I shook my head. “We can’t risk eating or drinking in Tír na nÓg, lest we become bewitched. I might be able to survive here for a month—but you can’t. And if we were discovered by the Gentry? We would be killed on sight. We must go back to Dún Darragh when the night is done.”
Rogan nodded reluctantly, then disappeared into the forest.
I waited until I no longer heard his footsteps. A breeze rattledthe branches above me. I swore I heard words in the sound, but though I strained my ears, I couldn’t understand them. I tugged my hood higher, then gingerly stepped out into the open. For a place of such darkness, Tír na nÓg was unnaturally vivid. I crouched down at the base of the slope leading to the shadow fort, studying the blossoms growing closest to my boot.
They were tiny, ethereal flowers with white pointed petals. A strange throb pulsed in the pit of my stomach, and I reached for them…
Pain burst hot against my fingertip and darted toward my elbow. I snatched my hand away, even as a drop of green-black blood stained the silken bloom.
A memory from three days ago burned behind my eyes: Another drop of blood. A razored ink-black feather tucked into my pack.
Something dark and brilliant flashed at the corner of my vision. I whirled. And looked straight into the face of a man about to kill me.
Chapter Eight
The arrow trained on my heart gleamed bright from twenty paces. But the man holding the bow was harder to see, as though the moonlight couldn’t bear to touch him, and so bent away, leaving him in shadow. I held my body utterly still, squinting from beneath the shadow of my hood. I saw only edges—night-black hair; charcoal smudged in the hollows of angular cheekbones; a jaw like metal.
Only his eyes shone distinct, and they were savage. Bright as moonlight, dark as a nightmare. I knew then—he was noman.
“Good evening,” I said inanely. As if we were guests at a feast, partners in a dance.
He tilted his head—a tiny yet threatening gesture. Dread weakened my limbs and muddled my thoughts.
I steeled my emotions. I was made of frost and rot and endless things. I was not made to fear the Folk.
“State your business, ghillie.” The menace in his voice raised the hairs on my arms. “Then begone.”
“I’m no ghillie,” I said clearly and pleasantly. “Although I’ve always wondered what it would be like to have birch bark for skin and moss for hair.”
His silence was sharp.
“It seems like it would be…itchy,” I clarified.
He moved closer, although neither bow nor arrow dropped. He was without question a warrior—I knew the look of a man acquainted with violence. It was there in the measured rhythm of his feet against the earth. The angle of his head. The easy slide of lean muscle over bone. The sheen of danger in eyes silver as faraway stars.
The blade of his jaw lifted, and he scented the air.
“You stink of the human realms. You speak like a human.” He glanced down at the shimmering petal I’d stained with my green-dark blood. “Yet you bleed like the forest. Tell me what you are.”
He took one final step toward me, and I finally saw the whole of him between the twisting shadows that wreathed him like great black wings.
He wasbeautiful.
He stood more than a head taller than I, narrow at the waist but broad through the shoulders. Unlike the men of Fódla’s long braided styles, his hair was cropped brutally short, the strands the shining black of a raven’s wing. In contrast, his skin was pale as marble. And oh, hisface. His striking features were carved in clean, austere lines—chiseled cheekbones, stark frowning brows, a hard sculpted jaw. The only soft thing about him was the bow of his incongruously sensuous mouth. And thoseeyes—like metal, like moonlight, like…
For a long moment, I was taken in. Bewitched. My shoulders relaxed; my mouth curved into a smile; my mind loosened.
Then I remembered where I was. Who he was.Whathe was.
His was the beauty of the night—dark moons and dark deeds. His was the beauty of the forest—hiding teeth and hiding monsters. His was the beauty of black ice—slick and thin and masking death.
I knew him then by his treacherous beauty. He was one of the Folk Gentry.
My hands trembled with the urge to defend myself, to snatch up my skeans and fling them at his heart. But I suspected my blades would not find their mark, no matter how true my aim.
“I am—” I hesitated, a mouse in a trap. There were many things I could tell him. Many truths. Many lies. There were also many ways I could die, here, tonight. “I am lost.”
“This is no place to be lost.” He circled closer. “Nor found.”
