32. Chapter 32
Chapter 32
Ard Tiarna Emrys of Breacadh an Lae, The Raven of the Dawn
I rolled my neck and groaned into the popping barely disguised by the crunching of my boots in the gravel path to the greenhouse. My guards were fanning out, moving in stealth among the flower beds, whispering their apologies as they passed each of the bud heads. I hadn’t said that I would meet him alone. He had not even asked it.
It was sloppy of him. But who wouldn’t be in his position? I’d have agreed to give anything, my true name be damned, if I were him. The way she came undone for him was like a ritual ecstatic writhing before a bonfire in the old days. She had sloughed off all pretense of her humanity, and for the briefest of seconds, I could have been convinced she was the Fae that she had been molded into mimicking. I had watched humans mating over the years. What young Fae wasn’t curious how other species mated? I had never seen the abandon, the wantonness, the commitment to pleasure like that.
Most of them were silent except for the panting grunts. She hadn’t even realized that she talked while she fucked. I jealously hoarded those words and kept them to myself. The bridle was my own jealousy at first, wanting to keep the way she screamed, begged, and whispered her passions all to myself. But when I saw her mouth spread wide, lips stretched thin and struggling to keep the drool in its cavern, I reconsidered my faith in the gods.
Surely, she had usurped them all.
I had left her in my most private chambers, hoping she would take some time to calm down and maybe rest. The thought of her drew a smile to my face without my permission. Of her having curled up on the coverlet I had made to be warm and soft against her delicate skin. Of her snuggling into sheets that she, if sharp-eyed, would notice had her name stitched in matching threads and a love sonnet I had selected for her. Perhaps she had even taken down her hair, and it was pooling in golden sheets across the pillows I had replaced in anticipation that, one day, we would share the bed.
I wanted the best for her. I wanted her to rest among the luxury she deserved. Even if the only time I could have her time was at night, under the cloak of darkness, with no one watching.
At least until I could figure out a way to unyoke her from servitude and flee this corrupted place. Until that blessed day, I would find ways for me to carve out small bits of joy for her and enjoy the way she burned for me.
Flicking my gaze to the dusk-kissed foliage around the greenhouse as I closed in on it, I found the softest glint of a metal bracer. That had to be Hemlock.
I’d told him to either blue his armor or wear leather like the rest of us. He was a slave to the aesthetic of being a soldier and not much dedicated to the actual art of war. I hated having to tolerate the foppish young Fae courtiers whose family wanted to claim a trophy of war. They made my job harder. I would have to deal with Hemlock sooner rather than later. If he blew this operation, I would disembowel him.
Candlelight streamed out of the greenhouse, casting small slivers of golden puddled light across the garden as I made my way to the glass door and opened it.
Brittle Spear was sipping a glass of wine as he leaned against one of the potting tables, casual as always. The man could have a hurricane bearing down on him, and he’d merely tsk at his spilled drink.
“Brittle Spear,” I grunted .
He didn’t even bother to look up from his wine. “A single night of passion, and you are so very familiar with me, Raven.”
His tone was bored, as if he had been waiting for me for ages. “Please do excuse me, Ard Tiarna Brittle Spear of Fómhar.”
He was, once again, wearing the Bandrui’s brother’s face. It irritated me. I didn’t want to see the same face that had seduced my little bug so easily. I wanted to see the cursed beast under it. The sharp, lopsided smile he gave me hinted at the serrated teeth his cursed form had.
“That’s better, Captain. Now. You have called me here after our beautiful little liaison. To what do I owe this additional blessing of your company? Though I do lament that my Pearl is not with you, is she?”
I frowned, barely restraining the growl of irritation. My Pearl ? I let him fuck her for me once, and suddenly, she is his pearl? If I didn’t know what was coming for him, I would rip his twisted cock from his body and shove it down his throat to muffle the screams as I gorged on his agony.
“She is not. She rests in my chambers after our attentions drained her.”
I let every drop of my irritation and the image of his painful demise leak into my voice. I wanted him to know exactly who she belonged to even if I let him share her with me.
“Then, what business have we further, Raven? Will you finally tell me why you plied me with your golden whore?”
