29. The Beantighe
29
THE BEANTIGHE
“ S affron, slow down—!” Taran attempted, having to squeeze himself through the bars of the fence as Saffron wasn’t paying attention. He only hurried without stopping, heart pounding in his ears, vision humming in front of him from the remnants of the fairy fruits.
The sound of Cylvan calling out to him—was just his imagination. Just his drunkenness, just a trick of the old wood or the veil itself as it continued its cruel tirade against him. Calling him a coward, calling him a fool—but what did it know? Such an ancient, all-knowing, omnipotent thing—yet it could barely grasp the fear Saffron held for it in his heart. A fear he’d held since he was a child; since he’d been traded through the veil by his human parents when he was a baby, unwanted, exchanged in a deal between them and Luvon; those same parents that, the one time Saffron did return to the human world to see them, held a gun to his head and told Luvon to get Saffron out of their sight.
Saffron never actually wanted to go there—if Ryder hadn’t taken his friends, Saffron would have been content to never think about the human world for the rest of his life. He didn’t make his oath with the veil in order to be able to pass through it—he made it to become powerful and cunning enough to keep Cylvan safe. What did the veil know? What did the veil know about him, about anything at all?
Despite the spinning of his vision, Saffron managed to find his way to the overgrown road leading up to the ruins—just as a black horse galloped by, nearly crashing into him as he stumbled from the underbrush at the same time. Reeling back, the horse did the same, eliciting a shout from its rider—followed by another exclamation of Saffron’s name.
Saffron met Cylvan’s eyes, staring at him in disbelief, or—anger. It may have been anger, pure fury, Saffron didn’t know, he wasn’t seeing clearly, he wasn’t thinking right, everything was glowing and undulating, his thoughts were thick like syrup and he could see every flutter and sparkle of the crackling veil and opulence in every direction. All he knew was—that look, on the rider’s face, made his heart stop. A rush of fear—knowing it couldn’t be Cylvan. Knowing it had to be a trick of the wood. Some wild fey that could glamour itself with a familiar face; it wouldn’t be the first time. Beantighes had often gone missing at night, claiming to hear the voice of a friend calling to them. Lost, in the darkness.
“Saffron!” The rider shouted again as Saffron tripped backward, leaping back into the woods— “Saffron, be still!”
His movement ceased. Mid-step, making the muscles in his legs tremble. Behind him, Taran growled, circling around Saffron impatiently before turning back to the person who left their horse and approached.
“I’m not in any mood for this,” Cylvan announced in exasperation, reaching for Saffron’s arm—only to step back again when Taran snarled, ears flattened and baring his teeth. “Out of my way, Taran!”
The way he knew the wolf’s name—perhaps it really was his raven prince, come to find him.
“Keep your hands off him,” Taran growled in return. “Not until you’ve calmed down, Cylvan.”
“Calmed—!” Cylvan barked. “Me! Do you have any idea—! You will not tell me what I can and cannot do with my own harmonious king, you dog!”
Taran moved and snarled again, standing between Saffron and Cylvan, as Saffron was forced to stare into the woods while the exchange happened behind his back. Then—maybe it really was Cylvan. Maybe Cylvan really had come to Morrígan looking for him, it wasn’t a trick of the wood, it was—his prince. His prince, who was furious—who said Saffron’s name with such thick venom, like Saffron was a thorn in his flesh he wished to pull.
He knew Cylvan would be angry when they met again—Saffron had anticipated, from the start, that Cylvan would not be thrilled to see him when they crossed paths again. And Saffron had been prepared to apologize, to explain himself, to do everything he could to reassure Cylvan to why —but never once did he expect his raven to compel him into stillness. Into silence. Just like Ryder had, so many times.
Bile turned in his stomach, up the back of his throat. Taran and Cylvan continued arguing at Saffron’s back, as Saffron just fought to regain control of his body. Fighting for the feeling in his fingers, first, just like every other time. His fingers, his toes, his hands, his feet—until finally a wash of life tingled through his muscles, and he slumped forward into the step he’d been in the middle of taking.
“Saffron—!” Cylvan dared try again, but Taran lunged and rammed his head into Cylvan’s chest, knocking him back and halting the command. The fact he would try it a second time made Saffron want to vomit. He wished to run again, to disappear between the trees, but instead—he turned. His entire body shook with a cocktail of embarrassment and a further brush of fear, something he’d hadn’t felt while facing Cylvan dé Tuatha dé Danann in a long, long time.
Cylvan finally met Saffron’s eyes, that time clearly seeing the pink glow of them, indicating Saffron’s inebriation. But rather than catching his anger for Saffron’s instinct to flee, understanding why he might have—instead, his handsome face only contorted into a further rage.
