Chapter 18
“Luirigh’s outer territory begins here,” Reynnar said two days later, without so much as slowing his stride.
Luirigh.
One of the royal kingdoms of Naidiryn.
They had gone over it the night before by the fire—Reynnar tracing borders in the dirt while Aoife corrected him whenever he simplified things too much. Luirigh on the coast, where the harbors ruled the trade. Talrein inland, among the river valleys. Caerthyn in the high forests to the east.
Elara lifted her gaze and followed the line of his attention.
The forest had changed while she wasn’t looking.
The trees no longer strangled one another for light but stood apart, their branches spread wide to the pale morning sky.
Aoife ran beside her mare as though the road belonged to her, hair loose and flashing in the sun like a filament of burnished wire.
Caelion kept a half-length behind, long strides falling easily into hers, silent as a drifting cloud.
She observed—with a disbelief that had, over the past weeks, hardened into something approaching extreme jealousy—that none of her Sídhe companions appeared even remotely winded.
They moved as though this pace meant nothing to them.
As though they could keep it up for weeks.
Months, even. It was, she decided, profoundly unfair.
Elara shifted in the saddle and made a show of studying the road ahead, as if she were judging the terrain rather than conducting an increasingly resentful audit of Sídhe stamina.
An audit that, unfortunately, invited comparison.
Half-Sídhe or not—whatever strange thing she was—she still felt painfully human beside them.
She wasn’t even running. She was sitting on a horse, for bloody sake, and still she felt like death.
Her thighs ached. Her shoulders burned from holding the reins.
And her stomach had been lodging pointed complaints for the better part of an hour.
Finally, they slowed, and Aoife began gesturing towards small details Elara wouldn’t have noticed.
The way the willow bark was stripped in long curls near the waterline—used by Naidiryn shipwrights to make a resin that waterproofed hulls.
The faint terracing in the marsh banks where eel traps had been set for generations.
“You’ll see their colors before you see their faces,” she said. “Everything painted in cobalt and green. Even the fishing knives. A charm against misfortune, so they claim.”
“You’ve been to Luirigh before?” Elara asked.
“Once.” She shook her head. “Twice, if you count being chased out as a separate visit.”
Elara raised a brow. “What for?”
“A misunderstanding,” she said, the admission bland as milk. “Apparently, wagering on a ship race that has yet to be conceived is considered fraud.”
“You invented a race,” Reynnar called over his shoulder.
“I invented an opportunity,” she corrected, her tone sugared with mock innocence. “Hardly my fault that a group of drunkards laid coin upon an imaginary vessel and lost.”
Reynnar met Elara’s gaze. “That’s how she ended up in their very dignified, very tiny jail.”
“It wasn’t a jail,” Aoife said, brushing an imaginary speck from her sleeve. “It was a broom cupboard with delusions of grandeur—and a very rude guard who didn’t appreciate my wit.”
Caelion’s tone carried a thread of wry humor. “And yet you still managed to start a fight in it.”
“He persisted in mispronouncing my name.” She cast him a sidelong glance from beneath her lashes. “I felt compelled to correct him…firmly.”
Elara bit back a smile. “How long did they keep you?”
“Long enough for Reynnar to begin bribing the locals.”
“That is called negotiating for your release,” he countered. “And it worked, didn’t it?”
Aoife rolled her eyes. “You paid them in rum. Which they drank, and then forgot to let me out for another three hours.”
“Best three hours of the trip.” Reynnar grinned, fangs flashing and entirely unrepentant.
Elara shook her head faintly, but her attention drifted past them as the land opened ahead. The marsh stretched low and pale, spreading toward a distant shimmer that might have been water—or sky. Color seemed to drain from the world and return in softer shades of silver and blue.
Once she knew what to look for, the marks of Naidiryn were everywhere: clay pots half-buried at the corners of culverts to catch creeping sand, ropes coiled around posts crusted with a white bloom of salt, and river-green glass charms strung from low branches to mark the river’s rise.
They sold Elara’s mare at the border of the marshlands, trading the bridle and saddle for a satchel of grainbread and oilcloth bundles of herbs. The beast would draw too many eyes in the city ahead, and Luirigh, Aoife had warned, was a place that preferred strangers on foot.
