Page 28

Magic is a selfish, self-centered creation. It wants what it wants and does what it wishes. It refused to allow me to ignore its insistent whispers, and in turn, I was paying for my resistance.

The Sapphire Speaker at my elbow gasped, and Daróg glared at me.

Scian an Mabh. The sacred blades of Mabh. A duel of honor.

“You have misspoken, Captain,” whispered The Lady Speaker at my side.

My resolve wavered only for the tightness around my heart to clamp harder when I remembered the state of her laying on that slab.

She had already been through so much, having barely survived wounds that refused to heal properly, fractures that reopened overnight. It was as if she were cursed.

“I have not. I call for Scian an Mabh!” I bellowed, startling a throng of Fae that had come to walk the gardens as the dawn rose over them.

“Everyone, return to the palace so that I may show mercy to my Captain of the Guard and not damage his honor any further.”

I snorted my amusement as the first ray of dawn crawled across my skin and melted into me.

My shoulder collided with the dark wood of the hallway and smeared a livid red streak across it. I snorted blood and drew in a heavy breath, stabilizing myself as I spat it and the three petals of a foxglove flower into my hand. Fucking Spéirling and their damned flowers. I crushed it across the wide plane of my thigh before pushing open the storehouse door.

The Bandrui and two additional drui gathered around the shivering, unconscious body of the golden idol of my dreams. Even having been spattered in her own milky blood, with her hair drenched and matted in her sweat and angry golden bruises blooming across her body, she was still the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. One day, I would crown her with the peaks of black agate of Dawn and cap her ears in gold. One day, I would bow at her feet and thank the gods for having blessed me in finding her.

“You shouldn’t have done that,” whispered the Bandrui as she took my arm and guided me into a chair, careful of the hissing, sizzling burn on my arm that branched up toward my heart. She was already cataloging the list of injuries, none of them too bad. “Did you at least win?”

I smirked up to her and gave her a curt nod before returning my singularly focused gaze to the woman on the slab currently having her arm rebroken and set.

The Bandrui sighed and knelt next to me as she began weaving magic around her to stitch my wounds. As the Bandrui of the Temple of the Ascended, she had access to small slivers of each of the gods’ powers. Gifts from her friends who held her in such high regard.

“Waste none on me. I will survive. Bandrui, please. Spend the gifts on Cricket.”

The deep timber of my voice rattled the nerves of the arm she was working on, and I swallowed the wince.

“You’ve eaten at least three Bláth an Earraigh bolts and who knows how many poisons, and there’s a hole in your side the size of a yew root. She is being seen to by Ailbhe’s own hand-picked drui. You will suffer my ministrations like a good boy, or I’ll be forced to clap your ears,” she bit back with all the spite of a shortbread cookie and turned soft as the flesh began to knit together. “Did you kill him?”

“No.”

“Would that you had, a great deal of her suffering would be avoided.”

“I exacted a price for his life.” The sickening crack of Cricket’s shoulder as the drui broke it to reposition it mixed with a grinding sound and settled in my churning stomach. “He would never touch her again.”

“Why didn’t you ask for her freedom, you foolish oaf?” hissed the Bandrui as I blanched.

If Cricket were awake and not kept asleep by a clever mixture of herbs and magic, she would have ripped her vocal cords apart on the agony they were putting her through to heal her.

“I tried. He would not give on it.”

“And you did not insist?”

“Tried to but wasn’t able to.” The druis’ brows collectively drew down, and they were speaking in worried hushed tones. I rose, shooing the Bandrui when she tried to insist I stay. The blood leaking from my body would continue to leak after I tended her. “What’s wrong? Why have you stopped?”

The two turned to me as my voice rose. “There has been a complication, Captain.”

“What complication? How complicated can this be? Spend the magic. Heal the girl. It is a simple matter.”

The more feminine of the two androgynous drui rolled their eyes and crossed their arms. “Would that it were, Captain, we would not be needed. Every Fae has magic. Every Fae can wield magic. But knitting flesh and bone is one thing. The pathways by which magic innervates our flesh is different from the electricity that innervates the flesh of a human and despite her outer shell. The girl is human.”

“So? You have treated humans thousands of times. What is the problem? Heal the girl.”

“Her flesh does not respond the way it should, Captain,” the other drui of Ailbhe said as a way of explanation and apology. “Not even for a human.”