“He loved Deirdre.” I packed the wound with fresh yarrow for clotting. Calendula for healing. Poppy for pain.
“Like an ocean admires the sky.” Irian bared his teeth. “Like a brother loves a sister.”
I sat back and inspected my work. There was still blood—toomuch blood. But Irian was alive. His back was a mess of thorns and flowers, but he was alive.
“What happened to him?” I looked up.
Irian was already gazing at me, his opal eyes vivid with pain, shock, and something unreadable. His sweat-slick head was inches from mine. He radiated fever. Beneath us, the earth had stilled.
“The same thing that happens to all boys.” His voice was hoarse. “He grew up. He traded winkles for war, songs for steel. He learned to kill. And then he learned to like it.”
I waited for him to go on. He didn’t.
“That’s it?” I asked, incredulous.
“It is.”
“Your stories are terrible.”
“Why?” A glimmer of his earlier smile played across his lips. “Because they do not have happy endings?”
I shook my head and moved to stand up. But Irian’s hand—still braced beside my thigh—shot out and closed around my wrist. His grip was metal hot from the forge. He twisted my palm upward.
“Your turn.” He tilted his head toward my hand, which was stained with dark earth and silver blood and scarlet flower petals. “I want the story of your gift.”
Gift.I closed the hand into a fist. “Your tale bought your life. I owe you nothing.”
I rose, jerking my hand out of his. He winced and exhaled, reaching around himself to prod the edges of my botanical bandage. Satisfied it was holding the rest of his blood inside his body, he levered himself to his feet. He swayed. I wondered whether it was from blood loss or from the narcotics tingeing his bloodstream. He looked down at his mantle and leather armor, which were held together by nothing more than bloody shreds, then tore the rest of the raiment apart with his hands, exposing himself to the waist.
I tried not to stare. And failed miserably.
Even covered in monster ichor and shaking with blood loss, Irian was magnificent. He was perfectly proportioned—tall and lean, yet broad through the shoulders and narrow at the waist. His muscles might have been carved from marble, they were so defined. Only the angular black markings laddering his arms and hugging his back marred his perfection. And even they were savagely beautiful. I wondered what they’d feel like beneath my fingertips, my hands on his shoulders with his flaming skin licking against my own, his weight pressing above me—
I forced myself to look away, to clench my fists, tobreathe. Irian might not be fanged or taloned or covered in scales. But he was as much a monster as the corpse behind me.
“My sword.” Sudden worry racked his already pained expression. “I cannot lose my sword.”
I followed his eyes. Twenty paces behind us, the ollphéist had begun toliquefy, its bulk spreading outward as its scales separated. What had once been flesh and bone oozed between the cracks, bubbling and steaming. The odor of rot and death intensified, making me clap my hands over my nose and mouth. Irian moved—or tried to move—toward the corpse, but he swayed like a tree in a high wind. His eyes rolled back in his head. I caught his elbow.
“You’re in no state.”
“To do what?”
“To doanything. I’ll fetch it.”
I thought he wasn’t going to listen to me. But then he seemed overcome by the sudden urge to sit down on the ground and put his head in his hands.
Definitely the poppies.
I stomped off toward the corpse, cursing. I wasn’t thrilled by the idea of fishing around in a decaying monster for mislaid weaponry but saw no other option. Besides, both my knives were somewhere in there too.
By the time I’d retrieved the Sky-Sword—my skeans were sadly lost to the mush—I was covered to the knee in monster goo and stank like carrion. I trudged back toward Irian, hoping he was still alive enough to thank me for the trouble. I was a dozen paces from him when I realized—
I was holding the Sky-Sword. The Treasure I’d been sent to retrieve. The weapon Mother and Fódla needed. The means by which Eala’s geas might be broken.
My steps faltered.
I hefted the weapon. The hilt was silver and bone, finely etched with a pattern of feathers that closely matched the tattoos laddering Irian’s arms. But the blade—the blade was forged of a material I had no name for, a metal black as starless night skies. In the wake of battle the blade was silent. But at my touch, impressions blew over me like a high wind—starlight and sunrise and cirrus clouds painted against the dawn. Lightning crackled against my palm,so different from the slow, steady throb of my own magic that I almost dropped the blade.
