Keeper of Keys Outtake: Fiadh's Heartbreak

Caution: Keeper of Keys spoilers ahead!

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Background:

This is a deleted scene from a now-scrapped novella draft, part of which I ended up using for witnessing scenes in Keeper of Keys. The scene takes place immediately after Fiadh breaks from Aidryn's traveling party in Keeper, with flashbacks that take place in a time range roughly two years to a few months before the events of Defender of Histories.

This scene was written before I added the Burning of Va'hesk to the storyline; therefore, there is no mention of that plot point here. The original novella draft was dual-POV between Fiadh and Caitir. Since then, the story has changed significantly.

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Fiadh Énna rode her stolen stallion, Edan, across the meadowlands on a breakneck course for Iathium. She’d taken Aidryn Tarlach’s horse for the second time, leaving him behind at the camp they’d made halfway to the eastern Clan Tarlach settlement. Her lips crooked into a wry smile as she recalled the look on his face when she’d used his incantation to make the horse run at its true magical speed.

He thought he’d concealed that power from her, like the many things he’d kept secret.

Aidryn—the man she had once loved—had deigned to marry a woman Fiadh despised. Silira Mór might be a sacred vessel of their continent’s history for some, but to Fiadh, she was the haughty little library wench who held Aidryn’s heart in an iron grip. For his entire life, it seemed.

Fiadh had been so close to keeping him for herself. Or so she thought.

She blinked back the hot tears that pricked at her eyes, but she couldn’t stop the memories from flooding in. If she was honest, she didn’t want to stop them. They were all she had left of Aidryn.

Before he’d loved her (had he loved her?), he would allow her to come onto the grounds of his family’s estate to visit him and the horses from time to time. That was how she’d gotten to know Edan.

Tending to the stallions’ shoes for Aidryn had always been the perfect excuse to be near him. Later, he would lead the horses to her or bring them by her father’s smithy. Where she had once felt welcome at his stables, she began to feel as though she didn’t belong. The closer she grew to him, the further he maneuvered her from the rest of his life.

She remembered feeling as though he was keeping her a secret from everyone. She worried he was ashamed of her, but he’d assured her he was not. And she went along with it like a fool, thinking he would come around. But he never did.

The Tarlach family were nobility; perhaps they wouldn’t have approved of him marrying someone from a working class family. Especially not someone who worked alongside her father as well as any apprentice. Fiadh was well aware of the iron staining her fingernails and the coal dust that often marred her cheeks—but they were no worse than the ink Silira wore on her hands every day.

Perhaps if she’d just been able to get close enough to his sister, Fiadh could have charmed her way into their approval. She’d charmed herself into Aidryn’s arms, well enough. Her stomach clenched with longing at the thought of the first kiss they’d shared.

Fiadh had found him brooding alone one night, in Fannin’s stall. She’d never been able to draw the reason out of him, though she assumed it had something to do with Silira. But he had taken her out riding with him that night, eager to escape from whatever was troubling him. She was all too happy to provide the diversion he needed.

They’d ridden out into the meadowlands to look at the stars, dismounting from the horses to sit out in the wide field together. Aidryn sat quietly for a long while, chin tilted up, studying the constellations above them. Fiadh couldn’t resist letting her gaze wander up from his bare throat to his jawline, his mouth.

Tentatively, Fiadh had risen to her knees and crawled closer to him until she was nearly flush against his side.

“The stars are beautiful,” he’d said softly, blue eyes gleaming in the moonlight.

She was near enough to catch the scent of his skin, and warmth bloomed in her belly. “You are,” she replied, ignoring the stars altogether.

Fiadh didn’t give him time to respond, but instead planted a soft kiss on his cheek, reaching up to touch the other side of his face with her fingertips. He turned to her then, almost instinctively, and their lips met without pretense. It had felt so natural, the way his mouth brushed against hers. As easy as breathing—like it was meant to be this way forever.

At the time, she’d believed they were destined for one another. She hadn’t realized she was just a convenient distraction.

