“Sit down, Wayland.” Morrigan, but everyone was acting strange toward me. Wayland subsided back into his chair as my pale, unearthly glow joined the homey light of the candles. “Up late reading when everyone else is in bed? That doesn’t sound like the prionsa I know.”
Wayland did not so much smile as bare his teeth. “Does it not?”
“The prionsa I know would himself be in bed. His, or someone else’s.” I continued past him to the bookshelf, skimming my eyes over gilded spines and scrolls curled like fiddleheads. “Although likely not sleeping.”
“Perhaps I have changed, Thorn Girl.” His voice was like a hand on my shoulder, turning me toward him. “At the very least, I am prionsa no longer. My father is dead. Which makes me a king.”
“King of what?” In the dim, his cobalt eyes glittered like an ocean at midnight. I could not tell whether he was joking, and I felt abruptly guilty for teasing him. “I am told Emain Ablach fell into the sea. What makes a king if not his kingdom?”
Without missing a beat, Wayland said, “You meanbesideshis very large—”
“Shush!” I almost reached out to smother his ridiculous, incorrigible mouth before remembering what I’d done to Irian. Wayland’s smile grew with my shock—he always loved to provoke.
“I was going to saythrone, Thorn Girl. What did you think I was going to say?”
“Stop it,” I chided as I turned back to the shelves. “You aren’t allowed to flirt with me anymore.”
“Why not?” He rose from the chair, leaning his hip against the shelf. “Because you don’t like it? Or because Irian doesn’t?”
I glanced up at him—his smooth golden-brown skin, his deep blue eyes, his half smile and heavy musculature. To be honest, I’d never really minded the flirting—it had been a constant undercurrent tugging at us since the moment he and I had met. It meant nothing—there was little between us but friendship, as far as I was concerned. But I knew Wayland’s familiarity bothered Irian. Perhaps it ought to bother me too. So I said, “Both.”
“Then I shall endeavor to cease any and all flirtations with you from this moment until the end of time.”
I faced him. “That was shockingly easy.”
“That’s what most people say about me.” He winced, pulling a face. “Sorry. Was that flirting? Old habits.”
“That was solidly self-deprecating. We’ll let it slide.” I cocked my head. “Speaking of your father—”
“We weren’t.”
“You said he died. What happened?”
Wayland’s easy stance hardened, his good humor evaporating like smoke. “I killed him.”
“Good.” The word came out venomous. I bit my tongue, for Wayland’s sake. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” He lowered his head, spilling sleek mahogany hair over one shoulder. “Mothers leave. Fathers die. It is as it has always been.”
Horrified sympathy choked me. I thought again of Rían Ó Mainnín. His words to me in the Deep-Dream:I would have likedto have loved you. And I thought of Deirdre, the last missing puzzle piece of my shattered past. I thought perhaps I understood a little of how Wayland felt, grieving a dead father and an absent mother.
“But he set you free, in the end.” I gestured to Wayland’s throat, where the outline of his heavy collar stood out pale against his skin. “You have your magic back.”
“And my destiny.” Wayland’s hand curled around his neck in a gesture that was at once violent and vulnerable. “Do you know what he said to me, in the end?Destiny is a bastard who longs to kick you in the balls.”
“That sounds like him.” I glanced down at where my visible skin glowed faintly in the dim. “I daresay he was right. But surely it’s better to have a destiny and an aching arse than be cut off from your stars entirely.”
“Do you think that’s true?” Wayland had always looked at me like my words mattered—something I still wasn’t used to. Now his deep blue eyes glowed with an intensity I wasn’t sure I liked. “Is it truly preferable to be destined for adversity than chained to happy mediocrity?”
“I think the cost of free will is the burden of choice.” I could not seem to banish Rían’s specter, his words in the Deep-Dream cutting furrows through my wakefulness. “Those who are not willing to sacrifice their hearts for the prospect of truly living may never learn what it is to be alive.”
“And do you feel alive?” Wayland asked gravely. “With all you have already sacrificed?”
“I don’t know.” I fought the urge to pull the sleeves of my tunic over my glowing skin. “But at least I know the choices I’ve made were my own to make.”
“Were they?” Wayland shook his head, then gestured at me. “Your… starshine. Is it harmful to all? Or just your husband?”
I shrugged, discomfited. “It seems a foolish thing to test.”
