The holes in Laoise’s words gnawed at Wayland—the spaces where the draiglings used to live vast and horribly hungry. He folded his arms, as if he could clamp his grief within the cage of hisribs. He did not understand how she could hear herself speak and not feel what she had lost.
It was cruel, cruel magic.
“If you learn, please write to tell me.”
“But then I’d have to kill you.” Laoise saluted, then mounted her own horse beside Chandi and Sinéad. The human girls both waved at him before urging their horses away over the waving plains of golden wheat.
Wayland sighed and climbed back to their emptying apartments.
Idris was packing up what once had been their room. Books, mostly—in the time since they’d arrived in the Summerlands, he had accumulated a decent portion of his and Laoise’s lost collection from the Cnoc. He had three saddlebags already full and was packing a fourth. Tucked behind his ear, the sleek waterfall of his red hair caught the sunlight like fire. He did not hide any part of his face as he sorted scrolls.
Wayland girded himself, then approached the other man. “You’re going to need a mule.”
“Perhaps I will.” Idris sat back on his heels, surveying his collection before cordially adding, “Thanks for the suggestion.”
Cordial.Wayland’s skin tightened, the muscles of his back going taut as he fought to hold in everything he was feeling. This room especially felt haunted by all he and Idris had shared, before he’d lost him: the bed bruised by their embraces, the pillows marked with their whispers, the air perfumed with their ardor. “May I ask where you’re going?”
“Annwyn, I think.” Idris glanced out the window. All seven draiglings cavorted in the trees, leaping and tumbling with abandon. “Blodwen is starting to get huge, and the others won’t be far behind. I still fear what the Ellyllon might do to them, but I can’t protect them here. Not without Laoise. The Summer Twins maybe the only bardaí left, thanks to Fia’s mercy, and the Septs may be gone… but dominion abhors an empty throne. Some new ambitious leader will soon hunger for power in Tír na nÓg. At least in Annwyn, the draigs will be honored and valued. Perhaps I’ll even learn more about where they came from.”
“And where you came from,” Wayland added. Idris didn’t seem to hear him, his attention fixed out the window.
Hog detached herself from the other draiglings, sailing on her stubby, wobbly wings through the window. She bypassed Idris completely, colliding with Wayland’s chest and nearly barreling him over. She, too, was getting bigger. She slid her claws through his long hair and purred, “Mine.”
A wonderful, awful idea sparked inside Wayland. “Idris?”
He’d returned his attention to packing his books. “Mm?”
“Can I keep her?”
Idris’s gaze narrowed.
“I mean, can she stay with me? For a while. If she wants to.”
The other man stared at him, then at the draigling, who had climbed on top of Wayland’s head to drape herself around his ears like an elaborate hat. At length, he asked, “Will you promise to keep her safe?”
“With my life.”
Idris nodded. “Then so be it.”
Hog mewled her satisfaction. Wayland pivoted away, then turned back before he could change his mind. “Idris?”
The other man’s head snapped up, but now he was annoyed.“Yes?”
Wayland beat back fury and sorrow. He hadchosenthis, living gods be cursed. “Do you remember the night on the beach? Before I renewed the Treasure?”
Unlike Irian, whose memories of Fia were completely gone, Idris seemed to remember all that had passed between them. Yet the emotion had been wiped clean—transient fog from clear mirror glass. He narrowed his eyes again. “Yes.”
“I just want you to know that I meant what I said. Every word.”
A flicker of contempt burned across Idris’s features in the moment before he looked back at his books. “Thank you, Wayland.”
Wayland turned away, pressing his thumbs into his eyes. And as Hog nipped comfortingly at his ear, he whispered, “Goodbye, Idris.”
He found Irian in the kitchen, aggressively polishing a finely tooled steel sword that was already gleaming. Wayland propped himself against the table as he gestured at the blade.
“What’s wrong with this one?”
Irian growled, low in his throat, and slammed the claíomh down with a clang. Over the past month, he had commissioned a total of three swords from three different blacksmiths in the Summerlands, deeming each to be less satisfactory than the last. The first had been too long; the second, too short. This one? “The balance is off. It pulls to the left. And my calluses are in all the wrong places for the grip.”