The muscle at the side of my jaw ticked painfully as I ground my teeth together. “The games we play are for the chambers, Brittle Spear. Outside of them, you will respect her as a lady of the court, or you will never see her again . . . or anyone else for that matter.”
His damned smirk twitched again. “So, you do care for her? A human? Tsk-tsk, my dear old friend. We both know how that ends. Very well, then. Even when I am not playing the dandy for her, I will respect our lady Pearl as you ask.”
“Your hospitality is appreciated, Ard Tiarna.” I tipped my head to him begrudgingly, even though I wanted to tear from him any disrespect he thought of letting grow root in his fool head .
He returned it, a truce silently called between us. “To business, then?” he asked, making a grand gesture for me to join him leaning against the potting table.
I obliged, drawing his attention away from the crouching guards who hid in the darkness outside of the other door opposite from which I had entered.
“Do the Abhartach still traffic in spiderlings?” I accepted his offer of his glass of wine but did not sip from it.
Brittle Spear wasn’t simply a random rabble rouser I had picked out of a hat.
The poison Sorrow had selected was incredibly rare, and outside of the Dúluachair court, there was only one other place to find it, the Fómhar court. And even they had a hard time distilling and perfecting it. Odharnait rewarded her followers in many ways, and one of them was her tomes of poisons gathered from every realm she had ever walked. Some of them couldn’t even exist in this world, magic too much of a jealous creature to allow it.
He cocked a russet brow at me. “You plied me with the best evening I’ve had since our dear Boar King rose to power for a spiderling? I knew you were a strange Fae, dear Raven, but that is strange even for you. Yes, to answer your question. We still tend the broods in the deep caves of our lands.”
We had kept the exact nature of how the King had been attacked a secret. Every single Fae unfortunate enough to witness it had been oath-sworn to secrecy and a few hostages, to ensure their silence, were resting in a special wing of the palace kept for the cursed.
I adjusted, making a show of trying not to be too uncomfortable about ensuring we were alone. I had learned from the best how to fake even the smallest of micro expressions and tells. Prince Sorrow had not trained as hard as he had under Senán himself for me to fuck this up.
“I’m not looking for a spiderling, Brittle Spear.” I dipped my words low for only his ears, even though my expression remained passive and hateful. There was no better lie than the truth. “The King is weakened. And I seek a poison to remove him from the throne completely. I cannot liberate her while he still lives and holds her true name in his grip.”
“So, it’s all true, then. The rumors of you two.” He clucked in the back of his throat when I did not answer and looked up to the dark glass ceiling of the greenhouse. “Tell me the truth, Raven. No more lies. Why?”
I wanted to reject the request, but what did it matter? He would be dead within a day.
“I love her.”
He snorted. “I said no more lies.”
“I am not lying.”
“You barely know her! She is just some sprite that skipped in on a Far Darrig ship with a sad story and a fiery temper. You cannot possibly love her enough to kill . . . him. ”
I knew what he meant. Not enough to kill my lifelong friend, the man to whom I had sworn my allegiance and so many other titles that muddied the waters.
I watched him. I would not debase myself by repeating it. It was the truth. I did love her. And so much more. To say I loved her was like saying Magh Meall loved magic. Now that I knew her, knew she existed, I could not survive without her.
“Very well. Which?”
“The crawlers.”
His head snapped to me, and he stared. “Are you fucking mad?”
A slow roll of my shoulders as the trap began clicking shut was easily disguised as a shrug.
“That poison is infectious, Raven. Do you not know this? It is why our court keeps its process so hidden. It is the only one of our remedies that can kill even those that have the misfortune of being in the same room.”
I hadn’t known that. I knew that, once the poison began birthing the crawler spiderlings, there was no stopping it, and it would spread through the victim until it was wholly consumed by the spiderlings. I also knew that the weapon needed to be burned and cleansed or the spiderlings would continue to breed even after the victim was devoured. I had not known that even being in the room with a victim could be deadly.
Sorrow and I would have words.
Brittle Spear forged on, seeing my wavering. “Any Fae unlucky enough to be in the same room with a victim for too long could be mistaken for the crawler’s next meal. And on and on and on, the cycle will go. They could consume the whole of Magh Meall if not contained and used by an especially skilled assassin. Only the most elite of my Abhartach know how to use it let alone brew it!”
