“You should hear what she has to say.” Finnian slides onto the stool beside me, forcibly spinning me around which is a great task.
Kieran stands across the room, his head tilted and his forehead wrinkled.
Morrigan and Macha are moving toward us.
Together they make the ground feel like it’s trembling. It isn’t. They’re just that powerful.
“Okay.” I run my tongue along my teeth as I reach back for my pint and take a long sip.
“Ash is not bound to the Unseelie Court,” The Morrigan begins.
“Yes, she threw out a suggestion to the debt and the magic laughed merrily and said yes.” I swallow the dregs of my pint, my head finally swimming enough to steal the ache that hasn’t left my heart in a month. The ache of her voice I can’t hear. Her laugh I can’t earn. The weight of her beside me that I reach for every morning and find nothing but cold air.
I finally look at my wrist where Ash’s green bond wristlet glows. Then to the guardian tattoos that writhe beneath my skin.
Calm. Unworried. If it weren’t for that I’d have lost my mind by now.
“Her life debt is owed to me.” Kieran joins us. “Father exiled me.”
“And you believe that enough to keep you away,” Morrigan taunts.
“We spent days,” I seethe. A little drunkenly, I admit. “Days trying to get into the Unseelie Court. Moros has us all but blocked. We cannot get through the warding.” Defeated. I feel utterly defeated.
Macha turns to Kieran. “Your queen owes you a life debt and yet you do not burn courts to save her.”
Kieran’s jaw drops. “That isn’t…”
She moves onto me. “You call yourself Wild Fae and yet you wear chains of your own creation.Willingly.” She shakes her head disappointedly at me.
I want to argue. Tell her she doesn’t know what we’ve tried. What I’ve sacrificed.
But the words rot in my throat.
Because she’s not wrong.
Finnian’s jaw is tight. He won’t even look at Kieran.
And I remember the fight three weeks ago. The one where Finnian said if Kieran had just told us about his father’s plan sooner, we could have stopped this. The one where Kieran said nothing back, which was worse than any argument. We should have told her who actually holds the Treasures.
We haven’t talked about it since.
Some wounds you just let fester.
I’ve known it for weeks. I’ve been waiting for permission to burn it all down when I should have already been striking the match.
And that burns worse than anything she could have done to me.
She turns to Finnian. “No laws exist that you can exploit. Gods are the law. When did you forget that?”
Morrigan lets out a slight laugh before she catches herself. “Macha.” She dares to reach for her evil twin. “They are but babes.”
“Now come on.”
“Excuse me.”
“I’ll have you know…”
“That does explain much.” Macha sighs, eying the three of us up. “I am unsure you are up to saving my niece.”
