life in the Loch. I was his means to accomplish both. Before I knew what hit me I spoke.

“I will marry you.”

I turned to James, who had been silently observing all of the events with interest. I tried to look pleased; there was no reason to look sad when you’re a princess with a hunk of man for your fiancée. All reason aside, I still wanted to throw up. There was something off about this whole thing; I could feel it in my gut, in my gift, in everything that was happening.

Blackness stabbed me in the chest with the force of a battering ram, but it was slammed back when James took my hand and squeezed it gently, wordlessly offering me support. He seemed to be a nice guy and a very attractive one at that.

In that one brief touch, I felt him as I had only felt the people closest to me since my gifts had begun. James was in love with the pictures and stories that my father sent. He was determined to make the Loch the best it could be and to put me on the throne to lead it. James didn’t want to force me to marry him but the old king’s word had to be done. Maybe I was wrong about this. I would follow this to wherever it would lead me, even if it would lead me down the aisle with this man.

4

James was foreign to me in ways I wasn’t expecting. I could not only feel his emotions but I had had a glimmer into his mind. The wall between us only partly crumbled the longer we were in proximity, but it was enough for me to see more of James and discover his nature. Magic seemed to flow through my veins, like hot tea on a cold day. Images from nowhere appeared behind my eyes. I knew James in an instant. He played like a perfectly rehearsed movie in my head with sights, smells and sounds.

“The one who sits on the throne speaks law,” he thought sadly.

I saw his adolescence in the castle. I saw how my grandfather lovingly taught and chided him. No blood related father and son could be closer than James and
Misha
.

They always read my father’s letters together. When he was still young, he courageously asked for one of the photos of my child self. He still wore the picture around his neck, close to his heart, as though my picture being there would give him strength and draw us closer to a future together.

When asked, James pulled the braided chain of rope tucked beneath his shirt and at the end was a small, golden locket. It contained one of my pictures where I was missing a tooth on one side of it and a very new picture of me on the other. I knew that the newest photo had arrived just after my grandfather’s death and was taken a few months earlier when I was reading at the living room’s bay window. It was no glamour shot but I happily smiled at my mother behind the camera.

It seemed that, with James or the stress of the situation, all the barriers that I had erected for self preservation were crumbling. I felt them melt into me as the dam in my mind that I used to keep everyone out broke and the levees over flowed.

I looked to my mother and concentrated on seeing into her, only to find that she was just outside of my reach. When I stepped closer, I could see her thoughts, worries, fears and depth of love for me.

I blanked out. In a moment, I felt something again. It was dark and teetering on the edge of everything that I was learning, feeling and seeing. It seemed of no consequence at that time. So I just blinked it away and I told my father everything. If anyone would know if this was normal, he would. We were both surprised when the name Sabina popped into his head.

“Wait a second. Who is Sabina?” I asked quizzically an edge to my voice. I didn’t know if I would be able to handle any more surprises.

“Sabina is my mother. She was the daughter of a great magus and an
Elven
princess. She had natural magic from both parents and possessed the gifts of healing, “sight” and wisdom only to name a few. They say sometimes the younglings don’t get any gifts from their parents. It was long ago said that I have no natural magic in me.”

My mind reeled. I was an elf…a big, plump elf. Move over, Mr. Bloom. Where’s my bow and Hobbit entourage? I snickered in my mind.

There was so much new information. Things I’d never dreamed of. Not only that, but I knew a few other things at that moment. First, my father was proud and sad that I had the gift of “sight” and second, he had an “unnatural” gift that he kept well hidden from everyone, including my mother and me.