I had to keep reminding myself—his beauty was a deception.
I stood behind him, fidgeting, until he looked up at me. His eyes never failed to startle—pale as starlight and reflective as mirrors. “Sit down, colleen.”
I fought the urge to obey. “That’s not my name.”
“I would imagine not.” He moved a metal kettle onto the fire. “Does it displease you?”
“A little.”
“I could call you something else. What would you prefer?Beefswaddle?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. His expression was a puzzle to me, and I couldn’t tell if he was joking.
“You can call me Fia.”
“Fia.” In his rough lilt, my name sounded unrecognizable. His eyes slid over my face, but it was like he wasn’t seeing me at all. Same as that night on the beach, something like hatred or hope or despair spasmed across his face before smoothing away. “It does not suit you.”
I stilled. “Why do you say that?”
“Names are poetry.” His gaze was too bright. “Yours fits yourverse, but not your cadence. I suspect it did not grow with you, as it should have done.”
The reaction caught me off guard, sending a delicate fear to dance along my spine. I had told him my name to soften him toward me. But what if I had given him something of myself I hadn’t meant to give? Somethingreal?
Chandi had said names did not matter in Tír na nÓg. But Cathair’s tales told a different story. With my true name on his lips, Irian could command me to dance relentless reels until my feet were stumps. To count every grain of sand on an endless beach. To hang myself with a noose of my own hair.
“It didn’t.” I made my voice nonchalant despite the dread gripping my bones. “Mother—myfostermother—had the name picked out for another daughter. A—”
I stopped myself before I saida real daughter. It was true. Before the Gate War started—when Eithne and Rían happily dreamed of a large, sprawling family—Mother had selected the name Fia as the name she loved second, after Eala. Had she ever carried and borne a second daughter, she would have given the child my name.
No. Motherhadhad a second daughter. Me. We did not share blood, but we were—what had Eala said?—bound in love. I deserved this name. I deserved her love. Gods knew I had earned it.
“And you?” I sank to my knees. “You still haven’t told me your name.”
He was silent a moment too long.
“You may call me Irian.” His teeth cut the name into something sharp, broken. “Did your foster mother not know your true nature?”
The reversal jolted me. As it was meant to. “I don’t even know my true nature.”
“So you implied.” He tilted his head. “Surely she questioned the arrival of a strange Folk child in her home.”
“She did. But in time, she grew to love her changeling daughter anyway.”
The kettle whistled shrill, slicing the tension between us. Irian grabbed it from the fire and poured steaming water into a shallow bowl. A small box by the hearth held bandages and unguents. He hesitated so briefly I thought I must have imagined it. Then he reached for my injured hand.
If I thought his skin would be cold—like his eyes, like his face, like his demeanor—I was mistaken. His touchburned—so hot I gasped and nearly pulled my palm from his large grasp. I hissed through my teeth, even as the sensation of his skin on mine edged from pain toward pleasure.
I would’ve preferred his skin cold. It would have reminded me he was a monster, as wicked as he was beautiful. A vicious Gentry royal who wielded more power than anyone ought to. Who might murder innocent girls on a whim.
I made my voice silky. “Will I get used to that too?”
Irian’s silver eyes held mine. He dipped a rag in the steaming water, squeezed it, and brought it to my fingers. Like his touch, the water was slightly too hot to be pleasant—discomfort spangled up my arm as he gently cleaned crusted blood from my hand. The cut burst open, and fresh blood spilled out. He pressed down with the cloth, applying steady pressure with a deftness I hadn’t expected.
But I hadn’t expected any of this. His willingness to help—and his competence in actually doing so—disarmed me. No one had ever bandaged a wound for me. I’d always had to care for myself. And even if my infirmity was a sham on my part, his gentleness seemed genuine—incongruous from someone as hard and guarded as he.
“While I’m pleased to offer you the opportunity to practice your field medicine,” I said, armoring myself once more, “what am I really doing here?”
One side of Irian’s mouth slid lazily upward, exposing a glittering canine.
