“She is my friend,” Wayland said carefully. “And my foster brother’s wife. Of course I love her. We all love her—it’s why we’re here.”
“You areinlove with her,” Idris clarified. “And if you think we can’t all see it, then you must think us all blind.”
Wayland swallowed, confusion peering through the uneven slats of his careful facade. The truth was, he’d nearly forgotten the feelings he’d once harbored for Fia until she came wandering through the caverns shining like a fallen star. He’d spent the last two months flirting with Idris and Idris alone. As much good asthathad done him.
Unless—
“Surely you are not jealous,” Wayland said softly. “Are you, Idris?”
At the sound of his name, Idris finally turned. His expression—glossed golden by candlelight—was turbulent, an unsteady combination of anger and fear and terrible loss. Shock rippled through Wayland. He abandoned his louche, easy demeanor, shoving from his chair to approach the other man.
“Idris,” Wayland said again as he lifted one hand to the shaved side of Idris’s head. His skin was warm to the touch. A shivering spark passed between them, forcing Idris’s gaze to Wayland’s. “I hate to point this out, but for the past two months, you have shown me very little interest. When I flirt with you, you ignore me. When I try to spend time with you outside the library, you make yourself scarce. And when I tried to kiss you, you pushed me away.” Idris frowned and opened his mouth, but Wayland interrupted him. “Asis, of course, your prerogative. You owe me nothing. But forgive me for assuming it also meant… you felt nothing.”
Idris looked at Wayland as if he wished to carve something nameless from the space between them. A promise, perhaps. A certainty. A known from the unknown.
“It’s not that I feel nothing,” Idris finally murmured. “It is more that I feel everything. But cannot make sense of what is real. What istrue.”
Wayland was quiet, even as guilt frothed through him. He knew he should have been more careful with Idris. He was sheltered, inexperienced. Heavily marked by the whims of tragedy. And for all Wayland’s faults, he never wished to cause anyone pain. But in the turmoil after the Longest Night—the loss and uncertainty and introspection—Wayland had wanted something easy. Something familiar. A heady flirtation, a frivolous dalliance.
Realhad not entered the equation. For it had been a long time since anyone had cared about Wayland’s truth.
“Let me tell you about Fia.” Idris’s eyes shuttered in surprise, then wariness. Wayland barreled onward. “When I first met her, at a full moon revel at the Elder Gate, we shared only a handful of words. We wore masks—I could not see her face, nor she mine. I safeguarded her against a predator and, in return, stole the promise of a shared kiss. I don’t know why I demanded that bargain. My father would say the pattern of the stars required it. Regardless, when we parted, she stole something of me in return—a tendril of whatever magic brought us together. I became…infatuatedwith the mystery girl at the revel who refused a kiss at the cost of her life.” Idris’s shoulders lifted toward his ears, a protective gesture. Gently, Wayland laid his palms on Idris’s collarbones, forcing his posture to ease. “But infatuation is the easiest kind of love—all spark and shimmer, like catching fireflies in the dark. Bright. Brief. Weightless, before it slips through your fingers. It never lasts—eventually, it either dies in the darkness of forgetfulness, or pales before the terrible dawn of reality.”
Idris’s gaze trembled.
“Fia swept back into my life like a winter tempest wrapped in thorns—untamed and unstoppable, trailing glorious destruction in her wake. But she arrived not as a fantasy, but as a whole person, complete with thoughts, opinions, and desires of her own. And oh—let us not forget—one inconvenient husband.” Wayland grinned. Idris did not smile back. “My infatuation burned out like a morning star before a rising sun, even as the magic of our geas drew us closer. As Fia and I circled each other, I saw glimpses of myself in her—as well as the impossible promise of what she saw in me. That was the real intoxication. Love like that is a mirror, not of your reflection but of how they see you—brighter, braver, morewholethan you ever imagined. And in that light you can’t help but want them—because no one else has ever shown you yourself quite likethat.”
Idris stilled. “She showed you your best self.”
“She seems to have a way of doing that.” Wayland huffed a laugh. “But that’s no better than infatuation, in the end. A love built on borrowed reflection shatters when they look away. And you are left searching for yourself in the dark places they never illuminated.”
“And now?” Idris’s voice was nearly inaudible.
“Now let me tell you aboutyou.” Wayland’s voice dropped. “I understand how hard it is to be vulnerable. To be honest. To bare something of yourself you have never bared before. I understand more deeply than you know. But I have also learned this: Love is neither fixed nor perfectly malleable. It is neither lodestone nor shifting tide. It does not grow in isolation; it cannot be nurtured in solitude. Words likerealandtrueare but meaningless fog until you cut through the haze. I have made my interest in you abundantly clear.”
Idris’s pulse fluttered in the hollow of his throat. “I am… afraid.”
“We’re all afraid, my darling man.” Wayland dropped his hands from Idris’s shoulders. He leaned over and blew out thecandles, one by one, letting darkness dampen the spaces between them. “What shall it be? The safe shadows of a sheltered heart? Or the cold, uncertain light of possible heartbreak?” He snuffed the last candle and made for the door. “It will always be your choice.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Fia
Despite my unsettling theories about the new starshine slicking my bones, I finally slept, curled a safe distance from Irian on the bed with a pillow propped between us.
Only to dream of Eala. She strode toward a feather-thatched cottage in the middle of a field of wildflowers, her white dress and pale hair blowing in the wind. She turned when she heard me approach. I jerked back from her. Black mold veiled her eyes, spreading like rotten veins across her porcelain face; ribbons of green lichen braided through her hair; a crown of pale mushrooms sprouted from her head. She smiled when she saw me; her mouth was full not of teeth, but of white wriggling maggots.
“There you are, Sister,” she lisped. “Shall we go in together?”
The door wheezed open as a shadow moved within—
I jerked awake, sweating in the ambient warmth of the caverns. A swift glance showed me Irian’s side of the bed was empty; his sheets were cool to the touch. A note slid from the pillow—I snatched it. Irian’s spiky, restless handwriting stared up at me.
Did not wish to wake you. Find me in the Armory.
My dream spurred me out into the quiet, dim halls of the Cnoc. Morrigan, I hated it here. Irian once told me I was as connected to rocks and minerals as I was to trees and plants, but I had never believed it. Perhaps I had tied my awareness too closely to the fleeting cycle of growth and rot and rebirth to truly commune with the ancient unchanging life of a mountain. The connection felt too heavy—an unbearable weight I did not care to shoulder.
The sound of steel on steel was the map I followed. The Armory was long and broad, with glittering ceilings and walls glinting with an impressive arsenal—long claimhte and unstrung bows and pikes and daggers and axes. In the center of the training mat was Irian, sparring with—to my immense surprise—Sinéad.
