Chapter Sixteen
Irian
The Cnoc bored Irian beyond belief.
Since he had become entombed a thousand feet deep in dense black rock, his sense of time had deserted him. He had nothing but the time-telling contraption Laoise kept in the library to go by, and Irian had been avoiding the library. Instead, he had begun trekking every day to the sinkhole with its flaming nemeton, if only to stare at the oval of open sky and breathe in fresh air and listen to the draiglings’ leathery wings.
A moon had come and gone since Laoise and Sinéad had returned, soot striped and disconsolate. Their group had all silently listened as Laoise recounted their encounter with Eala and her undead horde. Irian wished he had been surprised by their news. But he was not shocked Eala had fled to the human realms. He was only shocked she had not gone there sooner.
“Well,” Wayland had said boisterously. “Who’s going to go wake Fia? Has anyone triedshakingher? Loud noises? Irian, you havekissedher, haven’t you? That always works in the stories.”
Irian’s jaw had clenched as memories of his nightly strugglesneedled him. Yes, he had kissed her. But Fia was no pale princess entombed in ivory and glass. Nor was she a briar rose surrounded by thorns. She was his wife, a woman of sharp wit and stubborn pride and irritating grace and impeccable violence. And yet she lay before him, caught in a state deeper than dreams and more dangerous than death. Beyond his reach, although he stubbornly held on to her.
If Irian had thought kissing would wake Fia, he might have even let Wayland take a turn.
Since then, the days had taken on a depressing routine. Irian stayed with Fia through the nights as she endlessly transformed. When dawn arrived and she fell still, he left her with Balor or Linn and descended the winding stairs to the new forge Laoise and the draigs were excavating beneath the living quarters. He chiseled stubborn veins of metal and hauled loose scree until his shoulders screamed, then wolfed down a cold lunch of last night’s leftovers. Afternoons he spent in the Farm, working beside Sinéad, while Idris and Wayland pursued lore about forging magic.
Irian knew Wayland too well to believe knowledge was his primary pursuit.
“You don’t have to do that,” Laoise had told Irian as he carried water from the underground river and harvested moon mushrooms and weeded lichen beds. “I’m sure the boys could use your help in the library. There are many texts to wade through, and Sinéad can’t read our tongue.”
But Irian did not want to help in the library, occupied as it was by Wayland flirting relentlessly with Idris, who seemed to be the only one inclined to perform any real research.
Irian supposed this boredom was, in a sense, a novel sensation. He could not remember a time in his life when his boredom had not been fraught with fear or self-loathing. There had certainly been hours with little to do after he’d been exiled from Emain Ablach. Crouching for long, torturous days beneath the tall multicolored flowers of Ildathach while Folk hunted him like prey had been supremely boring, yes. But it had also been utterly terrifying.He had not known whether he would survive. He had sometimes wished he would not.
The years he’d spent in the crumbling fort beyond the Willow Gate had been little better. Cursed to spend his days as a winged horror, damned to spend his nights plagued by all the harm he had done to those he should have protected. Whether he lurked close by or watched from afar, the swan maidens’ existence mocked and punished him. He had been obsessed with keeping them safe—his presence both shelter and damnation. He had followed them to every full moon feis and midnight party. That long line of girls trailing behind their swan princess through nights like mouths waiting to swallow them whole.
He had loathed every repetitive party. Hated standing like a statue at the edge of the revelry. Despised the watching eyes wringing every ounce of familiarity from him until he was as sharp and bitter as a measure of bad whiskey. Detested the constant frisson of danger—his enemies just out of reach, just out of sight, just waiting for him to drop his guard. Yet those nights had kept him strong, made him stalwart.
Now, after months of mourning, then fretting over, then fighting with, then protecting his beautiful, beloved, and captivatingly troublesome bride, Irian was simplybored. Not even Eala’s threat inspired fear. He cared little for the humans who had tormented his wife. He would not mourn when Eala executed them.
“Ho.” Wayland didn’t bother knocking—he swung the door to Irian’s chambers violently inward. Or maybe that was just Hog—the little draig never seemed far from her new chosen companion. She trundled cheerfully toward Irian as Wayland’s deep blue eyes scanned briefly over the room. “Where’s your pretty sea snake?”
Seated on the edge of the bed with the Sky-Sword’s hilt rolling restively between his palms, Irian bristled. Sinéad had taken a morning watch over Fia while her changes were dormant so Irian could sleep. Not that Irian was sleeping.
And not that it was any of Wayland’s business.
“Surely you have something better to do than bother me.” Irian’s voice rasped in his throat, as if rough from disuse. “Like determining how to reforge the Un-Dry Cauldron and the Flaming Shield?”
“Every day brings me closer.” Wayland stopped an arm’s length from Irian. “Have you ever heard tell of a man—a human man—named Marban? My father spoke of him as an authority on bindings.”
“No.” The name sounded vaguely familiar, but Irian could not place it. “Why?”
“I found mention of him in theSilverwing Annals.”
“A heavily biased pseudohistory.” Irian snorted. The book Wayland named recounted a contentious period of the Sept of Feathers when two feuding Gentry families nearly tore the Sept apart. “I would not take it as truth.”
“Yes, yes.” Wayland waved a hand. “He appears but once—on a list of tributes offered at a feast.”
“So?”
“The annals were compiled, what? Two, three hundred years ago? When my father spoke of Marban, he led me to believe it was during his youth. Not long after the Treasures were forged.”
“But that was a thousand years ago.”
“And Marban was said to be human.”
“That is a Folk lifespan. And decently long, even for one of us.” Irian straightened. He had read the annals, a long time ago. He did not remember this Marban. “What was the tribute?”
