Maybe, in his duplicitous Folk way, Irian had never really lied to me at all.
An inaudible laugh escaped me. In a way, Irian and I were perfect sides of the same coin. I, too, was arrogant—to believe I couldseduce and outwit a Gentry lord on my first real mission. Selfish, to think I deserved an ending happier than the one already written for me.
And was I violent? Oh, yes.
Maybe Mother had been right: Only she knew how to love something like me. Maybe Cathair had been right: I was never made to love. Maybe Rogan had been right: Love only destroyed.
If they’d all been right and I’d been wrong… then maybe Eala, too, was right.
A breeze ruffled my hair, smelling of early frost and the first feather of dawn. I closed the shutters.
Summer was nearly over. It was time to remember who I was—what I was made for. I was loyal to Fódla. I was loyal to Mother. I was loyal to Eala, even if I did not agree with all her choices.
I was forged to be a weapon—raised to be strong, hammered to be hard, and whetted to be sharp. And weapons didn’t think. Weapons didn’t complain. Weapons didn’t love. They cut where they were aimed.
I would take the Sky-Sword. I would destroy its heir. I would set Eala free and deliver Rogan his bride. And then… I didn’t know. I didn’t think it mattered.
After all, this was never my story. And once I had played my dark part, it would go on without me.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Isent Rogan into Tír na nÓg ahead of me. I told myself it wasn’t reluctance that slowed my steps—it wasn’t indecision ratcheting the breath in my lungs. It was the anticipation of violence, the joy of the fight.
The promise of a kill.
I paused at the edge of the trees to steady myself. Then I closed my eyes and relinquished control over my Greenmark, letting the midnight magic of the forest creep over me. My rough breeches and fighting leathers melted away. Other sensations took the place of my clothes—the soft press of flower petals, the light rasp of long grasses, the velvety sweep of dark moss.
I opened my eyes. The slender, silky gown was like the glory of late summer. Golden as gorse flowers, it wafted like dandelion, plucked through with rosy streaks of aster and edged in the velvet black of a sunflower’s eye. I pressed my hands against the front, relieved to discover I’d successfully kept my skeans—albeit hidden cleverly down the bodice.
Before I had the chance to reconsider my plan,hewas there.
I felt him before I saw him—a storm on the horizon, a distant rumble of thunder.
He strode between the trees like a dark-edged wraith. His hair was black as a raven’s wing. It had grown longer since I’d first met him—kissing his brow and curling around his ears. The ink-dark feathers embossing his bare, muscular arms pulsed in time to my racing heart. His eyes were silver as stars. For the space of a breath, I was once more bewitched by him.
He smiled. I tried to tell myself it was a smile like steel whispering against a bare throat.
But it wasn’t. It was a single bar of moonlight breaking from behind a cloud, and it tasted like hope. That smile nearly broke my resolve.
I fisted my hands in the fabric of my gown and forced myself to remember every manipulation and deception. Every false story, every duplicitous touch. He had seduced me, groomed me, primed me to die.
And I—I had stalked him, plotted against him, cataloged his weaknesses.
Whatever stories I’d tried to tell myself, the truth was he and I had always been at war.
So I smiled back at the man I meant to destroy.
He stopped in front of me. I scanned his figure, forcing myself not to admire, but to inventory. His light but coiled stance. His restless gaze, which roved from my face in flickers of silver, constantly scanning the undergrowth for danger. The way his left hand floated higher than his right, never straying more than an inch from the Sky-Sword’s hilt. To someone else, it might not mean anything. But I’d seen him fight, and I knew he was ambidextrous. Discounting the bare second between the speed of a left-handed draw and a right might mean death to a lesser warrior.
I lifted my eyes to his face. And regretted it.
His face was like music, like magic. More beautiful to me now than the first time I’d seen him. Now I knew the slight quirk to his eyebrows that meant he wanted to ask me a question, the way he tilted his head to look down at me from his superior height, the way that sensuous mouth felt pressed against my own—
I bit the inside of my mouth hard enough to taste blood.
“There you are, colleen.” His voice was stretched tight with anticipation. “I have missed you.”
Lies. All lies.
