12. Chapter 12
Chapter 12
Ard Tiarna Emrys of Breacadh an Lae, The Raven of the Dawn
“ M y Lady Bandrui,” I grunted.
She raised her head from the whispered conversation she was having with the air around Senán’s statue. Her large dark-red eyes widened, owl-like, as if she hadn’t expected me.
I don’t know how she couldn’t have. Every day since I had rushed Cricket to her, I had come. Some I was allowed to see her, some not. Every single day, though, the moment I was relieved of duty by my second-in-command, I would make the long trek through the tunnels feeding directly from the prison level into the network of chambers under the Temple of the Ascended. Often it was late into the night, so late it was almost dawn.
Today was one of those days. I had spent too long going over the petitions for new courtiers to come to court. Each of them required proper investigation, and each needed to be cleared through me. It was laborious, tedious, and an unnecessary tax on my magic.
It had not just been screening of the courtiers, though. That would have taken time but would not have drawn me into the late hours such as this. Tracking the movements of the rampaging, wild magic storms terrorizing the realm, while trying to figure out where to deploy supplemental aid and where to order evacuations, had taken up the most time. Sometimes, it felt like pure luck trying to predict the capricious, chaotic appearance and movements of the storms.
The first one to be born in Magh Meall rose like a dread phoenix from the rubble of the House of Magic. I remember watching in horror as it devoured three warhorses and an entire squadron of my soldiers within moments. They had been there, staring at the rippling waves of dusk-tinted liquid swirling up out of the cracks of the stones one moment. Then, the very next, the liquid struck, and they were gone. Lightning illuminated the bones from within the storm, and as it dissipated, all it left was the scar in the grass where, to this day, scouts report no living thing thrives.
Since then, three had been charging through the countryside permanently with small instances cropping up at random. One was headed toward the battlements of Cailleach’s Keep, one headed toward the Kingswood, and the other, as ever, manifested and dissipated above the ruins of the House of Magic. No one knew if the same storm that was seen riding the air occasionally over the shattered bones that once held it back was the same one born on the day I toppled the House of Magic. But if it were, it was the only stationary one of its kind.
“Has he told you of the magic storm, my lady?” I asked, extending my hand to help her from her kneeling position.
Senán, patron god of the Dúluachair court, god of suffering, mourning, hidden things, deception, and grief, should have known of his court’s plight if none of them did.
“He did. Though I suspect you have not come to hear the whispers of an absent god.”
I gave her a wan, weak smile. She knew me well. “How is she today?”
“I . . .” She began and then looked up to the statue of Ailbhe. She held up a hand to me as she listened to the whispers and back to me.
“What does Ailbhe say? Are they still bent on me marrying into their court?”
“The old lech has given up on that dream. I suspect you know why far better than I.” A clever smirk played across her lips, and she tilted her head, watching me carefully. “They say that you should give her to them.”
I snorted and crossed the mass of my arms over my chest. “And what would they do with her? Hmm?”
She smirked with me and then let the smile fall to our feet. “Before you go in to see her . . . you need to know you are not her first visitor this day.”
My brow twitched in question.
“Please, Raven—”
I heard nothing more as I rushed down the hallway to the storeroom.
True fear flooded my body, the likes of which I had not experienced before. It seized my heart and magic and whipped it into a frothing frenzy of action. The sound of my boots slamming against the wooden boards would have woken the stones from their rest had they not been pried from their sleep to build this temple.
The scent of blood, fresh cracked bones, hot metal, and sweat filled my senses as I threw open the door to the storeroom where I had left her last.
Time slowed to droplets as I burst through the door. Daróg’s eyes connected with mine. Above his head, arms straining from the glow of hot magic, was a small anvil soaked in milky blood positioned right over Cricket’s head as she struggled to breathe, her skin having blanched. The mangled wreck of what used to be her delicate arm lay shattered at a sickening angle, her shoulder bruised a deep gold.
I did not stop to think, did not stop to consider how best to defuse the situation. All I saw was her. All I saw was the agony that she would feel. My magic reared out of my control and rampaged through me, leaving all thought of courtly deference choking on its rage-filled dust as it charged for him.
All I saw was the red blade of Dawn unsheathing itself.
I felt the reverberations of the anvil embedding itself into the wall as I ripped it from Daróg’s hands and threw it across the room. Next was his throat, slowly crunching beneath the grip of my massive hand as I pulled him toward me. He had always been smaller than I, but in this moment, he was but bug whose wings I intended to rip from its body.
