Chapter 21 #2
Fifty years.
The same length of time he had spent away from the Concord.
“Have you not wondered,” he said after a moment, “why the Turlaith called me Reynnar of the Broken Court?”
Elara scratched at her neck where the wool itched. “I have,” she admitted. “But it seemed…personal. And it didn’t feel right to pry.”
A faint smile touched his mouth. “Sometimes I forget you were raised among humans, and then you say something like that and remind me. That’s a very mortal instinct—to leave wounds untouched out of courtesy. The Sídhe are not so restrained.”
She dropped her gaze, fingers worrying at the edge of her sweater. The Draoth Cara still went unmentioned, its presence lingering between them, an ache without a name. She wondered, briefly, if his silence on that matter was for her sake—a mortal instinct he’d learned to keep.
“Why did you leave your home?”
His gaze shifted to the floorboards, then to the dark window beyond.
“I left because I could no longer breathe there.” His mouth curved faintly.
“It is a skill to survive in Teinloch—to lie gracefully, deceive beautifully, and pretend all the while you are doing neither. I hadn’t the patience for it. Nor the stomach.”
Elara thought of Latheria. Of the Druids. Reverence was expected. Rules followed. It was not deception in the same way Reynnar described, but it required the same skill—knowing how to move through a room without ever revealing too much of yourself.
“There were other reasons,” he went on to say. “I had failed. In ways that mattered.” Reynnar’s gaze lingered on the map only a moment longer before dropping to her. “My father has a long memory. And a talent for reminding.”
She stiffened before she could stop herself. The life-debt. He didn’t elaborate, and she didn’t press. Mortal restraint, she thought wryly. Still intact.
“Where did you go when you left home?”
A faint warmth softened his expression. “To the Tine clans. Lasairín. I lived among them for a time. No court, no politics, no lineage. Just work. Stone. Flame.” His shoulders lifted—almost a shrug. “I preferred it.”
Elara could see him there—stripped of titles and history, hands callused, face turned toward the heat of a forge rather than the glare of a throne.
It made sudden sense, the look that had passed between Aoife and Caelion when she’d once asked what it meant for a Sídhe to vanish without a word.
He had left everything behind and not looked back.
She swallowed. “Do you ever wish to return?”
He didn’t answer right away. The candle between them guttered, smoke winding in slow, delicate spirals. Then with that weary honesty she was learning to recognize—he said, “I imagine I’ll have to, whether I wish to or not. And sooner than I’d like.”
“Will it be difficult?”
He exhaled—part sigh, part short laugh. “Life usually is.”
The front door hit the wall with a dull thud, a rush of cold air spilling into the room before the voices followed. Eamon and Caelion stepped through, both burdened with brown-paper bundles tied in rough twine. The night trailed in around them, carrying the smell of canal water.
Relief flickered across Reynnar’s face so fast it was almost comical. “Took you long enough,” he muttered, reaching for one of the parcels. “If I had to suffer another minute in these clothes, I’d have—”
“Burned it off your own back? I’m aware.” Eamon lobbed a folded tunic at his chest.
Reynnar caught it and scowled. “Glad to know my misery entertains you.”
“Endlessly.”
“And to think,” Reynnar said, tugging off his shirt, “I almost missed your company.”
Elara pulled the borrowed sweater closer, half amused, half disbelieving, as boots and belts hit the floor in quick succession. Shirts followed—one after another—until there was more bare skin than fabric in sight.
She blinked, then promptly turned her back.
A brief, startled silence answered her.
“Oi,” Reynnar barked. “Upstairs. Change upstairs, you brutes.”
Elara snorted. As if he hadn’t been stripping with them.
Against her better judgment, she glanced back.
Caelion had frozen mid-motion. Beside him, Eamon—trousers halfway down—slowly tugged them back up.
Understanding dawned on Caelion. He cleared his throat, gathered his bundle without a word, and gave Elara a brief, almost formal nod of apology before retreating toward the stairs.
“Do all mortals possess such delicate sensibilities,” Eamon asked, one brow raised, “or are yours a special case we must now accommodate?”
Reynnar shot him a look that promised swift and imaginative violence.
Eamon rolled his eyes and went, though not before tossing her a final, amused glance—as if he fully intended to recount this anthropological discovery for Odhrán’s later use.
When the others had gone, Reynnar turned back to her with a small, helpless shrug. Elara felt her mouth twitch despite herself as he gathered the fresh clothes from the table.
She told herself—firmly—that she ought to look away.
She didn’t.
Her eyes followed as he drew the shirt over his head, the movement shifting muscle and light along his shoulders and arms. He carried strength like a thing he neither flaunted nor concealed—simply worn, effortless. Watching him stirred something inside her she did not particularly care to examine.
The Sídhe were beautiful. Every one of them. Their features held a balance that felt almost cruel beside mortal faces.
Yet Reynnar was different.
It wasn’t only his face, though that alone would have been distraction enough. It was the way he carried himself. There was control in him, the sense that every instinct—anger, power, even kindness—was held firmly in hand rather than allowed to run wild.
She noticed it every time he drew near.
It should have made him frightening. Instead, it made the gentler moments feel dangerously intimate, as though she had been allowed to see something she had no right to. It unsettled her. Drew her in. Confounded her in ways she did not fully trust.
Elara looked away at last, irritated with herself for noticing any of it at all.
“Are you rooming with Aoife?”
The question drew her back. Reynnar had gathered the fresh clothes and was already turning toward the stairs.
“Yes,” she said. “And you’re sharing with Caelion and Eamon, I take it?”
His mouth twisted. “Unfortunately. There’s one bed, and I’ve made it my personal duty to keep Eamon from claiming it.
He could use a bruise to his pride. Though, if I’m honest, I’d sooner share a room with a nest of hornets than with Aoife.
When she sleeps in a bed, she snores like a boar rooting in mud. ”
She folded her arms, smiling. “I find that difficult to believe. Though I will admit, I’m always receptive to Eamon slander.”
Reynnar tilted his head, studying her. “You don’t trust him?”
The question caught her mid-smile. She pressed her lips together, considering, her gaze flicking toward the map behind them. “I’m not sure how I feel about him yet,” she said.
He nodded, unsurprised. “We’re used to Eamon doing things his way.
Act first, explain later. He was raised in a court where few ever told him no and fewer still challenged him when he thought himself right.
The sort of upbringing that convinces a man he’ll always land on his feet, no matter how reckless the leap. ”
He stepped closer. “The irritating part,” he added, “is that he usually does.”
Elara’s mouth curved. “Which makes him arrogant.”
“Exactly.”
“After I was done knocking some sense into him,” Reynnar said almost offhandedly, “I made him promise never to put you in that position again. Not ever. It wasn’t his right to decide that for you.”
Elara’s gaze sharpened. “Because you think it’s yours?”