“Why would you do this?” he asked, voice harsh but flat, in a clear attempt to keep his anger at bay. “You agreed to return to Avren with me—why humiliate me like this instead? I had to demand they stop the train—in the middle of the godsforsaken Fall Court! I had to tell them—it was so I could chase down my disobedient beantighe servant!” That time, spoken through his teeth, between sharp breaths as he trembled with fury. Saffron’s heart continued to twist in rhythm, with every gasp Cylvan had to take in order to keep his composure. Whatever he had left. Had he ever seen the prince so angry?
“I—” Saffron attempted, but Cylvan continued:
“And here I find you! By yourself in the woods, wandering the ruins! Performing veil magic, eating wild fairy fruits! By yourself! Are you really so careless , Saffron! Do you have a death wish! Don’t you think I’ve lost enough, already! If something had happened to you, who would have known! I would never have known where to even begin looking for you, gods damnit! How can you be so godsdamned selfish ? —!”
“How am I the selfish one!” Saffron shouted back, startling even Taran with the shrillness of it. “How dare I—? How dare you accuse me of being careless! Of being selfish! When all I’m trying to do is help! I’m trying to find my friends, too! Not just Asche! Or have you forgotten all about them! Ryder took them first—Ryder took them first just to control me, damnit, and you haven’t brought them up once in all of this! And you call me selfish?—!”
“Asche is more important than your friends!” Cylvan shouted, nostrils flared. “The Daurae of Alfidel is more important than a handful of beantighes!”
Saffron stared at Cylvan, who stared back, eyes wide and breathing heavily. Swelling hot with emotion, Saffron didn’t know if he wanted to cry, or scream, or throw punches, paralyzed where he stood as his lip trembled.
He looked down at the fine fey doublet he wore, hands shaking as he suddenly wrenched it off over his head. Yanking the amethyst pendant with it, and throwing both in Cylvan’s face. Cylvan swore at him, demanding to know what his problem was, but the words caught when Saffron next yanked the emerald engagement ring from his finger—and threw that at the prince, too.
“There,” he said, voice cracking. “Now you have no reason to come looking for me again, either.”
Saffron turned and rushed into the trees. Cylvan called out to him again, but Taran must have kept him at bay. Saffron ran faster than any enchantments could catch him; he ran blindly into the foliage, knowing he’d find his way home eventually. Just wanting to run, wanting to get away. Just wanting to go home. Where Baba Yaga would brew him tea. Where could lie down and disappear. Where there was nothing.
Reaching Beantighe Village as the sun was beginning to set, Saffron shivered from being soaked through in the rain, especially without his doublet to protect him. Saoirse’s horse was visible in the front yard of Cottage Wicklow, but Cylvan didn’t appear to be back yet. Saffron had the briefest worry that the prince had gotten himself lost—before it was overtaken with another bitter thought of good . He wouldn’t be lost for long, even if he was. He hoped Cylvan was as cold and miserable as he was.
Sneaking in through the back door, he was silent as any other beantighe would be, though his henmother standing in the entryway to the kitchen still sensed him. Baba Yaga threw him a look as the sound of Aodhán and Saoirse’s voices came from the parlor, and Saffron quickly shook his head to imply he didn’t wish to be known.
Baba Yaga’s lips pursed, but she nodded, before subtly tipping her head to indicate he could sneak through the back hallway. There was nothing but her own bedroom that way, but he didn’t question it. He just wanted to get out of his wet clothes, he wanted to hide away somewhere dark and quiet.
Stripping naked in Baba Yaga’s quiet bedroom, Saffron scrounged around in his henmother’s things until he found one of her old nightshirts, pulling it on over his head in favor of something dry to wear. He crawled into her old bed and burrowed beneath the blankets, still able to hear the low mumbling of the parlor conversation, though nothing of the specific words exchanged. Perhaps that was why he didn’t cry—he worried they would overhear him. He didn’t want to be known.
That was—until an incessant scratching came at the closed door, and Saffron had no choice but to crawl from his warm hole to open it, thinking it to be Baba’s fat orange cat demanding entry. Instead, it was another similarly orange beast—Copper, who whined the instant Saffron appeared, throwing up his paws and planting them on Saffron’s chest in question. Saffron hurried his friend into the room, where Copper leapt up onto the bed and sniffed around the tousled blankets, making room when Saffron returned to the place he’d carved in his shape. The moment Copper nestled down under the blanket next to him, warm and soft and whimpering more in question, Saffron couldn’t stop the emotions from swelling until they spilled over—and he pulled his fox-friend close, silently crying into his thick fur.
Eventually, Saoirse and Aodhán’s voices faded, and a knock came at the bedroom door. Saffron peeked his swollen, tear-stained eyes out from under the blankets as Baba Yaga opened it. She took one look at him, clucking her tongue and closing the door behind her. Approaching to take his face and push hair from his eyes, kissing his forehead, his cheeks. She asked what happened, but Saffron just shook his head. He didn’t want to talk about it.