Magic fled my arm, followed by all my strength, as the Bandrui’s fingers wrapped around my wrist to pry me from him. “There will be no deaths in my temple.”
Her voice was ancient and a command that reached into me and rattled my very essence, jarring me back to awareness.
My eyes connected with hers. I could see their plea reflect back at me from the wine dark orbs piercing me. I didn’t need to beg her to take care of Cricket, for she was already moving toward her the moment I had let go.
“You will meet me in the gardens, my King.” I gave him a perfunctory bow, my tone a razor-blade-thin line of chivalrous rage. I turned on my heel.
Every nerve in my body screamed at me for doing so, but I had to know the Bandrui would ensure Cricket would not die from this. The more important threat at this exact moment was the deranged beast who wore a crown.
“I will do no such thing. You will leave me to attend my daoire,” he bellowed, rage finally finding its voice, where there had only been fear a moment ago.
I paused at the door, lifting my head enough to see over my shoulder.
“It was not a request, Daróg.” The chill of his true name flowing over the silent room filled the space between us. “You will meet me in the gardens where we will settle this like the Fae we are, or I will slay you for your crimes against sanctuary here in the Temple and accept the judgment of the gods. Either way, you will answer for this abomination and heresy against the hospitality of the gods.”
There were few rules among the Fae we held so sacrosanct as the rules of sanctuary and the rules of hospitality. Whether King or God or common Fae, to shatter the lines of either of those two fundamental laws of our very nature was a crime from which no Fae could escape judgment. Not even an Ard Rí. And every one of the Fae, as sacred children of magic itself, was charged in the keeping of these sanctities .
Attempting to kill someone outside of ritual or rite unsanctioned by the Bandrui was bad enough, but attempting to kill a ward of Ailbhe’s grace while they were atop their healing bed? What had he been thinking? It was madness. It was pure lunacy of the highest order.
I ignored the small part of me that whispered I was only incensed because of what she meant to me. I ignored the little voice that whispered that my harshness was fueled by the guilt of my crime written upon her flesh. I even ignored the way my heart twisted, saying I had not done enough to protect her.
I did not wait for him. He would either join me or with the rise of the sun, when I was steeped in the most magic. I would hunt him through the Temple. The certainty of battle pumped through me, icy over the hot rage that boiled beneath it, where it found my feet pushing them into a pace on the gravel before the garden.
The first figure to step free of the Temple was not Daróg, though, but his betrothed. Eyes the shade of new grass set into a soft heart-shaped face looked up at me the way they had when Daróg had pulled her from the rubble of her house. Wonder and fear mixed in equal measures on her angelic visage as she drew closer. She had always reminded me of a kitten, quiet and meek, a perfect match for the wrathful Fae she had been promised to.
“Captain,” she whispered, the sound wrapping me in the soft fur of that small cat.
“My Lady Speaker,” I grated out, trying not to allow my rage to shear the flesh from her.
A delicate hand pressed to my flexing forearm, and she graced me with a soft, doting smile that wrapped around the rage within me and tried to suffocate it. “There is no need for you to be so worked up over a simple daoire, Captain.”
“Explain yourself immediately, Bastard of the Dawn,” Daróg snarled as he broke clear of the temple.
The Sapphire Speaker’s hand never came away from my arm. She merely stepped to the side to avoid any weapon that might come of this confrontation .
“You go too far, Highness! You violate the natural order of the Temple of the Ascended by bringing violence and death to its door,” I barked.
“Are Senán and étain not gods themselves? Do they also not hold domain and right of sanctuary in this temple?” he hissed.
Soft whispers came from his betrothed, but I ignored them as we advanced on each other. “You know very well they do and that to invoke their blessings in the Temple one must be holding ritual and have leave from the Bandrui to do so. What you were doing . . . it defies all hospitality.”
“And what will you do of it?” He picked at his nails, the sound like fork dragging down a chalk board to me, and he knew as much.
“Scian an Mabh.”
The words formed on my lips as my incensed, wild magic thrashed out of my control. It howled its impotent rage as the courtier it was attached to struggled to hold its foolishness back.
Magic is a selfish, self-centered creation. It wants what it wants and does what it wishes. It refused to allow me to ignore its insistent whispers, and in turn, I was paying for my resistance.
