Chapter 18
Cillian
We lie there in the quiet shadows, tangled and gasping, completely spent from the fire we just built.
I roll onto my side, watching the steady rise and fall of her chest, still catching my own breath.
Margot stares up at the ceiling for a long second, then props herself up on one elbow, resting her palm flat against my sternum and studying my face with those dark, glassy eyes.
"Well," she breathes, a small, sleepy smile tugging at her mouth. "No matter what else happens, I think we can safely conclude we're good at that part."
I chuckle and shake my head. "Your ability to flip-flop from total panic to that level of smugness is a sight to behold, Ace. Though I suppose being a legend in bed has its perks, according to those articles—ow!”
She pinches my side hard, her eyes narrowing in a playful threat. "You really need someone to help keep that ego in check.”
I laugh, pulling her flush against me and burying my face in the curve of her neck. "As long as you're the one doing that, I'd die a very happy man."
She laughs, a soft breath against my collarbone, then pulls back just far enough to look at me, her face going quieter. "So. Are we actually doing this? No more strictly business?"
"That's the plan." I brush a stray strand off her forehead, and my hand stays against her cheek afterward, because it seems I've lost the ability to keep my hands off her.
"My whole life's a bit of a burning wreck at the minute, if I'm honest with you.
The suspension, the press, the whole circus.
But you're the one thing I've no doubt about. Not a flicker of one."
She smiles, slow and warm. "Good."
“Aye?” I ask, grinning. "Are you okay dating an athlete? Or should I be handing in my resignation to the Renegades?"
"No way. I’m actually starting to find it sexy." She leans down and kisses me, slow and unhurried, then sinks back into the pillow beside me. "Do we keep it quiet for a bit? Us, I mean."
"Us dating?" I pause to consider. "Is that what you want?"
She nods slowly. "I think so. Not because I want to hide you. But maybe it'll give the fans time to put the pitchforks down until you're back playing, and time for me to ease in before all your millions of followers find out. I think roughly half the women on earth might actually murder me."
"Then we wait." I hook a knuckle under her chin and tip her face up to mine. "Whenever you're ready. However you want it, Ace."
She smiles, looking relieved. "Really?"
"Aye, we'll figure it out. If I'm playing well, easier to control the story.
If I'm playing badly, well, I'll just have to fight harder to protect you from it.
" I chuckle, though there's a darkness under it as the reality looms back in.
I'm itching to get back on the ice, and dreading it in equal measure.
She studies me. "You know, you make fun of my breathing techniques?—"
"Hey, I did not make fun. I observed, respectfully." I press a hand to my chest. "I'll not have this slander on my good name."
She giggles. "Okay, okay. But maybe it would actually help you before a game. And you know I'm probably going to take up boxing when we're back, since you were right, hitting things is weirdly great. So it's only fair you try one of mine. I bet the deep breathing would help."
"Alright, then." I tuck an arm behind my head. "Teach me, coach."
"Okay, simple one." She sits up a little. "You breathe in for four counts, hold for four, then out for four. That's it. Simple, right?"
"Aye. I think even I can manage that."
"Good. So you'd better actually try it." She points a finger at me, mock-stern.
"I promise I will, Ace." I catch her hand and press a kiss to her fingers.
She stays there in my arms, both of us looking at each other, something so comfortable and easy about it, just taking in all the little things in her face.
The freckle by her jaw, the way her lip curves, how her nose scrunches when she smiles.
I think I could spend a lifetime studying them and not get bored of it.
She trails light circles over my chest with her fingers. "You know, someone mentioned the faerie folk to me today. Is that a real thing? Like, do people actually believe in them?"
I smile up at the shadows on the ceiling. "And where'd you pick that up, now?"
"When I grabbed dinner on my own tonight.
" Her eyes go bright. "There was this sweet older woman ahead of me, and she dropped a handful of coins, so I helped her pick them up, and we got to chatting.
She gave me the whole rundown. She seemed so sincere, but now I'm wondering if she was just messing with me. "
I smile at the image of Margot being her usual sweet self and making friends with an older woman the second she was alone.
"Aye," I say, tracing a slow line up the warm skin of her back. "There's no shortage of legends about the Aos Sí. The faerie folk. They still wander these parts, or so the stories go."
"The ays..." She has a careful run at it. "Ees shee?"
"There you are. Practically a local."
She watches me in the shadows, her eyes wide and bright with curiosity. "But do people actually believe in them? In this day and age?"
"A bit of both, I reckon. Most don’t and laugh it off, but I've met a fair few who very much do." I shrug against the pillow, pulling her a fraction closer. "My grandfather believed, no question about it."
"Really?" Her eyes widen.
“Aye. He used to tell us about a light he saw drifting out over the bog one night, blue-white, no lantern behind it and no house for miles.
A ghost light, he called it, and swore blind it followed him halfway home.
Scared me half to death as a boy." I huff a laugh.
"Ask my mam, though, and she'll tell you it's all fairytales and what in God's name are you on about.
She's no time for faerie rings or any of it. "
"What exactly is a faerie circle?" she asks, her voice dropping to a whisper.
"A ring of mushrooms, usually, or maybe just a wee circle of darker grass sitting out on its own in an empty field. Meant to be the spot where the good people dance at night. If you happen across one, you go around it. You don't ever, for any reason, walk through the middle."
"Hmm, fascinating." She stares out at nothing for a second, then turns back to me with a mischievous glint in her eyes. "So. Do you believe?"
I let out a low chuckle. "No. But I... I prefer to err on the side of caution."
"You err on the side of caution?" She smiles.
"Aye. Meaning if I find myself at the edge of a faerie circle, I'm not crossing it. I'm not taking a chance on the off chance they're actually watching."
"Ha! I knew it! You're superstitious!" She lets out a delighted laugh and I can't help but join her.
"Aye, you've caught me," I say, pulling her closer against my side. "Superstitious as they come.”
"So what happens if you step into one?" she asks, sitting back up and resting her chin on her hand, watching me intently.
"Well, if you're foolish enough to walk through the middle, which you know better than to do now," I look at her pointedly, "then you’d be taken.
Swept off with the good people, away under the hill.
As the stories go, a single night dancing down there is a hundred years up here.
You come back to find the whole world's moved on without you, everyone you knew long in the ground. "
"Sounds dark and terribly sad." She shivers. "I'll do my best to avoid them, just in case. Though if I do go missing into a mushroom ring, you'd better come after me."
I smile at her, brushing a stray dark hair from her forehead. "Aye, Ace. I'd come after you."
She smiles and leans down to kiss me, and I kiss her back, slow and deep, one hand sliding into her hair to hold her there. Her mouth is warm and soft against mine, and she melts into it, her weight settling over my chest.
Outside, the rain's still lashing the window, the wind still howling in off the sea, but it all feels a long way off.
There's just this. The warm dark of the room, her heartbeat against mine, and the strange, settled certainty that I'd follow this woman under any faerie hill in Ireland, hundred years and all.