But size wasn’t everything. The height of a bow was worth less than the aim of the archer. The stride of a horse was worth less than its will to run. The length of a sword was worth less than the edge on its blade.
I was small. I was a changeling, although I’d be damned if I admitted it to this fatted prince. But I was fast and fierce and unrelentingly trained.
Screw the revealing dress and the subterfuge. I was going to have to do this my way.
Without warning, I jabbed my free hand inward, catching Connla’s bicep above his elbow. He grunted as the muscle spasmed. His grip on my wrist relaxed—I wrenched my hand free and sucker punched him in the face. He reeled away, dumping me out of his lap. Blood dripped down his chin, staining the expensive rug under his feet.
“You bitch,” he gasped wetly.
“Bitch, witch.” I shrugged. “Just don’t ever call me changeling again.”
I climbed him like a ladder before he could so much as make a fist. Wrapping both arms around his head, I swung my legs around his neck—the fabric of my dress audibly ripping—and threwmyself backward. My weight jerked Connla forward, cartwheeling him head over arse. He landed hard on his back, the wind visibly gusting out of his chest.
I landed neatly on my feet. I crouched over him where he flailed like a gutted fish, planting my elbows on my knees and staring into his blood-drenched face.
“Tell me where the darrig is,” I demanded.
It took him a long time to draw enough breath to say, “No.”
“Fine,” I told him. “I’ll find the wretched creature myself.”
I slammed his skull against the edge of the fire pit. His eyes rolled and his head lolled sideways.
The tent was large, but it wasn’t endless. There were only so many places you could hide one of the Fair Folk, especially if you were keeping it captive. Somewhere out of the moonlight, which lent them power. Within a cage made of iron, which sapped their strength. I skipped the bed—mounded with soft furs, its purpose was revoltingly clear—and turned to Connla’s war trunk.
Locked, of course. I could pick it, but that would take precious minutes I didn’t have. Connla wouldn’t be out for long.
I laid my hand against the mechanism, then hesitated.
Little witch.
When I was ten, I’d found an injured hedgehog at the edge of the forest. I snuck it into my chambers, hiding it beneath my bed. I’d come to adore it, nursing it back to health and naming it Pinecone. But I’d let it get too close to me. One day, I’d fallen asleep with it tucked against my chest, beneath my shirt. When I woke, my magic had taken Pinecone from me—all that remained were clods of dirt and flecks of blood held together by pine needles and wood sap.
Some people—Mother in particular—saw my magic as a gift. I knew it to be a curse. It never gave, onlytook.
Blood throbbed against my palm, dark with shadow and hot with wine. I hesitated a second longer, then closed my eyes. I imagined thick brambles studded with dark fruit and capped with sharpthorns. When I opened my eyes, tough briars had snaked into the mechanism.
The metal groaned, bent. Snapped. I threw the trunk open.
At first, it looked like Connla’s trunk was full of jumbled sticks. But I blinked, and it was the darrig—a hunched and broken creature, with a body like a stump and limbs like gnarled branches and eyes like glossy pebbles. The iron cage Connla kept it in was too small—the darrig’s legs didn’t have room to bend without touching the metal, and ugly welts vied for space with bruises on its tree-bark skin. The sickening stench of burnt wood and rotting mulch wafted out of the trunk.
“Help,” the darrig croaked.
Sympathy pulsed through me, warring with my purpose for being here. The darrig might be a wicked, deceitful creature from Tír na nÓg. But not even fiends deserved the treatment Connla had given it. Stuffed into a tiny cage, starved and beaten.
I steeled my emotions. The Gate War had been fought with battle metal and mortal blood, nightmares and stolen fears. It had claimed countless lives. The war might technically be over—the Gates closed and buried, Mother’s vast fianna disbanded—but it had neverended. It was now simply fought on different fields.
I turned away from the creature, casting about for where I’d left my cloak. I needed something to wrap around the cage, to—
Fingers brittle as twigs wrapped tight around my wrist. I whipped around. The darrig had squeezed its wizened arm through the bars of its cage, ignoring the metal searing its flesh. It was surprisingly strong—although I shook my wrist in disgust, it held on to me with grim determination.
“Help.” An inexplicable glimmer of hope touched its depthless eyes. “Mend the broken heart. End the sorrow. Give what life is left, so we may see the morrow.”
“What are you talking about?” I twisted my arm, but the thing wouldn’t let me go. “Are you asking me to put you out of your misery?”
There was a thud behind me, drowning out whatever response the creature would have made. A hand wrapped around one of the braids coiled at my crown, brutally yanking my head back. Through watering eyes, I saw Connla looming behind me. His arm snaked around my throat and squeezed, sending pain spiking from my neck to my skull.
“Dishonorable bastard,” I croaked. I had severely underestimated his recovery time.
