Though I saw no path, Irian stepped confidently through verdant undergrowth studded with flowering vines and barred by saplings. How long had it been since anyone had come this way? I brushed my hands over the smooth, sighing trunks of the trees, but their concerns were root deep and earth dark and had little to do with our passing.
At last, Irian stopped, glancing around in the falling gloom.
“Now, let me see if I remember…” He frowned, took two sweeping steps, slanted his body sideways, anddisappeared.
“Irian?” A thread of panic twined my voice. “Where are you?”
A hand reached from nowhere, gripped my sleeve, and tugged me sideways. Vertigo spun me, and I nearly stumbled. When I looked up, Irian and I stood in a world wholly changed.
The garden shone with dark beauty. Although overgrown and neglected, it had once been magnificent. Unlike a normal garden, which basked in daylight, this one stirred awake with the falling dusk—drowsy blossoms unfurling, fronds aglow in twilight’s hush. I turned, breath caught in quiet awe.
“I thought you said it was walled,” I managed to whisper, looking back the way we’d come.
“Walled by magic.” His smile was little more than a lush lip curled over a gleaming canine. “Folk see walls and want to climb them. It is far harder to covet what you cannot see.”
Deirdre’s garden was certainly worthy of coveting. Rambling beds of flowers nudged over arbored pathways arched with hanging roses. Hedges made labyrinths studded with statuary and jeweled with broken lanterns. The paths meandered up a gentle rise,necklaced by once-shimmering fountains and crowned by a delicate pavilion gleaming like mother-of-pearl.
“She… lived here?” Unexpected sorrow gnawed at my heart, sharp-toothed and seeking. Whatever hope I carried of finding my mother here disappeared—this place had clearly been abandoned for decades. “Alone?”
“She had Folk nursemaids,” Irian told me. “I remember a ghillie named Lanae, who used to shoo me away with a thistle broom. I’m sure there were others. It is common for Gentry children to be tended by lower Folk.”
I was silent, remembering my own strange adoption by the Folk of the forest. I supposed it had not been so different an experience to my mother’s upbringing.
“She never left this place until she came of age?” The garden was exquisite, ethereal. But it was quiet and very, very empty.
“Deirdre was incredibly lonely.” Irian’s voice thrummed, ghostly, in the descending dim. “I like to think I brought her some companionship, in her darkest times. But I was young and brash and boyish. She was elegant and wise beyond her years. I doubt I was much to her beyond an amusing distraction.”
“I’m sure you brought her great comfort.” I longed to squeeze his hand, to curl my arm through his. The thought sent a sizzle of heated anticipation buzzing along my skin. I inhaled and pointed toward the knoll. “I’d like to see the pavilion.”
We wended our way along the paths, huge milk-white daturas nodding at our thighs. Roses the color of shining beetles’ carapaces tangled around our boots. Still fountains caught the last of the sunset’s carmine rays until they looked filled with wine.
Shallow steps led us to the pavilion, where quartz-streaked pillars lofted toward an arched ceiling. Diaphanous curtains—now tattered by wind and streaked by rain—sighed softly. Scattered pillows, frayed and filthy, lumped between divans with broken legs and shredded upholstery. Gossamer lanterns in the shapes of stars and moons and nameless marvels swayed gently on chains hung from the ceiling.
Twenty years ago, this would have been utterly beautiful. A gilded, glamorous prison for an heir with a cursed destiny. Different by far from my childhood in Rath na Mara—Deirdre would have been bored, not bullied. Cosseted, not trained. Doted upon, not driven to prove herself to those who did not understand her.
Irian leaned against one of the cobalt pillars, watching me intently. “What are you thinking, mo chroí?”
“How did she while away all those long years by herself?”
“She was educated in the manner of all Gentry heirs.” Irian tapped one of the hanging lanterns—once, twice, thrice. A cool, pale light blossomed. “History, law, magic, warfare. And when she was finished with her lessons, she loved to dance. She was agile as a doe, and as sure-footed. She sang like a nightingale. But mostly, she adored stories.” He lit another lantern in the center of the pavilion, illuminating a far wall ridged with rows of empty, broken shelves. “There were once a thousand books upon those shelves, stacked three deep and towering far higher than even I dared climb. Scrolls from the farthest reaches of Tír na nÓg, parchments in languages neither of us spoke. She would read me her favorites, on the nights I snuck into her garden, again and again, until the rhythm of the telling became music on her lips.” His eyes, silver now as night descended, glittered far away as stars. “That is what she did to while away the hours. She devoured stories and, in turn, was consumed. In stories the tyranny of her fate was transcended, the mundane transformed to marvels.”
“So it is with all tales.” I lifted a hand and beckoned Irian toward me. “Come here, mo chroí. There is a story I wish to tell you.”
Irian did not move a muscle. “Fia—”
“Come.” I unfastened my cloak from my shoulder and swept it onto the cool pavilion floor. I knelt, lifting my eyes to Irian once again. “Please.”
He made that glorious noise in the base of his throat, then pushed off the pillar. His steps were careful as he approached. He unclasped his own mantle and layered it over mine, then knelt to face me. His eyes were full of muted longing and harsh uncertainty.
“Once,” I began, haltingly, “on a night of murdered maidens and smoldering moons, a man and a woman stood in a sacred grove and pledged their lives to each other.” Irian’s gaze darkened like a thunderhead. I forced myself to keep going, even as nerves fluttered like dark moths inside my chest. The prospect of rejection reared inside me, and I wished I did not have to be the one to put aside my pride and make myself vulnerable. But I had spoken the terrible words that broke our marriage. So, too, would I have to speak the words to mend it. “But their bond was sundered by cold contempt and violent pride. Now, with the sounds of war lofting on the rising wind, and time pinched like a pauper’s purse, the woman wishes to ask the man—” I trailed off, the words of my poor story clumsy on my tongue. Irian’s eyes shone, luminous but opaque. “Irian of the Sept of Feathers, pulse of my heart. Mo chroí. Will you marry me… again?”
For an endless moment, Irian was statuesque and silent. When he spoke, it was barely above a whisper.
“Is that truly what you desire, mo chroí?”
“Yes,” I said simply. “No matter what becomes of us in the next week, I wish the world to know that you are who I have chosen. If, when this is all over, we may be allowed to live, then let it be as man and wife. And if I must die—”
“Do not.” Irian’s expression warped with anguish. “Please do not speak it out loud.”
