He stood fluidly, stepped toward me. I raised the blade toward him once more, but the gesture was half-hearted, and we both knew it. He plucked the sword from my fingers and tossed it away. He loomed over me. I stood my ground, but I was suddenly very aware that I wore only underclothes. Confusion and lingeringhatred and desire and shame burned green and gold through my veins. I clenched my fists and tried not to shake as I met his gaze.
“I guessed it that night on the beach, after you saved Chandika.” His voice was dark as midnight. “When I saw your face—so like Deirdre’s—it shocked me enough to let my control slip. And the way your magic responded to mine was…” He whistled through his teeth.
I shook my head, remembering high winds and falling water, rattling rocks and groaning trees. “But you—youdid that.”
“The wind was me. The rest of it… wasyou. You rattled the bones of the earth. Pulled stones into the air. Nearly ripped the forest up by its roots.” He tilted his head. “It was raw, untethered magic. Pure potential. The kind of potential the Septs would once have battled each other for. And you did not even know what you were doing.”
Wordlessly, I shook my head again.
“I was even more certain the night I brought you to my fortress,” Irian went on, like I hadn’t spoken. “As the tithe approaches, I grow ever weaker, even as the elemental power inside me struggles against its bonds. To anyone else—human or Folk—my touch would be like lightning. But you did not burn, did not scream, barely flinched. You tolerated it.”
As if to prove his point, he brushed a scalding hand up my throat, sliding his fingers against my jaw.
“At one point, I even convinced myself you were starting to like it.” Devastation marred his gaze. He dropped his hand. “But I see now I was wrong. So very wrong.”
Guilt burned bile up my throat. “Irian—”
“Youusedme.” His voice throbbed with barely masked pain. “You used my desire—mylove—against me. You deceived me, seduced me.”
“I thought you were seducingme!” Anguish painted my tone. “I thought—”
“Ah, yes. The wicked tánaiste who wished to steal your heart.”He turned abruptly away. He leaned his weight against the wall, then sank down until his long legs sprawled out on the cool flagstones. His head tilted back to rest against the wall. His moonlit eyes were distant. “I suppose it seemed a fitting revenge, to steal mine?”
“That’s not—” I bit down on my lip, hard. I remembered Eala’s accusations. Chandi’s confession—the way her eyes had burned like coals. “Eala told me you seduced the swan girls. One by one, trying to steal their hearts. The eldest first. All the way down to Chandi.”
“They were but children when I cursed them, and I was barely older.” His mouth curled with distaste. “We raised each other. As they matured, they grew to hate me for how I cursed them. And rightfully so. But I have always seen them as sisters. I would die to protect them. I wouldnever—” He broke off, scraped a hand over his face. “It matters not. It only matters that you believed Eala. Over me. When I have spent the last eight moons telling you truths I have never told anyone. Showing you pieces of myself I have never shown anyone. Showing you—”
I didn’t interrupt—I didn’t dare. His metal eyes slid across my face, too sharp and too jagged. For a long time, he didn’t speak.
“The night of the wedding, when you touched the Heartwood? It sang for you, as it does for me. Then I knew for certain I was meant to tithe the sword to you.” His voice was toneless. “It seemed impossible. For thirteen years I have spent nearly every night searching for another heir, and there has been no one. Not in the remaining Folk cities—Falias, Gorias, Findias. Not in the realms of the other Septs—Mag Mell, Ildathach, Tír fo Thuinn. Not even in Emain Ablach, the Silver Isle, where the smith-king Gavida reigns. The bardaí were too thorough.
“And then—you. A girl from the human realms with a face like a memory and a tongue like a thorn and a past as broken as mine. And I dared to hope you were my chance for a different ending. I dared to hope my story might be more than pain and failure and ruination. I dared to hope that before I died, I might finally have the chance to live, to—”
He bit down on the words. Stood up.
“It was a fool’s hope. I needed an heir—I found one. And we tánaistí are all the same. We were bred to be. Arrogant, to assume we deserve our inheritances. Selfish, to want to keep all that magic for ourselves. And violent, to always protect our legacies. I should not have dreamed you would be any different.”
Hurt shuddered through me, and then fury. “I’m not doing this for myself. I’m doing this for my people.”
“Yourpeople?” He took a step toward me. “And who might they be? Humans?”
“Yes.” I lifted my jaw. “The ones who gave me a home. Who raised me. Who loved me.”
“Who forged you to be a weapon? Who taught you to fear and revile your most essential self? Who taught you pain was only useful if you were the one inflicting it?” A dark note of irony touched his voice. “If that is love, then I suppose I have known it after all.”
He took another step toward me. I retreated. “If you’d let me explain—”
My heels struck stone, and my back hit the wall. Irian stopped half an arm’s length away.
“There is nothing left to say.” His eyes were empty. “In two months I will tithe the Sky-Sword. If you are not there to receive it, wild magic will go free, and both our worlds will burn. If you are, then you will become as I am. Vilified. Hunted. Powerful beyond measure. You may do with that whatever you wish. Go back to the human realms if you choose—cure your sick and heal your wounded. Or stay here and spend the thirteen years you have left trying to find another doomed heir. It doesn’t matter to me—either way, I will be dead. And glad for it.”
“You don’t mean that,” I whispered.
“I do.” Carefully, he reached out and brushed his fingertips along my chin, tilting my face up to his. “If you decide to accept your inheritance, colleen, I ask but one thing of you.”
My throat was too tight to speak.
“When the time comes, promise me it will be you who strikes me down.” He was barely touching me, yet his skin on mine burned. “You have already cut me deep. I know you will not falter.”
