Mother, her hair unbound around her shoulders, no torc around her neck.
And they were all of them staring at me with pleading in their gaunt, empty eyes.
I turned away before the grotesque horror of it could snatch me and grind me to dust. Because the fact was, I was not sure which of them were alive… and which were dead.
The guards led us through hallways as familiar to me as the inside of my eyelids, yet rendered strange by the echoing silence of the once-raucous castle. We were ushered into a fine suite of rooms reserved for visiting royalty or wealthy dignitaries—I had rarelybeen allowed to set foot in these chambers, let alone sleep in them. The guards quietly barred the door behind us.
I took in our new surroundings. After the unparalleled opulence of Emain Ablach, the human finery seemed a tad quaint—the four-poster bed small, the tapestries lining the walls dull and simplistic, the whitewashed hearth stained with smoke. But after the trials of the past few days, it was paradise. A copper tub set in the corner steamed invitingly.
“You first,” I said to Irian, although it pained me.
“Do you think me so uncouth, mo chroí?” He cocked his head and almost smiled. “I will languish in my filth a little longer if it means I get to watch you bathe.”
I scowled at him but did not complain. I stripped off Corra’s violet kirtle, now weatherworn and travel stained, and hung it carefully by the fire. Irian, true to his word, did not take his eyes off me, his gaze following where my hands went, unlacing boots and unfastening armor. At last, I stepped neatly into the tub. I had half expected Eala to have vindictively ordered it filled with ice water, but it was gloriously hot.
Irian came to perch on the edge like a raptor upon its roost. He rested a hand on the hilt of the Sky-Sword and waited until I had washed out my hair before saying, “What do you make of our welcome here at Rath na Mara?”
I worked my fingers through a snarl. “I do not trust it, of course. Eala always has plots beneath her plots, plans beneath her plans. Whatever reason she has for this farce of gentility, I have no doubt it masks something far more violent and vengeful.”
“Like what?”
“If I knew, you should have cause to worry.” A small smile bent my lips. “For then I should have gone truly mad, and you would be forced to take me out behind the privies and remove my head from my neck.”
“Is that the common cure for madness in the human realms?” Irian’s smile was a blade, his eyes like the summer sun. “How uncivilized. In Tír na nÓg we have healers for such things.”
“What Eala suffers from, I fear no healer can cure.” I rinsed my hair one last time before standing, the cool air of the room kissing my reddened skin. Irian reached for a towel and pressed it between us. I accepted the fluffy white cloth, my fingers grazing dangerously close to his. I smothered a burst of longing to cup his face with my hands, to press my mouth to his. To sink back into the steaming water and drag him in with me.
Instead, I stepped away. “Your turn.”
I settled myself in the window casement, where buttery afternoon sunlight streamed in between gossamer silk curtains. The spring afternoon was balmy, and I finger-combed my short tresses and fluffed them to dry as Irian undressed. I tried not to stare at the cut of his arms as he dragged his shirt over his head; the chiseled expanse of his torso as he jerked his trousers off. It was nearly intolerable—like staring at a Folk feast, tables overflowing with lush food and plentiful drink, and knowing every bite and sip was cursed.
I made myself look out the window and stop dreaming of the day I might have all of him again.
But the sight outside the window brought me little more comfort. Rath na Mara and all her lands spread below the keep in a tapestry of reality and memory. How many times had I run across the main courtyard, Rogan hot on my heels, some game or errand giving our feet wings? How many times had I sparred in the training yard, the older boys yanking on my braids when the weapons master wasn’t looking? How many nights had I saddled Eimar and galloped to the edge of the wood, not understanding the call of the forest, only knowing it felt more like a haven than the keep ever did?
I had hated this place, fervently. I had loved it, desperately. It had never been my home, not really. Yet it clung to me still like a ghostly handprint.
“Fia?”
Irian had finished his bath—he stood clean and damp before me, another towel slung low over his hips. Moisture clung in beadsto his hard, smooth chest and dripped from the skein of black hair slicked from his face. But there was concern in his eyes as he gazed at me. “What troubles you?”
I swiped at my eyes—I hadn’t realized I was crying.
“Nothing.” I offered him a wan smile that only made him frown harder. “It is strange to be back here again. Not so long ago I believed this place held everything I cared for, and all I might one day love. When I left with Rogan for Dún Darragh, a year and a half ago, Mother promised me that if I succeeded in rescuing Eala, I would be rewarded with a command in her fiann, the honor of someday becoming Eala’s war advisor. It is strange to imagine that I have returned not as a human fénnid but as a Folk Treasure; not as Eala’s war advisor but as her adversary, begging for peace.”
“Destiny is a poor map, mo chroí.” Irian braced an arm on the casement as the sun slanted lower, bathing us both in molten gold. “It is a song half heard, promising triumph and defeat in the same alluring refrain. It leads not with loud certainty—thus we yearn for its quiet mystery.”
I gazed at him, his mouth like honey I longed to taste. “In another life I think you might have been a poet.”
“I think not.” His lush lip lifted over a canine. His free hand toyed with the seam of the gauzy silk curtains floating at the edge of the casement. “I was led to believe you were an outcast in this place. Tell me, colleen—did you grow up amongst all this finery?”
I scoffed. “No.”
“Then where?”
I did not want to tell Irian of the garret bedroom I had once called home. I did not want him to think of me as that poor, lowly creature. Yet I had been her, and she me. “These candles are beeswax—mine were tallow. These windows are double-paned glass—I had shutters that leaked a chill in winter. That bed will be feather down—my little mattress was straw. And my curtains would have been patched linen—not this fine silk.”
“Silk.” Irian was still toying with the edge of the curtain—he slidhis hand over its gauzy layers, then without warning gripped my hand through the cloth. The touch jolted me—I automatically jerked away before I could hurt him. But he held on, his grip strong but gentle.
