Chapter Twelve
B y the week’s end, Lady Taliana is in high dudgeon, berating her poor servants for every which thing. I’m truly sorry for them. They deserve better than her.
And I think Prince Ruairí finally sees it, too, for I find him on the marginal walk by the cliffs, gaping at the cottage that his lady love has rented.
I can hear her shouting from where I walk. Which means he can, too. Quite well.
At least he says nothing of me avoiding him since that night; I’ve been dreading the inevitable talk. The “I’ve never seen a fae in her unseelie form” talk. In my home court, it’s as natural as breathing, changing into our other form. It’s a part of us.
Something in me has always feared that these High Fae, who act as though they’ve never met a low fae in their lives, will call half my nature ugly. But we aren’t ugly. My unseelie form is my greatest strength, my greatest truth.
It is what the fae should consider most beautiful of all. But High Fae are strange creatures, I’ve come to see. They rarely can see past themselves.
Our unseelie forms are what all fae used to be, before they took on human-like forms, and before the High Fae made themselves mighty and the gods forced them into their unbreakable vows. Or so the stories say. Since then, the High Fae have come to think of anyone who isn’t like them as very low indeed.
The part about the unbreakable vows is true, however. Which means that if the topic comes up—if Prince Ruairí turns around and sees a wild water horse in me instead of a fae woman—he won’t be able to lie and pretend otherwise.
"I thought it was her," he says when I very gingerly approach, not taking his eyes off the whitewashed door.
"What’s that, Your Highness?" As if I don’t know perfectly well. He’s too fixated on what Lady Taliana is screaming—the wrong dress was packed, and another still stained—to be thinking of me.
Thank the sea goddess.
"I thought she was the one."
Taliana? Curses and bargains, are we speaking of the same woman? How could anyone as foul as her be "the one" for any man of halfway decent character?
What?
I almost gulp audibly. Did I just think to myself that I find Prince Ruairí to have some redeeming qualities? The man responsible for the love of my life leaving me when our romance had barely begun? The man who sabotaged my happiness because it wasn’t with him?
Thank the sea goddess I didn't say that aloud. No, it's best, I think, not to say anything at all.
“Well, if it isn’t her, I suppose I must look harder.” The prince’s smirk, for once, is not quite so annoying. The sadness in his voice seems to temper its irritatingly cocky nature. “This is not something I’m used to, you know, hard work.” He turns to me, as if truly noticing me for the first time. “How is the queen?”
“Recovered enough for the journey home. Or at least she will be, by the time the high king has come and is ready to depart again.”
His brows rise in dismay. “Did you think her too ill to make the voyage after—the other night?”
“The voyage? Oh, not that. We aren’t returning to the castle by ship.”
His brow furrows. “Not by ship? Then how?”
“We’re traveling the old fashioned way, alongside the king’s retinue. He’ll be arriving and then departing after a few days, all by horse, and we’ll be going by hoof ourselves.”
There’s something I enjoy about his surprise; I usually have the sense that Prince Ruairí has already heard about almost everything that happens, or at least believes he has. “You’re going to walk the distance as—as—”
“As unseelie púcaí, yes. Sir. There will be room in the caravan if Queen Fiadh grows tired. You know the high king never uses it if he can help it.”
Prince Ruairí nods, the lingering divot on his brow saying he understands but wishes he didn’t. “I should travel with you, to be safe.”
“Suit your—er, I’m sure your presence would be welcome, sir.”
He quirks a smile at that. After all these months, I’m still not quite used to the way I must speak to royalty and nobility. I don’t think I will ever be.
When he turns to face the sea, I do the same. We begin walking together down the rambling path, me a little behind him, though he keeps shortening his stride to stay closer.
I walk in silence, almost beside him, watching the sky changing colors in the west, while the gray waters churn loudly below us. And I almost can admit it to myself.
Prince Ruairí isn't half bad.
T he week we spend traveling to the castle is the best I’ve had since leaving Diarmuid’s Row. With High King Tadhg here at last and keeping the noble ninnies away, our ride is easy and free.
Fiadh's very appearance changes quickly. She looks healthier now. My royal cousin is a little better each day, her headaches nearly vanishing. Was this what she needed all along? More fresh air, and more time in her true púca form?
And while I’m careful to avoid any closeness to Prince Ruairí, he proves to be a good traveling companion. He’s rather self-sufficient, riding ahead and setting snares for mountain hares or hunting grey partridges and red grouse in the woods. Not quite the layabout prince he has a reputation as.
Then again, he seems to enjoy this freedom, the same as I do. The difference between us, then, is that I don’t let my distaste for a task stop me from doing it well, while he will only do what he enjoys.
Today, though, he helps without anyone asking him. And I can tell, each time he comes back with foraged food or a hare, that High King Tadhg is pleased. More than once, they go off to hunt together.
And he has never brought up the night he saw me and Fiadh in our unseelie púca forms. To my knowledge, he’s never even mentioned it to another. After the first couple days on the road, the royal caravan trundling along behind us, I stop worrying about what he'll say. Traveling this way, with an intimate royal retinue, seeing two unseelie fae has almost become mundane to our little party.
Sometimes, when I am back in seelie form for the night and we cross paths around the campfire, I chance to offer the prince a smile.
He always returns it, a touch too eagerly. I almost don’t mind.
For that week, everything is welcome and good.
Yet within days of returning to the castle, Queen Fiadh’s fearsome headaches are back.
M y steps are heavy as I return to the kitchen, ready to fix the special tea I make to ease Fiadh's suffering. Only this time, as I enter the kitchen, I freeze as if my slippers were just bolted to the floor.
There, leaning over a plate of bread and cheese, chewing and telling a story to the rapt kitchen staff—including the cook, who stands with her arms crossed, but still listens—is Cillian called the Cloudtongue.
My bard. He’s back. He’s here .
He notices me in the doorway after a moment, his grin broadening. He forsakes his meal at once—one he needs, for he looks dreadfully thin now—and closes the distance between us in long, well-traveled strides.
“My dear Laoise,” he says, wrapping his arms around me. His slender fingers caress my hair and travel the line of my jaw, as if refreshing his memory.
I should be angry. I should give him a piece of my mind for being gone for so long, for arriving and not seeking me out first . “Cillian,” I open my mouth to say.
And then his lips are on mine, and it feels so right, I almost forget he was ever gone.