Hello everyone! I am delighted to present “Madoc’s Choice,” an epic fantasy romance set in the world of my YA fantasy novel, Avalon Lost. ❤️🏰
I wrote this story for the 2023 Legend Haven Short Story Contest, a contest hosted by the wonderful online writing community, LegendFiction.
Story Premise:
Madoc and Fiona were once the most devoted of married couples, until the day a bitter tragedy tore them apart. Eleven years later, they are reunited in the mountain refuge of Legend Haven. Can Madoc find a way to reconnect with his wife and win back her heart? And can Fiona open herself up to love, after so many years of darkness and abuse? Find out in the epic fantasy romance, “Madoc’s Choice”!
Madoc Owain winced as the healer gripped his arm firmly in her experienced hands.
“Are you ready, my lord?” she asked.
He nodded and drew in a long, slow breath. An icy bead of sweat slipped down his spine.
“On the count of three, my lord. Three…two…” Before reaching “one”, the healer pushed Madoc’s arm back into his shoulder socket. It popped into position with a nauseating click.
He hissed as intense pain surged through his shoulder, before settling down to a dull ache.
“Very good, my lord,” the healer said, as she tested his range of motion. The movement still stung, but the tingling in his arm had decreased.
“I hope this won’t become a daily habit, Lady Sara,” Madoc commented dryly. He leaned his head against the adjoining wall and closed his eyes. The shoulder pain was replaced with a headache that pounded mercilessly against his skull. “How many times has it been now?”
The grey-haired healer sighed. “The third time this week, my lord.” She guided his relocated arm back into a leather sling. “Your other injuries have also been slow to heal.”
Madoc opened his eyes and read the disapproval on her face. He braced himself for the coming lecture.
“You need rest, my lord,” she began. A warm flush of indignation colored her wrinkled cheeks. “Ever since you’ve arrived in Legend Haven, you’ve been working yourself to the bone—”
“You’re right, Sara,” he interrupted, giving her a mild smile. “But if not me, then who?” His expression fell as he considered their situation. “Our people have lost their ruler. The King’s been missing for the past month, and presumed dead.” Madoc swallowed, omitting that his son Will had gone missing, too. His chest tightened with worry. Will was in grave danger, with the Traitor hunting down every noble still loyal to the King. “Our people need a leader. Someone they can see, hear, and touch. I wish it weren’t so, but I am all they have left.”
Lady Sara’s hand stilled over the wash basin.
“My lord.” A maternal tenderness softened her eyes. “I have served the house of Owain for some twenty years, since the eve of your wedding day.” She glanced at his wedding ring, a permanent fixture on Madoc’s left hand. “I assisted your wife in the birth of each of your children. I stitched up wounds and mended bones. And…I have come to love your family.”
He glanced at her in surprise.
“So please, my lord…do not sell yourself so cheaply. Give your broken body the rest it deserves.”
Madoc nodded in meek assent. He was touched by the healer’s words, but knew he could not act on them. The people’s need for a leader was not the only thing keeping him awake at night. In the quiet hours when the moon and stars held court in the heavens, Madoc saw the shadows of those he had loved. Some of them had gone to lasting rest; others perhaps still lived. Yet all alike were lost, at least to him.
The King’s last words to Madoc, his best friend, were to bring his people to safety. Madoc had obeyed, leading as many families, soldiers, and watchmen as possible to the mountain refuge of Legend Haven. Their enemy had attacked and decreased their numbers many times along the way. Those who survived had hidden here a month, with hardly any news.
A brisk knock startled Madoc from his thoughts. The healer rose to answer it.
“What is it?”
“An urgent message for Lord Madoc,” came the muffled reply.
With a nod from Madoc, Lady Sara unlatched the wooden door. It fell open with a mournful groan.
A young watchman stood framed in the doorway. His camouflage cloak was splattered with mud, and he possessed the weary, haunted look of so many of Madoc’s warriors. He reminded Madoc so keenly of his son, it pained his heart.
“A message for you from Valeria, my lord.” The warrior offered a salute, precise and stern.
Madoc returned the gesture. “My thanks.” He offered a mild smile, careful to keep the pain from his injuries from showing on his face.
