Undying (Queens of Éire #3)

Chapter 1

Chapter one

RORY

At almost half past the midnight hour, dressed in gauzy green robes and wearing a crown of snow-white lilies, Rory stabbed the king in the heart, to the delight of nearly three hundred nobles and peasants alike.

She was supposed to kiss him, but alas for him – after all, she was a fantastic kisser – killing him seemed a far pleasanter endeavor.

A collective gasp flew up from the spectators, hundreds of breaths being inhaled at once, as his blood gushed over the bodice of her mint-green gown.

Which was a shame. This particular shade had suited her complexion perfectly.

Silence fell, expectant and heavy, only broken by the faint drip-drip of the blood pooling on the wooden boards of the stage.

Rory huffed. Not the reaction she had been looking for, but apparently even the sight of cold-blooded murder in all its gory details was not convincing enough for this particular audience.

She probably should have expected this, considering the two performances preceding theirs had been full of murders and disembowelments.

Even now, the very real blood which continued to spurt wildly from underneath Jean’s robes evoked only a rising murmur of confusion from the audience.

And that simply wouldn’t do at all. What good was it to take her revenge if no one was going to appreciate it?

So as Jean stumbled forward, tripping over the hem of his costume, reaching out for her in an unspoken cry for mercy, Rory reared back and stabbed him again.

That did it.

Screams erupted from the audience, wordless squeals of horror, half-sobbed prayers to long-absent gods, as the most debonair player in all the realm fell to his knees, blood burbling over his lips, his eyes growing dull and unfocused.

Rory dropped the knife on the wood boards of the stage reaching up to toss aside her purloined wig before using her flowy sleeve to wipe away the egregious amount of stage makeup plastered on her face intended to conceal that she was not, in fact, Néné Mowbray, one of the most acclaimed stage actresses in all Albion.

She gathered her gown in her hands as she stepped over the still-twitching body of the dead man, gliding towards the darkened wings beyond the now-bloodstained stage, unflinching in the face of the brightly burning torchlights.

They caught her immediately.

She didn’t fight, even when they bound her hands behind her back, nor did she protest when they hauled her past the still screaming crowd, their faces white with shock and rage, spewing spittle and foul words.

It was worth it, all of it.

She didn’t even fight when the soldiers unceremoniously shoved her into a cell, the iron door clanging shut behind her.

It was dark and dank, reeking of stale sweat and dried urine, but she had slept in worse places.

The rope bonds around her wrists began to chafe, so she gritted her teeth and started the wearisome process of wriggling them free, a gradual loosening of the coarse rope digging into her skin.

“Not like that, a bhréone.”

She spun around, blinking in the gloom. She remembered that voice too well, smooth as the river stones that lay embedded deep in the silt of the Sionainne.

Impossible. It couldn’t be.

“Rub your palms together first.” The scuff of a booted foot scraping across the floor – a deliberate sound, she well knew, as no one heard nor saw Finn unless he allowed them to. “The sweat makes them easier to loosen.”

“Seven years,” Rory said, squinting into the gloom.

“Almost seven years it’s been, and this is what you first choose to say to me?

Explaining how I’ve gone about my imprisonment all wrong?

You might have started with ‘hello, Rory, nice to see you,’ or ‘Rory, you were an absolute vision in that dress tonight.’”

“I deemed such assurances unnecessary. You know very well that you looked stunning.”

That much was true – although, admittedly, the bloodstains and bruises and dried spittle had likely lessened her appeal quite a bit.

She closes her eyes for a moment, steadying herself. Finn was here, in this place. Protecting her, even now, when she least needed him to, ever faithful to that long ago vow of his.

“Next,” she said, opening her eyes to search for him in the shadows, “I suppose you’ll be telling me that I ought not to have skewered that nice young man in such a brutal fashion, because poisoning him would have been much less messy?’”

“It would have been far less satisfying, though.” He paused. “Though perhaps not as satisfying as what happened to our old friend, Arnaud Montrose.”

“Did something happen to him? That's a shame.”

