Chapter Fifty-Three
Wayland
Wayland did not like goodbyes.
He watched with rising petulance as Sinéad and Chandi mounted their horses, slinging heavy packs over rumps and settling cloaks over shoulders, although the day was still hot.
Nearly a month had passed since the Bealtaine War. Of their fateful bargains beneath the Heartwood, Wayland, Laoise, and Irian had been left with little but broken tools and fading memories. Wayland’s trident had dissolved into sea-foam; Laoise’s vambraces had melted to obsidian ash. Irian’s unbreakable blade had shattered from its hilt into a dozen shards. Not long after, the living dead had simply… dropped. The Gentry warriors who’d remained in Tír na nÓg all waited for their brethren to return from beyond the Gate.
They never did.
The Gates had closed, and if the bardaí still lived, they were trapped in the human realms.
With Fia.
The thought still made Wayland smile, although the expressionfaded as Laoise descended from the tree city, strapping on a plain leather vambrace over her uninjured arm. The collarbone she’d broken was still in a sling. She’d let her hair grow out a little—her curls tumbled over one ember eye, half obscuring her features. She looked up, caught him staring.
She stuck out her tongue at him. “Like what you see, water boy?”
“Oh no, fire girl,” he prodded back. “I never taste things I know will burn my tongue.”
“You’re growing wise in your old age.” She checked the buckles over her knives. When she looked back at him, her face was serious. “Are you going to be all right?”
He knew what she was talking about. The three of them—he, Laoise, and Irian—had not explicitly spoken about what they’d bargained to unforge their Treasures. But it had not been hard to guess.
The heirs had clambered up to the apartments near dawn, exhausted and blood-spattered and smoke-stained. The eldest draigs had not yet returned from battle, and as the younger ones crowded toward their mother, it occurred to Wayland that Laoise did not seem concerned about their safety. Enfys barreled into her waist; Anwyll wove between her legs with glee. Laoise stared down at them, something akin to distaste pooling over her lovely features.
“Idris,” she said to her brother, who was hovering. “Can’t you manage the draigs?”
Confusion swept over Idris’s face, but he quickly collected the draiglings as Laoise repaired to her room, clearly intent on removing her boots and wiping the soot from her face. Idris turned to Irian, raised his eyebrows.
“What happened in the battle?” His gaze skated to Wayland without much interest, then snapped back to Irian. “The Treasures? What happened to Fia?”
Irian frowned, his stark brows lowering over eyes that were now the color of slate—gray as the cliffs where he was raised. The same gray Wayland remembered from their childhood.
“Who?”
And they all began to realize—nothing would ever be the same again.
Laoise’s vast maternal love for her draig children had been excised from her heart as if with a surgeon’s blade. Conversely, Wayland retained all his feelings for Idris, but Idris no longer looked at him. Barely spoke to him. When he did, it was with neither love nor hate—it was with no feeling whatsoever. He spoke with perfect cordiality.
Cordialought to be a curse word, in Wayland’s opinion.
He reminded himself: He hadchosenthis.
He wished he had been more selfish.
And Irian? For Irian, Fia had simply ceased to exist. Her name elicited no memories, no thoughts, no emotions. For Irian and Irian alone… Fia was justgone.
Wayland supposed, if he was being perfectly cynical, that it might be a kindness.
“I’m all right,” Wayland said now to Laoise, though it was a lie. What else could he say? That his heart was broken? That he mourned for something he had barely possessed? That every time Idris’s eyes slid over him, he wanted to grab him by the shoulders and kiss him so hard he saw stars? “And you?”
“There are only so many times I can be told what I have lost before I find myself glad I am no longer burdened by it.” Her words were callous. She didn’t seem to notice when Wayland flinched.
“Then it is back to Dún Scaith for you?”
Laoise nodded. “Chandi wishes to make amends for all her misdeeds. Sinéad wishes to hone her battlecraft. And I—I have no one to take care of, now that Idris is grown, and little else to occupy my time. Perhaps Lady Scáthach will finally take pity on me and show me how to brew her famous heather mead.”