Once he’d taken the dispatch and removed its wax seal, the letter opened easily. On parchment dyed a faint spring green were scribed the words:
To My Father:
Warmest greetings to you from the jeweled kingdom of Valeria. My deepest regrets at having to send this message to you by dispatch, rather than from my own lips. I long to be at your side again, to fight beside you against all the enemies we face.
Madoc’s vision blurred. My son. A letter from my son. Relief rushed through him. A letter meant that Will was still alive, and had escaped detection from their enemies. But what was he doing in the foreign kingdom of Valeria?
Yet fate has led me along a different path. I have acquired something that the Queen of Valeria desires dearly. So dearly, she is willing to part with one of her kingdom’s greatest treasures in order to attain it.
Today, I present this priceless treasure to you, in my stead. I do not call her a gift. If she belongs to anyone in this world, it is you. But even that precious bond, I believe, must be earned again. These eleven years have been most cruel…
Madoc stopped reading as his son’s meaning sank in. Who was this “she”? The priceless treasure, belonging to no one, lost eleven years?
“Fiona.”
Ignoring his injuries, the healer’s warnings, and the watchman’s protests, he surged to his feet. Pain ripped through his shoulder and leg, but he forced his body upward, using the chamber’s stone walls for support. Inch by inch, he staggered towards the open, gaping door.
“Fiona?”
His trembling fingers found the doorframe, and then he saw her.
Her pale hands drew his attention first. Fiona lifted them up and pulled back the hood covering her flame-red hair, now streaked here and there with grey. Her face had lost all its softness, but none of its wild beauty. Thick, dark lashes framed her wide, grey-green eyes. Her full lips, cracked and chapped, bloomed open when her gaze fell on Madoc.
Madoc used the threshold to push himself upright in the door frame, ignoring the tremor of his wounded limbs. A salty sheen of sweat gathered on his forehead. He’d collapse instantly if he moved towards her, but nothing could make him step away.
Fiona Chisholm Owain stood an arm’s length from him, the woman he cherished, the partner who completed him. He wouldn’t leave this spot for anything in the world.
She mumbled something, perhaps his name. He wondered if his disheveled appearance frightened her. Or if…
“Do you—” he bit his lip as pain tore through his shoulder. “Do you remember me?”
Her reticent expression shifted to surprise. A ray of colored light from the hallway window passed over her, crisscrossing her face with tones of emerald, rose, and blue.
“Oh Madoc! As if I could ever—”
He was helpless to come to her, so Fiona came to him. Her warm arms encircled him, thin and bony beneath her garments, but still strong. She smelled of the tannin pines that stood sentinel on the mountainside, and of good, clean earth. As Fiona’s head turned into the hollow place of his shoulder meant only for her, he caught a hint of cinnamon in those fiery locks.
“Fiona,” he whispered again, the words springing from his deepest heart, his fiercest longing. “My Fiona…”
“I’m free, Madoc,” she said into his good shoulder. “I’m free again, I’m free.”
“Yes.” He laughed. “Say it as often as you like, my love. Until the words sink in. You are free.”
She pulled back so she could see his face. Her grey-green eyes searched his.
What does she see there? he worried. The scars? The years?
At last, she frowned. “By the Founders, Madoc. You look terrible.”
He raised an eyebrow, then grinned.
Fiona’s lightning-quick gaze took in his injured arm, then his bandaged leg. She gingerly tapped the new stitches along his jaw, making him cringe.
“You can barely stand up,” she stated.
He shrugged, grinning broader.
“Lady Sara,” she nodded courteously at the servant, “has ordered you to take your rest.”
“Perhaps,” he admitted.
“Probably so you don’t die.”
“Ah…”
Fiona glared at him, then gestured towards his infirmary bed. “Madoc, I love you. But you are an eejit!”
Lady Sara chose that moment to approach them. She and Fiona helped Madoc back onto his bed, where the healer elevated Madoc’s leg and gave him more herbal tonic to drink.
“Why do you not listen to your healer?” Fiona berated him. “Why have you not taken your medicine? Why—”
He raised a hand to stop her. “Alright, alright. I am outnumbered.” He brought the mug of tonic to his lips and drank. The bitter draught burned all the way down, and nothing like a shot of Gwynedd whiskey.
Lady Sara finished her ministrations, then turned to Fiona. “My lady, may I give you an examination? To check for any injuries you may have sustained…on your journey?”
