Chapter Thirty Fia
Chapter Thirty
Fia
It was decided that Linn and Abyss would travel with Irian and me to a Gate before awaiting our return with Balor in the Summerlands.
“The Willow Gate may not be the closest Gate, but it is the only one I know that is not buried or guarded in the human realms,” I told Irian.
He inclined his head. “Once we pass beyond the Barrens, it should be but a few days of riding to reach my domain. I know many folkways to shorten the distance.”
Last spring, Chandi had shown me some of these folkways—mystical gateways throughout Tír na nóg and beyond that bent the fabric of distance and blurred the lines between spaces.
They appeared without warning in natural places—between two ancient trees, in a circle of mushrooms, or in the fog of a moonlit meadow.
Linn chattered her teeth and sent me a friendly vision of one of these gateways closing as I strode through it, slicing me neatly down the middle.
I sighed and quelled a shudder. “Shall we?”
We rode. Jeweled canyons slowly transformed into a broad, flat plain Irian named Mag Tuired.
He told me of Eala’s ambush; I stared at the blackened craters and scorched weapons scattered among contorted remains of long-dead warriors, hardly believing I had been senseless to all that chaos and violence.
Linn sent us a gleeful recounting of Abyss being dragged down by a skeletal hand, only for Irian and me to go somersaulting through the air a ludicrous number of times before flopping comically onto the ground. Irian colored and almost pouted.
I nudged Linn with my heels. “He rarely appreciates being teased.”
We camped that night in a dense glade of towering fungi, caps dripping bioluminescent ooze. For supper, the aughiskies caught soft, succulent fish from the glass-bright ponds dotted throughout the grove. Their glittering bones hummed with unearthly melodies that made my teeth ache.
We traveled the next two days through dank marshlands that had Irian buzzing with silent apprehension, then beneath shimmering waterfalls misting the air with giddy rainbows.
An hour after sunset on the third day, when exhaustion began to weigh on me, a river cut a broad swath through a forest just coming alive with spring, its banks dotted with tender green shoots and quivering aspens.
Irian instantly relaxed, swinging down from Abyss’s broad back.
“This is the boundary of my domain,” he said. “Abyss, Linn—this channel cuts straight through the Summerlands to the ocean. Follow it, and you will find Balor.”
Linn tossed her head as I, too, dismounted. Then the water horses were gone, sifting their finned fetlocks over the spray of the water until the night swallowed them.
“The Willow Gate is not far,” Irian said, with the strange hesitation that had dogged our interactions since I’d awoken from Talah’s curse.
As if every sentence he spoke was underlaid by an unspoken, more anguished phrase.
“We can cross into the human realms tonight. Or I can fly us to the fort if you would rather.”
That idea made me queasy. So, too, did hiking all night to reach Rath na Mara.
I walked a little ways between the trees, considering.
Branches of oaks and rowans sifted the silver light of a newly risen moon between unfurling leaves.
Beneath them, carpets of bluebells and wood anemones trembled in the cool evening air.
The scent of fresh growth and loamy soil mingled with the sharp sweetness of new blossoms, and I felt suddenly at home.
“The night is balmy.” I brushed my fingers over the earth. Moss deepened, rounding soft and thick over the roots of trees. Vining clematis and wallflower whispered down in a fragrant screen. “Come. Let us rest here tonight. The Gate will wait until dawn.”
The smallest smile tugged at Irian’s mouth. “As you wish, my sylvan queen.”
Night exhaled a last gray breath before dawn, and I awoke to find Irian watching over me.
He sat as close to me as possible without touching me. His crossed knees nearly brushed my shoulders; his broad leather-clad fists rested close to my head. I did not need to sit up to see him, only tilt my chin upward and open my eyes.
“Sky-Sword,” I murmured, my voice pliant with sleep. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Irian barely moved at the sound of my voice, his eyes jerking down to meet mine. In the faint mist sifting ghostly between the trees, they shone unearthly as the moon netting low between new leaves. After a moment, they flicked back up to continue their alert perusal of the silent forest.
“Keeping watch.” Irian’s low burr rasped pleasantly in my ears, raising a shiver along my nape. “As you see.”
But the silence in the wake of his words felt frayed, like a tapestry with threads pulled.
