36. Chapter 36
Chapter 36
Ard Tiarna Emrys of Breacadh an Lae, The Raven of the Dawn
I scrubbed my hand down my face, noting that stubble had started to gather on my chin again. I wasn’t spending the magic on my usual grooming regimen. Instead focusing it all on holding the forces, which were pressing in all around me, at bay. Everywhere I turned, the narrow walls of my enclosure were starting to crumble in on me.
And now he was lying in the infirmary, and I was hiding her in my room. She should be hanging in the Maw. Any soldier with half an ounce of courage in him going in to check on her would find the dragon empty of its treasure, and the alarms would sound of her escape. She should be in shambles, crumbled under the might of my torture.
Even with Brittle Spear shackled to a wall deep in the dungeons for the alleged crime and awaiting his impending execution, Daróg had not pardoned her yet, and she should be in the dungeon until that happened.
Which is exactly why, even though I would rather be curled up with her in the bed across from the tub I had left her in, I was escaping to the temple’s infirmary. I would rather be anywhere but here. I never wanted to see his face again, but the sloppiness of the assassination attempt had left too many questions, and as the Captain of his blasted fucking Guard, I was required to see it through to the end.
Fucking Fae oaths.
I stopped at the wash station at the door to the infirmary located at the back of the temple. Rich, thick lather from soap made by Faolán’s drui that smelled of milúll, comfrey, and lavender filled my senses. Brushing away the cobwebs of a thousand thoughts that tangled in each other like spiderlings on a gale force wind.
I cleansed my hands, my arms, and my face of any dirt, rinsing it down into a hidden basin that would empty into a marshy glen that would, in turn, filter it and return the water to the creek before taking a seat to remove my boots. Simple protocols of cleanliness kept all the ill beyond the copper doors from getting sicker from diseases and filth brought in by their visitors. My boots came free and were set aside. Then my garments were replaced by the simple garb provided for this purpose, and my large feet were shoved into too-small slippers.
Taking a deep breath, I pushed down on my knees, groaning at the aches in my weary bones. I was getting too old for this shit. Fae might be eternal, but that didn’t mean we felt eternal.
I wandered the glittering, polished dark-grey marble hallway, wincing a few times when the soft scented candlelight hit a vein of gold to mirror back a blinding flame.
The Ard Rí rested in state at the very end of the hall, in the largest room. One that was appointed solely for the royal family should they ever have need of it. They rarely did, but there he was, lying peacefully in a bed made of silk grass, surrounded by a bounty of fresh flowers that had been arranged to look as if they bloomed from the plush bed. Beneath that lawn was a mattress of the finest down and feathers. It was shit for fucking on but felt like sleeping in a cloud.
I was supposed to kneel next to him, to supplicate myself beside the living god of the spring. I was not going to do that. Not now and not back when I’d first seen him in this bed after the war when he had caught some sort of magic fever that boiled the essence within him and left parts of him withering and dying .
I’m still unconvinced it hadn’t been a curse from the Lady Airgetlám, wherever she had gotten to.
Instead, I dragged, noisily, a couch from the corner and set it next to him.
“You can stop pretending,” I grunted down at him, taking my seat and leaning my elbows on my knees.
I could see him rolling his eyes behind his lids before he opened them. The dark veins of the venom still ate at the whites of his eyes, still crawled on spidery fingers across his flesh. “I was sleeping.”
“You haven’t been sleeping for the last ten minutes. You knew the moment I entered the temple.”
“How do you know?”
“Do you forget how well I know you? You had a wisp stationed in the gardens to watch for my approach. It flew in ahead of me to report that I was coming.”
“A pix, actually. Wisps are dumb and prone to getting distracted.” He groaned as he tried to get comfortable. “Help me up.”
“A please still goes a long way, my lord.”
He frowned up at me. A crown might as well have burst into a flaming wreath atop his head. Imperious fucking bastard.
I rolled my eyes and leaned over. “Fine.” I helped him scoot up and then back against the painted headboard with a pillow at his back.
“Thank you.”
“Why is it that even when you’re saying thank you it feels like you’re barking an order?”
“You never seemed to mind my orders before.”
There was a hint of a flirt in his dull eyes, but I ignored it. He could flirt and play the slut all he wanted. My heart had hardened to him centuries ago, and now, more than ever, I had no interest in his affections.
When I didn’t take the bait, he sighed and pressed the blanket flat against his lap. “I am glad that you came, Emrys. We need to talk.”
“I was unaware I had the option of not talking with you, my Liege.” I leaned back in my seat and watched him through slitted eyes .
I had learned more than one lesson about being careful with his words.
