“What is wrong?”
Irian’s husky voice came from behind me, and I spun. He looked effortlessly cool and relentlessly composed. I dropped the wad of hair I’d piled on top of my head, and stopped fanning my sweaty neck.
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“You have been standing here staring at the lough. For half an hour.”
He’d been watching me? I prayed for a breeze to cool the flushing rising up my neck. “I’m hot.”
He waited for me to finish. “And?”
“I’ve always hated the heat, ever since I was a girl.” My curls were sticking to my neck again. I gave up on looking calm and collected, and piled my hair back on top of my head. “Not that Iparticularly enjoy ice or snow, but you can always bundle up on cold days. The heat’s more oppressive. There’s only so much clothing you can take off before you’re naked. And then you’re still hot and unfit to be seen in public besides.”
“I confess, I thought perhaps you were starting to get used to the heat. Maybe even enjoy it.” Irian stepped closer, his presence like a magnet drawing me toward him. His moonlit eyes had lost their distance and menace. “But if it makes you take your clothes off, I will not complain.”
“I will complain,” I said, smiling sweetly, “if you use my hatred of the heat to try and get me to take my clothes off.”
Irian’s lips lifted in a lazy grin. His eyes dropped to my mouth and then my throat and the swath of skin below where I’d tried to yank my collar wider. His palm slid over my shoulder and rested against my collarbone. He nudged his fingers beneath the fabric and slid it sideways, exposing my shoulder. My pulse jumped at his touch, then stuttered when I remembered how he’d rejected me last month.
“In three short months, tánaiste, you die. And the swan maidens with you.” I made my voice arch. “You have told me many tales, but none of any real use. Why should I let you distract me when there is so much at stake?”
“I am indeed doomed.” He did not move his hand from my collarbone as his eyes returned to my face. “Riddle me this, colleen: How might a dead man feel alive, with so little time left? If you can tell me that much, then perhaps I will part with more of my tale.”
“That is an unreasonable demand.” The heat of his touch was nothing like the sluggish, sweltering heat of the night. It sparked lightning through my veins and put a storm in my belly. “But I suppose either a remembrance of times past… or a felicitous hope for an impossible future.”
A thought ignited behind Irian’s eyes. “That is very good, colleen.”
Space bent around us, wringing my organs into contorted shapes before bending me backward and spitting me out. I hunchedover on the top of a rise behind the fort, gagging. I twisted to glare up at Irian.
“You need to warn me before you do that!”
He smirked. “And ruin the surprise?”
“I hate surprises.”
“You hate the heat; you hate surprises.” He arched one sculpted eyebrow. “For someone so small, you possess a shockingly large capacity for hate.”
Annoyance buoyed me to standing. “For someone so large, you possess a shockingly small—”
I bit off the rude words before they could cross my lips. But Irian’s half smile blossomed into something fully fledged and utterly lovely. His perfect teeth were a scythe in the night.
“Please.” Humor crackled along the edge of his voice. “Do go on. A shockingly small…?”
Heat touched my cheeks. I looked away, making a show of inspecting our surroundings. Rocky outcroppings sheared down into a ravine choked with ferns and bushes. “Where are you taking me?”
Irian ducked behind a twisting alder and dropped a foot in height. “Down.”
I squinted. Narrow stone steps—cracked with ancient roots and slanted with time—laddered precariously down into the dim, moonlit forest.
I crossed my arms. “If you want to murder me for insulting your manhood, there are easier ways than pushing me off a cliff.”
“I cannot think of any.” Irian cocked his head. “Do I have to carry you down, colleen?”
A challenge. Stubborn, I picked my way behind him as he loped gracefully down the stairs. I was moments from refusing to take one more step when the trees stopped suffocating each other. Trunks spaced out and branches roofed higher. Far above, the rocky edge of the ravine cut against the sky.
A star-bright mountain stream laughed down the cliff face andcarved out a deep pool in a broad clearing. Moonlight speared down, slicing the misty spray into silver prisms. Translucent shallows deepened to midnight near the center of the pond. Glittering flowers spangled sloping banks. A rush-lined stream looped away into the forest.
Irian was already at the water’s edge. He shucked off his boots in a few jerks, then stepped out of his clothes. My eyes followed the surge of his shoulders to the crisp taper of his waist. Crests of muscle carved grooves down the sides of his hips, toward—