The road thinned to a series of raised planks that wound through the marsh. The village appeared gradually from the fog—pale timber walkways slick with river mist, houses lifted on stilts above black water.
Whenever they passed a settlement, Aoife and Caelion went in alone.
They bartered for provisions—reedbread, smoked fish, vials of wax-sealed water—and listened more than they spoke.
A word here, a half comment there about the nights, the tides, the harvest. Nothing pointed.
Nothing that might draw attention. And every time, it was the same.
No talk of missing people. No houses left empty.
No signs of trouble at all. By rights, it should have eased her mind.
Instead, the calm of it turned her stomach.
Elara had learned long ago that true danger seldom arrived with noise.
By midday, the salt-sour breath of the coast had thickened.
The road gave way to old stone, worn smooth by centuries of boots and wagon wheels.
Low cottages appeared along the rise—painted cobalt and green, their shutters bright against tide-stained walls.
The kingdom of Luirigh opened along the coast like a jewel.
Sunlight struck the whitewashed buildings until they gleamed painfully bright, balconies spilling bougainvillea so pink they bordered on obscene.
Silk banners in sea-glass shades stirred in the wind, the air thick with tar, pitch, and salt.
Water slapped against the quay. Gulls shrieked overhead. Metal rang from the wharves as voices rose and fell like the tide.
It was beautiful—blindingly so. Which made Elara distrust it at once.
They paused beneath the shade of a hawthorn where the road bent toward the city gates. Aoife watched the flow of people entering and leaving and after a moment, her gaze flicked to Elara, then to Reynnar. A sharp, calculating look stirred in her expression.
Reynnar’s brows drew together at once.
For a brief moment, Elara was certain something passed between them—a wordless request. Whatever it was, the look Reynnar gave his sister in return left no room for doubt. It was a flat, unmistakable snarl of refusal.
Aoife clicked her tongue and seized Elara by the wrist. “Come with me.”
Before Elara could protest, she was dragged into the shadows of a low copse, branches tangled thick enough to form a screen. Aoife was already in her hair, fingers combing mercilessly through the curls.
“Hold still.”
Elara jerked back. “What are you—”
“Your ears,” Aoife muttered, twisting the curls to cover them. “Rounded as sunrise. If anyone sees them, it’s over.”
Elara hissed as Aoife tugged, but Aoife only worked faster, braids coiling sleek and tight. Then she leaned in and sniffed—unabashed.
“Are you smelling me?”
“You reek of humankind,” Aoife said, planting her hands on her hips. “You’ll need to change.”
With that, she stripped off her shirt in a single motion, unbuckled her trousers, and stepped out of her boots.
When the last fastening fell away, there was nothing beneath—not even the modest concession of linen.
She stood in the sun-washed shade like a goddess carved for battle.
Elara jerked her gaze aside, cheeks warming, and fixed her attention on the ivy climbing the edge of the grove.
“Should I be ashamed of my beauty?”
Her eyes snapped back to Aoife before she could stop them. “No. Of course not.”
That earned a quick grin. “Then you should not be ashamed of yours.”
“It’s different for humans. We don’t…we’re raised to be more—”
“Boring. Dull. Guarded. Pious. Prudish—”
Elara barked out a laugh. “Yes. All of that.”
Though that wasn’t entirely true…
The Druids had never been shy about nakedness. Quite the opposite. Their rites demanded it—hers most of all. The Hallowed must come before the gods as a babe newly born, they had said. No cloth. No adornment. Nothing that might stand between flesh and divinity.
She had stood beneath moonlight and torchfire more times than she could count, skin bare to the cold, to the eyes of the circle, to the weight of their reverence.
At the time, she had believed it sacred.
Now…she was no longer certain.
áine had lied. Stolen her from the life she should have had.
Wrapped theft in prophecy and called it devotion.
Perhaps the rites had been holy. Or perhaps they had only wanted her small.
Exposed. Grateful for the hands that claimed to guide her.
Perhaps holiness had only been the word they used when they wanted obedience.
Elara could not yet decide which truth angered her more.
Aoife’s snicker pulled her back to the present. “Tragic.”
She dug into her pack, drew out a fresh tunic and trousers, then pressed the cobalt-dyed set she had just shed into Elara’s hands.
