“Gods alive.” Wayland sent his eyes to the ceiling and sighed theatrically. “Why do the pretty boys always assume I’m illiterate?”
Idris flushed, hot and fast, his cheeks going visibly—and fetchingly—pink. “I don’t think you’re illiterate! There are simply some for whom scholarly pursuits come easily.”
“And some for whom they do not.” Wayland hid a smile as he stepped next to Idris, in front of the bookshelves. “You have me correct on all counts but one.”
“Oh?” Idris had conquered his blush. “What, pray tell, is that?”
“That I don’t enjoy being punished.” Wayland grinned, broad and blinding—a smile that had felled many a lesser adversary. “It all depends on who’s bending me over their knee.”
This time, Idris’s flush was a conflagration, and Wayland felt an answering surge of warmth course his spine to settle below his belt. It was too easy. If Idris responded like this to mere words, imagine how he would respond to Wayland’s touch. His kiss. His—
Wayland mastered himself, roughly. Had he learned nothing in this past month of forced marching and dreadfully sober self-reflection? Just because he could didn’t mean he should.
Even if it would be so,somuch fun.
“Can I ask you a serious question?” Wayland asked, taking pity on Idris.
Idris turned his attention to the books, pulling a few from the shelves. “As long as it’s serious.”
“Why have you and Laoise stayed here all these years? Surely you could have settled somewhere less…”
“Isolated? Lonely?” Idris finished for him. His expression hid behind the screen of his hair. “The bardaí slaughtered our parents—would have killed us, too, if they knew we survived. We thought for a time to return to Annwyn, whence my mother hailed—she was a princess among the Ellyllon. Had she not defied her family’s wishes and married into the Sept of Scales, we would have been raised there as hereditary royalty. But then the draigs came along.”
Wayland waited for him to elaborate. “I don’t understand.”
“Long ago, in the times of legends, draigs were an irreplaceable resource to the Ellyllon. Valuable beyond gold or jewels or even magic.” The words seemed to pain Idris. “They were trained in combat and ridden into war; their shed scales were harvested and forged into armor; their eggs, passed down through generations as treasure until everyone forgot what they really were. A family in possession of a draig was guaranteed political and social ascendancy. Laoise and I came to realize that the repatriation of Ceridwen’s wayward children in Annwyn… would likely come at the cost of our draigs.”
Hog rolled over on the mantel, letting out a faint, steamy huff accompanied by a shower of golden sparks.
“We may someday still try our luck with our mother’s people, when the draigs are grown,” Idris murmured. “When this nemeton dies and the veins of minerals lose their magic, the draiglings’ sustenance will be gone. They must gosomewhere. Once their existence is known, they will be coveted by whoever encounters them. At least in Annwyn, they will be protected. Cherished. Laoise and I might have a say in where they go, how they are treated, and who has access to them.”
“But they would not be free.”
“No.” Idris’s voice was nearly inaudible. “I’ve read the old tales, seen the old engravings. The Ellyllon will saddle them, chain them, collar them.”
Reflexively, Wayland’s hand floated toward his neck. Idris’s eyes tracked the motion; Wayland tried to make the gesture careless, brushing his length of mahogany hair over one shoulder.
“I’ve distracted you.” Wayland cleared his throat, tried on a smile. “You were about to be my tour guide.”
“Yes—of course.” Idris looked relieved by the change of topic. “The books. Over here is Laoise’s collection of histories. There’sWhispers of the Forgotten Courts—that’s mostly a genealogy of the Ellyllon royal bloodlines. That stack of bark cloth there is, ofcourse, theRedbark Histories, although I think those were written before the Treasures were forged. The big jeweled volume there isThe Shattered Throne: Saga of the Winter Kings, and— Oh!” Idris struggled with a heavy lock binding the pages together. “There’s an exceptional chapter about Gavida in here—although technically he is not considered a winter king, some scholars argue—”
But with his mind already fettered by thoughts of collars, the unexpected name of Wayland’s father spoken in Idris’s lilting voice roared up and dragged him down. He wrapped his palm around his throat, as if the memories themselves could strangle.
On the Longest Night, Wayland had hunted his father with the intent to kill him. The island he had so rarely departed roiled beneath him in its death throes, wrenching and throbbing and howling, but his steps had never been so sure. He had not seen where his father had fled in the aftermath of Eala’s unholy coronation, but he knew.
Aduantas was a nightmare made real. The citadel was imploding, sheets of pale stone smashing to shards from the high, curved ceilings; seashell candelabras and nacre chandeliers shattering to crunch beneath Wayland’s boots. The veins of silver and gold the Year had namedher metalwere melting, dripping from the walls and forming molten rivers on the floor. Great rifts opened in the sheeny polish of the flagstones, burping more slag from the deeps. Fear sent an unsteady ripple through the bloodthirsty roil of Wayland’s veins, but he pushed onward, sidestepping crumbling statuettes and fissuring marble.
Gavida’s forge was nearly unrecognizable. Dense white vapor plumed the throne room, stinking of sulfur. The ceiling had been damaged—howling winds whistled in and out, swirling the smoke into phantasms. The far wall was blank—the smith-king’s crucible had been moved to the Grove of Gold for the Longest Night. And—as the mist swirled away, then back—Wayland saw his father’s commanding throne of rough-hewn stone had split in two, one half crumbled on the floor.
Wayland had almost laughed. It was too on the nose, even for him.
Then he’d glimpsed his father amid the gusting white. Gavida had a thousand moods, each more fickle than the last. He could be wrathful one moment, riotous the next. Cruel, compassionate, composed. But Wayland wasn’t sure he’d ever witnessed Gavida’s current unhinged chaos. The smith-king circled the room like a captive wild animal, clawing at the walls. Ripping priceless fine tapestries, knocking magical artifacts from their plinths, thrusting whole stacks of books from their shelves. There was a knapsack laid open at his feet, but Gavida wasn’t packing anything in it. He seemed to besearching. But for what?
A few of the king’s blank-eyed battle puppets stood guard over their creator; at Wayland’s approach they lowered their helmed heads and charged. Gavida turned at the sound of their footfalls, flicked his meaty hands with choleric impatience. The puppets did not just stop—they collapsed, tumbling bodily to the floor before exploding into their component parts. Metal armor and rivets and wires jangled away across the slick floor, joining the cacophony of groaning stone and screaming winds.
Gavida took one look at Wayland, lowered his grizzled head, bunched the muscles of his shoulders, and charged him like a bull. Wayland drew the sword at his waist in one smooth, sweeping motion—although the blade was ceremonial, it was finely forged and sharply honed and, Wayland reckoned, long overdue for its first kill. The smith-king shuddered to a stop beyond the reach of its gleaming tip. He stared at the claíomh, breathing hard, before looking up at his son. His deep blue eyes—so like Wayland’s own—were lit with a terrible, furious, vengeful light. The smile creasing his weathered face was downright psychotic.
“So, my son—it has come to this.” His words were hammers, heavy and blunt. “The Oak King and the Holly King, in truth. One must fall for the other to rise.”