“So, you have it.”
“Of course I have it, you fucking étain-cursed donkey. I’m just not fool enough to use it!”
“Not even for her?” I pitched back at him as swift as he had dismissed me.
“I—” He snapped his mouth shut and huffed, mimicking the dragon his line was descended from. When his temper finally came under control, he snapped a nod. “For her. Yes. But you will share her evenly between us. From now until she tires of me.”
A slow, satisfied smile crept into my face as the guards heard him admitting to having access to the very rare poison that had been used in the attempt to kill the King. I almost wished that he had said his blasted court had burned the recipe and no longer held knowledge on how to make it.
“She is not a bargaining chip, Ard Tiarna. I selected you not because I needed this but because I knew you would treat her with care and give her what I could not.” I pushed off the potting table as the guards began streaming in. “Even if I wish I could.”
Brittle Spear’s eyes flicked from the guards to me and then tipped his head, acknowledging he had been played. Almost as if he had expected it.
I don’t see how he couldn’t have guessed this would be the outcome. He had watched me move in secret and shadow for far too long for him to have thought I would let him fuck her without exacting a toll worthy of the gods, especially if he suspected that I cared for her .
Even if he had no way of knowing what she was to me, even if she was nothing more than the untouchable daoire of the Ard Rí, to fuck her, he had to have known that I would have bled him for every drop of his pleasure. After all, the rumors were that I had bled an entire court dry for the sole crime of vexing the bastard on the throne.
I folded my arms as Silvertree and Quick Blade patted Brittle Spear down. He had been wise enough to come to this meeting in nothing but a well-tailored white linen tunic, a bare of breeches and unshod feet. Had he worn anything else, he’d have been handled much differently.
A commotion outside of the greenhouse drew my eye to Heart and her wife, Light, who were wrestling two hidden Fómhar to the ground, their leather-clad knees pressing plate caps into spines as they wielded leverage against the wrists of their query.
“Reinforcements, Brittle Spear? That’s not like you,” I taunted as he was drawn away. “Take the three of them to the accommodations on the second floor.”
Heart cocked her silvery brow to me. “Not the Maw, sir?”
“No. None of them are worthy of the Maw’s caress. And I have everything I need from them anyway. It is solely a matter of the council approving their return to magic.”
She nodded, and the prisoners were drawn away into the dark.
No one would go into the Maw again.
No one except her.
The way she had come alive under my blade had surprised even me. I knew that she held back her passions tightly laced up beneath the guise of aloofness. I had watched her take Daróg’s cock, and the twisting jealousy within me at the sounds she made while she did so had pushed me to make a mistake. A mistake that I was still not sure was the reason he had lost it or if there was something else. Some other reason that he had been drawn into rage.
I had wanted to be connected to her. I had needed to pretend even for a short, deluded moment that she was performing for me, that she was sucking my cock with such deep enjoyment. It was a foolish idea, a foolish slip of focus, and I had let my magic flow through my foot into her.
At first, I had rationalized that I had done it to make it easier for her, to make the violation that she had to perform easier for her to tolerate. If the magic of Dawn, Feidlimid’s own blessing of joy, could ease the trauma, it would have been a mercy, right? In truth, it was selfish. I had needed the balm. I knew that now. Watching my own heart forced to debase herself against her will and knowing she did not enjoy it had been a sick, twisted punishment, I was unable to submit to. Even for her.
I was haunted by the questions. Was that the reason why? Had he felt it? Had he felt my magic flowing through her? Had she acted as a simple conduit between the two of us? The guilt of not knowing why I had nearly lost her after finding her was a stag’s rack wedging beneath my ribs, piercing me as it gored me for my failure.
I hadn’t let myself touch her since. I couldn’t risk the draw of our bond. I couldn’t risk my magic answering her siren call and finding the path of my skin against hers, so easy to use, to break free of my control as it sought its natural place in her. As tempted as I was. As deeply as the ache within me was throbbing like a smashed thumb, sensitive to even the slightest jostling.
“Captain,” Fleetfoot muttered, coming to join me in my brooding lean against the gate that separated the greenhouse from the palace gardens proper.