As if there was something he wished to say but couldn’t find the shape of.
Ever since I had woken from Talah’s curse, it had been like this.
Irian, ever stoic—yet now without the private smiles and searing glances meant only for me.
I longed to speak to him, to weave new threads where the old had unraveled.
But all my words seemed either too much or not enough.
I, too, grieved the months stolen from us, time lost like stones dropped down a bottomless well. I, too, ached for his touch, like a flower yearns for the sun. I, too, felt untethered without the steady, wordless language of our bodies.
“I doubt we are in any danger,” I said softly. “We are both Treasures. Additionally, I carry within me the great, ghastly power of a dying star. I should think anyone who dared stumble upon us in the night should be more afraid of us than we of them. I wish you would rest.”
“Do not scold me for safeguarding your slumber, mo chroí.” He quirked an eyebrow at me. “And I was resting.”
“You were looming. Brooding.”
“I neither loom nor brood, mo chroí.” The barest smile touched Irian’s perfect face—little more than a glint of a canine beneath his lush lips. “I stand sentinel.”
“Handsomely, I might add. But I wish you would sleep.”
“I will sleep when I am dead.” The broad line of his shoulders shifted as his gaze dropped to me.
His eyes lingered on my face, tracing the plane of my cheek and the bow of my lips.
Against my breastbone, the Heart of the Forest throbbed.
Scabbarded across Irian’s lap, the Sky-Sword let out a plaintive hum.
Anguish spasmed over Irian’s face. “In truth, you are mad to believe there are any circumstances under which you and I would ever be here, alone… and I would let myself sleep.”
Pleasure and loss stitched over my skin, gossamer as spider silk—as intricate as it was inescapable.
Of all I had lost and all I had found, my physical connection with Irian was not the most precious.
And yet I did feel its loss keenly. As I knew he did.
He and I were bound by all the touches we had shared—sweet heat and bared skin and the desperate clash of mouths and limbs and bodies.
Now we were bound by the distance between us—cool air and thick cloaks and the growing knowledge that we might never share another kiss.
The moonlight slicing low between trees made me think suddenly of our strange, stealthy, combative courtship last year.
All the dark forest corners and flowering groves and moonlit ruins.
All the considering glances and careful touches, growing more intentional and heated as our mutual attraction grew.
All the sly flirtations and gratuitous banter we’d traded to hide the words we would not—could not—say.
If I wanted you, colleen, I would go to any lengths to keep you.
I shivered beneath the weight of his gaze, the weight of my memories. Yes, the loss of our physical connection was a grievous blow. But we had once had less… and made it into far more.
“Surely my snoring isn’t that loud, Sky-Sword.”
Irian exhaled and dropped his eyes. His raven hair fanned down around his ears as regret and resignation soured his smile.
“Right.” Irian shifted, drawing his knees beneath his body as his fist closed around the sheathed Sky-Sword. The other hand braced against the tree at his back as he prepared to rise. “Because of the snoring.”
“Wait.” I was not ready to let this moment go—bittersweet though it might be.
Poised here, in the soft, sweet sigh between night and day, with mist sifting between silent trees and the sun waiting somewhere beyond the horizon, I wanted him.
I knew I could not have him—not like that.
I could not have the imprint of his fingertips at the divot of my waist. Could not have the press of his mouth against my lips.
Could not have the thrust of his hips between my legs.
But there was more than one path through the forest.
“Tell me,” I breathed, the moment already so tenuous I feared it might be broken by speaking too loudly or moving too quickly. Irian stilled, one arm propped on a raised knee as he stared at me across the space separating us.
“Colleen?”
“Tell me why we would not be sleeping.” My voice dropped even quieter, a sudden shyness tiptoeing between the rising vines of desire thorning my veins. “If you and I were here. Alone. In the hour before dawn.”
Irian’s pupils dilated, the depthless black devouring the silver until it was little more than a halo. “Do not tease me, mo chroí.”
“I would never tease you.” My voice was little more than vapor in the silver mist. I slid a finger over my metal brooch, then swiftly unfastened it, allowing the hem of my cloak to fall down over one shoulder.
Irian hesitated, the powerful slope of his shoulders bunching as he battled some inner indecision. “Your eyes, Fia. Let me see your eyes.”