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“Can I help you, little miss?” I asked, crouching to her level so that my gaze was even to her soft violet glass-like eyes.

Small fissures spidered across the porcelain of her features as she watched me do so.

“You can, indeed, Sir Raven.”

Her voice was like chipped porcelain broken by a careless child being swept up into a bin, yet it held an authoritative edge that seemed at odds with her tiny child’s body.

“Raven is fine—or Captain if you insist on formalities.” I chuckled. “Does your mistress wish to have a sword to play with? I could probably spare a woo—”

“My mistress doesn’t give a fuck about your toothpicks, Captain Raven. And I’ve not come on her bidding any ways. I’ve come on my own.” Her rounded arms crossed over a flat chest, and she glared at me with the judgment of a wizened old crone.

“I was unaware they even had the ability to think for themselves,” jabbed one of the guards behind me.

He was given a reproachful scowl for his troubles before I turned back to the doll. There was no reason for him to poke at the daoire, and his elitism was just as unnecessary.

Cricket had accused me of being uncaring toward the plight of the warrens, but I wasn’t. Dawn had kept daora like any other court, but our methods of acquiring them were different and considered soft.

They earned a wage. They had agency in most things. They could marry. Have lives if they so wished. Even the method by which we selected our daora differed from the other courts, as we only selected those who had only misery in their lives beyond Magh Meall. We abhorred the extinguishing of hope and joy as a sacrilege and did not allow it to be callously done within our walls. That extended to those who served us.

I could no longer afford to be so kind in the Ard Rí’s palace.

“If you please, madame, your purpose for distracting my guards?” I lofted my brows and pressed.

Her baleful violet gaze moved from the guard to my face and then to the splatter of my blood in the dirt.

“Beautiful, isn’t it, Captain? Does it remind you perhaps of an errand you have left unattended?”

I tilted my head, narrowing my eyes on her, as she toed the dusty globs with a black slipper.

Who was this daoire? I hadn’t seen her about the palace, and she seemed to have appeared to remind me of something I had forgotten.

“It does not. Have I forgotten to skin someone alive for your mistress, little doll?”

“Oh, no. Not my mistress. But perhaps some roses might be nice.”

Her words were weighted and heavy as she glared at me.

“Apologies, young lady, but I will not be giving roses to a little girl. I’m sure your mistress is lovely. I lament that I am vowed to another. Do tell your mistress that I shall send her a bouquet, but they will not be roses. Striped carnations, white heather, iris, and white poppies wrapped in fern will be her bouquet from me.” I rose, dismissing the little doll coming to interrupt my brooding with the crush of a young courtier.

Waves of heat blasted me as the fissures in her face cracked wide and throbbed with a volcanic heart beneath. I could see all the way down into the cavity of her porcelain exterior to a swirling black and red molten liquid that quivered with her rage.

“Do not dismiss me as some child, Raven of the Dawn. I said to you once I do not come for my mistress. You are as dense as the twigs you fling about. Think again on your arrogance and what it has already cost another and what you vowed to that other. Your debt has been noted.”

Before I could reel in my own shock at the shift in demeanor, the plates of her face had snapped together, and her cherubic countenance had split into an innocent doe’s smile. She curtsied deep with all the reverence due to the Ard Rí himself, executed with grace and poise, she turned and skipped away into the arched corridor from where she’d come.

“The old ones creep me the fuck out,” whispered the Grey Hound. “His Majesty did us all a great service when he put the old master craftsmen to the sword. Their creations are just . . . creepy.”

“Never known you to be limp tailed.” I cast him a wry grin as we both watched the ruffles disappear into the shadows that would lead her up to the inner courtyard of the residential quarters.

“Limp tailed? Come, dear Raven, show me to your quarters. I’ll show you how limp my tail truly is,” he barked with laughter and pushed my shoulder.

“Your sword hangs at your side already, Grey Hound. I’d hate to deprive your Lady of it’s substitute,” I volleyed back, snatching up the practice sword I had abandoned, waving at him to prepare for our next round together.

The small doll’s words kept flying around my head, though. What had I forgotten to do? Who had I forgotten to visit? What debt did I owe that I had not paid?

The rhythmic clash of wood against wood soothed the warsome spirit within me enough to allow my mind to drift back to Cricket and the way she had felt pressed against me.

I was obsessed with her. Obsessed with the way she sparkled in the light. Obsessed with the way her eyes followed me. Obsessed with the way she bit back whenever she had a moment.