The niamh straightened slowly, suspicion breaking the despondent look on her otherworldly face. She gave no answer, dodging my stare stubbornly.
“Come on, almost everything that talks has a name. Mine’s Jon.” I put my hand to the glass, offering a soft smile.
Lips pinched, she gradually tilted her head up. True curiosity flickered beneath her solemn expression. “I have no name,” she said with a surprising haughtiness, as thoughnameswerebeneath her. “Buthecalled me Róisín.” Her voice cracked around the word, like it was something sacred and secret.
“Róisín,” I breathed. Her shoulders swelled with a deep breath when I said it. She scrutinized my mouth as if trying to memorize the sound. “That’s beautiful. You know, you sort of remind me of a good friend.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Do not compare me to any human.”
“No. She’s a fairy, actually.”
Her eyebrows pulled together as she studied me more carefully. “You’re not a very good hunter.”
“Yeah, I’m getting that a lot lately,” I muttered. “Whatever you’ve done before, maybe this is how you atone. If you help us, you’d be saving countless innocent lives, including my friend’s. I’m not ready to say goodbye to her yet—hopefully not for a long time.” When her frown turned thoughtful, I pressed, “Whoeverhewas… Well, anyone who could come up with a name like Róisín had to be a worthwhile person, right?”
She swallowed, eyes shuttering. Twin tears, shimmering like opals, slid down her cheeks.
“More than that,” she whispered. “He was everything.”
I latched onto the emotion, doubling down and fixing her with an intense, beseeching stare. “What would he want you to do right now?”
She fell silent, seemingly lost to her own mind. For a moment, I feared she would ice me out and lose herself to a millennium of maddening memories.
“Will you free me in return?” Róisín asked at last.
My hesitation read loudly. She seemed to understand my purpose without words—knowing that I had no intention of leaving until every monster in this chamber was deceased.
“I’ll give you a fighting chance,” I said. It was more than I could give the rest of these creatures.
Her dark eyes drifted back up to find mine, and she gave me the smallest nod.
“Cover your head,” I warned, pointing the rifle at the top of the cylinder.
Then I unleashed a barrage of bullets until layer after layer of reinforced glass gave way and shattered.
16
Sylvia
My head was still spinning.
Cliff’s father washere—and more of a monster than I ever could have imagined.
AndCliff…I couldn’t help but regard him in a new light, struggling to come to terms with it. Drinking in his stern profile, I may as well have been looking at an entirely different person. He had been so guarded about his past that the fragments he had shared left ample room for interpretation. Though he’d never confirmed it, I’d always assumed he’d grown up in a similar situation to Jon: family scraping by, accustomed to hand-me-downs and sneaking into movies he couldn’t afford tickets to.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
The same man who was able to sleep on the lumpiest mattress, who got by on take-out and cheap whiskey, who’d sneered at the wealth of this very hotel—he was heir to an empire.
As the conversation continued, I wondered how I could fathom Cliff like this. Not just a hunter, but a disgraced prince. He’d hidden it all from me. Had Jon known? He must have, given that their history stretched back to their teenage years.
It stung, but they must have carried an unspoken agreement far to bury the past behind them. Perhaps even to protect himself from the judgment of others. I remembered the motley, ground-down hunters that occupied the Louisiana outpost. Even disowned, if they’d known Cliff’s once-inheritance, they’d have eaten him alive.
“I promise,” Ben said, pleading with Cliff’s searching gaze. “I’m not dangerous. I-I mean, I never wanted to hurt anyone. I just didn’t see another way out.”
“Of course not,” Eros said, turning back to Cliff. “But accidents will continue to happen with impulsive, naive creatures like these untethered. Surely, you’ve seen horrors of your own, with this one around.”
Eros’ cold eyes flitted to me. I bared my teeth in revulsion that hedaredto assume he knew me, knew of any fae beyond caging them like animals. I glanced at Cliff to share a dark glare.
