Chapter 16
Chapter Sixteen
Awareness came back to Cillian slowly, like a dream.
“He doesn’t know you.”
“He is my prince.”
“You’re Fae, and your kind have been torturing us all week. He won’t trust you, but he’ll trust me.”
“If you harm him—”
A short, sharp laugh had Cillian wanting to soothe the edges of Bran’s fear through the migraine pounding through his head. “I traded myself to keep him alive when Ainmire had us. Do you think I’d hurt him now?”
Bran’s words penetrated the fog wrapped around his mind better than an alarm. Cillian groaned, forcing his eyes open, staring up at a wooden ceiling, the bed beneath him swaying with a motion that wasn’t him but wherever they were. “Bran?”
The other man’s familiar face appeared above him, and the state of it had Cillian moving before he realized that was probably not a good idea.
Pain stabbed through his entire body when he got an elbow underneath him, and he hissed, resisting the urge to flop back down on the bed.
His head ached, pain spiking through his skull.
“Lie down,” Bran said, grabbing him gently by the shoulders and easing him back anyway. “Apparently, being skinned by Etain takes it out of people.”
Cillian gripped Bran’s arms, blinking up at the other man’s bruised and swollen face, everything coming back to him in jagged segments. Ainmire and the cell. Etain and whatever her magic had done to him. And Bran—
“What did that bastard do to you?” Cillian rasped.
Bran blinked down at him, his dark brown hair falling over his forehead, one eye half-swollen shut above a bruised cheek. His lips were swollen as well, the holes from thread cutting through them barely scabbed over. “Besides be a creep? Not what you’re thinking.”
Cillian tightened his hold as best he could on Bran, searching his eyes. “You’re sure?”
“You were worth everything I gave up.”
“Bran. What did you trade?”
“I got on my knees and begged to ride with you in that carriage, but that’s it. Ainmire said yes.”
Bran wouldn’t quite meet his eyes, and Cillian knew there was probably more to that interaction than Bran was letting on, but he decided not to push. “You’re okay?”
“Other than my face and our current situation? Yeah. I’m okay.”
Cillian tensed. “Current situation?”
Bran moved to sit on the edge of the bed.
Cillian didn’t want to let him go but reluctantly did so.
Bran turned his head, and Cillian followed his gaze.
“Niamh helped take us from the carriage. You were unconscious when it happened. She took off Ainmire’s collar for me, too, along with the shackles they had on your wrists. ”
The Fae in question stood nearby, dressed in knee-high boots and skintight pants, a white blouse, and a black corset, making her look not unlike a pirate.
A bandolier was slung over one shoulder, small throwing knives attached in a neat line over the front.
A gold necklace hung from her throat, the round pendant embossed with a crest depicting a sword pointed downward through the image of a crown framed on either side by a bird of prey.
Her long blonde hair was tied back in a single braid, pointed ears devoid of any jewelry.
Her golden eyes more than made up for the lack, their brilliance impossible to look away from as she stared at him.
Cillian’s eyes widened when she dipped into an elaborate curtsy, her gaze never leaving his. “My prince.”
He jerked his gaze to Bran, sucking in a breath as he remembered what he’d glimpsed in the mirror of that bathing room. He’d thought it was a dream. “Bran?”
Bran’s jaw twitched before he leaned over and grabbed something off the small shelf nailed to the wall beside the bed. It turned out to be a handheld mirror, and when he held it up, Cillian didn’t want to look at it.
“Etain removed the glamour you’d been living in,” Bran said quietly, not meeting his eyes. “You’re Fae, Cillian.”
“No,” Cillian said, but the truth was staring back at him, the face in that mirror all features that were his but not quite and pointed ears he’d never seen before. “That’s not me.”
Bran set the mirror down on the bed, still not looking at him. “It is. I’m sorry. I don’t know how or why, but—everyone here seems to know you.”
Cillian stared at him in disbelief before glancing over at Niamh, the Fae still looking at him as if he was about to disappear any second. “I don’t know them. Bran, I grew up with you. In Pelham. I’m human.”
He said it desperately, as if maybe that would make it true and the mirror a liar.
“I know. I didn’t imagine you.” Bran swallowed, shoulders hunching a little. “Maybe you were a changeling.”
“He is not,” Niamh said sharply. She stepped closer, going to one knee before the bed. She kept her hands to herself, though, for which Cillian was grateful. “You are no changeling, Cillian. You are the Winter Prince returned to us by the Cauldron’s blessing.”
“I’m not,” Cillian said raggedly. “I’m not who you think I am. I can’t be.”