“Sure now, you would find it a shame to learn that someone slit his throat in his sleep one night.” He moved closer, a still-blurry figure in the darkness.

“You remember his estate by the sea, don’t you?

Rumor has it that he was murdered there – killed in his own study. No one seems to know why – or who.”

“Perhaps it was the wife who killed him.”

“Whatever for?”

“Perhaps she found him to be a dullard between the sheets.” She smiled, her favorite smile, one that was cold and cunning and unfathomably cruel, even if she knew full well that it had no effect on the man who watched her from the gloom of the dungeon.

“What better reason could there be, for the killing of a man?”

“And is that why you stabbed that young man so cruelly tonight then? Because he bored you in bed?”

“Not at all. He was equally boring me out of it, and that, I simply couldn't tolerate.”

She heard Finn laugh softly in the dark.

“Do you know,” he said, “I did also hear the very curious rumor that the recently departed Jean happened to be the nephew of a certain very powerful Albion general.” He tsked softly.

“Come now, Rory. You've lost sight of yourself – of your purpose. That fool of a boy was hardly responsible for the sins of his family.” A slight pause.

“I'm surprised at you. Bloodthirsty though you may be, you've never had much stomach for the slaughtering of innocents.”

None of them were innocent. She could kill them all, down to the very last babe mewling in its cradle, and still she would be hungry for more.

The thought roared through her mind, but Rory shuttered it away.

It was not a topic that she had any intention of discussing with him.

In fact, it was well past time to be done discussing anything at all with him.

“Seven years is a long time, Finn. I've done many things that you would never have believed me to do.”

Another soft laugh. “Oh no,” he said. “Make no mistake – I believe it all.

I said I was surprised, true, but I'm also quite pleased. For a time there, I was worried that all those years living among the board-trodders might have ruined you. You spent so much time pretending to be someone else that I feared that you might have forgotten who you truly are.”

“You dare to scold me?” Her lips curled as she glared into the gloomy corridor where he still lurked in the shadows. “You, who have shamed your forefather’s memory.”

“Perhaps I have,” he said. “But you should take more care, when wielding such fire, a bhréone, else you burn yourself.”

“I have never cared for your poetic metaphors, Finn. Speak plainly.”

“Very well. I am calling you a hypocrite – my queen.”

Her cheeks stung, as though he’d slapped her, even though he had not so much as raised his hand. “I shall ask you again,” she said, “and for the final time. Why are you here?”

“Saving you, of course.”

“I have no need of saving.”

A long pause, followed by a wordless hum, the still-familiar sound of his silver-smooth voice warbling soft and low, and the hall was filled with light, a hundred white-waxed candles floating lazily in the air.

She blinked once, her eyes dazzled by the sudden rush of light, and there he was, dark-eyed and stone-faced as ever.

“I think you will want to hear what I have come to say.”

“It won’t matter. What’s done is done, Finn. It can’t be fixed.”

“I would argue otherwise.” His hand drifted down to rest upon the hilt of his sword, and she tracked the movement idly, distantly.

“One glimpse.” He was closer now, halted outside the bars of her cell.

She could see the hunger etched into the lines of his face as he watched her.

“One quick glance, and see the future that I have plotted out for you – for what was once our home.”

For a moment, they stared at one another, the silence heavy with their shared resentments, their twin sorrows, until Rory broke away, forcing her shoulders to go slack and loose, letting her vision grow blurry and fog-laden, seeking that power which she’d left untouched for so many years now, growing moldy and stale in the forgotten corners of her mind.

There was only silence and shadow, and then it struck, a lightning-bolt of knowing, a swirl of color – moss-green and blue-gray and keen bright hazel, a burst of bright golden light, then an unceasing cataract of blood-dark red – until the unmistakable taste of vengeance settled hollow and bitter on her tongue.

She swallowed thickly before she looked back at Finn to see him staring at her, hands gripping the iron bars so tight she wondered that they did not snap under the force of his fingers. “Did you see?”

“I saw.” Rory’s gaze shifted away from him again, to watch the unearthly fog she had called forth slip back into the dark corners of the corridor –to wait, to bide its time, till she chose to summon it again.

