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I didn’t bother him anymore. I wanted some space and time to think to begin with. I needed to figure out what came next. Was Havenhome the next? Was it where we should stay? Could I stay here? Could I leave the three who came with me to the humans of Havenhome?

So many questions crowding my brain. I needed to think through each one. I needed to shut off my brain and let them marinate in their own juices for a while, and physical labor would be a good way to do exactly that.

I broke my back digging out the hole until there was only a sliver left of the sun, just enough to be able to find my way back from the small thicket to the river and back to Havenhome.

My thoughts were in no better of a state than they had been when I’d dragged that shovel out, but they were starting to make sense. And by the time I had washed and taken the offered clean chemise to join the mourning village for what amounted to a wake for Nick, I felt them slowly lowering into place even more.

Chapter 9

Ard Tiarna Emrys of Breacadh an Lae, The Raven of the Dawn

Irolled my neck and let the ease of popping vertebrae roll through me in the dying evening stillness. Dawn was fast approaching, and I was sipping milúll wine in the abandoned salon of my court. No one came in here. It was the first of all the salons and yet it had not been used since he had taken the throne. I was the only member of my court left, and I had always detested the salons to begin with. But it afforded me a perfect view of the doors to the throne room.

When they opened, I would be summoned to finish whatever game the Ard Rí was playing at. I had dressed for the occasion in the last piece of court finery I owned. A pair of lush, black leather breeches and matching boots, a cloth-of-gold tunic with black and gold trim adorned with the sigils of my house struck through with black thread as befitting our disgraced status, and a black cloak with matching trim. At my throat was something new though. A brooch clasp. A snake wrapped around a dog with its mouth open wide and a star in its jaws. I had quietly added it to the dowry I was collecting for my bride’s price should Cricket have ever honored me with her hand.

I had never had the opportunity to present it to her, nor the small horde hidden beneath my bed, so I wore it now to remind me of my true north. She may be dead. She may have passed into whatever humans had for an afterlife, but this was here with me. A quiet reminder of what I had and lost. My whole life was a reminder of what I had and had lost, but this deprivation needed to stand out above the ever-present din of absence. Even the black gloves on my hands still smelled faintly of her pleasure.

My fingers twitched and shook with need as the pain of loss and sorrow overcame the small sips of Siur Dobh I had placed in the wine. Just a drop or two. Just enough to keep me comfortably detached from the twist of the shard within me. Just enough to keep me from feeling the bitter misery living at the center of my being.

When the doors opened wide and a herald emerged, he had but to fill his lungs before I was stepping free of the green carpets and presenting myself.

He blinked in curious surprise and nodded. “Good. Captain, you are summoned before the Glory of the New Dew, the Ard Rí of Magh Meall. Do you heed his summons of your own free will?”

“I do.”

He turned to his apprentice who approached with a carved granite basin and a silver ewer in the shape of a crane. Adorned with intricate knitted silver wire for a handle, the herald grasped the ewer and poured the crystalline waters of the Well of Magic into the bowl and took up a short bough of blooming hawthorn. “Then cleanse yourself of your ambitions and motives beyond duty to your Ard Rí.”

I stepped forward and tucked my gloves into the belt at my waist. Dipping my hands into the icy waters, I washed them in accordance with the ritual of the High Court. The herald whispered blessings and reproaches for breach of ceremony and hospitality over me as he dragged the hawthorn down my body. The water was to cleanse me of the mundane, to invigorate my magic and center my essences. The hawthorn was to draw out any poisoned magic that had clung to me or to scrub free any non-Fae taints. One by one, the fingers of the dark sister uncurled from me, tinging the water deep orchid. I struggled under the full weight of the searing, hot pain as it worked its way through me, petrifying my lungs for a few moments.

The herald watched me with all the passive detachment of a consummate professional. He had surely seen countless courtiers wash themselves clean, seen the evidence of their addiction taint the water in the bowl. I was not the first, nor would I be the last, Fae who used a substance to fight through the horrors of our world, be it the eternal razor’s balance that was the madness of our magic, or the loss of an anam cara like myself.