Fiona clutched the front of her cloak, her eyes widening in alarm. “I—I am well, Lady Sara.” When the healer stepped towards her, she retreated to the adjoining wall.
Madoc observed this exchange with growing apprehension. His beloved—she was injured, too, and far deeper than an arrow through the leg, or a dislocated shoulder. Hers were the wounds of the heart.
And what can Lady Sara do for those wounds? Madoc’s hands curled into tight, angry fists. For eleven years, she has been the Traitor’s mistress. For eleven years, she’s endured the unspeakable to protect me and our son.
“My lady, I’m here to help you.” Lady Sara coaxed, placing a calming hand on his wife’s shoulder.
Fiona shrank away from the healer’s touch. She pressed herself into the wall, as if hoping it might swallow her whole.
“No, no, no.” The words slipped out in short, stilted gasps. One pale hand snaked up and down her arm, rubbing her bare skin raw.
Madoc twisted his body to face her. “Fiona?”
She ignored him, staring straight ahead with unfocused eyes.
What is she seeing? What is she remembering?
Madoc could guess, but all the possible answers lodged like poisoned needles in his heart. His son had told him what had happened to the last watchman who came looking for Fiona. How the water they used to drown the poor man splashed both the guards and Fiona alike. How she was forced to watch, then later forced to comply…
I’m free, Madoc, she’d told him only moments before.
He had to remind her.
“Fiona, my love.” He struggled to find the right words. “You’re not in that foul bastard’s fortress anymore. You’re safe here. You’re safe with us.” With me, he wanted to say, but bit back the phrase. Would she ever feel safe in a man’s presence again?
“I’m fine. Just don’t touch me,” she insisted.
“Perhaps I could call another servant to bring water for bathing?” Lady Sara suggested.
“Oh, let me be!” Fiona snapped. She seized the half-filled mug from Madoc’s bedside table and hurled it across the room. It smashed into the mantlepiece, baptizing the fireplace with clumps of soggy green herbs.
All three of them stared at the fireplace in shock. The herbal tonic sizzled as it hit the burning logs, filling the air with a pungent, medicinal scent.
Lady Sara cast a dark expression at Fiona, then went to inspect the damage.
“Well good riddance,” Madoc said. “The stuff was foul anyways—”
“This is your fault!” Fiona interrupted, stabbing a finger at Madoc. “You did this to me!” Her fury rolled off of her in waves, a tangible, malevolent force.
He flinched. “Dearest, don’t say that. Don’t you know that I love you still?”
Fiona crossed her arms and glared at him. Even in her anger, she was breathtaking.
“Where were you, Madoc?” Her voice cracked. “Why did you stop looking for me?”
There. The question he’d been waiting for, and dreading.
Why did you abandon me?
These were the words that haunted him, late at night. The reason he could not rest; the guilt he could not heal. His beloved had been the Traitor’s slave for eleven years, and for most of that time, Madoc had chosen not to rescue her in person. He had chosen this.
Madoc slid his legs over the bedside and pushed himself upright to face her. He felt too much a coward to answer her directly. Instead, he asked about the one thing they would always have in common.
“Did you see him, Fiona? How is our son?”
Her whole manner softened. “Will. My brave, beautiful boy.”
Their son, now come of age. Will Owain, who had his mother’s lionheart…and her astounding capacity for self-sacrifice.
“Aye, Madoc. I saw him.” Her eyes shone with pleasure. “He looked almost as dreadful as you, the first time he visited. He was badly injured when he was fighting to defend the King.”
Madoc leaned forward in rapt attention.
“The second time he came, he’d healed a bit more. He hurried to embrace me, overflowing with excitement. ‘Mama,’ he said, ‘I’ve obtained your release. You’re going home. You’re free.’” She repeated Will’s words with awe. “I thought he was talking nonsense. But then he gave me that letter,” she gestured at the dispatch, “and the next day I was sailing back home to Avalon. One of Will’s watchmen friends accompanied me and brought me here.”
“But how did he gain your release, when so many others have failed?”
A shadow crossed her face. “Will wouldn’t tell me before I left. He only said that in order for me to go home, he had to stay in Valeria.”
A vague sense of dread curled in Madoc’s stomach.
