Anything to blunt the sharper corners of his loneliness. Anything to drown out the slithering whispers. Anything to light the edges of the shadow waiting to drag him down.
It always caught him, eventually. Just before dawn, when the sex and wine and drugs wore off. When he bolted upright in bed with sweat slicking his arms and darkness collecting in his raggedlungs, grappling with the unrelenting fear that it wouldalwaysbe like this.
He wouldalwaysbe alone.
For weeks now, there’d been no bodies. No liquor. No tinctures. For the first time in over a decade, Wayland wasn’t alone. Somehow, that only made the hole yawn wider—a premonition of returned loneliness. The curse of havinghadsomething, only to have lost it.
Now, the day after Eala’s undead army attacked them at Mag Tuired, Wayland’s eyes slid helplessly over their small entourage clambering through a dawn scaled pink as a salmon’s belly. The aughiskies, who—despite their reputation for vicious independence—had thrown in their lot with a bunch of reckless bipeds. Balor, the good-humored Fomorian who weathered whatever trials they faced with equanimity. Sinéad, the human girl who had suffered unimaginable loss yet thrown herself into adversity with little care for her mortal frailty. Laoise, the exiled tánaiste of the lost Sept of Scales, with her mythic anam cló. Irian, brother of Wayland’s heart, yet again holding Fia, the wife of his own.
They were betrayed and beleaguered, exiled and exhausted. No one was having a good time. They might all die here, skewered between Eala’s restless dead and Laoise’s merciless mountains.
It was the happiest Wayland had been in thirteen years, at least.
He glanced again toward Irian and Fia, his gaze lingering onherlonger than was proper.
After the Feis of the Nameless Day, Wayland had thought of the woman he’d known only as Thorn Girl more than he’d ever admit out loud. He still could not say what had prompted him to step in on her behalf with the barda who’d threatened her—he was not in the habit of intruding on Gentry business outside Emain Ablach. He could say even less why he’d placed the geas on her. Something about the angle of her chin, the specific shade of her hair, the color of her strange green blood. Or perhaps it had been something more ephemeral—a significance he could not name. The way hername sat upon his tongue before he ever spoke it. The shape of her mouth, like a promise yet to be kept. He had not given it too much thought—the patterns written in the stars had been his lullabies, his playmates, his bedfellows.
After, he had thought of her an obsessive, unseemly amount. The way her unruly hair had curled around the edge of her mask. The way she’d pooched out her lips, advancing on him like she was marching into battle, so determined to end their connection before it had even begun. The way she’d calledThen I will simply avoid you!to the terms of their geas, as if the magic of Tír na nÓg could be so easily sidestepped.
And when, a year and a day later, he’d finally met her again… well. Shewassignificant.
The patterns in the stars were fixed. They also, apparently, had a cruel sense of humor.
Fia was—then and now—profoundly out of his reach.
Sometimes Wayland replayed their solitary, forbidden kiss against the backs of his eyelids in the moments before he surrendered to sleep. Like a devotion, a sacrilege. The rumpled blankets and tangled limbs. Fia’s legs, latched around his waist. Her mass of dark hair spilling damp over his cheek, smelling of cold water and crusted salt and Talah’s acrid magic. Her lips, pillow soft and pliant. The way she had gasped against his mouth as the magic of their bargain concluded, her breath tasting like moss and hope and longing—
Wayland’s hands tightened on his aughisky’s mane. It had been his own longing he had tasted that night—Fia had made that much abundantly clear. She was not his to long for. Never had been, and never would be.
He forced himself to catalog the way Irian’s arms cradled Fia’s lolling body, the way her sable hair spilled over his calloused fingers. The way Irian’s lips moved in silent, constant supplication to absent gods, as if he might persuade the power invading Fia’s form to relinquish her through sheer persistence.
Fia had chosen Irian. Of course she had. Irian was steadfast, serious, solid. Dangerous, devoted beyond reason. Protective, respectful. He had offered Fia his love, his very life.
Gods living and dead knew Wayland was none of those things. He was a lush, a libertine. He was lost, incomplete. He had nothing much to offer. Not to Fia. Not to anyone.
The past was proof—Wayland was not the kind of man anyone chose.
“Ho!” He nudged his aughisky, Dubhán. The cobalt yearling gamely trotted toward Irian’s stallion, whose limp had returned. The other man barely acknowledged his presence, although Wayland knew he must have heard his approach. “Let me take a turn, Brother. Your mount could use a rest. As could you.”
Irian’s hands tightened around Fia’s shoulders. Wayland knew it was no coincidence that once Irian finally relinquished his mad resolve to quite literally carry her to the ends of the earth, Wayland had held her the least. He also knew it was his fault. He had been too forward with his flirtations. He had shoved the kiss he and Fia had been bound by too cheerfully in Irian’s face. Still, threads of guilt woven with resentment twined through Wayland, embroidering the edges of the hole carved around his heart.
His foster brother should have forgiven him by now.
“I have her,” Irian said, his voice low.
Yes, he did.
“Then tell me how else I can help,” Wayland said. “Surely there is something I can do—”
“Unless you know some novel way to wrangle information from Laoise,” Irian said, “then I am not sure what good you are.”
Maybe the burr of frustration rasping along Irian’s voice wasn’t intended for Wayland. They’d endured weeks of hard travel interspersed with altercations with the restless dead. All while Fia transformed with the terrible, unknowable magic coursing through her, and Laoise refused to tell them where they were going. But Irian’s words felt barbed, rather than careless.
“I wonder whether anyone’s tried kissing it out of her.” Wayland forced his tone light. “Historically I’m at my most persuasive when I’m not saying anything at all.”
Irian’s mouth twitched. His day-blue eyes finally landed squarely on Wayland. “I hate to be the one to tell you this, but I do not think you are Laoise’s type.”
“Nonsense.” Wayland smirked. “I’m everyone’s type.”
