“So did I.” I stood, the air bracing after the relative warmth of the tub. Irian handed me a towel, which I used to gently dry my hair. I once more indicated the burnt patch, which stretched from one of my ears halfway down my back, a mess of crimped, blackened frizz. “I don’t like this. So go on.”
Irian’s distress was plain as I turned my back to him, hiding a smile. The man could battle a ravening ollphéist or a dozen armed Gentry warriors but couldn’t bear the thought of cutting my hair? He hesitated one long moment before gathering my hair in hisfist, firmly but gently. The Sky-Sword kissed the back of my neck, cold and humming. In one swift jerk, Irian pulled the keen blade through the hair gathered at my nape.
The first sensation was one of perfect lightness—as if a thousand pounds had been lifted off my shoulders. I sighed at the short strands brushing my neck and falling along my jawline, then turned to Irian, who was holding the discarded ends of my hair like a wet animal carcass.
“Well?” Sudden shyness cast my gaze to the floor. “Has this made me unbearably loathly?”
Irian’s eyes grazed my face, my hair, my collarbones. He twitched his finger, and a concentrated burst of air swirled around my head, ruffling my hair until it settled dry above my shoulders.
“Quite the opposite. I fear it is unexpectedly fetching.” Simmering anguish glinted deep in his dazzling eyes. He hid it once more beneath humor. “Do I have your permission to keep these cast-off strands?”
“Why?” I narrowed my eyes at him. “Is it not unwise to gift the Folk even a single strand of your hair? A whole handful must be downright dangerous.”
“You are correct,” he mused. “I could command you to dance reels until dawn. Or sing out all your deepest secrets.”
“You’ve heard my singing voice.” I raised my eyebrows. “That would be a punishment for us both.”
“But worth it. For all the delicious secrets.” He plucked out a hair and held it to the light, considering. “What shall I ask you first?”
“Oy!” I swiped for the tresses, but Irian jerked them out of my reach. “Give it back!”
As I chased him briefly around a room carved from black rock glinting with silver and gemstones, I allowed myself to forget, for a few moments, that I could not touch the man I loved.
It was harder to forget that somewhere—far beyond these walls, these lands, this realm—my sister was going to war.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Fia
Icould not fall asleep.
Irian and I had spent the rest of the afternoon talking, acquainting ourselves with all that had passed over the past few months. Acquainting ourselves with our new physical dynamic, achingly different from what we were accustomed to. Acquainting ourselves with each other—for in some ways, he and I were still strangers.
At what I assumed to be suppertime, Laoise’s brother had stopped by our chambers with an array of strange foods and a pitcher of wine. Irian conversed with him in low tones; the younger man had avoided looking at me, hiding his eyes behind his sheet of hair. I’d sampled the food but found I had little appetite. Just as the wine had tasted sour and flat earlier, so too did the provisions taste bland. I craved something older. Wilder. I wished not to eat, but to consume.
Or, perhaps, be consumed.
Eventually, Irian’s physical exhaustion could no longer be ignored. I gathered that he had not rested much over the pastmonths, standing sentinel over my nightly transformations. His Treasure glossed over hollow cheeks and bloodshot eyes. But it could not stop him from yawning.
I gaped. I didn’t think I had ever seen Irian yawn.
Now he slumbered deeply beside me, face down on the mattress, limbs outstretched as if in his dreams, he was flying. I rolled to face him on the pillow and smiled a little. I could not begrudge him the rest, even if my own felt impossibly distant. Every time I closed my eyes, shapes clattered against the inside of my eyelids—patterns sharp as silence and vast as eternities, imprinted in living starlight upon my innermost reaches. In the dark and silence, my sister’s last words to me on the Longest Night reverberated between my ears, mingling with the echoes of prophecies I’d heard in my dreams, spoken by ghosts.
You are my sister. My other half. Only together can we be made whole.
Find your sister. You are her balance. Only you can bring her to the light.
Eventually I sighed and sat up, running a hand through my unfamiliar short tresses. I padded to the wardrobe, which—fortunately for me—contained more than Irian’s too-large clothes. Earlier, Laoise had thoughtfully stopped by with some sundries, including clothes for both day and night. She was close in height to me, if not proportions, and I easily laced myself into a soft, simple kirtle before toeing on worn leather boots.
I opened the door and slipped out into the Cnoc.
Grooves set in the stone walls carried rivulets of flaming oil to supplement the gleaming minerals and gems studding the walls. I had no idea how anyone told time in these caverns, but I judged it to be late—along the corridor, doors were shut, and no voices or sounds echoed. I followed the lights to the vast dining chamber we’d met in earlier. Balor slept in one corner, his bulk like a fallen tree and hissnores like the scraping saw that felled him. The hearths guttered with red flames; a few of the larger draigs were clustered close to the heat, their leathery wings wrapped protectively around their scaled bodies. I gave them a wide berth as I skirted through the chamber. Irian said Laoise had raised them as her children… but even children got hungry. I wasn’t positive either my Treasure or my new radiance could protect me from toothy draigs.
Beyond, a single door stood ajar, spilling honey-gold light across black stone. I glimpsed chairs, a table, stacks of books. A library? That seemed as good a place as any to bore myself to sleep.
I wasn’t the only one with that thought.
Wayland sat at the large table in the center of the room. A few candles illuminated him in gold against the dark rows of books at his back. He looked up when I entered, then stood abruptly, the legs of his chair scraping.