“Will’s friend told me more, on the voyage home.” Fiona had been standing all this time, but when she saw the terror on Madoc’s face, she came and sat down across from him.
“Is he safe, Fiona? Is he well?”
She gave him no such reassurance. “The queen of Valeria,” she explained slowly, “believes that Will has the power to cure the Indigo Plague.”
The Plague was a contagious disease that caused deafness, blindness, and often, death. It had affected the capital of Valeria most severely, and there was no known cure.
Madoc shifted on the edge of his bed. “Will is a watchman. Not a healer.”
She studied him, as if gauging his ability to hear her reply. “The queen thinks, and apparently it’s true, that Will can heal the Plague with his blood.”
His blood.
Madoc swayed, his mind dragged back to that hellish night in April, when he’d fought a dozen enemies to salvage the remains of his son. The whips, the mud, the nails. They had utterly destroyed him.
“Haven’t they spilled enough of my son’s blood already?” he demanded, spitting out a stream of curses. “Hasn’t he given enough?”
A miracle had saved Will’s life in April, but there was no reason to think another would save him now.
“Madoc!” Strong hands caught him as he fell forward, sending a shockwave of pain through his shoulder.
He blinked and peered upwards, expecting Lady Sara; but it was Fiona who had steadied him.
“The queen’s going to kill our son to cure the Plague?”
“No! Not kill him, Madoc. Just take his blood.”
“His life, his blood,” he growled. “It’s all the same, isn’t it?”
“If they need his blood for a cure, they won’t kill him, my lord,” Lady Sara offered. “They will need him as healthy as possible.”
Madoc curved his good hand into his lap, fidgeting with his wedding ring.
“I’m sorry, Fiona,” he said, after a lengthy silence. “I’m so, so sorry.”
She met his gaze. “What do you mean?”
“I stopped searching for you because of what happened nine years ago,” he confessed. “Do you remember? My team infiltrated the Traitor’s fortress and brought you out alive.” He swallowed hard. “We’d almost escaped when the Traitor found us.”
Fiona gnawed her lip. “He killed your men, then gave you that scar.” She nodded at his chest. Hidden beneath his tunic was a scar running from Madoc’s shoulder down to his opposite hip. “He used an acid-tipped knife.”
“It burned like hell, sure,” he agreed. “But that was nothing compared to the pain of him taking you away from me. And then hearing you say…”
Fiona reflected for a moment. “I said, ‘Stop coming for me, Madoc. Go home and raise our son. He needs you.’” She covered her mouth with her hands. “Oh! I did tell you to stay away. But I didn’t think you’d listen!”
“Of course not. As soon as I could fight again, I planned to return. ‘My Fiona must have her freedom,’ I said.”
A smile lit up her face, like a candle in darkness. “Then what happened?”
“When I returned home, that shrew of a governess, Lady Jade, decided to make an ‘example’ of our son,” Madoc growled. “She was one of the Traitor’s spies. There to enforce…consequences.
“She wanted Will to beg me to stop looking for you. When he refused, she pushed him down the tower stairs.”
His wife gasped.
“He broke multiple bones. The other kids called him ‘idiot prince’, thinking he’d fallen on purpose. I couldn’t leave again after that, Fiona. I would happily die to save you, but I couldn’t sacrifice our son.” He pressed a hand wearily over his eyes. “And now look what’s become of our boy.”
“Yes, look.” Fiona’s voice was surprisingly calm. “He has become the very best of men.”
Madoc raised his head. “He has become like you.”
Her thick eyelashes fluttered, scattering tears. She laid her hand over his, pale fingers resting over his wedding ring.
“I forgive you,” Fiona said, “for abandoning your search so you could protect our son.”
Madoc exhaled. An eleven-year burden lifted from his shoulders.
“And I forgive you, Fiona. For giving up your freedom, to save us.”
Their fingers entwined as they took this first step towards healing together.
“Let’s build on what we’ve started here,” Madoc said.
Fiona smiled, and for a moment, all was at peace in Legend Haven.
#
Thank you so much for reading! If you enjoyed this story, you may also like its companion piece, “Fiona’s Choice”, which tells the first half of Madoc and Fiona’s tale:
You can also check out my new fantasy blog on Substack for future fantasy stories:
More content coming soon! Thank you so much for your support!