The Sapphire Speaker at my elbow gasped, and Daróg glared at me.
Scian an Mabh. The sacred blades of Mabh. A duel of honor.
“You have misspoken, Captain,” whispered The Lady Speaker at my side.
My resolve wavered only for the tightness around my heart to clamp harder when I remembered the state of her laying on that slab.
She had already been through so much, having barely survived wounds that refused to heal properly, fractures that reopened overnight. It was as if she were cursed.
“I have not. I call for Scian an Mabh!” I bellowed, startling a throng of Fae that had come to walk the gardens as the dawn rose over them.
“Everyone, return to the palace so that I may show mercy to my Captain of the Guard and not damage his honor any further.”
I snorted my amusement as the first ray of dawn crawled across my skin and melted into me.
My shoulder collided with the dark wood of the hallway and smeared a livid red streak across it. I snorted blood and drew in a heavy breath, stabilizing myself as I spat it and the three petals of a foxglove flower into my hand. Fucking Spéirling and their damned flowers. I crushed it across the wide plane of my thigh before pushing open the storehouse door.
The Bandrui and two additional drui gathered around the shivering, unconscious body of the golden idol of my dreams. Even having been spattered in her own milky blood, with her hair drenched and matted in her sweat and angry golden bruises blooming across her body, she was still the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. One day, I would crown her with the peaks of black agate of Dawn and cap her ears in gold. One day, I would bow at her feet and thank the gods for having blessed me in finding her.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” whispered the Bandrui as she took my arm and guided me into a chair, careful of the hissing, sizzling burn on my arm that branched up toward my heart. She was already cataloging the list of injuries, none of them too bad. “Did you at least win?”
I smirked up to her and gave her a curt nod before returning my singularly focused gaze to the woman on the slab currently having her arm rebroken and set.
The Bandrui sighed and knelt next to me as she began weaving magic around her to stitch my wounds. As the Bandrui of the Temple of the Ascended, she had access to small slivers of each of the gods’ powers. Gifts from her friends who held her in such high regard.
“Waste none on me. I will survive. Bandrui, please. Spend the gifts on Cricket.”
The deep timber of my voice rattled the nerves of the arm she was working on, and I swallowed the wince .
“You’ve eaten at least three Bláth an Earraigh bolts and who knows how many poisons, and there’s a hole in your side the size of a yew root. She is being seen to by Ailbhe’s own hand-picked drui. You will suffer my ministrations like a good boy, or I’ll be forced to clap your ears,” she bit back with all the spite of a shortbread cookie and turned soft as the flesh began to knit together. “Did you kill him?”
“No.”
“Would that you had, a great deal of her suffering would be avoided.”
“I exacted a price for his life.” The sickening crack of Cricket’s shoulder as the drui broke it to reposition it mixed with a grinding sound and settled in my churning stomach. “He would never touch her again.”
“Why didn’t you ask for her freedom, you foolish oaf?” hissed the Bandrui as I blanched.
If Cricket were awake and not kept asleep by a clever mixture of herbs and magic, she would have ripped her vocal cords apart on the agony they were putting her through to heal her.
“I tried. He would not give on it.”
“And you did not insist?”
“Tried to but wasn’t able to.” The druis’ brows collectively drew down, and they were speaking in worried hushed tones. I rose, shooing the Bandrui when she tried to insist I stay. The blood leaking from my body would continue to leak after I tended her. “What’s wrong? Why have you stopped?”
The two turned to me as my voice rose. “There has been a complication, Captain.”
“What complication? How complicated can this be? Spend the magic. Heal the girl. It is a simple matter.”
The more feminine of the two androgynous drui rolled their eyes and crossed their arms. “Would that it were, Captain, we would not be needed. Every Fae has magic. Every Fae can wield magic. But knitting flesh and bone is one thing. The pathways by which magic innervates our flesh is different from the electricity that innervates the flesh of a human and despite her outer shell. The girl is human. ”
“So? You have treated humans thousands of times. What is the problem? Heal the girl.”
“Her flesh does not respond the way it should, Captain,” the other drui of Ailbhe said as a way of explanation and apology. “Not even for a human.”
My eyes darted between the two of them. “I don’t understand.”
“And that is the problem, Captain. You don’t understand the workings of Ailbhe.”
