23. Keira
KEIRA
R uairí's skin is still warm against mine and it is the kind of warmth that settles into the bones and lingers long after the body has cooled.
For a while, I simply let him have me, the clean weight of his hand on my hip, the heat of his breath on my collarbone, the lull of his heart that drowns out memory and prophecy alike.
Our bodies are a tangle of muscle and ache, the sheet kicked to the floor, his torso streaked with old scars and new bruises, my thigh marked with a fading crescent of his teeth.
We are a battlefield, and this is our only armistice, and perhaps that's why it always feels truer than anything else.
I keep my ear pressed to his chest, counting misshapen beats, pretending I don't hear the world outside the window rebuilding itself for the morning.
A cold pulse of gray-blue sky seeps through the glass, illuminating the cracked ceiling, the warping at the edge of the walls where the damp creeps in.
The room smells like his aftershave and clean sweat and the faintest trace of gun oil, a low note that never really leaves us, no matter how often we try to wash it away.
There is nothing gentle in the way he holds me, but it's his idea of gentleness—the unspoken promise that as long as I am here, the world cannot touch me, not even at the corners.
He runs his fingers up and down my spine in a lazy rhythm, almost thoughtless, but it tells me everything about where his mind is.
His touch is more deliberate now than it was just an hour ago, almost reverent, as if he's memorizing each vertebra, each groove of bone, each old fracture that healed slightly wrong.
I wonder if he's counting them, if he remembers the story behind each one, or if he's only pretending so that I'll believe him when he says nothing will happen to me while he's alive.
He's always been good at lying, but I've always been better at hearing the truth inside the lie.
He is still here, still tethered to the weight of what just passed between us, not rushing off, not planning his next move, just... here. I know I should give him a moment before I speak, should let us have a few more breaths of peace before I ruin it, but peace is a luxury we cannot afford.
I wish I could let him have it, the illusion that the bed is a world apart from the rest, that nothing will ever breach the walls as long as his body blocks the door.
I want to give him that, but I know how quickly illusions shatter in this house, in this city, in this life.
"I'm going to send word," I say, quietly but with the same certainty in my voice.
"To Niamh. To the circle."
His jaw works for a second before he answers.
"What kind of word?"
"The kind that says you've left. That we've ended it."
The silence that follows is not comfortable.
It is taut and sharp, and it hangs between us like an open blade.
"No," he says finally.
Not loudly, but with enough force that I feel it in my chest.
"We are not doing that. "
"We have to."
He shifts to face me more fully, eyes narrowing.
"You think letting them believe we've fractured is going to help? You think giving them even the suggestion of a crack in the foundation is a good idea right now?"
"I think it's the only way," I answer, and I make myself meet his gaze, even when I see the storm building behind his eyes.
"They need to see me alone. Vulnerable. They need to believe they've won something. That you've abandoned the city, that I'm the weaker half of this alliance and that I have no more cards left to play."
His hand drags over his face, down his beard, and he leans forward, elbows on his knees.
"You want to put yourself in the crosshairs. Pregnant. Alone. You want to paint a target on your back just to draw them out?"
"Yes."
"Jesus, Keira."
"I don't need protection right now," I say.
"I need options. And the only way I'm going to get those options is if we look like we've broken apart.
If I'm left behind in Dublin, if the Council believes you've gone soft or gone south or gone quiet, then they'll try to pull me into their fold.
Padraig will make his move. Liam will think he's got a shot with me.
And Moretti will come looking to build."
His eyes flash at that.
"Moretti?"
I nod.
"He'll hear about it. He already has people circling. I want him to think the Irish side is splintered. That the marriage meant nothing. That you're done playing kingmaker. He'll come thinking he can take what's left."
Ruairí shakes his head, slowly at first, then with more force.
"This is a risk."
"All of it is a risk."
"You're asking me to walk away. "
"I'm asking you to act like you're walking away."
He is quiet again.
His fingers curl into the sheet, the muscle in his jaw twitching.
"You're not bulletproof, Keira. You're not untouchable."
"I don't need to be untouchable. I need to be bait."
His expression twists like he wants to argue, like he is trying to form a sentence strong enough to stop me, but in the end, he does not speak.
Instead, he reaches out and pulls me back into his arms.
I let him.
I go willingly.
