I shook my head, muddled and mute. My heart throbbed wild with his words:I’d been in love with you for years. I had to know the rest of his story, even if that was all it was—astory.
“Shelaughedat me. Then she told me you’d never be able to love me once I was reduced to nothing.” The words were recited with the rhythm of repetition—as though he’d replayed them in his head so many times, they’d almost lost meaning. “If I wed you, she’d make sure my father disowned me, disinherited me, cast me out into the dirt.”
“No.” I tried to shake off his bruising grip. “She wouldn’t—”
“She did.” Agitation shuddered through him. “She also told me that without the protection of my betrothal to Eala, the peace between our kingdoms would be forfeit, and she’d see no reason not to march on Glenathney. Slaughter Bridei’s cattle, burn our grain fields, then end the Mòr line with my brothers.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I couldn’t think of a way out.” His voice was nearly toneless. “I was eighteen and powerless. The queen was right—if I stepped out of line, I would be disowned and disinherited. Never mind the money—you are worth more to me than gold. But my father is an old, sick man, and my half brothers have been badly raised. I am the crown prince of Bridei. I have a duty to my ancestors. To mypeople—and life is already hard for most of them. I couldn’t bear to be the cause of more violence and sorrow. So I gave in. I thought if I returned home, I could bide my time until I was king. Then I’d have power. Then I could challenge the high queen. Then I could marry whomever I liked. I thought… I thought I had time.”
My eyes burned. “You should have told me.”
“I tried.” Old agony striped his gaze. “I couldn’t get near you—not with Cathair’s witch-birds lurking everywhere I went. And then my father arrived and gave me the worst whipping of my life. I couldn’t get out of bed for the three days before being forced to ride home.”
I suddenly remembered Rogan’s drawn white face the morning he’d left. I’d thought him cold and furious—but if he’d just been whipped, riding would have been torture. But that still didn’t account for the cruel, crushing words he’d spoken to me. If it had truly been our parents forcing us apart—something I still couldn’t bring myself to believe of Mother—then why had he said something so hurtful?
“If that’s true, then why—” The question stuck in my throat like mud. “Why did you say it? Why did you say you were a prince, and I was nothing?”
“Nothing?” Confusion twisted over his face, followed by a brisk and brutal realization. “Donn’s gates, Fia.That’swhat this is about?”
The brittle threads stitching together the shattered pieces of my heart began to fray. My eyes stung with unshed tears. “Never mind.”
“I didn’t say you were nothing.” He caught my arm. “I said you wereno one.”
“No one?” Cutting open an old scar always hurt worse than the original wound. “That’s better, then.”
“Listen to me.” He grasped my chin, forced my eyes up to his. “Don’t you remember that skipping rhyme from when we were young?I asked all around, who broke the vase? No one, no one wants to show their face.”
A sharp thorn of memory pierced me—something I hadn’t thought about in years. Rogan and I sneaking into the scullery in the middle of the night, stealing Cook’s fresh-baked bannocks and slathering them with jam.No one, no one, we’d giggled, stuffing our faces until we were crumb crusted and sticky.
No.
“We made a game of it for a while—don’t you remember? Whenever we did anything naughty, we’d sing, ‘No one, no one,’” Rogan breathed. “I needed the queen to think she’d won. I needed my father to think he’d beaten me into submission. And I needed you to know I was still fighting for you. I thought you understood.”
“Why would you think that?” Misery clawed a cry out of my throat. “How was I supposed to know what you meant?”
“Because I wrote you. Every week, for nearly a year. I had to ride all the way down to Árd na Dare to hire a messenger so my father wouldn’t catch on.”
“I never got any letters,” I whispered.
Something desperate welled in Rogan’s eyes. “I stopped when—when you never wrote me back.”
He stared at me, willing me to come to the conclusion on myown—to absolve him of the responsibility of telling me something I didn’t want to hear. But I twisted away from the understanding growing tall and sharp and despicable inside me.
“She wouldn’t,” I insisted, but even to me the words sounded feeble.
“Wouldn’t she?”
Something broke inside me then, but it wasn’t my heart. It was something else—something I’d believed would never break. It was strong as a queen and sharp as a blade and golden as a torc. It was something I’d believed I could trust above all else—something I had never dared to question.
“She wouldn’t—I know she wouldn’t.” My voice cracked with anguish. “Why would she? Rogan, she loves me.”
“Are you sure?” His voice held pity, understanding. “There was one last thing she said to me the day I asked for your hand. She told me I couldn’t possibly know how to love something like you. She said you were made of poison nettle and steel—not something to be loved, but something to be wielded. A weapon, not a girl.”
“I don’t believe you,” I whispered.
But I did—Idid. I’d heard Mother’s voice often enough to know her words. They had been slightly different—changed, I supposed, for my benefit—but close enough.
