It wasn’t the fighting leathers and breeches I was used to. But tonight I needed a different kind of armor.
“Irian,” I said.
He turned. He, too, was elaborately dressed—his black mantle embroidered in forest green and trimmed in silver. He wore what looked like ceremonial regalia—dark leather armor intricately embossed with silver. The same onyx torc he’d worn at the Feis of the Nameless Day circled his neck, and the Sky-Sword hung sheathed from his waist. But it was not his formal attire that arrested me. It was his perfectface. Wonder and want softened his plush mouth and softened the rest of him with it—the harsh angle of his brows easing,the hard line of his jaw blunting. His gaze brushed the floating hem of my airy dress before grazing up the length of my legs, the curve of my hips, the swell of my breasts, my flower-studded shoulders. Shadows bled away from his face, leaving his eyes incandescent.
Irian was always vexingly handsome. Tonight, the sight of him stole my breath.
“Fia, you look—” He closed the gap between us with a stride, his palm finding mine in the dark. I jolted at the unexpected touch, then froze as he lifted my hand. He bowed over it, poised and formal, before brushing a swift, scalding kiss over my knuckles. “Exquisite.”
My tangled veins sparked, sending blood to paint my skin with warmth. “So. What’s the occasion?”
He straightened, eyes glittering with a light that might have been anticipation… or trepidation. “A Gentry wedding.”
“Awedding?” When he’d told me to dress for a party, I’d expected another Folk feis—beguiling, alluring, but a known quantity. A wedding was something else entirely, and I couldn’t help but think—fleetingly, fiercely—ofthem. If Rogan and I were successful in breaking Eala’s geas, soon enough it would be their turn to wed. And although everything I’d told Rogan on Bealtaine was true, it didn’t mean I liked the thought of witnessing their nuptials. Not when just weeks ago, it had been his hands on my waist. His lips on my lips. His—
Confusion and unease and the afterglow of lust burned through me in quick succession. I forced the thoughts away.
“I wasn’t invited.”
Irian lush mouth quirked. “Neither was I.”
“Then why?” I narrowed my eyes at him. “The other Gentry despise you—seek to destroy you. Why would you want to intrude uninvited upon one of their weddings?”
His head tilted dangerously. “I wish to… make a point.”
“Exactly how sharp is this point?” I folded my arms over my chest. “Am I likely to get cut?”
“The geas of hospitality is strict,” Irian promised. “You will come to no harm.”
“But you promised to answer my question from last month.” I set my jaw. “You promised to tell me the ending to my story.”
“And so I will. After we arrive.”
I wavered. “Fine. But don’t try and make me dance.”
“I doubt I couldmakeyou do anything, colleen.” Reaching behind me, Irian plucked a green tendril trailing from a nearby tree. He twisted the flowering vine over his fingers and held it up between us. “Perhaps you will do the honors?”
I frowned, not understanding.
“It is best if your… extraordinary features remain a mystery to all but me.”
I remembered the velvet mask Chandi had conjured for me on the Nameless Day. I plucked the vine from his hand and forced a mocking smile.
“Am I really so loathly that you need to hide my face from your friends?”
“They are not my friends.” His expression darkened, the shadows at his back coiling tight against his shoulders. “And know that you are lovely, colleen. Bewitchingly so. Try not to blame me for wanting to keep that beauty all to myself.”
I drank down his words like a parched person might swallow water, even as I lifted the vine toward my face. I bade the tendrils to lengthen and twist, creeping around my eyes and sliding against my scalp. The vine had tiny thorns that prickled my skin, but I welcomed the sensation—it cleared my head. Flowers burst along my cheekbones and coiled in my hair like a crown.
“How do I look?”
Something like regret passed behind Irian’s eyes. “You look like one of us.”
If Irian hadn’t bent space and whisked us somewhere else in an instant, I might have known where we were. But from the momentour feet touched down on the bright runnels of moss flooring the forest, the only thing that mattered was how exquisite everything was.
The wedding bower was festooned in a thousand milk-white anemones, illuminated by delicate pink and yellow lanterns. Magnificent piles of food towered on vast banquet tables. Vernal bouquets bloomed in every color imaginable—peonies and dahlias and lilacs. A colossal, unimaginably ancient tree wore gossamer garlands of eglantine and woodbine that tumbled down to trail along the ground. Exuberant sheeries winked around us like captive stars.
But Irian’s arrival was met with a silence that trickled through the Folk wedding like acid. Guests and revelers ceased their merriment. Conversation halted. Drinks were set down. The fluting music jangled to an awkward stop. Even behind my mask, I could read the expressions that met our arrival—bewilderment, alarm, outright malice.