“Fleetfoot.”
I felt him follow my gaze to the corner of the garden patch, where the humans were flowing in from their duties in the fields and gardens that fed the Warrens.
“Thinking about plowing one of the garden gnomes? I tried one once. Nice and tight—muscular, too. He sounded so fucking hot pounding into me. Fucked me into the potting table so hard I had splinters in my hips for weeks. Tried one of their women, too—more my speed, to be honest. The big tits bouncing as I fucked her really heightened the experience. Different from the Fae, though. Not as passionate. She just sort of took it, even though she was the one that initiated it.”
I let my gaze slide to him, my head never moving but my brow raising. “I assume that this tale of you violating the Ard Rí’s servants has a purpose, Fleetfoot.”
“Oh. Uh. Mostly just talking to hear myself speak, Captain.”
“I recommend in the future, soldier, you might sound better silent.”
I felt him turn to look at me full on, and I grunted. It wasn’t that I disliked my guards, but they liked to poke and prod in business that didn’t involve them. And I suspected Fleetfoot was about to do the exact same thing.
His boot toed at a convenient rock.
“Is it true, then, that you haven’t taken a lover since the war?”
“I’m testing out the human custom of keeping their lovers a secret, soldier. I suspect that your honor greatly appreciates their discretion. I would advise you do so as well.”
The words were a bald threat, but as ever, I masked it with the even, flat tone that kept everyone around me from being on edge. I wanted to snarl. I wanted to bite. Always. She and I had that in common.
It was her savagery, her indomitable spirit, and her refusal to be subdued that drew me. A kindred spirit.
An itch started in the back of my mind. Like the sensation of a bug crawling up the inner wall of my skull.
“Are you now?”
The sly look he gave me was not lost on me, but the insistent itch drew my attention away from him, drowning out anything he said.
It grew, rumbling down the corridors of my mind, until my entire body was seized by a thousand daggers piercing me. A high-pitched, insistent ringing took hold of my awareness, and drowned all sound and sight as pain racked me.
I rocked on my feet, my balance shifting left and right, like I was on a boat in the middle of a raging storm as every one of my battle-hardened muscles strained against their anchors on my bones .
Bile rose up in the back of my throat and spread across my tongue in an acrid, bitter taste.
Gravel bit into my hands, knees and the left side of my face. The plate guards on my ears scattered across the pathway, and I groaned as burning cold lanced through me.
“Captain! Captain!”
It sounded like Fleetfoot, but it was so far away and so soft compared to the shrieking banshee in my ear.
I tried to push the gravel pathway away from me, tried to rock back to sitting on my heels, but the colossal weight of the ice that tore at me from within my very body prevented it.
Thoughts fled my head like scattering birds driven from their hiding places by braying hounds. All I could feel or see was blackness and haunting flashes of pale-blue light.
Cricket.
Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong.
I clamped down on the storm of magic within me, which fought my flesh to riot out into the world around me to find her before my cells could follow. I leashed it and pulled it back under my control like a herd of wild stallions thundering across the hills, fleeing from a dirge hound.
“What’s wrong with him?” demanded a feminine voice.
“I don’t know. We were just talking and then . . . now he’s like this.”
It was Fleetfoot. I was sure of it. Still fucking talking.
Hands were on me, grasping and pulling my bulk up from the ground. Everywhere their hands touched me felt like my skin peeled away in their grip, and I bellowed in pain. Pain and rage.
And then I was a bolting Percheron, rearing up and battering anything before me. My feet, massive hooves pounding at the ground as magic warred within me, took control and threw me headlong, stampeding toward a destination that had no solid place on a map.
Just a name .
Sóna.
Sóna.
I had to get to her. I had to find her. Something had happened. Something catastrophically wrong had happened. I had never felt this before. I had never felt the pulse of insistent panic and fear that rode me and pushed me through the gardens, through the palace and hallways.
I had never known fear like this in my entire life. Not even when faced with an executioner’s ax.
I had breached the main hall that would lead down into the prison levels when a bolt of unseen lightning shot straight through me. My muscles seized, and barbed wire tore through every vein within me. Ice replaced my blood and hollowed me out.
My magic went still.
Deadly still.
And then snapped.