“All due respect to you, drui, it doesn’t seem like you do either if healing a simple human girl from mundane wounds confounds you. So, have you earned your caps, or are you just another one of the pretty trappings of the Temple?” I growled.
“Careful, Raven. You’re supposed to make friends with the people who hold your pet’s life in the balance,” the Bandrui said at my side through gritted teeth.
“Perhaps if we . . .”
The two drui of Ailbhe faded off into conferring with each other as they spoke in rushed, hushed tones about the intricacies of flesh mending.
I gave the Bandrui a sidelong glance and winked. “Works on soldiers, too. Sometimes, you’ve got to give them a reason to prove you wrong.”
Her brows drew down, and she began chewing on her lip. “It’s rather serious, Raven. Those are the two best healers in the temple. If they are pushing themselves, it is very serious.”
I nodded to her, returning to the chair by the door that had become my second bed.
“I suspected as much.” I eased myself into the chair and stretched so she could have better access to the wound at my side that had narrowly missed my organs. “You were keeping her from me while he was beating her?”
The question fell as an open-palmed slap across the Bandrui’s face as her fingers stilled for a moment. “She could not feel the damage, and at first, it was easy enough to heal it while we were working on her other injuries. There was no reason to goad your ire when he was neither causing her pain nor harming her in a way that could not be undone. It was best to allow him his visitations and keep the peace of the temple.”
“That violates hospitality,” I hissed, trying to keep my temper under control. Here she was, stitching up my wounds while calmly telling me she had allowed that beast to brutalize a defenseless woman in her care.
“It did. And I have done my penance for that violation. It was necessary.” She raised and inspected my arm where I still bore the mark of Cricket’s bite. “Did that bastard bite you?”
“There was nothing necessary about it, Bandrui. I will not accept the whisperings of your estranged friends as a reason to violate the sanctity of the Temple nor harm a defenseless charge of the Temple, human or not.” I tipped her chin up with the crook of my finger and glared down at her. “It does not happen again. You do not keep these secrets from me again. She is my ward. Do we have an accord?”
Something deviously clever sparkled in her dark-red eyes, and she nodded. “Then, you will take charge of your ward when you can.”
“I will. And leave the bite mark. It’s a trophy.”
“Of what? A rabid dog?”
“My utter defeat,” I quipped enigmatically while watching the hound in question.
Her placating smile was a small balm to my nerves as she worked, and I watched Cricket. Every twitch, every wince, even though I knew it to be a momentary bodily reaction, felt like I was suffering it myself. My heart broke, and my spirit ached for the agony she would have been experiencing if she were not held in an unnatural torpor. Guilt and torment paired together and created a toxic stew within me.
It took them hours to finally finish with her and flee the room, leaving us in silence. All the while, I sat in the chair by the door, guarding her from anything else. Exhaustion tried to claim me more times than I cared to admit. Long hours slipped by sometimes with me fighting the battle not to nod off more than the slight inconvenience from the devastating wounds I had received during the duel .
Daróg had fought me with everything he had. I could see it on his face. He wasn’t going to let the duel stand in his way if I hadn’t completely humiliated him. I could feel him drawing from The Sapphire Speaker the entire time, pulling and siphoning her magic away from her like the little leech he had become. Every one of his attacks was twice as vicious, twice as brutal as they should have been.
I had to mete my own strength. I could not let him know or see the true depth of my own stores. I could not allow him to see how strong I had become under the stress of years of his torment. I could only let him see me struggling. It had been the hardest fight I had waged since the war. Everything within me, every molecule of my essence had wanted to rip him from the very pages of the history of our realm and burn him from memory, for her. To keep her safe. To keep her whole. To honor her in blood.
But I couldn’t.
There were too many years of planning set out before us to allow that to happen. Too many years of careful preparation to destroy him for one single duel to unmake all the plans we had laid down. And even if there was not, she was not ready for me. Not yet. And it would be all for naught.
So, I had let him strike me, let him bend and break me against his magic more times than I should have. Only when I knew that he had nothing left did I allow myself to show him the tiniest droplet of strength I had accumulated. It had been an easy bluff—a painful one but an easy one. He would return to his chambers to sulk and stew and would excuse the loss by the fact that we fought at dawn during the waning of spring. He was naturally at his least powerful with the ending of his court’s time, and I was naturally at my strongest with the height of my own. He could justify his loss as circumstantial and not the routing that should have been his penance for the breach of hospitality.