“Here. Naidiryn colors. You’ll pass better in these.” Amusement glinted in her eyes. “And you’ll smell like me for a while—hopefully long enough to get us through that crowd and somewhere safe to meet Eamon.”
Elara quickly changed, the clothes snug in some areas and too long in others. When she looked up, Aoife had already plaited the last of her own hair back and was buckling her knives into place. She gave Elara a single, long look—head tilted, a queen surveying her handiwork.
“You’ll pass.”
Elara brushed her fingers against the curve of her ear. “And if I don’t?”
“Then walk quickly.”
Elara opened her mouth to press further, but Aoife was already striding back toward the road, tossing the words over her shoulder. “Keep your head down. Pretty face or no, if someone sees the wrong angle of those ears, we’ll all be cinders.”
They slipped from the grove and onto the road.
Reynnar took the lead at once, guiding them into Naidiryn proper, where the open road broke into a weave of cobbled lanes.
The air changed as they moved deeper. Salt and spice thickened on it, mingling with the tang of shipyards and the briny sweetness of smoked kelp.
Above them, the sky narrowed to a thin ribbon of blue, snagged between tiled roofs, lines of laundry, and nets hung out to dry.
Through a break in the crowded roofs a high inner wall rose in a pale sweep of stone beyond the lower quarter, its clean surface almost jarring against the riot of docks, markets, and layered terraces below.
Watchtowers punctuated its curve. Somewhere behind it—lifted above the noise and movement—an upper quarter rose above it all, its rooftops and banners appearing only in brief flashes between the buildings, distant enough to feel like another city entirely.
Elara watched the flow of people approaching the inner gate—where the lower quarter funneled toward the upper. The entrance was tightly controlled: guards posted at either side, a long, slow-moving line of would-be entrants waiting beneath their scrutiny.
She was still cataloging the process when a patrol rounded the corner ahead.
Six guards in sea-green sashes advanced in perfect unison, their armor polished to a brightness that caught the sun and flung it back so harshly that she had to narrow her eyes against the glare.
People moved aside almost at once, creating a clean corridor through the press leaving Elara plainly visible in the open street.
“Head down,” Reynnar muttered, and she tucked her chin, the braids Aoife had woven digging against her scalp.
Elara drew a measured breath as they slipped into a side lane, the walls rising close and narrow around them. The street noise dulled, but the sensation did not. It crept along her spine all the same—the distinct awareness of being watched.
She allowed herself a brief glance back.
One of the guards had slowed at the mouth of the lane. His sash hung loose against his armor, his step no longer in rhythm with the others. He seemed younger than the rest, his helm pushed back just enough for her to see his face clearly—and his gaze was fixed on her.
Not scanning the street or watching the crowd. Watching her.
Elara’s stomach dropped.
“Keep moving,” Eamon murmured as he slipped into the side lane beside her, so seamlessly it was as if he had been there all along.
Her eyes snapped to him, her pulse loud enough to scatter coherent thought.
Reynnar, Aoife, and Caelion did not react at all.
They adjusted their pace without breaking stride, as if his presence had been anticipated.
As if they had sensed him. She stumbled a step before regaining balance, forcing her gaze away and fixing it on a fishmonger’s stall ahead, where baskets of eel spilled brine into dark puddles, their scales catching the light like drowned stars.
She held her focus there, breathing carefully.
But the shout never came.
When she finally glanced back, the guard’s gaze was already sliding away, swallowed by the machine of marching armor.
Her breath left in a rush as Eamon guided them down the side street and into another that bent and twisted, keeping them clear of the open squares until they stopped before a crooked shopfront tucked into a lane so narrow she might have passed it without noticing.
Its shutters were warped, its sign worn to little more than a blur of paint—a place that looked half-forgotten, eclipsed by brighter neighbors.
“This is it,” Eamon said.
Reynnar eyed the sagging beams. “You’re sure?”
“Appearances deceive.”
He pushed through the door and shut it behind them before the sound had fully settled. The air inside was thick with damp and age, as though the room had been holding its breath for a century. It stood empty save for a single door on the far wall—slight and unremarkable.
“What is this?” Aoife asked, stepping farther in.
“This,” Eamon said, “is our passage into the upper city.”