Chapter Five
I t seems Queen Fiadh has thought of everything. Or so I tell myself when Cillian Cloudtongue’s long shadow peels itself from the wall. A brilliant smile greets me.
Instantly, the two maids I walk with dissolve into giggles.
“I think I forgot something her ladyship requested of me,” Mairi says, nudging me with her shoulder as she turns to leave.
“And I’ve just remembered a bit of stitching I must get started on,” Fiona says.
“As if you would sew at this hour,” I hiss after her. “Don’t leave me!”
Mairi winks at me from over her shoulders, already hurrying down the hall. “Sounds as though our Queen's Maid Laoise is an actual maiden.”
“Don’t be afraid,” Fiona calls out. “I’m sure he’ll be gentle!”
They giggle like a couple of ninnies as they abandon me.
Slowly, I turn toward the bard. The one my heart beats for even now.
The one who is only pretending to court me.
It’s been two weeks of “clandestine” meetings designed to get the court talking—and to make them forget Prince Ruairí ever spoke to me. Two incredibly awkward weeks of showy acts of love, poems slipped into my hands and serenades outside my window. It seems the only one who hasn’t fallen for our acting is Prince Ruairí himself.
I’ve never seen a man glower through a musical performance like he has on each night the Connacht Bard performs for the court. Worse still, the pretty Lady Taliana, a recent arrival from the continental undercourts, has made no secret of her interest in the prince. Unfortunately, he is either very clueless or completely unwilling to give his attentions to anyone but me, and it does not go unremarked upon around these stone halls. I’ve begged High Queen Fiadh to warn him not to ruin our deception, but she says no one else must know of our scheme.
“This is a secret between the three of us,” she warns me. As if she is afraid I will tell Prince Ruairí the truth.
As if I haven’t done everything in my power to avoid being seen with the prince.
He has found me in the castle library, the garden, and in one rather uncomfortable moment, the kitchens while I brewed some herbal tea to ease the High Queen’s stomach symptoms during one of her bad headaches. Each time, I’ve narrowly managed to brush him off before someone gets the wrong idea.
Even if I searched all the undercourts of the world, I doubt I would ever find another position in which fussing over a queen, having my heart broken, and fighting vicious rumors just to stay alive were in the job description.
When I write my letters to my family in the mornings, it's all I can do to keep my tears from dampening the pages.
And here, before me, is another sight to make me cry. Cillian Cloudtongue, smiling warmly at me as though he means it, when I know he really doesn’t.
“My dear Laoise, would you care to stroll the gardens with me? The sky is clear, and the court astronomers predict shooting stars tonight.”
I cannot keep pretending like this . Resolve filling me, my back straightens as I close the distance between us. I’m barely a hands-width from him when I whisper, “Enough pretending, good sir. No one is here, and I don’t think my heart can take it right now.”
He lifts a brow. “Your heart, dear maiden?”
“ Please ,” I beg him, “stop talking like that.”
“Like what?”
“As if you mean it.”
“What if I do?” Again, he arches that brow. I recognize this mischief in his eyes from when he sings one of the bawdier tunes, towing the line between poor taste and a good time for his audience. We stand so close, I can count the freckles on the arch of his nose.
“But you don’t. You don't mean any of this," I reply, fighting to keep the trembling from my voice.
He shifts his shoulders, his towering height seeming to diminish by several inches. “In truth, Laoise, I really do wish to walk with you. Our arrangement is making me a touch—uncomfortable.”
“Then you’ve much catching up to do, good sir. I’ve been uncomfortable for a fortnight.”
“Then why can’t we learn to be at ease? We can get to know each other. Perhaps we’ll even like one another.”
I do like you , I almost say. But he’s right. I only know Cillian the performer, not the person.
I'll only bring myself more pain by agreeing. Yet I find myself nodding anyway. Anything to be closer to him.
He offers me his arm, and together we slip away into the starlit gardens.
I learn many things about the bard tonight.
Cillian Cloudtongue is so named not only for the lightness of his song, but from his origins as a sky fae. He has three brothers and three sisters, all of them musical. He has a gaggle of nieces and nephews whom he adores, too, for whom he always brings back trinkets from his travels, though he confesses it has sometimes made him poor. He also tells me how it breaks his heart to see how they’ve grown in his absence.
Yet he loves the road, and has a fondness for out-of-the-way places and smoke-filled taverns, whose patrons are often better audiences than the nobility. He’ll never stop playing for common folk, no matter how many nobles offer him patronage.
I also learn what his lips taste like.
As we stand under a shady bower, me on the tips of my toes, him with his bent back against a tree, and the sky filled with dancing stars overhead, our lips meet in a cautiously tender dance. I taste the salt on his lips from supper and think of home.
Then we walk a little further. I tell Cillian about my family. About Unagh, and my various cousins scattered along the coast. I tell him about the sea fae we revel with four times a year, and about the devastating storm that hit Diarmuid’s Row not long before I took this position as a queen's maid. I tell him about my adventures beneath the sea with Niamh, about our customs, about everything I miss most. The soothing crash of the ocean waves at night. The irreplaceable scent of a peat fire in the hearth.
“If you could do anything for a living,” Cillian asks me, all curiosity, “what do you suppose you’d do?”
“Something with the sea fae,” I say with a wistful shrug.
“You cannot tell me any more than that?”
I laugh. “I tell you, I haven’t really thought about it. When I was just a púca living among our clan, I thought we’d go on like that forever. Sure, I traded with the sea fae often enough—”
“Traded with them?” He nudges me playfully. “Traded what? Tell me everything. I’ve never met a sea fae.”
“Sometimes it’s knowledge. Sometimes it’s goods from around the world, or works of low fae craft. You’d like them well enough,” I answer, blushing for some reason. “They’ve a fondness for music, too.”
“Whale songs and the like, I suppose?”
“Goodness, no!” I chuckle at the thought, as if the sea fae—kin of the púcaí—were unsophisticated. “They prefer lyres and singing. They have the most wondrous sung epics.”
For a moment, he gives no response. Then Cillian bursts out laughing. “You mean the sort of thing that lures human sailors to wreck their ships on the rocks?”
“What? No! They would never!”
“They would indeed! I’ve traveled the human realm a great deal.”
He tells me more, then, about the human lands. About the legends of the sea fae. I tell him the sea fae I know are peaceable folk, and it isn’t their fault if the humans are bad at navigation.
And then his lips are on mine once again. This time, his arms wrap around me, lifting me from the ground. His tongue slips into my mouth, deftly exploring.
I am glad he holds me, for my legs turn into moon jellies. And then, without thinking, those same useless legs have somehow wrapped themselves around his waist, and we are slipping into the clandestine shadows of the trees. Cillian's touch is soft and sensual, never greedy as he traces my curves.
I do not know how long we remain there under the bowers, learning each other’s contours, our hands slipping under each other’s clothes. He lays me down on the dewy grass, soaking my dress, though I do not mind.
Nor do I think I'll wear it for much longer. His skin is almost moonlit as I pull his tunic over his head, an entirely different color than his deeply tanned face, arms, and neck. Heat pools below my belly, chanting my want for him in a steady pulse.
He is as beautiful as his songs. And the desire darkening his eyes makes me feel beautiful, too.
Our mouths meet again, our kisses growing urgent. As my hands rove his warm body, my heart beats faster. Yet at the same time, it calms for the first time in these past two weeks. This feels good. Better than that, it feels right .
Slowly, as he unlaces the bodice of my dress, I feel my heartache easing.
And afterward, when we lie together, naked and sated and a little drunk on each other, I feel what I’ve longed for since arriving here.
I am filled with belonging and joy.