25. Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Four
Igasped awake, sunlight straining weakly through Morhaven’s cursed canopy. The rot clung to my lungs, grounding me back in the mortal realm. For a fragile heartbeat, I thought I was alone.
Then I felt it—the weight of a gaze. I turned.
Tairngire was propped on one elbow, golden curls brushing his brow. His eyes gleamed with something I didn’t trust. He leaned close enough to steal the air from my chest.
“You smell of Fae magic…” His voice was curious. His nose nearly brushed my hair as he inhaled. “And something else. Care to tell me where your dreams took you, Little Seer?”
I clenched my fists by my side, furious. The words ripped out before I could leash them.
“Were all of you in on it?” I sat up, my heart hammering. “Davorin calling you Eryndor Vale. Caelith with his riddles. Do you gods trade mortals like chess pieces? Pass us around for your entertainment?”
At that name—Eryndor Vale, Tairngire stilled. His jaw clenched. The tension betraying the mask he wore so well. “You remembered.”
I almost laughed. “I found a book. The Chronicle of Eryndor Vale. I read it hoping it would reveal why you chose it as an alias. Then the second time I opened it—” Memories crashed together: honeysuckle air, the waterfall, violet eyes gleaming with secrets.
“I wasn’t in Anamcroí anymore. I was…somewhere else. ”
Aeos Sítheann. I was sure of it now. The night Davorin drowned Branwyn and I in Fae magic, the book changed. It became something like a portal.
He leaned closer, eyes raking my face as if he could peel more truths right from my skin.
“You knew, didn’t you?” I spat, rage clawing my throat. “You knew all along. About the Fae. About the book. About him.”
He said nothing, but that damned smug look was plastered on his face. The silence was worse than all his lies and half-truths.
And goddess help me, I was distracted. By the cut of his jaw in fractured light.
By his intense eyes that pinned me, unblinking, glinting with secrets I couldn’t pry free.
By the breadth of him, muscles shifting like corded steel, runes glowing faint beneath his tunic. Every breath screamed with his godhood.
My fury sputtered against the heat curling low in my stomach, and I hated it. Hated him for lying there, tearing my world apart.
“I assure you, Little Seer, I was not in on anything. The Fae play their little games as they please—threads of mischief wound tighter than even the Fates can weave. They hardly need me in their petty schemes.” His words came out carefully, measured.
As if he was practicing caution for once in his ageless existence.
He rolled the name I’d given him on his tongue. “Caelith.” His jaw flexed. “Yes…there is one that goes by such a name. But it isn’t his true one. Not the one from long ago.”
My teeth ground together. “You’ll choke on your riddles one day,” I snapped. “Why use the name of a Fae king as your alias? What does it mean to you?”
“Names,” he said, tone mild, “carry power. Some more than others. A name can be a shield, a mask, a weapon.” His derisive expression was feeding on my rage. The smirk he wore suggested he knew it, too.
He shrugged. “Eryndor Vale served well enough.”
“Cryptic godsdamned answers.” My voice rose. “You used the name of a Fae king who walked Aeos Sítheann unbound instead of ruling. Why?”
The silence pressed thick with things unsaid. His gaze slid sideways, feigning indifference, but I caught the flicker of restraint.
“You seem,” I bit out, “to have a fondness for the Fae most divines don’t. That name. The way you say Caelith as if you’ve bled on it before.”
“Fondness?” His laugh was soft, humorless. “You mistake familiarity for affection, Little Seer.” He leaned close, words pricking like nettles. “And if I were you, I wouldn’t confuse the two. Not when it comes to them.”
Before I could snap back his arm shot out, yanking me back down onto the forest floor. My spine hit the earth and I let out a squeak. His arm anchored me before I could resist.
I thought about fighting. Gods, I should have. But my body betrayed me, muscles slackening against his grip. I stayed where he wanted, pulse racing.
“Now,” he drawled, voice hot against my ear, “why don’t you tell me what you dreamed of.”
He pulled back a fraction and his gaze slid over me with calculated slowness. “What did Caelith do, Little Seer, that leaves you…” He inhaled again lightly, mocking “Smelling of desire?”
The word burned between us. I snapped my head away, heat flooding in my cheeks. But his tone was sharp—barbed, teasing, hiding something darker. A crack in his armor, or maybe just the shadow of it.
His attention clung to my skin like a parasite. When his fingers flexed against the grass, as if holding back from touching me, I wasn’t sure if the fire in my stomach belonged to me—or him.
I caught the flicker. The way his face faltered at Caelith’s name. The snag in his voice on desire.
Gods didn’t get jealous. They were above it. Untouchable. Eternal.
So why did he look like that?
I let my mouth curve into a wicked smile. “Careful, Tairngire. You almost sound jealous again. And that would be beneath you, wouldn’t it?”
His jaw flexed. Subtle, but I saw it. “Tell me what you dreamed of,” he said again, low enough that the sound threaded through me. “Tell me what Caelith showed you.”