Still, she’d noticed, though she could coax kisses from him—sometimes fevered and intense, other times sweet and almost chaste—that she could never get him behind closed doors. They went from the occasional meeting in the stables to strolling in town, or riding together in the meadowlands sometimes. At best, she stole kisses from him out in the open meadow, but she couldn’t entice him to do more than that.

It wasn’t for lack of trying.

Fiadh had hoped to lure him into her bed, perhaps carry his child—give him a reason to stay by her side. But he was too concerned with honor and propriety for his own good.

Now that she thought of it, he was likely holding out for the library girl all that time. That had worked in his favor, in the end, though Fiadh wouldn’t wish that insufferable woman on any man.

The longer Fiadh pursued Aidryn, the more distant he became. She’d tried to press him into calling what they had a courtship, but she couldn’t even convince him to do that much. He refused to engage her father outside the usual business at the smithy, and he made it clear she was not to present herself to his family, either. He’d implied their relationship was strained, but Fiadh had begun to wonder whether he was the problem, rather than the rest of them.

The more she thought about it, the more she realized she never really knew him. He’d never allowed her to know more than his affection for his horses, his love of riding, or his loyalty to his friends.

His loyalty to Silira.

A white-hot current of rage ripped through her at the thought of the woman.

She vividly remembered the night Aidryn broke from her, thought it had been more than a year ago now. They’d ridden out to the meadowlands again, this time at sunset. From her seat astride Edan, she had grasped the arm of his tunic and pulled him to her, pressing an eager kiss to his mouth.

They dismounted near a burbling stream, where he tethered the horses. He’d seemed distracted, but she drew him to her anyway, standing on tiptoe to kiss him again. Instinctively, he’d gripped her waist, dipping his head to better access her mouth.

She couldn’t keep pushing down her growing feelings for him—and the questions that rose within her with every passing day. The demands she wanted him to meet. The expectations that had begun to form in spite of his reluctance to take their relationship out into the open.

There was something about the way he touched her that day that sent a jolt down her spine. The electric current gave her hope that his feelings had grown to match hers. Perhaps now was the time to speak up.

“Aidryn, I love you,” she whispered against his mouth.

His lips faltered, but he didn’t reply. Instead, he moved in for another kiss. To silence her, she realized with a pang.

Reluctantly, Fiadh broke away from him, her heart hammering, stomach twisting in knots. Aidryn furrowed his brow.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, taking a small step back.

“I want to know what this is,” Fiadh answered softly. “You and I.”

He shook his head a bit. “It’s just us,” he replied, flustered, though he seemed to be floundering for words.

Fiadh’s stomach dropped as he opened his mouth again, then shut it. “I don’t want to be just us,” she replied, hating the tinge of desperation in her voice. “Do you not love me?”

“Fiadh…” he said, his voice trailing off weakly. “I care for you. But—”

“I want you to say you’re mine,” she said, her voice wavering. “I want you to show me off—to tell everyone about us. I want you to ask my father for my hand, and I’m tired of waiting for you to come around to it on your own.”

Aidryn blanched. “I—I’m not at liberty to—”

“To what? To openly court me?” She scoffed. “You have plenty of time to kiss me and to ride with me out here, but you can’t seem to open your mouth and say the words. Are you embarrassed by me? Is that it?”

He shook his head, his expression incredulous. “No, that’s not it.”

“Then why do you hide this from everyone?” She threw her hands out, exasperated.

Aidryn sighed heavily. “Fiadh, there are things I can’t tell you—you know this.”

“What could possibly be so secret and serious about working in the Archive?” she asked. “You’re record-keeping—preserving old books. Getting old and hunched in the process. I can’t understand why you keep holding me at arm’s length.”

He rubbed the back of his neck, cheeks reddening, and shifted his posture. “Again—if I could speak of it to anyone, I would. I can’t even talk to Lira about it, and she works with me.”

Fiadh’s temper flared. She hated it when he called the girl that. The shortened form of Silira’s name felt like some term of endearment, coming from his lips. She longed to banish it from his mouth forever.

“So you admit you’d rather talk to her about it than to me,” she said.

“That’s not what I said,” he replied, “though she would understand it completely.”

