That part of me thrilled at his words, his closeness, his touch. That part of me never wanted him to let me go.
With a push, he pinned me against a tree. My bare back rasped against the rough bark, and I gasped. He pressed closer, until his knee nudged between my thighs, his shredded breastplate dug into my bodice, and his broad shoulders blocked my view. The only place I could look was up.
Irian’s eyes were nailed to my face. Even blood-spattered and exhausted, shuddering with pain and adrenaline, he was magnificent.
“Once—in a time of sunlit mornings and barefoot afternoons—there was a boy.” He spoke swiftly, intently. “He was not always careful where he played. One day, in the wood, he stepped upon a thorn. Though small, it drove deep beneath his skin—too deep to remove without pain. So the boy ignored it, hoping it would come out on its own. It did not. Instead, his skin grew around the thorn. Every step the boy took, he felt the agony as that thorn dug deeper and deeper into his flesh. Soon, the wound festered. A healer was finally called. The healer had to carve into the boy’s skin with a knife, clean the wound with burning salt water, and cauterize itwith fire and steel. The scar left behind was jagged and unsightly. If the boy had but plucked out that tiny thorn when it first pierced him, all that pain could have been avoided.”
I tried to piece together the meaning behind his words. But I could barely think beyond the weight of his gaze, the heat of his proximity. “What are you saying?”
“That prince does not deserve you. He is a thorn beneath your skin. Cut him out of your heart. Then cauterize the wound.”
Irian leaned down. Hesitated for barely a second. Then slid his bloody hand beneath my chin, lifted my face toward his, and captured my lips with his mouth. He kissed me slowly, then ferociously. Bruisingly. He tasted like cold metal and ice water, night at the edge of dawn. His hand on my jaw trembled, and the forest around us vibrated with it.
Before I had a chance to kiss him back, it was over. He stepped away, clutching his ribs where silvery blood seeped through his mantle. I lifted a hand to my scorched lips.
“Apologies, colleen.” A ghost of a smile spasmed over his face. “There were vows. One or two secrets. But I could not quite manage the sunrise.”
Irian disappeared into the night without another word.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Huath—Hawthorn
Late Spring
Fledgling summer took flight—buoyant gold-blue afternoons strung one after the other like jewels on a necklace. And I—I was bewitched, bewildered, delirious.
I forced myself to train. I ran hard intervals around the lough, then spun through my forms and variations with the set of newly forged skeans that’d finally arrived from Finn Coradh. I worked long hours in the garden, catching up on the weeding I’d neglected. I pruned overzealous lilacs. I seeded late summer crops. I thinned the fruit trees for autumn’s harvest. And when the lengthening days finally faded toward night, I repaired to the archive, meandering through the ancient cares and worries of someone long dead, in order to avoid my own.
After the Treasures of the Folk, wrote the ancient warrior in his looping, runaway script,a heart is the most powerful magic in Tír na nÓg.
Yet no matter how hard I worked—how exhausted I made myself—my dreams tangled with visions.
A colossal tree singing songs I almost recognized.
A deadly sword slicing down.
A searing kiss stolen beneath melting trees.
Waking was little better. No matter how much I controlled my body, my thoughts wouldn’t stop spiraling, always to the same place.
Irian.
The way he’d spoken to me after bestowing his dubious blessing—candid, callous, cruel.I am not a good man.The way he’d danced with me—as if I were less a girl than a goddess. The way he’d kissed me—feral, intense, tender. Temptation painted shades of honeysuckle and poppy on my skin.
Morrigan, how Iwantedhim. I shouldn’t. But I did.
But he wasn’t the only thing troubling me. Irian’s words beneath the Heartwood had lashed my thoughts into tortured patterns I struggled to untangle.
“Corra?” I called, sitting back in my chair. It was past midnight—torches guttered in their sconces. I knew I should go to bed, but a theory was coiling between my ears—one I wanted to voice before it lost its gleam. “Are you there?”
Corra coalesced into a carven otter, who flicked its rounded ears. “Dark sky, what hour is nigh?”
“A bargain, fiend.” I leaned over, reaching into a drawer for something I’d been tinkering with over the past few weeks. “I have something for you. I’ll give it to you… in return for one completely honest answer to any question I ask.”
“What is it?” Corra’s otter wriggled its stocky webbed legs. “Riches? Treasure?”
“Not quite.” I smoothed my fingers over a rough collection of sticks held together by bits of twine and ribbon, then set it on the desk. Woodworking had never been my strong suit, but I’d done my best to build a little manikin—a strange little figure twice the length of my palm, cobbled together from straw and sticks, with little beads for eyes and a dried red berry for a mouth. “If you ever need to speak with me, and there are no carven walls or tree knots nearby… perhaps this will do instead.”
