“No.” His lips curled away from his teeth. “So you will understand if I do not wish to share my secrets with you.”
“Then I suppose we have no choice.” I forced myself to meet his silver gaze with a level, unruffled stare. “We must endeavor to no longer be strangers.”
“How do you propose we do that?”
“How do strangers ever become friends, except by sharing secrets?” I remembered what the blue-eyed Gentry stranger—whom I’d mercifully never seen again—had said to me on the Feis of the Nameless Day. “I saved Chandi’s life. You owe me a boon.”
“A boon I have just repaid,” he said smoothly, “by bandaging your wound.”
Fury spiked through me, tinged with betrayal. His gentleness—his willingness to help—had been nothing more than a ruse. “I never agreed—”
“A service was offered. A service was accepted.” Irian’s smilewas a scythe. “You should be more careful, colleen—few things in the Folk realms are ever given freely.”
I fought to calm my temper. “Then let me offer you a bargain.”
“Surely you have been warned not to make bargains with the Folk.” His smile grew even sharper. “I might steal your shadow. Devour your fondest memories. Keep you trapped in my fortress forever.”
I laughed to mask the vines of fear creeping through me. “If you knew what a rude houseguest I am, you wouldn’t go to such lengths to keep me.”
“If I wanted you,” he drawled, “I would go to any lengths to keep you.”
My pulse jumped, pulling my eyes wide.
“Name the terms of your bargain.” Irian’s own gaze flashed with vicious amusement. “And perhaps I will agree.”
“A story for a story.” My words came out rushed, breathless. “You tell me what I wish to know, and I will tell you something in return.”
“Very well.” Some savage decision crossed Irian’s face. “But I will choose the stories. Yours and mine both.”
I frowned. “That doesn’t seem fair—”
“Balance and fairness are two different things, colleen. Your stories are worth less to me than mine are to you. So I will choose.”
“How do I know the story you tell will be of any use to me?” I knew plenty of stories. Folk legends hammered into me during Cathair’s endless lessons. Stories of treachery and seduction, violence and vengeance, magic and mayhem. Stories with violent, tragic, unhappy endings. “The cat chased the dog—that’s a story.”
“By my troth, I promise that any story I tell will pertain to the matter you wish to know.” He pressed a formal palm to his chest. “Will that do?”
I doubted I had room to argue. It wasn’t much, but it kept me close to him, kept us interacting. Got me closer to the Treasure and closer to understanding what he’d meant that night on the beach.It’s you.“It will do.”
“Good.” He still held the Sky-Sword loosely in one hand—he now whipped the blade toward me, too swift for me to dodge or block. I froze as its tip came to rest against my arm, sending a shock of energy zipping through me. I looked down. The sleeve of my mantle must have ridden up over my wrist as Irian bandaged my hand. The Sky-Sword now hummed against the raw, scarred skin beneath my bracelet of brambles, nettles, and hemlock.
“This.” His eyes were molten metal. “I want you to tell me the story of this.”
My bones were sticks. My heart, a rock. I stared at the bracelet, searching for words to explain. To explain what it was to me, how I used it. How the pain had become a friend, an ally, a constant companion. Cathair had schooled me in many things—poisons, blades, dead languages, seduction. But he’d never taught me how to be honest. I didn’t know how to be vulnerable without baring something of myself I didnotwant to bare.
“There was once—in a time of long-lost battles and unknown pasts—a changeling girl,” I began haltingly. Irian’s attentiveness scorched me—I had to look away. “She was raised to be strong, hammered to be hard, and whetted to be sharp. But she had a weakness for green things, for she carried the forest in her blood.”
My words died as I strongly reconsidered this regrettable bargain.
“Go on,” Irian commanded.
I thought of Rogan choosing Eala and leaving like a ghost in the blue of dawn. Of the warm, humid flush of the royal greenhouses—damp earth and sweet scents and green leaves. Of Cathair pressing vials of poisons into my hands, instructing me to drink them, to pour them on my skin, tobecomethem.
I’d fashioned the bracelet not long after that. Something to remind me that the things I loved—like hedgehogs and hothouse flowers and boys with river-stone eyes—could still hurt me. To remind me that love was more dangerous than hatred and always hurt more.
“She tried to keep those parts of herself separate,” I continuedin a rush. “But she could not. If a thing could grow, it could die. If a thing could heal, it could hurt. If a thing could be kind, it could be cruel. So she made the bracelet to remind herself.”
“To remind herself what?”
