I looked away.
“Eala doesn’t want to come home.” His voice had an edge to it. “She’s been raisedthere. Withthem. The nights she regains her human form, she spends with the Folk. She knows their ways, attends their revels, sings their songs. Has done since she was eight years old. She barely remembers her mother the queen, let alone a forgotten childhood in the human realms.”
My eyebrows lifted. Eala had been so eager to steal the Sky-Sword—to cut away her geas so she could return to Fódla. Why would Rogan say the opposite? Either he was lying to me, or Eala was lying to him. But I bit my tongue and let him speak.
“You know I do not relish the idea of marrying her.” Bitterness splintered his voice. “I know she does not relish the idea of marrying me. She is sweet-faced yet sour-tongued. She will dance with me, then spurn me. Flirt with me, then insult me.”
A thorn of residual guilt tore at me. I had been the one to encourage Eala to toy with Rogan. But I had never meant for her totormenthim. At least, not to this extent.
“But I’ve turned it over in my head a thousand times, changeling. I can’t find a way out.”
I met his gaze in surprise. “A way…out?”
“I don’t want to do this anymore.” His eyes were the same color as the river-stone winking from his collar. “I don’t want to gothere. I don’t want to chase afterher. I don’t want to playact the hero when I feel like a failure and a liar.”
“Whatdoyou want?”
“You.”
The directness of his answer stole my breath. We’d danced around this for so long. A twilight of dread and desire made a muddle of my thoughts.
“Changeling, you’ve had it so wrong.” He brushed the back of his hand against my cheek. I hated myself for it, but I leaned into his touch. “You accused me of thinking of her when I was with you. But it’s the other way around. All I can think about—with her, without her; day, night—isyou.”
I wanted to eat his words like honey. I wanted to savor every warm, tempting promise.
“But if you want to protect your people, there is no way out,” I whispered.
“If there is, I cannot see it.” He clasped my chin, sword-calloused fingers rough against my cheeks. The sensation made me think, abruptly, of Irian—as though his scalding fingers had left imprints on my skin from the last time he’d touched me. “At first, I thought to run away. We could sail abroad, to my cousins in Caerafwyn. But it would be mere months before the queen discovered what we’d done. Before she hunted us down.”
“She would kill us both. Me for betraying her. You for defying her.”
“And even if she was merciful, there is too much at stake.” His hands fell to his sides. “I cannot abandon Bridei to my brothers. They would malt our best grain for the distillery, then drink and gamble and whore their way to empty coffers and fallow fields.” His words were bitter. “No—Bridei will not survive another bad king. But for me to rule, I must marry Eala.”
“What would you have me do with these words, Rogan? They mean nothing.” My voice came out hoarse. “We are right where we started. The princeling and the changeling, always together and yet fundamentally apart.”
“We weretornapart.” Rogan caught my hand again, threadinghis fingers through mine. His eyes matched the sky dimming to cobalt behind him. “But look at what we’ve done to this greenhouse, Fia. This whole garden. Seeded with new growth. Reforged. Mended. Couldn’t that be us? We are not so broken that we cannot be put whole with care and work and time.”
“How?” His words were a balm against my thorny heart, but I fought the urge to melt into his arms. “When she is still your betrothed?”
“Surely there is a way.”
It took me a moment to realize what he was suggesting.
“How many times must I say it?” I willed my heart hard as stone. “I am no one’s whore.”
“Then let me be no one.” He shook his head, pulled my stiff body closer. He brought his lips to my ear and whispered a snatch of a rhyme against my hair. “I asked all around, who broke the vase? No one, no one wants to show their face.”
I closed my eyes as that silly, childish rhyme conjured up a gauntlet of memories. They chased me, teased me, bruised me. The silence between us cut its teeth on my desire and drank my hesitation like liquor.
Rogan was never meant for me. He wasn’t the man I would wed, would bear children to, would grow old with. But that wasn’t what he was asking me for. He was asking for part of me—and he was offering only part of himself in return.
Morrigan help me, but I had wanted him for so long. And maybe I could have him. If not forever, then… for now. Eala’s geas was not yet broken. He was still mine. For a little while longer.
It was wicked to want such a thing. But I’d asked for so little for so long, and been given even less. Didn’t I deserve this one small thing?
“I thought I heard a giggle, a whisper in the hall.” I murmured the next verse of the nursery rhyme. I slid my hands around his neck and pulled him toward me. I tilted my head, parting my lips. Dusk blurred around us, turning the air blue and gold and shy with desire. “But no one, no one was ever there at all.”
At the edge of the trees, a flicker of metallic light caught my eye. I startled, whipping my head around. My eyes dredged the shadows, searching for—what? The glitter of bloodstained flowers, the sweep of a black cloak, the rattle and claw of a distorted monster. But this wasn’t Tír na nÓg. The night here was softer, as was the light I’d seen. It flashed, then disappeared. Another glimmer appeared a few feet away. Then another.
