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We never spoke of the war. Neither of us were willing to return to the harrowing halls of memory we shared. Haunted by the choices we made and those forced upon us. Neither of us would ever be the same. Those game trails would be silent as the lips of the loved ones we had watched die, impotent to stop the charging horses of the war we had unleashed.

“Don’t tell me what the fuck I need to do, Sorrow,” I snapped back, churlish and ill-humored with the weakness coursing through me.

“You spent yourself on a fucking daoire, Raven. Furthermore, you are costing me more fucking stores to heal you!” He slammed his fist into the solid wood of the table I was sat upon. “I entertained this foolishness when you brought her to the Bandrui the first time. I listened to your fucking drivel about potentially using the daoire to our advantage, but this”—he gestured to the state of me—“is ludicrous! You degrade our standing with the fucking guard for a daoire!”

“Call her a daoire once more, Sorrow.”

I kept my voice steady, measured. Every muscle coiled taut, wrapping around bones ready to leap to the fray despite the loss of blood and magic to fuel them.

He paused, staring at me as the change from simple friend and compatriot washed away to the true danger that lived under my skin. The truth that Sorrow and Daróg forgot in their mad quest to top one another was that there was a reason I had been called on as the General to the armies of Dawn and the vanguard of Daróg’s army.

There was a reason that, despite being younger than both Sorrow and Daróg, despite being from a court that even then had been less richly invested in magic, it was me who shook the knees of our opposition. I was a brute. At my deepest core, I loved the taste of blood and the feeling of gristle between my teeth.

Unlike them, I didn’t have to learn to be a war machine. I had to learn to be a citizen of polite society. I embraced every violent urge and let it fuel me. I held my passions for the blade and battle under control by splintering nails.

The costume was not the warrior, the costume was the courtier. Forgetting that was the peril of every enemy that had ever come against me. No one had questioned the accusation that I had slaughtered every living soul, man, woman, child and daora of the House of Magic. They had questioned why I had stopped.

Sorrow’s pale face blanched, taking on the blue reflection of his doublet.

“Gentlemen, I politely ask you that if you wish to tear each other to pieces that you do so outside of my temple. It was hard enough to scrub the blood from my storeroom when that boar was finished. I do not relish the idea of revisiting that pleasant treat.”

The mild voice of the Bandrui, a gentle autumn breeze whistling between us, reminded me to reign myself in before I ripped the dagger from my shoulder and carved my sigil across Sorrow’s soul.

“Apologies, Bandrui,” we both murmured, two recalcitrant boys reprimanded by their matron.

Sorrow returned to his pacing, rolling a lock of hair I was all too familiar with between his finger and thumb as he let his mind swallow him. This was Sorrow’s way, bouts of rage quickly snuffed by pensive obsessive thoughts. When those gave way to the madness, that was when Sorrow became something other than the tightly leashed and controlled creature the war had forged him into. I wished I could say that it was a glimpse at my old friend, but madness had never been a friend to me.

“Has the human at least started to work on the other humans in the warrens?” The Bandrui asked as she applied a faintly glowing poultice to my face. Sparking magic pulsed and throbbed against the wound Cricket had inflicted in her feral fury.

“I don’t honestly know. Every time she returns to the warrens, some fresh hell is visited upon her,” I answered honestly.

“I loaned you the fucking dragon’s horde of stable magic for a purpose, Raven. You convinced me that bringing a pretty little thing to distract him would pay off and be a worthy investment.” Sorrow’s pacing finally ceased, and he turned to me, taut with restraint as his milky-white eye and piercing arctic-blue eye scrutinized me. “I will have her value returned in kind.”

“Would you like to crawl up into the palace and keep that fuckwit from being himself? I would be happy to oblige you with a uniform and sword, Sorrow.”

He snorted his derision.

“That’s what I thought. This business is too dirty for your fingers to be sullied with.” I winced as my leather armor was slowly unbuckled by the skilled hands of the Bandrui, revealing the three puncture wounds where Cricket had found the spaces between buckled straps and sank her dagger into me in quick succession. “Have you made any work on getting him married?”

“None. He is determined to stay a bachelor for the rest of time.” Her soft breath felt like razors over the ragged wounds as she spread more sweet honey-smelling mud over the abused flesh. “I’m starting to think he moves pieces on a board I do not see.”

I grunted as I traced in my mind the intricate webs the three of us had woven over the last two hundred years. “Does he suspect you?”

“If he does, he’s not fool enough to reveal it.”

“And his oath to you?”

“As far as I can tell, still solid as stone. Why the gods honor it, knowing full well I was oath-sworn otherwise when I took his, I do not know. But so far, no ill has come from it. With the storm brewing at our doorstep, though, I am not fool enough to test the boundaries of their benevolence.”

“Or your friendship,” Sorrow bit in.

“Or my friendships,” the Bandrui agreed.

“None have returned since Airgetlám’s disappearance?”

We could use the help of our errant gods, if nothing else, but to curb the rampage of the usurper on their throne.

“Sadly, no.” Her nimble fingers were untying the laces at the side of my padded under tunic. “Though messages are sent pretty regularly still. Ailbhe even tempted your little human, Raven. As we all expected.”