“The rancorous pigeon-egg canker-blossom?” The toad blinked at me with bulging eyes. “Gone. As we predicted.”
“He’s already left for Roslea?” I cursed. “Donn damn him.”
Chapter Forty-Three
Gort—Ivy
Autumn
Finan and I sped toward Roslea. The stallion shook his head in protest but did his best to weave between the trees despite his mounting exhaustion. Contrition rose in me, but I was exhausted too—there was no way I was going to make it to the Willow Gate on foot before the moon rose. Soon, the shadows of stone monsters opened vast jaws to swallow us. The stallion reared up, nearly unseating me. I laid a gentling hand on his neck, careful not to surrender to the forest pulsing green and black through my veins.
My brief time away had dulled the memory of how strong my Greenmark was here at the edge of Tír na nÓg.
I dismounted. Rogan was nowhere to be seen. I led Finan to the stream and let him drink deeply, then tossed his reins over a nearby sapling and loosened his girth.
“Sorry, old boy,” I murmured into his mane. “No warm stable or hay for you tonight.”
The stallion whickered, shoving his huge black nose into my chest.
“If anything tries to bite you, just kick them. Rogan will take you home at dawn.”
The horse bent his head to crop at the grass edging the brook. And I crossed into Tír na nÓg.
I stared up at Irian’s fortress, which glittered like a dark dream atop a starshine hill. I’d never actually walked up to it—Irian had always flown me inside. I knew it had windows, but did it have doors? If it did, I had no idea where they were. The notion of walking inanely around the fortress looking for entrances made me queasy with embarrassment. But what was I here for, if not to atone? Perhaps I deserved a modicum of humiliation.
I inhaled, flicked the end of my mantle over my shoulder, and climbed. The fort rose up before me, and I found my worries were for naught; it did, indeed, have a door. I put my shoulder against it and pushed.
A stiff gale lashed through the entrance, slamming the door shut and shoving me back. I planted my feet and pushed again. The flagstones shuddered beneath me. The fortress groaned. The door rumbled open. I forced my way inside, even as wind whipped my hair and threw dust in my face.
“Irian,” I ground out, “stop it.”
The wind died.
Irian stood at the top of the staircase, gripping the banister like he might fall without its support. At his back, shadows coiled in charcoal spirals, lifting the ends of his hair into wings of night. Moonlight spilled down from the high windows, painting his face with bright splashes of emotion: wrath and regret and something akin to relief. His struggle rattled the stones beneath my feet. Howled smoke in the hearth. Shook painted leaves from the living chandeliers.
“Irian.” I mouthed the contours of his name like I could reach through the sounds and touch him. “Irian, I never meant—”
His hand made a slashing motion, and my words died in my throat. He came down the stairs two at a time, until he stood before me. His silver eyes writhed with warring wants, warring needs.
“Why have you come?” His hands clenched and unclenched at his sides. He didn’t move to touch me. “You should not have come.”
“Irian, I’msorry. Please listen to me—”
“Have you decided?” His expression was jagged. “I need to hear you say it.”
He was talking about the tithe. “No, I—”
“No?” He rocked back a step. “Then return when you have made up your mind.”
“Listen to me!” My guilt twisted into anger. “Once there was a changeling.”
Irian stilled. The distance between us felt vast: dark and cold and impossibly huge. “The time for stories is past, colleen.”
“She had never known love.” I tasted moss and black rot in the back of my throat. “So she searched for it wherever she could. And as the years passed, she was given many opportunities to fall in love. She did so gladly—a hundred times, and then a thousand more.”
Irian made a noise deep in his throat.
“Yes—a hundred thousand loves, and none of them real. The girl fell in love with a mother who desired only vengeance, because she did not know the difference between being used and being loved. She fell in love with a fénnid laughing too loudly in the training yard, if only to share his joy. She fell in love with the princeling who snuck her his portion of meat beneath the feasting table. She fell in love with the sweet-faced girl hauling barley down the lane, for to have such simple purpose seemed like bliss. She fell in love with the forest. She fell in love with the night. But she never—ever—thought to fall in love with herself.”
