“I wish to know what to call you. Or what you wish to be called. It doesn’t have to be your name. I could call you—” Morrigan, why not let him think me daft? It had worked well enough for Corra—I’d let my guard down with them completely. “Beefswaddle. Winklepicker. Jelly Belly. Dizzy—”
“That is enough.” His mouth worked. “Jelly Belly?”
“As you wish.” I spared a glance at his abdomen, which even clothed and armored was visibly trim. “Not the one I would have chosen, personally.”
“You are brave, colleen.” The smile he gave me was feral. “I have eviscerated men for less.”
I smiled back. “Good thing I am no man.”
He tilted his head, as though considering whether my argument was sound. Finally: “You are still bleeding.”
I followed his gaze to my hand, which was indeed still bleeding. My finger throbbed, but distantly—the wound was little more than a nick.
“Let me clean and bandage it for you.” In his husky timbre, it sounded more like a threat than an offer of help. “It is the least I can do to thank you for saving Chandika’s life two moons ago.”
I almost scoffed—I was accustomed enough to bigger hurts to ignore such a small wound. And yet…
In the summer of last year, Mother had hosted a delegation from a kingdom across the channel. Throughout the week of organized feasts and tournaments and hunts, the foreign king had been consistently rude to the queen—talking down to her, explaining asinine facts to her, and implying she would have been better off passing the throne to a brother or male cousin after Rían’s tragic death. Mother hadn’t reacted to any of the insults, simpering and smiling at him like a girl of sixteen.
During the feast on the last night of his visit, the king had the audacity to recount a legend from Mother’s own noble lineage—incorrectly, no less. Mother’s gentle smile had never left her face, but I’d had enough. I’d risen from my chair, hot words scalding my throat. But Cathair had gripped my wrist and yanked me back into my seat.
“Why won’t she stand up to him?” I’d hissed.
“She is a queen among kings. Nothing she does or says will keep her from being underestimated,” he’d told me softly. “So she finds ways to let that serve her.”
“I don’t understand.”
“He thinks her weak and stupid. Soft as marrow, and no threat to him whatsoever.” Cathair had plucked a discarded boar rib from his plate and snapped it in half, then sucked the marrow from the bone. “In the autumn, he will move all his forces north to battle the Mac Loughlin clan, leaving his coastal settlements defenseless. Then our queen’s fianna will strike. She will take his silver and his cattle and his eldest son as her fosterling. And then he will know—she is not marrow, but bone. And if he tries to bite down on her, he will break his teeth.”
I’d been quiet, digesting this. Later that night, Mother had leaned over to me.
“To disarm a powerful man, do not let him see how strong you are. Let him see the weakness he expects of you. Then you may strike at him when he least expects, and he will never see you coming.”
Then, the advice had made me indignant. Now, as I looked up at Irian, Mother’s words seemed wise.
I made my face soft and lifted my injured hand up in front of me. The moonlight slid over the dark blood and turned it silver.
“Please.” I made my voice plaintive. “It does hurt.”
His face spasmed with an expression I didn’t know him well enough to read. He stepped forward, clasped a hand on my shoulder, and bent the world around us.
Chapter Seventeen
The night air closed around me. Shadows beat against my skull and chest with great black wings. I opened my mouth to scream, but there was only the soundless weight of an endless sky.
I fell to my knees on smooth flagstones, my palms smacking down a moment later. My stomach heaved, and for a blistering moment I thought I might vomit all over Irian’s boots. Which would likely be unproductive to my aim of seducing him. I clamped my mouth shut until the feeling passed, then glared up at him.
“What was that?”
“Apologies.” He didn’t look apologetic. He brushed the palm that had held my shoulder down the front of his leather breastplate, as if touching me disgusted him. “You will get used to it.”
I clambered to my feet. “Not bloody likely—”
My words died in my throat when I finally looked around me. Somehow—in the spaces between midnight breaths and forgotten sighs—he’d brought me into the shadow fort. And it was… indescribable.
Like Dún Darragh on the other side of the Gate, the shadow fort was ancient and half-ruined. That was where the similarities ended.The staircase ascending from the hall was shattered like the broken spine of some long-dead beast. The grasping roots of massive trees made eerie chandeliers, strung with broken glass and gemstones. An opalescent floor glowed the same color as the tánaiste’s otherworldly eyes. Shadows wreathed the corners, thick with the ghosts of half-remembered faces.
I shuddered and forced my eyes to Irian. He knelt before a hearth and began stoking its flames. The light caught the edges of his striking face—smearing red on his cheeks and smudging charcoal beneath his eyes. He’d thrown off his outer mantle—the sleeveless tunic beneath it revealed the full extent of his tattoos, which stretched from his wrists to his biceps and disappeared beneath his clothes. I tried not to stare at the sculpted muscle sliding and bunching beneath them as he tossed wood onto the fire.