“True. You do not have the option of not speaking with me.” His diseased eyes turned up to the swaying butterflies that danced on artificial breezes, animated for his amusement by squandered magic. “Duty calls for you again, Emrys.”
“Stop calling me Emrys. I revoked your right to use my true name casually a long time ago.”
I hated when he called me by my true name. It reminded me of all the times I had heard it bellowed on the wings of passion or whispered lovingly. I never wanted to hear him so familiar with me again.
“You are especially surly this evening. What has my Raven so thorny?” He turned his attention back to me, and I could see the slight green tinge to his usually tanned skin.
“I’ve had to put another of my friends in the dungeon for treachery, my Liege. I do not have so many as you, my lord. I cannot afford to lose them as easily.”
It was an agile lie. He didn’t need to know that I was on edge because I had, once again, allowed myself to be convinced by some misplaced sense of chivalry that, when my anger rose, I should abandon Cricket. Was it truly better for her to never see the way she lit me aflame and drove me mad? Was it more kind, knowing that I intended on spending the rest of my life with her, to hide the true edge of my beast from her?
“And which friend of the court did you find skulking about that bitch daoire girl?”
I fought the urge to flex my fists in his presence. I had already wounded his pride once when it came to Cricket. Further slicing at it would prove deadly for either Cricket or Daróg.
“Ard Tiarna Brittle Spear, lord of Tromluí údramáil, has been arrested for the crime. We are currently interrogating him to find out if his hand wielded the blade or merely pointed it at you, your Highness.”
“Brittle Spear?” A deep, weak frown sculpted itself into his features. As if he was confounded by how, of all Fae, Brittle Spear could have laid him so low. The information weighed heavy on him and forced him back into the pillows as if all his energy had been spent sparring with me, even if it had been but a kitten batting at a dandelion. “So, the whole of the court is corrupt?”
He had uttered that sentence before, whether he meant to harken back to the day he had me on my knees in the throne room begging for the life of my family, there I was, exhausted from battle, with my armor still crusted in the blood of the House of Magic. The great hammer I wielded against his enemies, shattered across the stonework in symbolic recrimination for my crimes.
“No, my lord.”
I tried not to let the emotion of the memory, crisp and clear, as if it had happened but moments ago, take hold of my voice.
“Then, who else?”
“We don’t know yet. But there is no evidence the human was involved.”
The soft light reflected off the darker veins in the sea of nearly black-green of his eyes as he looked up. “Duty it is, then, my Raven. See it through.”
I gritted my teeth and grunted in response, assuming he was finished, rising to leave.
“Your king is not done with you yet, Raven of the Dawn.”
A nerve under my eye began ticking along with one in my jaw as I turned to him.
“Your betrothal to my sister.” I opened my mouth to interrupt him, and he held up his hand to stop me. “I know I dissolved it long ago as punishment. You have served your penance in that arena, Raven. I grant you leave to return to her side as her betrothed. You will be wed when the milúll trees bloom again.”
“Your generosity knows no bounds, my lord, but I am no more worthy of The Lady Oaken Rose’s hand today, as I was then. I cannot accept this gift.”
Every muscle in my body was straining with the hold I had on it to keep from lashing out. How fucking dare he? Now? Of all times? Now he decides to reinstate that shitty betrothal I had never wanted to begin with?
“You will accept it, Raven of the Dawn.”
“Your Highness, I am too low of station to be worthy of a Banfhlaith’s hand in marriage.”
“On the day of your wedding, I will cleanse Breacadh an Lae of the stain of your crime against magic and reinstate you as Ard Tiarna of the Dawn,” he stated simply.
My eyes darted between his, trying to find the threads of his logic to chase it down and with it my next move, but none of it made sense. He had kept me under his thumb by the sheer grace of my diminished status. He had disgraced me and my court so thoroughly that even my station within the palace itself was seen as a charity and earned him beneficence with the other courts. So, what had changed? Why now?
Did he know about Cricket? He had to. This had to be his gambit to keep me from her, even if it was not unheard of for Fae, once married, to have honored companions that they spent their lives with instead of their married partner. Outside of procreation, in a marriage of political import, there was no true reason for two Fae to even see each other let alone love each other. But it was different for humans. Humans did not tend to enjoy being shared or sharing their partners. Many a Fae had lost their beloved human to this folly. There were countless songs and poems about the singularity that was a human’s love. She would never tolerate my affections should I be forced into marrying The Oaken Rose.
“No.”
There was no logic, no move I could make that would not reveal my hand if he didn’t already know of my feelings for Cricket.
“It was not a request, Raven of the Dawn.” His eyes leveled on me, and he examined his nails. “I lay here, in this infirmary bed, unable to rule my kingdom. My sister reigns in my stead until such time as I can retake my throne. But she is . . .”
