For the next three days, the only thing I allowed myself to think about was the Gentry tánaiste.Irian.I thought about him obsessively, tormentingly, hatefully. I thought about him until his cropped black hair extinguished the candlelit glow of golden curls, until his brutal silver gaze overwhelmed the alluring gleam of river-stone eyes, until the violence of his actions drowned out the irresolute words of a lustful prince.
In the end, I had something resembling a plan.
Stalk him, lie to him, ingratiate yourself with him, Cathair had told me.You’ve grown into a pretty little thing—perhaps you could seduce him.
I feared I was going to have to do all those things.
Chapter Sixteen
Icrouched beneath the dún in Tír na nÓg, the field of starflowers sweeping up before me.
The moon was high. Rogan had already vanished with the swan maidens, without needing to be told. Chandi had trailed at the back of Eala’s retinue, but though her eyes had searched for me, I’d hidden myself well. Her expectant smile had fallen in disappointment, sending regret glimmering through me.
I’d heard her warnings about the shadow heir. But I was going to have to disregard them. And I had no compelling way to explain that to her. I would see her again. But not tonight.
The first time I’d met whom I now knew to be the deposed tánaiste of the Sept of Feathers, I’d tried to pluck one of these starflowers. The second time, I’d saved one of his prisoners—orwards, depending on whom you asked—from drowning. It was no more than a theory, but perhaps he could sense when I interacted with his realm.
I supposed there was only one way to find out.
I reached for one of the starflowers and plucked it. A painful dark peppering of green-black blood burst along my forefinger. I hissed and dropped the blossom.
“They will do you no good,” said a voice like midnight and peril. “They were not made for the likes of you.”
I whirled, coming face-to-face with the tip of a long claíomh. The blade was hammered black and etched with a design I didn’t recognize. Itthrummed, sending exhilaration to crackle like lightning along my bones.
It had to be the Sky-Sword.
The heir stood a pace away, shadows roiling at his back. He held the blade loosely in his palm, like it weighed nothing and he might drop it at any moment. I knew neither of those things were true. Without the onyx torc and velvet tunic, he no longer looked like royalty. He was unlike any prince I’d ever met in Fódla. He carried himself with none of Rogan’s casual entitlement. None of Connla’s smirking condescension. He was hard as battle metal and distant as the night sky.
The human part of me didn’t understand how something so beautiful could be so wicked.
The other part of me—the part of me crafted from the darkest parts of the forest—understood perfectly.
The blade flicked toward my face. I flinched, but the point of the claíomh glided above my hairline, pushing the hood of my mantle down from my head. Tonight, the sight of my features did not elicit the same reaction it had that night on the beach. His silver gaze jerked between my mismatched eyes, but his expression betrayed nothing.
“I know this face, if not the rest of you. Tell me how you came by it.”
“I have borne it for as long as I can remember,” I answered truthfully. “My lord.”
The title startled him—a muscle in his jaw jumped.
“I am no one’s lord. Least of all yours, colleen.”
Colleen.Again, I almost laughed. That he should call megirl, when all my life I had wished to be nothing more and nothing less?
It was a name that pleased me about as well asmy lordpleased him.
“I thought you were tánaiste of your Sept?”
“Your mistake, to think of me at all.” The sudden edge to his voice sharpened the rest of him, banishing the clinging shadows. Details leapt out at me—the ragged border of his once-fine cloak, silver woven against black. The midnight sheen of his hair. The way the tattoos inked along his arms seemed to elongate, like wings poised for flight.
Sept of Feathers.Lingering fear and tortured hope braided up my spine when I remembered the power he’d wielded at the edge of the lough—the power contained within that midnight blade. I pressed my arm tight against my thigh so the thorn-and-thistle bracelet dug into my wrist. Then I lifted my hands in a gesture of peace, letting him see I had come here tonight unarmed.
Well, notcompletelyunarmed. But he didn’t need to know that.
“Perhaps we should exchange names,” I said mildly. “We keep running into each other.”
The noise he made deep in his throat set the hairs on the back of my neck to standing. “You wish to know my name?”