Preparing a bedroll on the floor for him to sleep through the night, Saffron never complained, glad at least to know he wouldn’t take the old woman’s bed from her. Baba Yaga brought him a warm cup of tea without being asked, charmed with an arid circle that read peace and restful sleep .
He curled up around Copper who spiraled under the blanket alongside him, like a personal hearth to keep him warm even as the rain continued on the other side of the dark window.
Knowing Saoirse and Aodhán had gone out to look for Cylvan, Saffron thought he’d be able to close his eyes and disappear. To let the magic of the cup, whether real or not, take him and do whatever it pleased until sunrise. He would decide what to do next, then. He wouldn’t think about it until then. Nothing, nothing, nothing—that was all he wanted.
But then a loud, demanding knock came at the cottage’s front door, and Saffron held his breath. He didn’t otherwise move, just staring at the wall in the darkness and holding Copper close. Listening.
“I’m here for Saffron,” Cylvan’s voice came, clearly audible even over the noise of the rain. “I know he’s here.”
“Saffron will return to Avren if he sees fit,” Baba Yaga responded, firmly. Saffron tried to imagine Cylvan’s expression in response to that—but he couldn’t. For the first time, he wasn’t sure what Cylvan would do, how he would react. Like every impression he’d ever had of his prince had been wiped, warped, with that one look of seething resentment he’d worn.
“You tell him to come out here and speak for himself, like the proper fey lord he promised to be for me.” Cylvan’s response finally came, cold and cutting. Saffron’s heart thumped painfully, and he pressed a hand to his chest. He didn’t want to.
“I’ve already told you my peace on the matter,” Baba replied. “Now, get out of my house. Before I show you exactly why your great-grandmother was so afraid of people like me.”
Even Copper shivered slightly.
“How dare you speak to me like that,” Cylvan hissed, clearly in disbelief. “After everything I’ve done for him?—!”
The sharp, distinct sound of a hand striking flesh rang out through the cottage, and Saffron petrified in an instant. His chest ached. His heart pounded in his ears, making it hard to hear. Worried tears burned in the backs of his eyes, terrified of what might come next?—
“You will not darken my doorstep again, you vile thing,” Baba Yaga hissed, the air in the house shuddering. “You dare come making demands for that poor boy to bend himself backwards further than he already has, for the sake of your ego—but when was the last time you looked at him? He comes to me bruised, beaten, exhausted, on the verge of collapse, after everything he’s already sacrificed for you. Worse than I’ve ever seen him—after I trusted you to take care of him in Avren. Worse than after years of slaving as a beantighe. A handful of months away, and your darkness has already consumed him practically to the bone. ériu curse you for taking someone so soft and patient—someone who cared for you so much, and breaking him like you have. Get out of my house, or there really will be no heir to the damned throne once I’m finished.”
Saffron pressed his hand into his mouth. Suffocating himself as the emotion ebbed in and out of his body, agonizing and leaving trenches where needly fingers scraped through his insides. Hating the feeling of wishing to keep Baba Yaga from saying such things—too scared to go out and stop her. Wanting to remain hidden, not wanting Cylvan to know where to find him. Just a little bit longer. He just wanted to be alone, for a little bit longer. Alone beneath the blankets, on the floor of his henmother’s bedroom, curled up tight with the warm, protective body of his friend pressed into his back.
A long, distinctly silent pause followed Baba Yaga’s voice. Saffron almost thought Cylvan had turned and left without a sound, barely pulling his hand from his mouth, just a moment before an answer came.
“Alright,” Cylvan said, sharp and in finality—before breaking slightly, with the words the followed. “Then—keep him here. Where I know you will take care of him. At the very least—just—tell him I didn’t mean what I said. And keep him out of the woods on his own. It isn’t safe.”
There was another pause, joined by the softest whispering Saffron couldn’t make out. Baba Yaga said nothing else after, followed by the sound of the door closing. The old henmother sighed quietly, before the sound of the creaking floor followed her into the kitchen, where she sank into one of the chairs in silence.
Saffron couldn’t hold it back any longer. He cried, curling up tighter on himself as he did everything he could to suppress the noise. But Copper surely heard; Baba Yaga surely heard. Even the beantighes lying in their beds upstairs might have heard him, crying into his hand. Unsure where the sound came from. Likely assuming it rattled from some sad ghost haunting their cottage. One of many lost human souls that wandered the Agate Wood—left there by centuries of the same hubris what had just stormed out.
“Cylvan is a fool,” the beast in the back of Saffron’s mind whispered.
Copper tucked his head into the dip of Saffron’s side. Fiachra purred and chirped softly, nipping at Saffron’s hand once again pressed tightly to his mouth.
For the first time in what felt like ages—Saffron fully allowed the miserable emotions to storm in and out of him, until there was nothing left to ravage. Until, finally, he was cursed to sleep as deeply as the dead.