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“’Tis yours, my lord Raven,” she whispered with reluctance, as if in the doing of it her tongue was split across a blade.

The Raven watched her, twisting the tip of his sword until a single drop of ruby dribbled down her filthy neck. “I’m sorry. ’Tis your purpose, Ard Tiarna of Árus Láigh.”

When he was satisfied, his sword fled her throat, and once more, she cast baleful eyes at me but said nothing nor made moves toward me to continue her attempted drowning.

“You don’t have to like her, Laundress, but you will respect that she outranks you as a possession of the Ard Rí of Magh Meall,” he said without looking at her as he slid his sword into the scabbard. “As all daora, servants, squires, and peerage of Bláth an Earraigh do. You have served in this castle for too long to forget that. Explain yourself, daoire of Árus Adaig.”

I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to pull some of the heat from the tub into me. I wanted to hear what was passing between these two. Pieces were slowly falling onto the table of the puzzle. I was sure that, once I had a moment to sit with Violet, Green Man, and the other one, I would begin understanding this place.

The Laundress looked between me and The Raven a few times before I could feel the trap he had walked her into start to close. This man was dangerous. It wasn’t just his inexplicable magnetism that drew me in when I wanted to plunge a dagger into his heart and bathe in his suffering. He was cunning, patient, and ruthless. If I didn’t hate him with everything that I was, I would respect him.

“Go ahead, daoire, say it,” he purred, danger dripping from every syllable.

She began to stammer, grasping at straws, as she tried to figure out how to say what she had been thinking without her throat getting sliced.

“Say. It.”

Any other person could have been less intimidating while bellowing the two-word command.

“I thought she was a daoire of Breacadh an Lae!” she blurted.

I had heard that name before. Rictus had used that name to summon The Raven.

“You thought she was mine, so you sought to, what . . . punish her for the crime of being owned by the Dawn?” He had looked away from her again, examining imaginary dirt under his pristine trimmed, shaped nails.

“The daora said she mouthed off to His Royal Highness!”

“And you thought that, as a daoire of Lon di Lughae, you outranked her. So, you sought to establish your own little daora hierarchy. Is that correct, Laundress?”

My skin was crawling, nearly screaming for me to run. My nerves all in unison wailed at me and pleaded for me to get clear of the perniciousness of his simple softly worded questions.

“Well. Everyone knows that your—” She snapped her mouth closed, suddenly seeing the jaws of the trap.

Finally.

“No, no, do go on, Laundress. You were finally starting to say something of interest to me. Everyone knows what?” The ease of his muscles, the way they looked so relaxed, almost languid, was hauntingly terrifying. No one should be microseconds away from whatever it was he was about to unleash while looking so at ease.

“Everyone knows that your court is disgraced,” she whispered, her chin tipping up. “And as such any property belonging to the Dawn are also disgraced and without rank.”

“Yes, this is true, Laundress. Everyone knows that Breacadh an Lae is a house in disgrace and that I serve at His Majesty’s charity. That I am no Ard Tiarna of Dawn any longer but a simple Captain of the Royal Guard.” He took a soft breath so easily mistaken for a sigh of resignation, but it was the same breath a sniper took before squeezing the trigger. “If she had been mine, Laundress, I’d have given you a swift death for daring to harm that which is mine. Take the daoire to the Maw. I will follow shortly.”

I turned, looking around to see who he was talking to. There was only the kin’tha, who was stretched out, belly flat to the copper tub. The kin’tha did not move, though. I expected it would. After all, he owned it, right? It was his to command and its purpose was to transport daora, right?

I was not prepared for the sunlight streaming in from the windows, tucked up against the roof, to solidify into ghostly shapes. In horror movies, I had seen shadows do the same birthing of a solid form trick, but I had never seen sunlight do it.

Twin sunbeams moved to either side of the Laundress and took her by the forearms. Their transparent grip glowed against her skin as she passed me. The flesh lit up by their grasp began to slowly darken to a rosy tinge, as if I were watching a sunburn grow before my very eyes. She was already howling by the time they drew her back into the light, and she disappeared.

“What—and I can’t stress this enough—The. Fuck,” I whispered to myself as I stared in horror.

He cleared his throat at my back, and I whipped around, scrambling away from him. A hissed growl came from the kin’tha as I splashed water over it in my haste. “Calm, Cricket. You’re going to—” He was cut short as I slipped on the copper beneath my frantic, scrambling feet and toppled over the hip-high back lip. The stonework rushed toward my skull, but it never connected. In a movie somewhere, the clumsy heroine would have been caught in the arms of her hero. I was not that lucky. Instead, my would-be horror hero had gripped the front of my soaking wet sheer gown and was hauling me bodily over the lip by it. “—Break your neck.”

He growled and pushed me back into the water, shuffling back, as if I would bite him again. To be fair, I might.

“Could you please, just for a short while, cease your attempts at self-annihilation? I grow weary of saving you.”

“No one asked you to save me!” I screamed at him.

I felt childish. It felt good, and I wanted to barb him again to see the way his curling lips warred with the tempest in his eyes.