Fiadh felt heat creeping up her neck and into her cheeks. “And I’m not intelligent enough to understand it because I’m not a scholar.”

“If it’s a fight you’re after, look for it elsewhere,” Aidryn snapped. “I’m not here to play games with you.”

“Then what are you here for?” Fiadh cried. “What am I to you? Because right now, I just feel like some deep, dark secret you’re hiding from Silira.”

“You’re—” He raked a hand through his hair, biting down on his bottom lip. “You’re Fiadh. You’re Faolan’s sister, and my friend.”

Fiadh felt as though her legs might give way beneath her. “Your friend,” she said slowly, the words slurring off the tip of her tongue.

A stricken expression crossed Aidryn’s features. “I wanted to love you, I did, and I’ve tried. But I can’t keep this up. There’s too much happening that I can’t explain, and I have to shoulder it all alone. No one can help me.”

She heard the desperation in his voice, yet she nearly went blind with rage at the sound of it. “I could help you if you’d tell me. If you’d just tell someone! You act as though it’s up to you to singlehandedly save the entire world.”

He visibly sagged, taking inches off his tall frame. “Sometimes it feels that way. If Lord Irem and the—” Clamping his lips shut, he bit down on what he might have said, had he felt he could do so.

“The what?” she pressed. “The who? Please, Aidryn, let me in!”

“I can’t!” he cried—almost shouted. Fiadh flinched, drawing further away from him. Beside her, Edan stamped nervously.

Aidryn turned his back to her then, wrapping his arms around himself. He spent a long moment in silence, studying the mountain range in the distance. Fannin stepped to his side, nuzzling Aidryn’s shoulder. Her heart wrenched, seeing the two of them together. Seeing Rodhlan Ridge and its imposing, dark peaks that stood in stark contrast to the sunset.

Fiadh knew what those mountains meant to him. Knew who hailed from the Ridge—who still held his heart. It was painfully obvious, and she wasn’t sure why she’d tried so hard to erase the woman from his thoughts. She’d just been wasting her time.

“When are you going to let her go?” she’d asked quietly. Because she knew, she knew she would never be enough for him. She would never be Silira. “She’s never going to want you.”

He flinched almost imperceptibly, and Fiadh knew her words had hit their mark. She was glad, too—he deserved to feel at least a fraction of the pain that was ripping her apart inside. Still, he didn’t answer. She thought to goad him into it, to push him a little harder. To draw out that anger she knew she’d kindled within him. But suddenly, the thought of toying with him any longer exhausted her, and she just shook her head.

“You can keep your secrets, Aidryn,” she said, swinging easily into Edan’s saddle, “but I won’t be one of them.”

He glanced back over his shoulder at her for a brief moment before he softly answered, “I’m not asking you to be.”

I wish you were, she wanted to scream. Tears burned her eyes as she kicked the stallion into a gallop and steered him back toward Iathium. She wanted Aidryn to call after her, to come galloping up on Fannin and ask her forgiveness. But the further she drew from where she’d left him, the more alone she felt. A hole had been ripped wide open inside of her, and a vacant, void sort of sensation quickly filled it.

That emptiness was what had driven her to Fortress Halgeir in search of her brother—in search of Aidryn, too. She’d hoped to find him with a changed heart, now that the truth about magic was out in the open. Because that’s what he’d been hiding from her—at least, in part. By now, she knew his secrets had run far deeper and more complex than she could ever have guessed possible.

But there, in the heart of Clan Beran’s territory, Aidryn and Silira had been together. Married. Drawn to one another through mysterious magical circumstances only the dead Rí seemed to understand.

Whenever Fiadh tried to unravel it all, her head throbbed. It was all too complicated, and it was painfully obvious that Aidryn was in over his head. She’d longed to simplify his life for him, to draw him away from the fray and back into her arms. But he’d been too deeply ensnared, and there was no way to get him back now.

That was why she’d decided to ride for Iathium. To Caitir. Because perhaps this alliance with her might lead to some future that still included Aidryn.

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Want to know how Aidryn and Fiadh’s ill-fated story begins? Check out my free novella, Ballad of Stallions. You can get your copy here.