Page 6 of The Lure of Wolves and Whispers

She glances over my shoulder. “The gardai marched right through the merchant quarter and didn’t touch a single person. Not until they got to Quayside.” Finn grimaces. “They’re looking for someone.”

My mouth goes dry. “How do you know where they started, Finn—and what were you doing in the merchant quarter? The banks aren’t even open today.”

“I meant what I said, Maeve.” My sister’s grip tightens on my shoulders. “Don’t ask questions you really donotwant the answers to. I need you to trust me.”

Everything in me revolts at what she’s asking. There’s never been anything I’ve needed to hide from Finn. Never anything I couldn’t talk to her about. My whole chest aches, and not just with hurt. With a fierce ache to know more, to help her.

I would doanythingto help her.

As if she sees the fight rising in me, Finn whispers one word. “Please.”

All the fight rushes out of me.“Fine.”

Finn lets go and steps back with a wince.

I seize my chance. “But you need to find Keeva. Take a balm or a tonic, or something.”

“Why do you think I’m taking you this way?” She winks. “Shortcut. Trust me, I’ve found enough of them over the years.”

That I have zero problem believing.

Nothing in Quayside is higher than two stories, but the deeper we go into the warren of lanes and alleys, the more the glare of Castle Mount above us seems to fall away anyway. Even the reek of the Black Quay and the salt of the icy sea begin to fade.

Chimes with tiny lupine figures carved from protective woods like cedar and elm and rowan, woven among the dull jewels of sea glass and old, bleached bones, hang from doorframes. Whatever market vendor sold them probably lied through their teeth and claimed the bones came from a dead mage—that there could still be traces of magic in them after all this time.

Fools.

For the many who let themselves hope the Martyr and the mages will return, the wolf is a protector. A subtle symbol of hope—of the Old Ones, of the dream of what our isle used to be—since the uprising was crushed five years ago.

To me it just looks like a waste of someone’s time spent carving the damn things.

We can dream all we want that she’ll come back, but the Martyr is gone. She abandoned us long before the High King formally banned magic five years ago, when the healer mages and the battle mages and the common mages fought in the uprising and then faced the executions. But the Martyr had left Eireann the day he banished her almost twenty years ago, just hours after she failed to save his first High Queen from the short, sudden sickness that killed her.

Now there’s nothing left of magic except for the scraps passeddown in secret through families—like my mother’s triple knot charm and whatever the Whisperers barter in the shadows, sourced from Old Ones know where. Magic is dead and buried now.

And so are all our dreams.

But Finn—she trails one hand along a window ledge as we slink through a narrow lane. The wood is thick with heavy, hardened wax, like candles had been lit and melted down on top of it over months. Someone’s left little staves of wood as long as my fingers with markings carved into their lengths lying there. A chill sinks into my bones at the sight.

Ogham was once the language of the Old Ones.

Now it’s treason.

My sister runs her fingers over the runic markings. Their short, brutal lines branch out from a central shaft down each stave. And as much as I wish I don’t, I still know how to interpret them. Finn does too. Our mother made sure of that before they executed her.

“You shouldn’t touch those.”

My words come out heavy and cold, but Finn just shrugs.

“Not the first time I’ve done something I shouldn’t. Won’t be the last, either. There’s no one around to see us here, Maeve.”

A sensation like spiders crawls over my skin, close to the way the mist always seems to tingle along my arms. It never seems to bother Finn.

I shift and steal a glance at the lines of grimy, filthy windows with their curtains pulled tight. “You never know who’s watching,” I murmur.

The Lady of Shadows has spies everywhere.

One of them, somewhere, betrayed our mother.