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“What was broken, I shall guard. What was hidden, I shall seek. What was sundered, I shall labour to join.”

When I speak those words, a pale fire kindles in the glowing symbol, causing the tiniest of hisses to slip past my lips. A lesser man would have yelped. I come near to being that lesser man.

“I take up the charge laid down by those before me, not for glory, nor for vengeance alone, nor for the saving of my own life, but that Éire be not left forsaken while one true heart remains to stand for her.”

“By blood, by witness, by love freely given, and by the hope that has outlived despair, I bind myself to the Emerald Oath.”

The tether connecting me to the basalt pulses faster.

A murmur rises all around me, but the voices are not familiar. They sound distant, strange, as though they are coming from somewhere far beyond the room.

“And I shall not be released from it,” Mannie finishes, his voice lower still, “until the severed halves are made whole once more, and the Raven Queen and the White Hart are seated together again.”

I say it after him all the same, though that last bit is alarming enough that I mean to come back to it later.

The fresh mark upon my hand flares, and for one terrible, brilliant instant both it and the tablet blaze bright enough to blind. The light flowers outward all at once filling every corner of the room. It doesn’t dim or recede. It simply vanishes, as if some unseen hand has closed over it, leaving the air bare and my sight swimming with afterimage.

I step back.

Róisín reaches for my hand at once, turning it gently in hers, brows knitting when she finds nothing there but my normally sun-tanned skin.

“Are you all right?”

I can still feel where it hit me, a sharp little bite of heat that took me by surprise more than anything else.

I catch her by the waist and pull her in, pressing a quick kiss to her mouth before I can think better of it.

“It was only a brief sting,” I say.

Then I glance past her toward Mannie.

“Although,” I add, voice dry, “a fucking warning would’ve been nice.”

Mannie only shrugs.

“You act as though I make a habit of performing oathing ceremonies.”

Then Róisín draws in a breath, squares her shoulders, and steps forward.

She swears as I did, line by line.

Róisín tries to swallow the pain of it, stubborn woman that she is, but the whimper still gets out, and I see red at once.

The primitive male in me wants to lunge across the space, snatch her hand away, and punch Mannie square in his ancient, infuriating face.

Instead, I lock my jaw and stay where I am. She’d likely plant a fist in my face for interrupting, anyway.

She finishes the words.

The mark flares bright across her skin, then vanishes as quickly as it came, leaving her breathless and blinking hard against the sting of it.

The instant Mannie lowers the stone, I’m there.

My hand finds the small of her back. “You okay?”

She lets out a shaky breath that might almost be a laugh. “No, you undersold that, ya bastard.”

That would worry me more if she did not then lift her chin and add, with watery-eyed irritation, “But I’m still standing, aren’t I?”