“No, don’t! Please, don’t?—”
“Sadie!” another voice said. A familiar voice.
But my mother yelled over him. “Jezebel. Harlot! You think these boys want you? How stupid can you be?”
Suddenly, I was back in my room in St. Ailbe. Boarded-up windows. Metal door. The sound of locks clunking all around. No way out.
“Mama, don’t!”
“Sadie!” the other voice said again.
“Mama!” I tried to pound on the door with my fist, but my arm was too weak. My knocks weren’t even strong enough to make a sound. Tears filled my eyes as I sobbed, “Please, Mama! Don’t! Let me?—”
“Jaysus Christ, Sadie. Wake up! Wake up right feckin’ now.”
I couldn’t pound on the metal door. But a strong pair of hands shook me—shook me so hard my eyes popped open and there he was…
…a red-haired giant in nothing but a pair of sweatpants, standing over me.
I gasped out with relief. “Tadhg! Oh my goodness, Tadhg.”
I grabbed one of his arms, clinging to him like a buoy in the lake. Then I burst out crying.
And then he was crawling into bed with me. “It’s alright, Strawberry. I’m here for you.”
He wrapped me in his strong arms. “I’m here. I’m here.”
Yes, he was. And that only made me cry harder, which somehow felt even more embarrassing than screaming out my release while the Shadow King mercilessly lapped his tongue between my legs.
“The High King!” I choked out. “I don’t… I don’t want him to see me like…”
I was crying too hard to continue, but I didn’t have to finish.
There came a soft electronic whirr, and the room went pitch black with the disappearance of the softly lit picture on the lake view wall.
“It’s just us now. Cry as much as you want.”
I didn’t want to cry.
But I couldn’t stop.
Tadhg held me against his chest until I shuddered to a stop.
Then he kissed the top of my head and asked, “Wanna talk about it?”
“No,” I answered miserably, right before adding, “It was just a stupid nightmare about my mother. I liked my training so much. But I guess my head is confused or something. And I have sticks, but I don’t have any whittling knives, so I can’t work through things like I usually do. And anyway, my mother is what Naomi would call ‘the worst.’ She’s lied to me my entire life, and… and I don’t know why I’m letting her get to me like this.”
“Parents are a hell of a thing.” Tadhg gathered me even tighter in his arms. “They get in your head even after you accept they’re a walking bog sack of issues who had no business having children in the first place. I haven’t talked to my father in years, and I still hear his voice laying into me when I feck up at work.”
“Do you have nightmares, too?”
“About him? No.”
I waited for him to tell me who hedidhave nightmares about. But nothing came after that.
Just me, sighing in the dark as my eyes fluttered closed, with Tadhg’s strong arms wrapped around me.
I fell asleep in Tadhg’s arms but woke up alone the next day with savory smells wafting into my nose.