But he remembered, just then, that eerie voice when he and Bran had passed through the wyrding, the way it had called to him.
Welcomed him.
And his thoughts felt broken and sore deep in his mind, like something had cracked open inside of him. Something he’d never noticed before.
“I’m going to be sick,” he decided, rolling to his side because his stomach was doing its damnedest right then to crawl out his mouth.
Bran swore and leaned over, coming up with a metal pail that he shoved beneath Cillian’s face.
He held back Cillian’s hair as he vomited up bile, nothing worthwhile left in his stomach to expel.
Cillian spat out the last of it, the taste in his mouth worse now.
Groaning, he sat up, gritting his teeth against the way the room spun briefly.
He dragged a hand through his hair, freezing when his fingers grazed the tip of his ear, shivering at how the nerves in the point there registered the touch in his body.
He fisted his other hand against the bed, looking at Bran, remembering what Bran had said about witches and the Fae in the cabin after outrunning the lights. How they had only ever been enemies. “Tell me it’s an illusion like Etain’s magic.”
Bran shook his head. “It’s no illusion. I’m sorry.”
“I don’t want us to be enemies. Seven years was enough, and they were terrible.” He couldn’t live his life without Bran in it. Not again.
Bran’s gaze softened, hand twitching like he wanted to reach for Cillian but didn’t. “That wasn’t us being enemies.”
“What was it, then?”
“Us giving each other the silent treatment.”
Cillian barked out a harsh laugh, shaking his head. “That’s what you want to call it?”
“I don’t think now is the time or place to talk about it.” Bran’s gaze flicked to Niamh, then back to Cillian. “We have other things to worry about.”
“Right.” Cillian swallowed, nearly gagging at the taste of vomit in his mouth. “Are we prisoners?”
“No,” Niamh said immediately, rising to her feet.
“Okay. Then where are we?”
“On my ship, the Bone Breaker.”
Cillian stared at her. “That would make a terrible cruise line.”
Niamh didn’t seem to know what he was talking about. “One of the Mórrígan’s own guided me to you.”
“A raven,” Bran said at Cillian’s questioning glance. “Jupiter. I don’t know how she found Niamh and her people, but she did.”
“Did she find Aisling?” Cillian asked.
Bran shook his head, fiddling with the bracelet on his wrist. “No.”
“We need to.”
“I’ve been saying that, but no one here will listen to me.”
“I take no orders from a witch,” Niamh said coldly.
“Don’t talk to him like that,” Cillian snapped.
Niamh pursed her lips, gaze darting between the two. “He is the enemy.”
“He’s my friend.” He bit back that he wanted Bran to be more because the Fae didn’t need to know that.
She looked like she’d swallowed something terribly sour. “You used to never care for witches.”
“You and everyone else keep talking like you know me, but you don’t. I grew up with Bran. We were kids together back home. I can’t be this prince of yours.” His head throbbed as he spoke, pain skittering through his thoughts. He swallowed against the nausea in his gut, trying to keep it at bay.
Her shoulders slumped as she crossed her arms over her chest, staring at him with a pained expression in her eyes.
She murmured something in her own language under her breath that he didn’t understand before shaking her head.
“When the witch told me Etain had unraveled your mortal skin, I had hoped that meant she had made you whole, but it seems she left your mind alone.”
“That’s not a bad thing,” Bran said testily.
“It is when what was stolen is still gone,” Niamh retorted. “Cillian is our Winter Prince, heir to the crown and throne of the Winter Court, and he does not remember.”
Cillian shook his head, which was probably not the best thing to do since it made his vision swim a little and his migraine worse. “It has to be an illusion. Maybe Etain didn’t remove anything but put something on me. What did you call it, Bran? Glamour?”
“There’s no glamour on you. At least, not anymore. This is the real you,” Bran said reluctantly.
“No.” Cillian reached for Bran’s hand. “No, I’m not Fae. I’m not one of them. I won’t be.”
Bran flexed his fingers but didn’t try to pull away. “I guess we both had something to hide over the years.”
Cillian growled in frustration. “I didn’t lie as a kid, and you did for a damned good reason.”
Bran looked up in surprise, shoulders loosening. “I didn’t want to, not with you. But Mom always said to never talk about my magic.”
“And mine said never to trust a witch.”
“She did?”
Cillian looked down at his right hand, palm still sore and red from being burned by iron. And wasn’t that some bit of proof of everything the Fae were telling him? “I thought it was because she didn’t like your religion.”
“What happened to your hand?” Bran asked sharply, reaching for it.
“Ainmire.”
“It looks like an iron burn,” Niamh said.