“Fia—” Rogan tried to catch me as I crossed the room. I shook him off. “Let me explain.”
The plea in his voice stopped me at the door. Impulses warred within me—the need to escape with some shred of my dignity still intact; the desire to hear some wild, compelling explanation that would make all of this hurt less. His large, rough palm folded over my hand, arrested on the doorknob.
“It’s how I process things.” His voice was rutted with regret. “It’s easier than talking. It’s a hell of a lot easier than writing. It’s been that way ever since we were children. You know that—you’ve always known that.”
Perhaps I did. Rogan used to hoard sheaves of parchment beneath his bed—the only one of his possessions he had never shared freely with me. But he had guarded those drawings jealously, showing me only a few chosen pieces from time to time. Mostly, I remembered the castoffs—the prancing horses with ill-shaped hooves, the disproportionate serving girls, the rude little doodles meant to elicit a laugh. They had been nothing like these disturbed dreamscapes, these raw, remarkable portraits.
“Just tell me this.” I forced myself to look up at him. “Were you thinking of her when you were touching me?”
“No.” He spat the word as if it cut his mouth. “How many times must I tell you, changeling? I think only of you.”
Tears burned behind my eyes. “And yet she is the one on your wall. And she is still the one you will wed.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
Three nights later, Rogan and I waited by the Gate. The evening unfurled around us, lily soft and violet edged. No sound disturbed the silence but the distant, trembling lament of a restless bird. The world felt poised—balanced in these last moments of twilight.
I’d never wanted anything as much as I wanted the moon to rise.
“Fia.” Rogan’s voice desecrated the hush. “We need to talk about—”
“No.” I hunched on a mossy stone that had once been an aughisky’s rump. “We really don’t.”
For a long, fraught moment, he was silent. Then:
“The day I broke Eala’s doll was also the day I learned I was to marry her.” He looked down at his palms. “Can you imagine? I was a little boy. I liked hitting rocks with sticks and terrorizing ant colonies and pinching my little brother when his mother wasn’t watching. But that day, I was lashed for something I hadn’t done, then informed I must someday wed the tiny terror who framed me for it. I knew I was a prince—I knew things were expected of me. But that?” His hands flexed into fists. “I had nightmares formonths. Dreams where she chased me through the halls of Rath na Mara. Dreams where she was the one who whipped me, while wearing that broken doll’s grinning face. Dreams where I sat on my father’s throne, and she stood behind it, giggling and hissing with all that fair hair floating around her like clouds.
“I was glad when she was taken by the Folk.” His voice shook with old malice. “There was keening in the halls of Glenathney, I remember—mourning for a stolen princess. But I secretly rejoiced. I thought I was free. Not long after, I met you, and—”
My gaze flew up to him, but he kept his eyes lowered.
“I’ve always known my duty, changeling. That doesn’t mean I’ve ever had a choice in it.” He finally looked up at me. His eyes were the color of the darkening horizon. “I won’t have a choice when I finally take Eala to my marriage bed. And I won’t have a choice when it’s your face I see—your body I imagine—for the rest of my life.”
Resentment and sympathy and lingering heat tangled inside me. “It doesn’t change anything, princeling. And you’ve always known that too.”
When the moon finally rose, we crossed the Willow Gate in miserable, weighted silence.
Tír na nÓg was coming alive. The forest sang as we hiked to the fort, swarming with bright green leaves and strange flower buds. Moonlight polished the lough to a high shine, but there was no sign of the swan maidens. Rogan made off through the trees without looking back at me, as though he knew exactly where to find them.
I exhaled, following him with my eyes until he disappeared. I had my own business to attend to tonight. Irian’s revelations—if true—had put a decided kink in my plot to steal his Treasure and then destroy him. Somehow, I needed to ascertain if he was telling the truth.
The shadows between the trees coalesced like falling feathers.
Irian stepped onto the path.
I faltered back, fighting to calm my racing pulse. I searched for silver eyes amid the curling shadows he wore like wings. Slowly, he came into focus: tall, lean frame; soft mouth and hard jaw; black sword and coiled alertness.
“You’re not dead,” I observed. “Or actively dying.”
“Oh, I am.” Irian looked relentlessly composed—his gaze harsh and dangerous. It was a look I hadn’t seen him wear in months, and it sent a tendril of alarm to wind around my bones. “Just very, very slowly.”
In the month since I’d seen him last, I’d convinced myself that saving his life from that ollphéist, then returning the Sky-Sword to him instead of giving it to Eala must have earned me his trust. I saw now that might not be the case. It occurred to me in a rush of dismay that instead of stealing a Treasure and freeing a princess, I might have lost both my knives, ruined Corra’s new cloak, alienated my closest kin besides Mother,andlost what little confidence I’d earned from the Gentry heir. All in one fell swoop.
“I daresay thanks are in order.” I smiled wide, ignoring his disdain. Perhaps, with some willful ignorance and a touch of guile, our connection could still be salvaged. “Or is disembowelment by ollphéist not usually a terminal condition?”
“You do have my gratitude, colleen.” He gave me a terse, tense bow. “For my life, I owe you a boon. But you also tried to take that which is most precious to me, after telling me you did not covet it. You may ask anything of me, and I will be honor bound to give it to you. But once my debt to you is paid, I cannot promise I will not kill you for once more trespassing on my lands without invitation.”
I wasn’t surprised by the creeping fear his words elicited. Iwassurprised by the sharp burst of disappointment that accompanied it—as though his harsh words stole something from me I hadn’t even known to miss. Irian was my enemy, and we had interacted only a handful of times. Yet some renegade part of me hadalready started looking forward to the full moons purely because I would get to see him. I hardly dared admit it to myself, but Ienjoyedthe cutting rhythms of our banter. The beguiling thrill of his stark, striking beauty. The unnatural heat of his skin when he touched me.