“Hated?”
“—Not well respected by the court. Through whatever chicanery you hold, you have gained allies even in your disgrace. The Lady Oaken Rose will need those allies to balance her rule while I am abed. You will do this. Whether you wish it or not, my sister announces it this very evening at the evening feast, my gift of your returned betrothal. You will act as her intended in good faith.”
“Or else?”
“There is no or else. You will do this.”
“I know you better than this, Daróg. There has never not been an ‘or else.’ So, say it. I do not wish to have the unknown threat hanging over my head.”
He rolled his eyes lazily up to meet mine. “Spideog was recently spotted.”
Every drop of my blood froze within my veins. Spideog. Robin. My youngest of ten siblings. She was still in the nursery when they raided Breacadh an Lae. Her nursemaid, a human named Burning Heart, was found in the Night Market ten years later and was slain or sold before I could get to her. But the hope that she had lived and maybe spirited Spideog clear of the slaughter had lived in the garden of my heart ever since.
And he knew it.
“You lie.”
“Do I?”
“We both know you do. If you knew where she was, you would have—”
“Waited until the news would have best served my advantage over you? Such as right now, when you once again refuse to bend the knee?”
I gritted my teeth against it. My sister. My youngest sister, she would barely be older than The Lady Sapphire Speaker. She was only eleven when the war started. Still practically a baby in the eyes of Fae.
“Where is she?”
“Accept the betrothal. Do as you are commanded and serve as my sister’s knight until I am healed and able to claim the throne.”
“I will never marry her.”
“I don’t need you to. I need you only to allow the rest of the court to see that if I die, my dynasty will live on in her, bolstered by your savagery. I will heal, in time. And when I retake my throne, when my ass sits atop it once more, I will tell you where she was last seen, and if you wish, dissolve your betrothal to my sister for the final time.”
“I will never marry The Lady Oaken Rose. Not in a year, not in twenty, not in this lifetime nor the next.” I hissed, rage riding me with fear holding its bridle.
Spideog was a child. What horrors had she lived through in these past hundreds of years? Did she know I still lived?
“If she lives, why hasn’t Spideog gotten word to me to come to her in over two hundred years?”
His arms crossed over his chest. “I haven’t the slightest idea, Raven. Perhaps she is a little annoyed that her older brother pissed away the entire court and manor on a whim, and she was forced out into the wilds to fend for herself. Or perhaps she doesn’t trust you, like the rest of us. Young though she was, she wasn’t an addle-headed child. She probably saw you for what we all saw, a beast only good to be used at the end of the leash. So, be a good puppy and heel.”
“I don’t believe you.” I narrowed my eyes and played the one gambit I had.
Calling his bluff.
He softened into a sigh. “I didn’t speak to her, Emrys. I wasn’t even there. I don’t know how true the rumors are, but several Bánánach saw her during one of their rides on the wild hunt. Lord White Throat himself claims he saw her.”
Lord White Throat, a lower lordling of the Samhradh. He was not prone to wild, fanciful tales nor prone to spreading false rumors. If he had uncovered an errant bird of the Dawn, he would have reported it, expecting a reward not to be questioned at length.
Daróg took the boon of my pensiveness and pressed his advantage. “Please, Emrys. Do this for me. They are saying I may not walk again for a long time. I cannot have my sister set before the court unprotected and unallied. You know how she is. She may not be your favorite. She never was, not even when our parents first brokered the betrothal, but she is my sister. And as you would do anything to help Spideog, I would do anything to keep Oaken Rose safe. I cannot do much from this bed. I cannot trust many Fae besides you. I have known you since the cradle. You, I can trust, even if it is to trust you to do the killing I cannot. I know you will treat her with all the chivalry she deserves and not allow harm to come to her as she holds this kingdom back from crumbling in on itself. If you wish payment, I will pay it. Tell me what it is, and it will be yours. And I will also tell you what I know for Lord White Throat’s report.”
His sincerity twisted at my heart. Fae are all but immortal, and whether they fall in or out of love with another, the scars of the piece of their heart they give to another will always bear that Fae’s name. The jagged scar that throbbed Daróg’s name ached.
I drew in a deep breath. She was going to fucking hate me when and if she found out.
“I will do this for you Daróg. On two conditions. One, when you take the throne again, you will tell me everything you know of the reported sighting of Spideog.”
“Done. And the other?”
“When you take your throne again, you will release Cricket to me. You will grant her her freedom, and I will be her guardian.”
Malice, deep and bitter, twisted his face. “Never. She is mine. You will have her bones when I take my throne and nothing more.”