8. Chapter 8
Chapter 8
T he kin’tha carried me down hallway after hallway, my head turned up so all I could see were the passing bemused features of Fae all around me and ceilings. I had no sense of direction nor how to get back to the throne room or even back down into the warrens.
I was aware of the two guards who had taken me to the throne room, leading the kin’tha, but all I could see were the beams of the ceiling. I counted them as we passed, my anger growing somewhere around one hundred fifty.
When the kin’tha finally let me go, it was a gentle unfolding of its limbs settling back into its massive cat form. Only this time, they were not cat ears that it took on but the wide ears of a fennec fox.
I narrowed my eyes on it, but before I could question it further, I was drawn into the steamy room and pushed into a hot bath by a pair of rough hands. My head was held under water, and I thrashed. Arms and legs wildly sought to connect with the owner of the hand that palmed my skull with such easy strength.
Just as quickly as I had been pulled into the water, I was finally let go as my lungs screamed for air, and I shot up, ready to punch whomever it was that had been holding me. I didn’t need to, though. The Raven was there, a sword drawn and its tip pressed into the chin of the Laundress. Her face twisted in hate aimed directly at me.
“I will say again, daoire, your purpose is to wash. It is not to mete out justice as you see fit. Whose job is that?”
The ease in his voice sent icy fingers crawling up my spine, making a fool of the hot water I stood in. It was the sort of calm I had heard in my own voice before, the serenity of seeing the fork in the road in front of you and resigning yourself to whatever path your foot fell on. It was the calm born of a sense of resignation bound up in a confidence that, no matter what came next, you would walk free of it even if the other person did not.
The Laundress hesitated but a millisecond, abhorrence thickening the air between her and I. What the hell I’d ever done to this woman was beyond me, and I made a note to find out the next time I was in the warrens.
“’Tis yours, my lord Raven,” she whispered with reluctance, as if in the doing of it her tongue was split across a blade.
The Raven watched her, twisting the tip of his sword until a single drop of ruby dribbled down her filthy neck. “I’m sorry. ’Tis your purpose, Ard Tiarna of árus Láigh.”
When he was satisfied, his sword fled her throat, and once more, she cast baleful eyes at me but said nothing nor made moves toward me to continue her attempted drowning.
“You don’t have to like her, Laundress, but you will respect that she outranks you as a possession of the Ard Rí of Magh Meall,” he said without looking at her as he slid his sword into the scabbard. “As all daora, servants, squires, and peerage of Bláth an Earraigh do. You have served in this castle for too long to forget that. Explain yourself, daoire of árus Adaig.”
I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to pull some of the heat from the tub into me. I wanted to hear what was passing between these two. Pieces were slowly falling onto the table of the puzzle. I was sure that, once I had a moment to sit with Violet, Green Man, and the other one, I would begin understanding this place.
The Laundress looked between me and The Raven a few times before I could feel the trap he had walked her into start to close. This man was dangerous. It wasn’t just his inexplicable magnetism that drew me in when I wanted to plunge a dagger into his heart and bathe in his suffering. He was cunning, patient, and ruthless. If I didn’t hate him with everything that I was, I would respect him.
“Go ahead, daoire, say it,” he purred, danger dripping from every syllable.
She began to stammer, grasping at straws, as she tried to figure out how to say what she had been thinking without her throat getting sliced.
“Say. It.”
Any other person could have been less intimidating while bellowing the two-word command.
“I thought she was a daoire of Breacadh an Lae!” she blurted.
I had heard that name before. Rictus had used that name to summon The Raven.
“You thought she was mine, so you sought to, what . . . punish her for the crime of being owned by the Dawn?” He had looked away from her again, examining imaginary dirt under his pristine trimmed, shaped nails.
“The daora said she mouthed off to His Royal Highness!”
“And you thought that, as a daoire of Lon di Lughae, you outranked her. So, you sought to establish your own little daora hierarchy. Is that correct, Laundress? ”
My skin was crawling, nearly screaming for me to run. My nerves all in unison wailed at me and pleaded for me to get clear of the perniciousness of his simple softly worded questions.
“Well. Everyone knows that your—” She snapped her mouth closed, suddenly seeing the jaws of the trap.
Finally.
“No, no, do go on, Laundress. You were finally starting to say something of interest to me. Everyone knows what?” The ease of his muscles, the way they looked so relaxed, almost languid, was hauntingly terrifying. No one should be microseconds away from whatever it was he was about to unleash while looking so at ease.
“Everyone knows that your court is disgraced,” she whispered, her chin tipping up. “And as such any property belonging to the Dawn are also disgraced and without rank.”
