The Pillars Of The World

clean his room that the main business that was transacted on those visits took place in a mistress’s bed. He planted a few other seeds as well, and then left them to do their work.
    It was a hard year for the family who had turned him away. His mother, upon hearing the whispers about her husband’s infidelities, took a knife to their bed one night and cut out his adulterous heart. She was hanged and then burned.
    A few weeks later, his younger brother, still distraught over his parents’ deaths, put his horse to a jump the animal couldn’t possibly take, and died of his sustained injuries. His pretty wife, swollen with their second child, went mad with grief, threw herself into the small lake on the estate, and drowned.
    A month after that, Adolfo returned to the village, a prosperous man who simply wanted to make peace with his estranged family. It was almost touching to see how the gentry in the neighborhood worried about him as he grieved. When he left a week later, all he took with him was his young nephew and the boy’s nurse.
    Adolfo still stared at the fire.
    “You hated me because I revealed your secret, because I couldn’t hide what I had inherited from you ,”
    he said to the mother who was long dead. “You let my father do monstrous things to me in his attempt to win back your love—and retain the wealth you provided. I have used everything he taught me, Mother. I have refined those crude lessons into something elegant. And I use what I learned against your kind. You could have loved me. Because you chose hate instead, I will not suffer a witch to live. I promise you that before I’m done, there won’t be one of your kind left.”
     

 

     
     

Chapter Thirteen

 

     
     

     
    She wasn’t being deceitful, Dianna assured herself as she and the borrowed mare left Ahern’s farm and trotted toward Brightwood. She just didn’t see any reason to tell Lucian she had met Ari—or that she had decided to go back to the cottage today. It had nothing to do with his returning to Ari’s bed each night, but he would assume it did, and then they’d quarrel about it and he wouldn’t listen, and she didn’t want to quarrel with her twin about some . . . human .
    Besides, why should Lucian be the only one to find some distraction these days? Aiden had instructed every bard in Tir Alainn to send him any information they might hear about witches or wiccanfae. The only things that had been passed to him were the songs he’d already heard, but they told the Fae nothing except that they had an enemy in the human world capable of destroying the Fair Land.
    They had lost more Clans over the past few days. More pieces of their land were suddenly gone. And there was still no answers.
    I am the Huntress, and I am helpless, Dianna ranted silently. How can we fight something when we don’t even know what it is? How can we find these wiccanfae if we don’t know what they are or where to look? It’s like trying to fight a shadow that sucks the life out of whatever it brushes against .
    So why shouldn’t she spend a little time satisfying another curiosity. She was curious about Ari. And she was wondering why, if Lucian was finding Ari’s bed so pleasurable, he seemed troubled by it.
    As they passed a marking stone, the mare pricked her ears and quickened her pace. Dianna didn’t rein her in. It was already midmorning. Having to wait until Lucian returned to Tir Alainn so that he wouldn’t ask questions about where she was going—and why— and then riding to Ahern’s farm and back to Brightwood had wasted enough time.
    Ari was working in the low-walled garden, wearing the same shabby clothes. She looked up when she heard the horse, then smiled and raised a hand in greeting.
    “Do you live out here?” Dianna asked, guiding the mare to the wall.
    “At this time of year, yes,” Ari said. She petted the mare’s nose. “It’s planting time, and I’ve still got a lot of seeds and seedlings to get into the ground.”
    Dianna looked at the still-empty sections of the garden. “If it’s so much work, why plant so much?”
    A little puzzled, Ari replied, “To have enough food to last through the winter.”
    “But—” What had looked like a large plot of land a moment ago suddenly seemed smaller. “Can you harvest enough from this?”
    Ari’s smile now held a hint of worry. “Usually. Some years are better than others. I also pick apples, strawberries, and raspberries. Some blueberries, too, but