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Even if it was only for a short time.

“Do you remember that day in the throne room? I remember the pride in your eyes when you laid your hammer at my feet. Kneeling before me with your golden-tipped ears and the radiant halo of Árus Láigh’s crown atop your head. I had heard of Human’s angels before but never thought I would ever see one.” He turned his head back to me, a nostalgic smile lighting his face. “I saw one that day. I kept thinking to myself, I have never seen a Fae craft wings upon their back. How beautiful you would look with a mantle of white feathers. The silver feathers of your cuirass would never compare.”

“And then you took my hammer, snapped it in two, declared the Court of Arus Láigh traitors to magic, and stripped me of my crown.” There was no bitterness in my tone. There should have been. “What is the point of this, Majesty?”

“One of many regrets that clog the very storehouse of my anam,” he murmured, reaching out to touch my face. I easily dodged the furtive touch by pressing his forearm away from me. He let his hand rest on my thigh, and I allowed him. There was no point in wrestling an ailing man off my person. “So many regrets piled upon my doorway. Could I ever sweep them clear, you think? Before I return to magic?”

I snorted and gently pushed his hand away. “That is a question better posed to the Bandrui, than I.”

“You mourn, brother. For what?”

His switch of topics spun my head.

“Does it matter?”

“You mourn for the daoire girl?”

“And if I do? What concern of that is of yours?”

“Another regret. Nothing more,” he whispered, pulling himself away from me and slowly hefting his once lithe and nimble body up onto his cane.

“If you regret her so much, I will ask again. Dissolve my betrothal to your sister. Free me of this madness, and let me return to Breacadh an Lae.”

Before Cricket had come, he would have whirled on me and slapped me for even asking it, let alone demanding it of him in a moment of sentiment. But he didn’t. He merely leaned on his cane and watched me quietly with an unreadable expression on his face for several breaths.

“I cannot.”

“Daróg. It made sense. When you were dying. When you were not sure from one moment to the other if you would even survive. But you are here, walking around, even if it is with a cane. You are healed. You will only get stronger as the seasons pass. It made sense for you to prevent the courtiers from tearing her apart in an effort to seize your throne. It is what you have done for Our Lady Sapphire Speaker, and she has flourished under your hand. But you are no longer at the edge of the stones. You have survived. It’s no longer necessary.” Though I let passion, foreign and ill-fitting, slip into my words, I did not beg.

I would never beg him again.

The gentle spring sky of his eyes searched the dark forests of mine. “I cannot, my Hope. Whether you believe me or not. I cannot do this for you. I have sworn on my true name that I will see my sister married to a suitable match.”

“And how can I fulfill this oath, my lord? I have neither lands nor titles. I have nothing but the armor on my back and a few books in my room. Everything else I have is yours in name, made for my use by your hand and nothing more. I am all but a pauper on the streets of Hy-Brasil, gasping for air as the tides pull up the city. Your sister is the Banfhlaith! She was born a Banfhlaith of Bláth an Earraigh in her own right and is now the Banfhlaith of all of Magh Meall! Your oath would only be fulfilled by marrying her to another Fae Crown.”

“And so I will.” His answer was a simple proclamation and it had me snarling at his enigmatic approach. I rose to protest the idiocy of this circular conversation, and he held up his hand to stop me. “I will agree to this concession, my Hope. I will see you also married to a Fae worthy of your station.”

“What station, you daft walnut? You would have me marry a what? A dull plow instead of your sister? You etched my disgrace as clear as day on my skin yourself! I could no sooner stand as equal to her as I could stand beyond these walls as anything more than a tool in your employ. How does that make any sense at all?”

A silken chuckle rolled off him as he leaned forward, hovering so close that if one of us moved our lips would meet. When he spoke, his words dusted over me like the petals of a shaken flower. “You will come to the throne room and retrieve what you once left there. In the morning, when Árus Láigh is most powerful.”

“What the—” his finger pressed to my lips, and he began his slow retreat across the blood-soaked inner bailey.

I watched him go in his interrupted staccato walk. Had I just been summoned to court?

My head spun as I tried to put the pieces of his riddles together. All the clues said he would return my crown to me but there was one thing the man did not do, and that was return that which he had stolen. Once something belonged to the Ard Rí, it was his for eternity.

It was what vexed him most about me. I had once belonged to him, and now I might as well have been stolen from him.

Was that why he hated Cricket so much? Did this man truly see her as having stolen me from him? I hadn’t been his since the war. He had to know that. I would never be his again, either.

I frowned deeply and watched his back as he disappeared. Tomorrow morning, I would find out what twisted game was afoot. Would it be as deadly as the last game we played?

Chapter 8

Cricket

Mornings in the warrens had been a hushed-whispers, porridge, cold floors, and misery-crackling-up-bent-spines sort of affair. I expected things to be the same in Havenhome, perhaps a little less so, but I was unprepared for laughter, easy and clear, to jolt me up from a dead sleep. My heart raced in my throat and fear dragged its claws through me.