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He broke the kiss, leaving both of us panting, gasping for the breath the other stole from us. My arms snaked around his wide shoulders and rested against the back of his neck as I watched him war with something behind shuttered eyes.

“Sóna . . .”

“If you say I can’t, I’m going to ask you why. And I will push and push and push until the magic of this room turns against you and makes you tell me why.”

It wasn’t a bluff, but I dared him to try it and call it anyway. I needed to know why he wouldn’t touch me, why every time we got close, he pulled away. The question burned in my very bones.

He smiled a painful smile that curled at the edges of his mouth. “You pay attention.”

I wrapped my free leg around his hips and turned us over. He let me. With his bulk, he could have easily resisted, but he didn’t. I took advantage, quickly moving the volume of my skirts so that all that lay between him and I was the excuses and his breeches. His hands found their familiar place on my hips as he watched me. The suspicion I had seen last night was a mere ghost flitting through the dark-green treetops of his gaze.

“You look good up there,” he murmured as I swayed my hips on him, grinding against the firm length of his cock that burned beneath my soaked core.

“I’d look better naked and riding your cock.”

I threw caution to the wind. Let the excuse in the morning be this wretched room. Let it be that I could not lie. Let it be anything other than the fact that I wanted this and the summons from Oaken Rose meant that my time with him was growing to a close. Let it be that simple and pure before it turned bitter and hate-filled.

His fingers dug into my hips as he both guided and encouraged the slow sensual slide of me against him, his teeth ravaging his bottom lip as we both enjoyed the simple pleasures of the boundaries we had erected around us.

There was no need for words, no call for our usual back-and-forth. Something had shifted in him, and I knew what had shifted in me. I was saying goodbye in the best way I knew how. Letting him enjoy me and me enjoy him as pleasure built and swelled within me. It was nothing compared next to the pleasure of his kiss. It wasn’t the all-consuming heated fever that built when his skin touched mine, and there were truly no barriers between us, but it was enough. It was enough for me to enjoy this bittersweet moment that he didn’t know would be anything more than the thing that we both enjoyed.

His fingers captured mine, lacing together like they had been meant to curl around each other from the very moment that they had been carved of flesh and bone. It drew me back from the swirl of my own mind, looking down to connect with his gaze.

“Tell me to touch you, Sóna. Tell me to kiss you. Tell me to make love to you,” he whispered his silent plea.

I bent forward, my hips never ceasing their slow teasing ride against his imprisoned cock. My lips hovered over his, and the memory that this was a problem of his own making came flooding back to me. “Free me, and I will.”

I pushed back up and then off the bed. I needed to hold on to that tiny shard of bitterness, that tiny little glass that cut my hands every time I held onto it because I could feel my heart falling out of my chest and into his hands when he looked at me like that. When he looked at me like I mattered beyond a simple little fuck. I could imagine myself curled up next to him, not caring that he had murdered everything that I held dear before I could even hold it. I could imagine myself slick with passion and sweat as he came to my bed after attending to his wife, just pleased to be held by him.

I deserved to be loved. I deserved to be held. I deserved all of that, but most importantly, I deserved to be the first choice and not a consolation prize. Even if I was a daoire.

He let me go. I would have never made it to the door and yanked it open had he not let me.

“I don’t own you,” I heard him whisper as I barged out into the hallway to a bewildered-looking Silver.

Rage best served by the beast in the bed behind me pulled my fist back as I cracked Silvertree square in the nose.

“As for you, you hit me again, and I don’t care if you’re the Ard Rí himself, I will gut you and feed your entrails to the birds. Am I fucking clear?”

He stumbled back holding a hand up to stop the rush of the other guards. Silver cast his gaze between me and The Raven behind me. I could tell by the direction of his eyes that The Raven hadn’t moved from the bed. I snapped my fingers in front of him. “Eyes on me, big boy. He’s dick drunk, and I’m the bigger threat.”

Silver snapped his attention back to me, his hand holding what I hoped was an agonized mangled mess and nodded curtly before making a sweeping gesture that asked me to lead the way. When his hand came away, I was disappointed to see only a red mark where my fist had collided with his face.

I silently took up the path out of the Dúluachair wing. I didn’t need Silver to guide me. I could see the path as clear as if there were neon signs announcing the exit. He was trailing behind me a silent shadow as I moved through the wing like fire was licking at my heels.

Anger and agony danced in hypnotizing circles within me as I walked away from The Raven. My heart clenched and hardened in my chest, the ice of the Winter Court curling around it.

We walked in silence for a long time before Silver finally broke it. “I’m sorry.”

I paused in my storming of the halls, the open courtyard we had come to echoing my sentiment with its emptiness. “What.”

Silver twisted his gloves on his fingers. “I said I’m sorry. The Captain said you were an imposter. I . . . I was so angry that someone had taken you, or that someone had fooled me into thinking they were you that I let that anger cloud my judgment.”

I threw my hands up in exasperation. “Is that what that was all about? He thinks I’m a doppelgänger or something?”

“Don’t know what a doppelgänger is, Miss Cricket, but, yes. The Captain came down to the barracks last night on a rampage. He wouldn’t say at first what happened. Just took the whiskey from us and sat brooding in the corner. Any time any of us got near him, he’d punch us. When the boys all went to sleep, he confided in me that he thought someone was impersonating you. I asked him why, and he wouldn’t tell me. He said that he had his reasons.” Silver shrugged. “I haven’t seen him like that since after the war. He asked me if the Righ-cuicidh of Dúluachair would give up his quarters for a fee. Senán blessed that room himself long before this place was much more than a holiday home for the courts to gather. Every metal surface in there is iron or cursed to uncover deception.”

“You hit me.”