I shrugged, a yawn slipping free. I feigned ease though my pulse hammered. “Maybe I’ll keep that little secret for myself.”
His expression darkened, intent honed, as if my defiance only stoked the storm already brewing in him.
“Tell me. Now.”
My grin held more confidence than I felt. “Make me.”
His composure snapped. He moved too fast. My wrists slammed to the earth, his heat caging me in.
Green fire blazed in his eyes. Runes flared across his neck as the pace of his breathing quickened.
My eyes fell to his pulse pounding against his throat, trying to escape.
His frustration was palpable, and I drank it in like a sweet wine.
“Do you think it wise to test a god’s patience?” His voice came out on a growl, the ground humming beneath me.
I should’ve been afraid. Instead, I felt the cursed bond tug—hot and insistent. And it wasn't just anger lacing it, but something else entirely. Something dangerously close to the desire I'd felt in that vision that Caelith had forced me into.
That couldn't be right, could it?
“Tell me what you dreamed, Little Seer. I will not ask again.” His grip tightened, reminding me how easy this was for him, how much he wanted an answer.
“Maybe,” I hummed, my smile devious, "the desire you’re sensing isn’t from the bond—or Caelith. Maybe it’s from the illusion he gave me. One where I finally stopped using my Sight like a chained hound and actually learned something worth knowing.”
The words landed hard, daring him to flinch.
For a heartbeat, he didn’t move. Just stared, eyes and runes burning against the decaying shadows. My words hung between us like a challenge neither of us could take back.
Then his mouth twitched. A flicker. The bond was throbbing now, betraying him. His anger was hot and biting, but beneath it, a ripple of something jagged was lodged there.
“Do you think I haven’t tried?” His voice was softer than I’d ever heard. “Do you still foolishly believe I wanted any of this?”
The red thread between us was painful now. I gasped at the intensity of it, and Tairngire didn’t even flinch.
This was nothing like the side of him that smirked and taunted. This was something else—his jaw tight, eyes burning with an emotion I couldn’t define.
I opened my mouth, but nothing came. My heart thundered as he leaned close, breath ghosting my cheek.
"Beware, Little Seer. For if I give you what you ask, you may not be able to carry it,” he said, quieter, but no less dangerous.
Then the mask snapped back, smirk swift and sure. The cracks in his armor now sealed. As if nothing had slipped. But I’d seen it. Felt it. If but only for a moment. The weight of it pressed heavy in my chest, refusing to be ignored.
Shadows curled around him like they wanted to drag me into him. My pulse still thrummed from his outburst, from that flash of something human—too human—in his eyes.
I couldn’t stop thinking about the wolves, not beasts, but mortals once. Men who’d made a choice. A choice that chained them, twisting their flesh into something else.
I’d taken one down, and he’d cut through them like brush and bramble. Effortless. Efficient. Unmoved.
But my mind replayed their howls, the alpha on his knees, cowering under Tairngire’s command.
Choices, yes, but gods never bore them the way mortals did.
Divines carved. Mortals bled. Now here he was, towering over me, smug mask tight, calling me by the name he’d branded me with the first night of our ‘training’.
Little Seer.
I exhaled hard, hating the thread of vulnerability in my voice. “I have a name, you know.”
The words fractured the stillness like a stone breaking through glass. His head tilted, eyes shifting down to mine.
Names. To gods they were weapons, never memories. A mortal name meant recognition. Ownership.
I had one. And he’d never used it. A fact I was all too aware of.
Aurenya. The sound of it lived only in my chest, unspoken. I wondered if he even knew it, or if he refused to, the way divines shunned anything too close to humans.
I wondered if he didn’t understand at all. Not what it meant to carry a name, but to be one.
The words hung between us, fragile but significant.
I have a name, you know.
He didn’t answer. Not right away, he just looked at me. Really looked. His eyes weren’t mocking, not laced with amusement, nor armored with arrogance.
“Names,” he murmured, tasting the word. “They make mortals think they’re remembered. But names are dust. They fade when no one speaks them.”
He leaned closer, the glow of his runes burning brighter. “But you want me to speak yours, don’t you? You think it would make you less small. Less…forgettable.”
Heat shot up my spine at his words—how easy it was, for him to make mortals feel small. I forced myself to hold his gaze. “Maybe I just wanted to see if you know it.”
His eyes flashed. For a breath, I thought he might breathe my name. I could almost feel it lingering between us, like the forest itself wanted to whisper it.
Instead, his grip on my wrists tightened—not painful, just a reminder of how easily he could hold me. “Careful what you wish for,” he said, voice lethal. “Because once I taste your name on my tongue, I won’t ever forget it.”
I held my breath, the heat between us was scorching. But instead of leaning in, instead of acknowledging whatever hung between us, he released me. As though he’d decided the moment was over long before I had.