Chapter 6 #2
The room beyond was stark. A narrow bed with a neatly folded wool blanket. A squat table, two chairs angled toward one another. Stone worn smooth by time. A single window stood open, a cool draft curling in, carrying the endless dark of Talamh na Sí.
“Lord Eamon arrives tomorrow. Dinner will be sent up shortly.” Kynra paused in the doorway. “The human stays here. Guards will remain outside the door, day and night.” Her eyes cut to Reynnar. “I bent for you once. Do not make me regret it.”
The door slammed before either of them could answer, the sudden crack of it making her flinch—and then they were alone.
Reynnar turned and strode toward the wardrobe as if he hadn’t just been threatened for protecting her.
He pulled on a pair of breeches while she forced herself to look away.
Her fingers twitched at her side. They’d seen each other before—half-naked, bloodied, broken—in far worse circumstances.
The Pit had systematically stripped them of any pretense of modesty.
But it felt profoundly different now. Now, when the room was quiet.
When the only barrier was a closed stone door, not the iron of a cage, and the only shadow was cast by their lantern.
Elara fixed her gaze on the small window, tracing the moonlight threading across the floor. She told herself it didn’t matter. That she absolutely wasn’t aware of the soft sound of fabric sliding against skin.
She cleared her throat. “What does Tuatha mean?”
Reynnar went still—just enough for her to notice the change. Wariness pricked across the Cara, and just as quickly, she sealed it off again. She glanced back, and he was already dressed, his shirt clinging to damp skin where he’d pulled it on too quickly. He seemed to consider his answer.
“Another insult. It’s supposed to be a collar,” he said with a shrug.
“Doesn’t fit.” He smiled and crossed the room without a sound, his hands settling gently on her shoulders.
“The Concord will push for your execution. Eamon won’t give it to them.
He owes me—more than a life-debt. I’ll call it in. You don’t need to worry.”
Worry.
If only that was all she felt.
“How do you know Kynra?” She searched his face. “You spoke as if there was history between you.”
“We were raised in the same circles. Our families are bound to the Concord of the Fir Dé—the bloodlines who claimed custodianship of the old order. Descendants of those who followed the prophetess Cessair, westward, fleeing a world swallowed by the sea, before Epona’s Spioraid divided the courts.”
She blinked at the word she’d heard twice now, turning it over in her mind. Spioraid. Spirits. He must have seen the question forming on her face.
“Epona did not shape Tír na nóg alone,” he said.
“The First Breath she exhaled became Na Spioraid—the elemental guardians. They shaped the land before the Sídhe ever set foot upon it.” He lifted his hand, fingers splayed.
“Four great orders were born from her breath. Spioraid Tine—the fire spirits—took the forms of draguins and phoenixes, creatures made of molten bone and starlight. Spioraid Ghaoithe—the air spirits—became wind-steeds and feathered phantoms who race the stormfronts. Spioraid Uisce—water spirits—rose from rivers and seas in seal-skins, serpent forms, creatures who guide tides and souls alike. And Spioraid Cloiche—earth spirits—took shapes of stone-stags, root-beasts, and towering guardians carved from mountain marrow.”
He glanced toward the pines beyond the windows as though expecting one of the great beasts to step through at any moment. “They’re older than the Sídhe. Older than the courts. They answer the Tuatha, and sometimes the old bloodlines…but only when they choose to.”
A shiver crept up her spine. “You mentioned Cessair’s line. You said she fled a drowning world?”
Reynnar dipped his chin. “The Fomóiri realm—Vorrath—another plane, like your own.”
Another plane. Her thoughts skidded, then caught. Something Reynnar had said back in the Pit surfaced—words she’d taken in at the time and promptly set aside because survival had demanded priority.
His voice echoed in her memory.
“Their stones aren’t random. They form a perfect geometric alignment, spread across this earth and mine. The positions correspond to each other, like coordinates in a vast grid. One set here. One in Tír na nóg. The last…somewhere else.”
“A third world,” Elara breathed.
His expression tightened, not quite wary, but cautious.
“A cursed place. That’s all we were ever taught.
A realm the Triad abandoned. Some of the oldest Sídhe bloodlines fled it before the seas swallowed their kingdoms. The same way others fled Latheria after the Great Divide and found their way here, to Tír na nóg. ”
She swallowed. “What happened there?”
He shook his head. “Stories. Nothing I’d trust as truth.
The Concord keeps its own history, and most of it is buried under oaths.
” A pause. “When Epona’s breath shaped the courts, each race claimed kinship with one order.
The Concord—our families—believed it was their duty to maintain the balance between them.
Eamon is the Tuatha of the Turlaith. Kynra was chosen as his Steward.
” Reynnar’s mouth tightened. “The Rúnaithe line has held that charge for centuries. When the Tuatha travels, the Steward remains. She governs in his stead. Her word carries the weight of his seal.”
“You grew up together,” she murmured.
He inclined his head. “We were…groomed together. Affection was permitted, but only if it served utility.”
“Kynra certainly seems devoted.”
“She is. But devotion, for her, is not feeling. It is structure. Her oaths are older than she is. Older than her will.”
“And now she’d have me killed for existing outside them.” Elara worried her lip between her teeth. “Do you trust her to follow through with Eamon’s orders?”