Forty
The door to the human realm will not open for me until midnight on Mabon, which means I have roughly seven weeks to learn everything I can about Granny Maggie’s time here in Tír na Dubh.
According to Sabre, her quarters have not been touched since she left. But there is no dust on any of the surfaces, and the air does not have the stale quality of a boarded-up room.
It’s almost as if someone spends a little time in here regularly.
But if Sabre had been visiting Granny’s abandoned rooms, my presence is the perfect deterrent. Any pretense of courting me was discarded the moment he made his confession. Perhaps even earlier than that.
Still, in order to figure out why my grandmother stole the fragment and what she planned to do with it in the human realm, I needed to understand her mindset while she was here.And the greatest source ofthatinformation is Sabre himself. He seems to be the only thing in this manor to which the ring reacts.
But he’s a hard man to pin down. Since our arrival, he’s taken no more meals with us. And from what I can tell, most of his hours are spent locked in his study. I crept past the other day to find he’d left the door cracked. He was bent over his desk, hair mussed and fingers ink-stained, making notes on what looked like blueprints or architectural drawings. Before I could ask him about it—or sneak a closer peek—he got up and slammed the door in my face.
I’m starting to question Granny Maggie’s taste in men.
And wondering if I might have inherited it from her.
George was obviously a bad choice, though the further I get from that affair, the more I realize he took advantage of my open nature. I’m not excusing my own role; I am a fully functioning adult capable of making my own decisions. But itwasnaïve to assume a man like that would have proposed to me. Not because there’s anything wrong with me, but because of those unsavory qualities of his that I was all too eager to overlook: an obsession with status, a need to be adored, a compunction to be seen as the “good guy” in any scenario. Regardless, I am done reprimanding myself. George and I were never meant to be.
Lachlan, on the other hand … I am not sure how to classify an entanglement that was doomed from the start. Yet another example of my appetites getting me into trouble?
Aunt Teddy was always scolding me for them, be they gastronomical or on the more prurient end of the spectrum. Said if I didn’t learn to regulate them, that no man would ever take me seriously as a wife. I often wondered if she’d guessed what George and I were up to.
My appetites never seemed to bother Lachlan. Though I suppose becoming his wife was never a possibility anyway. Perhaps that’s why I was not afraid to indulge?
I will leave it there because to examine my motives any deeper might mean unearthing world-shifting revelations about my feelings for him. Bury, bury, bury. If Bretonnic society taught me nothing else, it at least taught me that.
Tonight, I’ve decided to go for a walk around the property at dusk in an effort to clear my head, shake off some of those buried feelings, and pout over my inability to find anything that might inform my search for the Bannrhorn. I have only just stepped outside when I hear paws pounding toward me and the unmistakable huffs of a pursuing animal.
I turn, then freeze as Skadi races toward me, Sabre jogging after her. It looks as if they’ve come from the wider walking path that rings the outskirts of the property.
She bounds closer and closer, her tongue bouncing, like a gigantic, half-dead puppy.
“Skadi!” Sabre shouts, and my ring heats at his voice. “You blasted fool. Halt!”
Skadi may be excitable, but she will not disobey her master, thank their gods. She stops, then sits back on her haunches in front of me. She’s enormous. Larger than Torvil’s báshounds. Nearly the size of the elephants in the zoological gardens at Harbridge.
Her hot breath fans my face and I pinch my nose, expecting to smell rotting carcass, but am treated to a scent that’s more like peppermint leaves steeped in snowmelt.
She barks at me, a short, sharp yip, then tip-taps her front paws. Granny and I never had a dog, but our closest neighbors lived on a farm with all kinds of animals. Including the sweetest wolfhound named Sheilagh who used to perform this same bark and tap routine. I know what it means. Pets. That’s what Skadi wants.
I raise my palm and Skadi bends down to nudge her wet nose against it. I try to keep my hand to the intact half and not the half that’s mostly exposed nasal cavity.
“My apologies, Miss Fitzroy,” Sabre pants as he scuffs through the gravel toward us.
We’re at the back of the house, several paces from the veranda and overlooked by the guest rooms. Most are dark, mine included, but there’s a shardlight glowing in Aowen’s. And I swear the curtain just billowed.
“Skadi is usually far more obedient”—Sabre side-eyes his … well, I’m not sure exactlywhatSkadi is—“but where you are concerned, she seems to forget her manners.”
“It’s alright,” I say, continuing to pet Skadi’s nose. Her glowing green eyes slip shut; she’s in pure ecstasy. A small giggle escapes my lips. “She’s adorable.”
Sabre grunts out a laugh. “I have never heard anyone other than your grandmother say that about a necrowolf.”
“A necrowolf.” I roll the word across my tongue. “What is that?”
“I could give you a proper explanation, but I’m afraid it might take all night. Have you heard the saying ‘a cat has nine lives’?”
“Yes?”