“Yes, this is true, Laundress. Everyone knows that Breacadh an Lae is a house in disgrace and that I serve at His Majesty’s charity. That I am no Ard Tiarna of Dawn any longer but a simple Captain of the Royal Guard.” He took a soft breath so easily mistaken for a sigh of resignation, but it was the same breath a sniper took before squeezing the trigger. “If she had been mine, Laundress, I’d have given you a swift death for daring to harm that which is mine. Take the daoire to the Maw. I will follow shortly.”
I turned, looking around to see who he was talking to. There was only the kin’tha, who was stretched out, belly flat to the copper tub. The kin’tha did not move, though. I expected it would. After all, he owned it, right? It was his to command and its purpose was to transport daora, right?
I was not prepared for the sunlight streaming in from the windows, tucked up against the roof, to solidify into ghostly shapes. In horror movies, I had seen shadows do the same birthing of a solid form trick, but I had never seen sunlight do it.
Twin sunbeams moved to either side of the Laundress and took her by the forearms. Their transparent grip glowed against her skin as she passed me. The flesh lit up by their grasp began to slowly darken to a rosy tinge, as if I were watching a sunburn grow before my very eyes. She was already howling by the time they drew her back into the light, and she disappeared.
“What—and I can’t stress this enough—The. Fuck,” I whispered to myself as I stared in horror.
He cleared his throat at my back, and I whipped around, scrambling away from him. A hissed growl came from the kin’tha as I splashed water over it in my haste. “Calm, Cricket. You’re going to—” He was cut short as I slipped on the copper beneath my frantic, scrambling feet and toppled over the hip-high back lip. The stonework rushed toward my skull, but it never connected. In a movie somewhere, the clumsy heroine would have been caught in the arms of her hero. I was not that lucky. Instead, my would-be horror hero had gripped the front of my soaking wet sheer gown and was hauling me bodily over the lip by it. “—Break your neck. ”
He growled and pushed me back into the water, shuffling back, as if I would bite him again. To be fair, I might.
“Could you please, just for a short while, cease your attempts at self-annihilation? I grow weary of saving you.”
“No one asked you to save me!” I screamed at him.
I felt childish. It felt good, and I wanted to barb him again to see the way his curling lips warred with the tempest in his eyes.
“And yet I have. I count thrice now. Let me count the thanks I have received in kind.” He paused, tapping his chin with his gloved fingers. “Hmm. Carry the one, multiply by . . . Ah, yes. Exactly zero.”
“An accomplished self-flagellator and a mathematician? Your accolades astound me, good sir.”
I would drown in my own sarcasm now that the Laundress wasn’t bent on drowning me in my bath.
His full lips twitched up, struggling to keep the laughter at bay.
The kin’tha yowled its displeasure with both of us and sauntered over to the sunbeam that had borne one of the twin creatures, and it flopped into its warmth.
“How did you do that?” I whispered, fearing both that he would answer and that he would not.
“Magic.” He shrugged. “Your people turned away from it a long time ago, long before the Romans dared to invade the human side of our realm. All of it that you ignored fled into our realm and enriched us even more. What you saw was a simple parlor trick compared to the sum of our might. What you experienced at Rictus’s hand was mild compared to what we Fae can do. We are the masters of all matter in this place. We could make and unmake you a thousand times and get bored before we weaken. As a deposed Ard Tiarna of the court of Dawn, my domain is the light. I can bend it and shape it to my will just as you can bend and shape clay to your will.”
“Is that what that means? Breacadh an Lae?”
He hummed. “It means Break of Dawn. It was the name of our palace but now stands as the name we are called. Well, I am called. There is only me left of the Dawn.”
“And the others? ”
He moved to rest against the tub opposite mine, taking up the soap the Laundress had left. “If you ask where the others are, they are dead.”
“Ah . . . I meant the other words you had used.” Awkwardness began to writhe under my flesh. I had guessed from the just me part that they were all dead. I itched to ask more about why, but something told me that the story would only make me feel bad for him. And while I was talking instead of yelling at him, I wanted to keep my ire.
“árus Adaig, it is the name of the Court of Night. Lon di Lughae is the name of their palace. It means Oath of the Blackbird. The Fae you saw the King speaking to was their lord and Ard Tiarna.” He paused, tossing the soap into the tub and pushing up to stand. “Clean up. Hot baths are not usually afforded to daora. Cherish it. When you are done, I will send in another to dress you and then I will take you before the King.”
“You’re leaving me alone?”
“Your pet is here. I’m sure you won’t get far. And my pets watch from the sunbeams.” He turned away from me, stalking toward the door. “And Cricket? Watch yourself before the King. I might find your spirit amusing, but he will not. I cannot keep you from his wrath should you lose your novelty.”