His only acknowledgement of my state was a slow lofting of his brows after a few moments as if to ask if I was ready. An almost imperceptible nod was given, and he all but evaporated back into the shadows.

I was about to enter the inner sanctum of what used to be the most sacred space outside of the Temple of the Ascended. When Mabh had sat on the throne, the throne room was steeped in such deep and thick magic that it was said even thinking an oath would lock it in place, and great wonders could be born with just the slightest whisper of a push to connect the energies.

My mother had once been a lady in waiting to Ard Banríon Mabh and had said that even the House of Magic itself could not boast the wonders she had witnessed. She would never outright tell me though. Mabh had been a misandrist of the highest order claiming that those who aligned with the masculine were not balanced enough to wield and sculpt magic as much as those aligned with the feminine. To Mabh’s eye, the feminine could give and end life. Those who walked both and neither could also do the same. But the masculine could only end the magic branch of life.

There had been a reason I was so willing to turn my hammer against her.

Cleansed, I stepped forward into the now diminished inner sanctum with only three witnesses. The herald and his apprentice closed the doors behind me, leaving myself, The Lady Oaken Rose, the Ard Rí, and Our Lady Sapphire Speaker, who lounged like a favored house cat at the Ard Rí’s feet.

Each one was a glittering gem against the backdrop of the splendor of the throne, and yet even they were dulled by the lack of stable magic. The Ard Rí had gone to great extravagance for this display. Motes of sparkling, snapping magic hung in the air, and the golden flowers that normally were hammered metal into his crown were transformed into living flowers, exhaling a glittering trail of perfume around his head. The Lady Oaken Rose, who usually expended great amounts of magic to keep the roses in her hair from wilting or dying, was cloaked in a mantle of creeping roses, each blooming with gilded edges. Even the Lady Sapphire Speaker, ever soft spoken and meek compared to her braggart of a betrothed, was wreathed in deep magic. Her skin had transformed into the dark nebula of a flashing sapphire stone, swimming with fish that seemed to be alive as they traversed the passages of her veins. Each one had a halo of light radiating from them.

Vanity.

All they used their magic for was vanity. The amount of magic it would take to hold and sustain this glamor could save an entire village from blight for a season. It could hold a wild magic storm at bay long enough for a whole city to evacuate. Yet here they were, burning it just to impress a singular disgraced Fae.

It made me grit my teeth and think of all the ways in which I could have saved Cricket with this much magic. All the ways I could have eased her and the other humans suffering.

“Come closer, Raven of the Dawn. Kneel before your Ard Rí and pledge your allegiance anew,” whispered the Lady Sapphire Speaker. Her lips never moved.

On silent leather boots I stepped forward and knelt before him. In the ancient custom, I fashioned golden bracers of pure dawn light around my wrists and crossed them before my chest. “My lord Majesty,” I murmured as a means of acknowledgement. “I, The Raven of the Dawn, disgraced Ard Tiarna of Árus Láigh, deposed lord of Breacadh an Lae swear fealty to the sacred hawthorn and oak throne of Magh Meall. If its branches sway to the tune of battle, I will bend my scorching rays to its cause. Should its roots encounter pestilence, I will call my falcons to break apart the offending stone before it. This I swear on the Well of Magic and the magic that it has granted me.”

The one benefit of the ancient oath of fealty was that our ancestors had seen fit to never bind a Fae’s true name to it nor bind the oath to a specific ruler. To do so would have been the death of Fae everywhere. It is not in our nature to sit peacefully—mischief and treachery run as deep as the magic that fuels us. Each court had their own version, one that its seated Crown would learn as part of their ascension rites. Long ago when Mabh still sat the throne, even the minor lordlings and Country Fae had a version that aligned with their house or their guild. Daróg was a different kind of ruler, neither caring nor needing the fealty of those he viewed too far beneath him. The art had been lost to the ages of his rule.

“The throne acknowledges you, Captain. Rise and be counted among my banners.” I let the scorch of my bracers release and return to the Well of Magic and rose.

My betrothed watched me from behind dark, soot-coated lashes that she had always used to guard her true thoughts.