Now he realized with a lurch and lollop of his heart that Idris was staring at him. Curiously. Sympathetically.
Pityingly.
“Where did you go?” Idris asked gently. “I fear I must have been boring you terribly.”
Wayland almost told him. About the night he committed both patricide and regicide. The night he lost a past and gained a future.The night he both relished and regretted. Instead, he said, “Somewhere long ago and far away. But it was not your doing at all.”
Both men turned back to the bookshelves. This time, it was Wayland who spoke first.
“Prince Marban.” Wayland still did not know what his father had been searching for in the throne room on the Longest Night. He feared he might never know. But that name—a name his father had mentioned in passing many times over the years—stuck in his throat. He could not ask his father to teach him magical forging. But his father in turn must have learned from somewhere. Or someone. “In all your research, have you ever come across accounts of a man named… Marban?”
Chapter Fifteen
Laoise
It took two weeks for Sinéad to regain her strength. The human girl ate like a woman possessed—devouring everything Idris cooked as fast as he could cook it. She slept like rest was a competition she could win. She trained with fervor, throwing herself back into her strengthening exercises. When Laoise refused to drill her further for fear of overexertion, Sinéad went behind her back and asked Irian. After catching them sparring together in the Armory, Laoise had scolded them both.
“Are you her mother, Laoise?” Irian had shrugged, bemusement plain on his stark features. “If she wishes to train, it is surely her decision.”
Laoise had to bite her tongue to keep from pointing out that just six weeks ago, Irian had gone berserk at the slightest whiff of danger toward his precious wife. She supposed if he had revised his stance on that, it was none of her business.
But as the promised two weeks drew to a close, Laoise had to admit to herself that she wasworried. Not for herself. She was the last heir of the Sept of Scales, mercilessly trained by the ladyScáthach; her anam cló, a mythic draig. She had faced opponents more fearsome than the human princess and prevailed.
No, not for herself. She worried for Sinéad, so determined yet so fragile. She worried for Idris, so curious about the world she had sheltered him from yet so naïve of its dangers. She worried for her draigs, growing so quickly yet still so young.
The Cnoc was safe—the safest place she knew. She had made it that way—carving a home out of a literal mountain so everyone she loved could be safe. It was her fortress, her haven, her sanctuary. As long as her draiglings and her brother and her friends juststayedhere, no harm could come to them.
Was that too much to ask?
At last, Laoise could put it off no longer. More shadow missives had arrived from the Twilight Sisters, detailing Eala’s inexorable progress through Tír na nÓg. Laoise could hardly fathom the destruction they spoke of—the burning forests and ruined settlements. The risen dead. Like Sinéad, she knew she had to see it herself to believe it. To truly understand what they—all of them—faced.
She briefly considered leaving in the night without telling anyone. But she knew Sinéad would never forgive her for breaking her promise. And if she had learned anything from witnessing Fia and Irian’s explosive dramas during the Tournament of Kings, it was this: Betraying those you loved for what you believed to be best for them never ended well.
On a bright blue morning shivering toward spring, Sinéad met her in the sinkhole, near the nemeton. She was dressed in fighting leathers beneath a heavy traveling mantle, with her hair tightly braided to her head and blades strapped to her waist. When Laoise caught her eye, she scowled, as it anticipating some rebuke.
“I am quite recovered,” she stated, without preamble. “I’m coming with you.”
Laoise sighed. “So I see.”
Above, two of the draiglings wheeling against an azure sky detached from their siblings and swooped down. Blodwen curved an affectionate wing around Laoise’s shoulders; Barfog butted his large head into Laoise’s hip, nearly knocking her over.
“Come too,” lisped Blodwen, smoke curling from her nostrils. “Please?”
Laoise’s heart might have been a stone for how heavily it settled between her ribs.
“Come! Come!” Barfog’s eyes, gleaming onyx, were alight with excitement.
Laoise had always known the draiglings would not be babies forever, would not need her for long. But she had hoped for longer than this. She glanced helplessly at Sinéad, then back to her eldest children, trying to find the words to tell them all no. To tell them that she could protect them better if they stayed where they were, if they stayedhowthey were. She could protect them best if they never grew up.
But that was a fractured kind of truth—comforting only in subtraction. To ask them not to mature would be refusing them growth. What kind of mother would that make her?
“I should have expected an ambush.” Laoise made her tone rueful so they would not hear how her voice wanted to shake, then shifted into her anam cló so they would not see her tears.
Her skin rippled along her collarbones, deepening to a burnished red-gold before pouring along her arms like molten gold. Her limbs lengthened, undulating with seams of muscle. Claws, long and wickedly sharp as swords, burst from her hands as she fell on all fours. Her massive wings came last, erupting from her shoulders and stretching wide, the translucent membranes shimmering with all the hues of a blazing sunset. Sinéad rocked an instinctive step backward, and Laoise grinned, baring her rows of razor-sharp teeth. A curl of steam escaped her nostrils as she said, “Climb on.”
Laoise had let someone ride her only once. She’d asked Idriswhether he wanted to, when they were both younger. He’d thought about it, then shaken his head no:I don’t love heights.Wayland, of all people, had been her first passenger, when she rescued him from a crumbling Aduantas on the Longest Night. It had been unpleasant for the both of them—he hadn’t known where to put his hands, awkwardly gripping the spikes serrating her long, agile neck, and she’d hated the way he’d clamped his legs around her ribs.
Sinéad was different. Her mettle barely wavered before she ascended onto Laoise’s back, instinctively settling her weight in the hollow at the base of Laoise’s neck. She tucked her legs neatly behind Laoise’s wings as she laid herself nearly flat, her hands sliding into the grooves between Laoise’s jutting spikes. It struck Laoise as strangely intimate—a shared secret or a quiet understanding. It was comfortable in a way Wayland’s ride had not been, both physically and otherwise. Laoise felt perfectly at ease with Sinéad on her back.