There is no one else I would rather have at my back, no one else I would trust with this much of myself, and maybe that is why this is so hard.
"When you've made up your mind, there's no telling you to change it," he says finally, his voice low in my ear. "So I'll say yes. Just don't expect me to enjoy it."
I press a kiss to his shoulder, breathing him in.
"You'll manage."
"I'll leave for Wicklow in the morning," he says.
"The guards here will see, and I expect some of them will let the word spread. And I'll make damn sure they think it's for good."
"I'll stay here. Take the house, take the meetings, take the questions. Niamh will spread the story fast. Her people are already watching the street. Lena's cousin can drop the story to Liam's handler by noon."
"And what if Moretti moves before we're ready?" he asks.
"Then we'll see it coming."
He pulls back just enough to study my face.
His fingers brush my cheek, then fall to rest over my stomach, his thumb tracing a slow line above the curve of it.
"You don't have to do this," he says.
"I do."
He sighs, then nods, and I know he hates it, every part of it, but he'll do it anyway.
Because he believes in me.
Because he trusts me.
Because this is war, and there are no rules left that either of us is willing to follow.
The moment I have the go-ahead from him, I brief Niamh and Lena over the secure line.
They see the logic, although they're not too happy about it.
Once this is done, I kiss my husband again, softer now, not hungry or frantic, but grounding.
When I pull back, I press my forehead to his.
"We have an hour before the performance, maybe two."
There's a window between this fading night and consequence, and we slip through it like fugitives.
Ruairí wraps himself around me, one arm under my head, the other cradling the soft curve of my stomach, and for a while the world outside is just scaffolding and ghosts.
I listen to his heartbeat, slow and metered.
His chest rises and falls with the kind of discipline I used to mistake for calm.
The sheets smell of old soap and the gun oil he never manages to scrub from his hands.
Somewhere in the estate, the pipes groan and rattle.
Somewhere in the city, men with my name in their mouths try to decide whether I am dead or just waiting to be.
He traces a line down my shoulder, fingertip following the edge of an old bruise.
"Does it still hurt?" he asks, voice rough.
"Not that one," I say.
He huffs a laugh into my hair.
"You're supposed to rest."
I almost tell him about the dream—the one where one of the babies is born with a crow's beak and a hunger for blood—but he's tense tonight, and I don't want to tip him off the edge.
Instead, I say, "Tell me something I don't know."
He's quiet so long, I start to think he's fallen asleep.
Then, "When I was nine, Fiachra pushed me off the roof of our house. "
This is new.
"You're shitting me."
He shakes his head, chin scraping my crown.
"We'd built this ramp out of plywood. He said we could fly if we jumped hard enough. I made it to the next roof, but I landed on my wrist. Broke it in two places."
I laugh, picturing it.
"And your mother?"
"She said, ‘If you're going to be an idiot, at least land on your head next time. Save us the hospital bill.'"
His voice is fond, a little raw. "We never went to hospitals after that, just learned how to fix each other."
I reach back, run my palm over his forearm, the one with the faint seam of a scar where bone must have poked through.
"Explains a lot."
"Does it?"
He shifts behind me, props himself up on one elbow.
The room is still dark, but his silhouette is solid, the old bruiser pose he adopts when he's trying to seem bigger than the rest of the world.
"I always figured you thought I came out of a factory. Ready-made arsehole."
I laugh, and it echoes in the hollow between us.
"No, you're more like a home science project gone wrong."
He grins, then goes quiet.
"You know, I hated you at first."
I let that hang.
"Which time?"
He bites my shoulder gently.
"The first time I saw you at this house. I mean, I didn't really hate you. It was more of… who the fuck is this girl with the balls to look me in the eye?"
"Didn't take you long to get over it," I say with a chuckle.
He snorts.
"Didn't have a choice. The old men started betting on who would crack first. Fiachra put twenty on you, which hurt more than the roof did."
I stretch, rolling my shoulder until the joint pops.
"He still owes me from that."
"He owes everyone."
The wind changes outside, and the curtains billow.
I pull them shut with a toe, then tuck my feet under his thigh, anchoring myself.
"You ever think about leaving?" I ask.
"Where would we go?"
I almost say anywhere.
There are places in the world where people wake up without an agenda, where the only threat is weather or time.
But I know he wouldn't last a day in that kind of exile.