I pushed out of the chair, groaning silently at the stiffness in my body. I needed a long, hot, steaming bath and to enjoy the unwinding of the day, but before I did that, I would bathe her.
I knelt at the edge of the stone platform and watched her sleep .
Her eye had been stitched closed in an effort to save it. The way it dangled and bounced as I ran still haunted my dreams. Her hair had been parted where they had taken tiny tweezers to remove the slivers of her skull that tried to work themselves into the flesh of her brain. Fluid kept gathering over the exposed, wrinkled greyish-pink that throbbed gently with the strength of her heartbeat. Her nose had been broken multiple times, healed multiple times, and had formed a small bump in the middle of the bridge I could not help but obsess over. Would she like it the way I did? Would she find beauty in the evidence of her survival the way I did?
I gently removed the soft wool blanket that had been draped over her to keep her body from prying eyes. No matter how many times I saw the evidence of his brutality, it always made my gorge rise. I had seen atrocities pile up in the mud of a once-parched battlefield and had never reacted. I had committed such heinous acts upon my enemies that they were whispered in nightmare tales to scare young Fae babes. But this roadmap of carnage was too much for me to bear witness to.
Her hips, once full and rounded with a feminine flare, were littered with dark bruises, where he had taken the stout oaken leg of a chair and beaten her repeatedly until I was sure the cracking was no longer the sound of bones breaking but of the wood striking the stone floor beneath her. The bones had been reshaped but were still weak and delicate.
She was a collection of more broken pieces than whole. There was not a single place on her that had not been destroyed in those nightmarish three minutes. Three minutes that would define my life for the rest of eternity.
Delicately, I took up the sponge and bucket of clean water and began washing her body. I had to be careful, though. Each wound, each split in her beautiful skin was precariously held together with stitches of magic and prayers. My hands were better suited to brutality, not made to gently dab sweat, blood, and filth from her body with a featherlight caress .
I labored over cleaning her, making sure every inch of her was fresh. When I was done, I took the oils I had purchased from the merchant who had come up from the surrounding villages to ply their wares to fancy courtiers. They had promised the oils made of comfrey, rose, elder, and sweet rush mixed with almond would not only soothe her skin but also bring healing to it.
I silently prayed to the gods as I massaged them into her skin that they watch over her and bring her back to me, even if she returned with fury. All I wanted was to hear her voice again. To see her turquoise eyes flashing with amusement and teasing me with that special barb she always used. I longed to save her from herself again.
At least when she was busy flashing her claws at me, I could pretend to be the gallant knight saving her from the dragons she lined up in front of herself. At least when she was up and moving around, I could hear her voice and feel the way it twisted my heart and guts into knots.
I slathered her entire body, every inch with the oil, and hoped that, one day, she would forgive me enough to allow me to touch her like this under less . . . painful situations.
Once her skin was tended to, I moved to her hair. The golden strands were a mess from every manner of befoulment, and I hesitated to acknowledge the splatter across her face and into her hairline that was just as creamy as her blood but was certainly not.
Anger boiled deep and hot in me again as I slowly unwound the braid from her hair and began cleansing it, too. I wished I could wash away the memory of what had happened to her. I wished I could wash away the violation of her body as easily as I could wash away the blood and filth. She was not meant to be abused this way. She was not meant for this at all. She should be sat atop a throne of black agate and basking in the golden rays of Dawn.
“I’m sorry, sweet girl,” I murmured down to her as I gingerly combed through her hair. “You deserved better from me. I thought the greatest danger to you would be not understanding our language. I thought if I warped your tissues into the memory of our language that it would ensure you a safe life here. I was such a fucking fool. I have disappointed you in ways you don’t even know yet. Ways that will be my eternal shame.”
I lathered a gentle soap into her tresses and rinsed them clean and clear.
“When you rise from this bed—and I know you will—I will endeavor to be better for you. You deserve that from me. I will woo you the way you deserve. With gentle smiles and soft words. I will touch you with careful hands and be the guardian you deserve. Just . . . come back to me, Sóna. Let me prove myself worthy of you.”
I sighed at her silence and finished her hair with a simple braid I tied with a leather strip from my own hair.
When I was done tending to her body, I changed the linens she was tangled in and pressed a kiss to her forehead. I didn’t care that my magic leaked out of me to fill her. Let her have what scraps I had left.