“I saw it,” she said again, aware of Finn’s unwavering stare, the keen edge of his anticipation.

“But my answer remains the same. I have accomplished what I set out to do, Finn. My debt is paid.”

“It is not,” he said, eyes burning. “What of the traitor Leinster, Rory? Does he not deserve your justice? Fitzgilbert, too –”

“If you remember," Rory interrupted gently, "the general's bloodline has recently been abruptly brought to a close. That is my justice.”

“– and her, of course. The one who most deserves to be laid low in a hellstorm of blood and ice. She yet lives, Rory, and it is an abomination, an outrage that calls out to the gone gods for vengeance, more insistent and infuriated with each passing daybreak.” His jaw tightened.

“You see now, that there is a way to see it done.”

“Perhaps,” she said. “But you only just scolded me for killing the son for the father's sin, did you not? And now you ask it of me again?”

“This one is different. He’s a coward, as much of a traitor as his father.” Finn shrugged. “Let him die with the rest.”

“You’ve grown cruel.”

“I have always been cruel,” he said. “I have always been ruthless when it came to my own ends. You simply have never had the opportunity to experience it for yourself.” His fingers fell away from the iron bars as he stepped back.

“As are you, as recent events have proven. And the time has come for both of us have to embrace that, to strike back at our enemies – to let that cruelty, that ruthlessness bring to fulfillment our wildest – and bloodiest – dreams.”

For a moment, she wavered, remembering that iron-bitter taste of victory that had flooded through her in that brief flash of what might one day be to come, if she yielded to this cursed gift of hers that still lingered at the edge of her consciousness, aching to be let loose upon the world that had so wronged her.

But then it passed, that brief flicker fading away, leaving her empty and cold, as always.

“My vengeance is complete, Finn. I left it lying on a bloodstained stage hours ago, and now I will rest.”

He stepped closer, the soft white lights bobbing closer to him, brushing against his shoulders, silent and anticipatory.

“Don’t do this,” he said. “Do not despair. Do not yield.” His gaze bore into hers.

“You know that I can give it to you – the full scope of vengeance that you are owed. You know that I can give you your revenge beyond your wildest dreams if you let me. You have seen it.”

“It will not bring back what we lost.” Her fingers flexed, slow and careful. “Go, Finn. When they come for me, as they soon will, no one will be leaving this place alive.”

He understood immediately. “Yourself included?”

Rory's cool expression did not flicker.

Because she should have died seven years ago, as she’d sworn to do, instead of hiding away across the sea. It was long overdue, this moment.

So let it come, and let him see it, in all its horror, the thing he craved. Let it end him – and her, as well.

The glowing orbs of light which he had conjured flickered, feebly fighting against whatever superior power came sidling into the room, a silent, all-consuming fog of impenetrable shadow, then went out.

“You have always been like a father to me,” she told him now, a thin layer of ice slowly, inexorably creeping across the prison walls, reaching out towards Finn with hungry, heartless talons.

“I would regret watching you die, and yet this is the fate that awaits you if you do not leave this place immediately. I am finished with this life, Finn, and I am ready to die. I do not think that you can say the same.”

“There was a time,” he said, indifferent to the gathering shadows of frost and ice around him, “when I would have. But you are right – no longer.”

“Then I would suggest,” she said, flexing the tips of her ice-covered fingers, “that you run.”

“Is that so? As you did, from Niall?”

In an instant, the shadows vanished, the fog lifted, and for a moment, Rory wondered if she herself had been stabbed, so achingly sharp and fierce was the slice of pain through her chest.

Niall.

It was a name that she had not allowed herself to think for so long, locked it away in a dank, cobwebbed corner of her mind. Her lips were cold and stiff as she forced herself to speak. “How dare you?”

A low hummed note and the orbs reignited, burning brighter and fiercer than before, and she blinked against their light as Finn smiled, furious with triumph.

“I am the only one who dares,” he said, “to speak this truth to you: you must go home again, a bhréone –not for me and not for éire – but for Niall.”