Irian squeezed his eyes shut. “That does not sound real.”
“Does it have to be real,” I asked softly, “to be true?”
He raised his head. I clasped his jaw and brought his lips tomine, tasting his dissipating pain. He growled, deep in his throat, his hands tightening on my waist as his mouth moved on mine. Stars flung themselves against my skull and burst, scattering down my spine and leaving flaming trails in their wake. I gripped his arms, not caring that they were slicked with the aftermath of nightmares made real, and kissed him, hard.
And before I stopped thinking altogether, I wondered, How long did something have to last before it felt like forever?
Chapter Forty-Five
Every night, he asked me, “Colleen, have you decided what you will do?”
At the Feis of the Ember Moon, he meant. At Samhain.
“Tell me why,” I asked one night. “Tell me why it means so much to you—why the Treasure must be renewed, instead of letting wild magic go free. Why I must take this burden from you, instead of letting both worlds burn.”
For a long, fraught moment, he was silent.
“I wish I could say I remembered what Tír na nÓg used to be like—before the Gate War, before the bardaí.” His voice was rutted with regret. “But I cannot. So I will tell you what Deirdre once said to me, when I asked her why she was willing to tithe the bulk of her life for a destiny she had not asked for. She said, ‘I will die sooner or later. Let it be for something greater than myself. Let it be for good. Let it be for magic.’”
His scalding palms curved against my cheeks and smoothed my hair.
“As long as the last Treasure survives, there is a chance things can be better.” His face spasmed with that old hope.It’s you.“I could never see how. But I am not a good man—I know little beyond violence and vengeance. Perhaps the next heir will find a way to do what I never could. To return balance to our world—to heal the sorrow warping the land.”
I held his gaze. “That’s asking a lot of me.”
“I know.” His eyes were dying stars. “If there was a way for me to live—a way for our story to end differently? I would take it in a heartbeat and relish the opportunity to become a better man. For you. For Tír na nÓg. But whether or not I tithe the sword, my death is inevitable. So let me make it mean something. Let it be for good. Let it atone—at least in part—for all the mistakes I have made. For all the violence I have wrought.”
But I just shook my head.
Every night, I shook my head. I couldn’t be the one to kill him. Iwouldn’t.
And every night, the moon grew a little thinner, until it went dark. And then it began to swell.
The night before Samhain, we made love beneath a nearly full moon. After, we lay together on a blanket in his tower room. His chambers had never recovered from what I’d done to them—his rotting mattress had proved fertile, spawning flax and goldenrod and a thousand waving asters to sway above us in the moonlight. I stared up at the botanical mayhem I’d wrought, and once more imagined what it would be like to be a vessel for the power of the winds, the clouds, the lightning-streaked skies, instead ofthis.
Arms corded with muscle and inked with feathers enveloped me. I nestled against Irian, turning my head for a kiss. He obliged, sliding his mouth deliciously over mine. When he drew away, it was too soon.
“Colleen,” he whispered, as he had twenty-eight times before. “Have you decided what you will do?”
I gazed up at him.
“You once said my potential for magic was so great, the Septs would have battled over me.” I twined my fingers in his, tracing the raised edges of his markings. “Did the Septs not always select heirs from their own lineages?”
“Not always.” He gripped my hand in his scalding palm. “Maintaining a dynasty requires compromise. If a member of the lesser Gentry or even the lower Folk showed great promise, they were encouraged to adopt or marry into a Sept. If they themselves did not become tánaistí, then their children likely would. My mother was such a one.”
“But my…great promise.” I voiced the doubt that had been growing inside me. “I have nothing of wind or air or storm in me. Surely my innate magic is better suited to the element of earth than the element of air—better suited to the Sept of Antlers than the Sept of Feathers.”
“Perhaps.” Regret made diamonds of Irian’s eyes. “Perhaps—had a great many things been different—you might have been heir to Deirdre’s Treasure. But the Sept of Antlers is destroyed. Its lineages ended. Its magic broken and the emblem of its Treasure lost. The Sept of Feathers is all that remains.Iam all that remains. And you, tánaiste of the Sky-Sword by default. I never said it was perfect. But it is all we have.”
For a while, we were both silent.
“If I say yes—” His face bruised with wretched hope, and I held up a finger. “If.If I agree to take your life, accept your tithe, and become the next Sky-Sword… what exactly will I have to do?”
Irian’s heartbeat jolted. Apprehension streaked dark over his silver gaze, touched with a yearning I didn’t have to name.
I slid my palm around his wrist and gripped him tight.
“Tomorrow evening, at dusk, we will go together to the Heartwood.”
