11. Chapter 11
Chapter 11
A giant Maio drum was being struck by an especially skilled dancer behind each of my lids. With every strike, my entire body shuddered. I couldn’t open my eyes, for even the act of trying to lift them was like wrestling an anaconda. I wanted to return to the blackness I had slid out of to take up residence in the throbbing, aching, agony-infused flesh I was wrapped in. Every inch of my body felt like I had been tucked into a blanket of concertina wire and thrashed around too much in my sleep. Even the rise and fall of my breath was a level of effort I didn’t want to repeat.
The scent of clover, resin, and dried rose petals hung, heavy and smoky in the air. It wrapped around my beating head and whispered sweet lies about how delightful the living world was. It stroked the side of my face and said I should open my eyes.
I didn’t take orders from incense, so I kept perfectly still in the strange bed of pain.
As consciousness came to me slowly, I saw flashes of other moments when I had come to. A flash of gold and forest green. Soft hands pressing warm, wet rags to fevered skin. The gentle rumble of a masculine voice. The raised voices of two women and a man. The conspiratorial tittering of two women. A soft song sung sweetly too close to my ear that I didn’t hear the words but the sentiment behind. It was a song of longing and yearning. Images were threaded through with torment and bloody threads wrapped around panic .
How long had I been laying here? How long had I been sweating into this same blanket? And where was I? It was too warm and smelled too good to be the warrens. I didn’t hear Violet, Green Man, or even Emerald’s shuffling and tinkling movement. The warrens were a loud place, even at night. Wherever I ended up was quiet, like it was holding its breath, waiting for something or someone.
All except for the two that were in hushed argument somewhere to my left in the distance.
“Perhaps it is time is all I am saying,” said the first voice, an old woman whose age hung in her statement like herbs from rafters.
“No. He can’t be trusted.”
The second voice was a man. The sound of it made my stomach knot up with fear and wrath, but I didn’t recognize why.
“You trusted him enough to betroth him to your sister.”
“That was then, and this is now. The war changed him.”
“That’s what happens when you murder your best friend’s entire family.”
“Watch your tone, Bandrui.”
“And watch your temper, Ard Rí. They might tolerate your tantrums up in the court, but you stand in my realm and the pact states—”
“If every time I come here, you remind me of the letter of our contract, I will stop coming.”
Ill temper, barely restrained, was bubbling in the male’s voice.
“You will continue to come. You cannot stay long from Caoilfhionn. We both know how weak you are without him, with Faolán’s back your only comfort. So, you will continue to come, and we will fulfill our pact. Now. Back to him.”
“The answer is still no. I dissolved his betrothal for a reason. He cannot be given access to a chroí. He would be too powerful, even without his court behind him. He simpers like the rest of them, but I don’t trust it. He brought me that thing for a reason. It’s too beautiful. It bleeds gold. Did you know that? It’s too beautiful for him to have given up something that cost him so much power so easily. ”
The woman snorted her amusement. “Did he, though? Seems to me that he prevented you from killing her.”
The male went quiet as if in thought, and the room around me leaned in close as if hanging on what it believed would be the next words. They never came, though, and the palpable disappointment settled heavily all around me.
“If not him, then who? She must be married. The court is starting to talk. You already draw your own betrothal out for too long. The rest of the realm is starting to think you will never marry the heir to Canai eter Duthracht. It has been nearly a year since you last let us bid any of the courtiers from the rest of the courts to marry. There is starting to be talk that you are delaying their weddings to distract from your own nuptial delay.”
The sound of a meaty fist slamming into something wooden shot shivers of terror and agony through my blood. A heavily carved wooden door, my pale golden pearl hand covered in golden blood reaching for it flashed behind my eyes and squeezed my lungs tight.
“Fine. Who is still waiting?” the male growled.
“The daughter of Macha of árus Contráth has been courted by the son of Prince Sorrow.”
A derisive snort was given. “I told you already, no love matches.”
“Your insistence on keeping the breeding pairs as weak and hateful as possible will, one day, serve as the venom you serve yourself. You know that, right?”
“The kingdom was full of them before I took the throne. It didn’t stop me.”
“And so it wouldn’t, for when Mabh’s own son is slain, fear would slice any chroí into chroí baire.”
“Just do it. None. Wed Macha’s daughter to Lady Ever Bright’s bastard. The Dusk’s goddess is missing as it is. They cannot expect a powerful match when even their patron turns her favor from them. As for Sorrow’s son, wed him to”—the voice paused as if in thought—“árus Aine, the Scythe’s niece. She is weak of mind and weak of talent. Sorrow has and always will be a grasping sycophant. Let him feel that he has won only to realize the Scythe is the only one in that entire house with any sort of power.”
The female voice tutted softly. “That will displease Prince Sorrow greatly.”
“I don’t need him happy. I need him under my boot, and with his house’s power dwindling as magic runs roughshod over their battlements and his sole heir married to a turnip of a wife, he will have no choice but to turn to me to supplement their reserves.”
“You play a dangerous game, Ard Rí.”
“I play a winning game.”
“And if Prince Sorrow ever discovered this? Or any of them?”
The caution in her voice filled the empty space around me.
“That is why I bound you with your own name before we ever embarked on this little venture, Bandrui. By all means, walk outside these temple walls and scream at the top of your lungs what you know. Watch how quickly magic swallows you. Even with it rampaging across the land, it would turn its eye to an oath breaker faster than a wisp can snap. Now, make the proclamations. I have better things to do.”
“As you wish, Majesty . . .”