I slid my eyes over to Rogan, who looked miserable beneath the dripping hood of his woolen mantle. It was hard to tell if the full moon had risen—thick banks of clouds made a dull gray bowl of the night sky. I gnawed my lip and trained my eyes toward the Willow Gate.
“What would you like me to say?” The argument we’d had last week—and the revelations that followed—had already torn me to pieces. The places where I’d patched myself back together still felt raw. But much as I ached, I knew in the root-tangled cavern of my heart that nothing had changed. The obstacles standing between us were the same as they’d always been.
“Something. Anything.” Frustration etched his face. “I told you I wanted to wed you, Fia. It’s the kind of thing that deserves a response.”
“Wanted. Past tense.” I forced my voice to remain neutral. “Unless you’re planning to break off your engagement to Eala now?”
“Ican’t.” Resentment harshened his voice. “My duty is to mypeople. I wish I could leave that to my brothers. Brighid knows my father’s wife would gladly see her eldest, Cillian, as king. She already seeks to secure him a royal match from Usdiae. If she does, he could produce an heir before me. Then Father will give him Bridei. But Cillian is idle and dissolute—he’ll gladly sell off our best farmland to Fannon if it means his choice of Connla’s prize stallions. And Bridei will not survive another bad king. I must be the one to dig us out of penury—for my people, if for no one else.”
“I don’t blame you for leaving, Rogan—not now that I understand why you had to.” Tiny raindrops needled my face and frizzed my hair. “But nothing has changed. If we give in to this—if we follow our foolish hearts—it could be the ruin of thousands. And for what? Childhood infatuation? We’re too grown to believe that will have the ending we want it to.”
“Fia—”
“A princess is still trapped in Tír na nÓg,” I interrupted, blunt. “A geas still has to be broken.” Silently, I added,A Gentry tánaiste still holds a Treasure I mean to steal. “You will return to Fódla with a bride and an inheritance and a throne. And I…”
I paused. Mother had said I would return as an honored warrior in her fiann, a respected member of her court. After what Rogan told me at Imbolc, those words had begun to ring hollow. But Mother’s love was still more sure than Rogan’s was—even if her love was a poisoned, imperfect thing. I couldn’t turn my back on my one chance to be accepted, to carve out an ending for myself that was wholly my own. Stealing the Sky-Sword, freeing Eala, and returning both to Fódla was still the straightest path toward that resolution.
“You and I… we were never more than an impossible story,” I said. “A story we told ourselves so many times, we both started to believe it.”
“Plenty of impossible stories have happy endings, changeling.”
“But this isn’t a story.” I finally looked at him. In the dim pale moonlight, Rogan’s eyes shone like brittle glass. I almost wavered.But I set my jaw. “You were right four years ago. Youarea prince. Iamno one. We were never meant for each other.”
I turned back to the Gate. But not before I saw Rogan’s eyes shatter.
It wasn’t raining in Tír na nÓg. Instead, a bank of choking fog settled over the forest, sifting eerily between the trees. As we walked toward the shadow fort, figures seemed to trail us in the mist. Voices called, just out of earshot. Damp hands reached for the hood of my new mantle.
My vigilance skittered toward high alert. My ears strained for the slightest sound; my hands hovered over the weapons at my belt; my nerves sang with danger.
At last, the forest thinned. The sound of lapping water penetrated the fog. The field of starflowers breathed silver through the gray. I couldn’t see the fort at all.
“Be careful, Rogan.” The fog swallowed my words. “Wherever you go tonight, do not tarry. In this fog, it will be hard to tell time and be easy to get lost.”
His eyes—dark gray in the mist—lingered on my face. Then, with a jerk of his head, he disappeared.
I stared up at where I knew the fort to be. Night after night—restless in my bed despite working my body to exhaustion in the greenhouse—I’d pondered my last encounter with Irian. His words looped relentlessly in my mind as I sought for deeper meaning in the story he’d told. I’d combed my memories of his predator’s grace for any sign of weakness, any chinks in his armor he might unwittingly have revealed. But every night, as dawn sighed into my room, I had nothing but broken nightmares and unanswered questions to show for it.
The shadowy tánaiste was still a dreadful mystery to me. And I was afraid—yes,afraid—of putting myself under his spell oncemore. I didn’t trust myself not to fall for his illusion of gentility, of refined eloquence.
It’s you.
“What’re you doing down here?”
I jumped so high my feet left the ground. I spun to see Chandi lurking beside me in the undergrowth. As usual, the taller girl was wearing nothing but her own thick black hair. The swirling fog didn’t flatter her honeyed skin and amber eyes—in fact, the gray miasma lent her a corpse-like pallor that did nothing to calm my vaulting nerves.
“Morrigan, don’t sneak up on me like that!” Instinct had put a pair of blades in my hands—I carefully sheathed them. “I could have killed you.”
“Jumpy tonight?”
“I don’t like this fog.”
“It’s called féth fíada.” Chandi fluttered her fingers ominously. “A magical mist said to bring invisibility to whoever casts it. They say it only appears when wicked deeds are afoot.”
A chill kissed my spine. “You’re not helping.”
“Tír na nÓg just has strange weather.” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, I need to ask a favor. You know that…lummoxyou seem to be friends with?”
I quelled a laugh. I had a feeling Chandi and Corra would be fast friends. “Rogan?”
