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Something was up, and I didn’t like that I didn’t know what secrets were being passed all around me and how they would impact the plans I had. It would be very hard to escape with The Raven there. Even harder when suspicion was building around me, and I had no idea how to slither free of its grip. Moving in secret and shadow was hard when someone insisted on shining a lantern on you the entire time.
We continued to wander, no specific destination in mind. When I asked him if we would be going to the salons or to the throne room, he merely grunted and did not answer further. We turned down a corridor that I knew would lead us to the Dúluachair wing and watched as Silver seemed to relax a bit as he entered his court’s home turf.
I was watching him carefully as we wound through the corridors and missed running into The Raven by a single step.
“Silvertree,” he said in a stern voice before turning his attention to me. “Cricket.”
“Asshole. Funny seeing you here.”
Pain bloomed across my cheek as Silvertree backhanded me with the metal plates of his armored gloves. I spun at the waist from the force, my hand coming up to meet the ache in my cheek. Fury burned within me as I rose and stared Silver right in the eyes. “What—and I can’t stress this enough—the actual fuck, Silver!”
“You will address the Captain with proper deference, daoire.”
My eyes flew between The Raven and Silver. The Raven stood with his hands clasped behind him, his feet shoulder-width apart, his hard evergreen eyes fixed on me with no emotion.
“Cricket.” The Raven pushed open the door to the room at his left and indicated I should enter it with an open palm.
Anger coursed through me, and I glared at Silver as I moved into the room. I felt something icy cold wash over me as I stepped over the threshold and turned as The Raven entered behind me, closing the door on us and shutting Silver out into the hallway.
“What did I promise you in the infirmary?”
“What?”
Ice gathered in his tone as he stalked me. “What did I promise you in the infirmary?”
I let him stalk me until my calves hit the baseboards of a large bed. “You didn’t promise me anything in the infirmary. I was never in the infirmary. I don’t even know where that is.”
“Good,” he barked, taking a candle holder from the side of the bed and pressing it into my palm. I let my fingers close in around it, confused. “I mentioned a promise to you last night. What was it?”
“In the storage room, when you were helping me walk around, you swore on your god that you would never lie to me.”
“Which god was it?”
“Feid—Feid something!” I screeched as he pushed me back on the bed, caging me in with the weight of his body.
“Say his name.”
“Feidlimid, I think?”
“What is your name?”
“What? What the fuck is going on?”
He sat back, his ass and weight pressing me into the bed until I could no longer move. “The question I asked is a simple one. What is your name?”
“Sóna Mac Raith.”
My heart was pounding in my throat, fear lacing around it like barbed wire. The ice around The Raven was scaring me.
“When did we first meet?”
“What the fuck is going on?” I hit him as hard as I could with the candle holder, and he reared back, hissing. Where the metal bit into his shoulder, the flesh sizzled and began to rot black under the hole in his tunic. “Iron? You made me hold iron?”
I threw the candleholder across the room, and he slammed his hand into my shoulder, the leather sliding to wrap around my pulse and hold me firm as he gritted his teeth through the pain of the iron bite. “When did we first meet?”
I slapped at him, and he snatched my wrist with his other hand, shoving it under the point of his knee cap. He switched hands smoothly and, with a speed I had not seen from him before, snatched the other wrist and shoved it also under his other knee, effectively disarming me all while he held firm on my neck.
“I will ask one more time, and if you do not answer, your date with the Maw will not be as sweet as the last.” He leaned over me, the points of his knees digging into my wrists. “When did we first meet?”
