Chapter 31
Oaths and Banishment
Chyr
T
he cavern hasn’t changed. Even the scent of intimacy lingers, along with the smell of horse and damp.
Only twenty-odd hours ago, Flora lay here in my arms and gasped my name in hunger.
If I close my eyes, I can almost feel her mouth on mine, the curve of her spine arching into my hands, the way the magic curled between us.
Now she refuses to look at me, and I can feel her thinking, plotting. I keep her beside me when we all split up to water the horses and gather forage so we can get out of sight before dawn breaks. Until then, there’s no time for anyone to talk.
But once the chores are finished, Lorcan’s dark voice cuts the silence first. “Explain,” he demands, stepping in front of me. “What in the Pit just happened?”
I turn and lift the saddle from Bramble’s back and carry it to where Flora is already setting Eira’s saddle down.
Lorcan huffs and follows me. As he nears Flora, the Shadehounds shift uneasily where they’ve flopped down near the cavern entrance, their heads lowered while they weigh whether he’s a threat.
Flora straightens, and the Crown of Flame across her brow paints gold and red reflections on the cavern wall. She stares at them, her back stiff and her shoulders tense. I reach for her, but she shifts away.
“Answer the question, Chyr. We deserve an explanation.” Lorcan squares his chest up against the saddle that I’m holding, forcing my attention back to him. His dark hair is tangled, and there’s no hint of the amusement he likes to hide behind.
Already frayed beyond recognition, my self-control shatters. “You know what happened,” I snap at him. “We Hunted the Maiden, and we’ve invited even more chaos into this war for the sake of the damned oaths that own us. We’ve taken all of Flora’s freedom from her.”
Flora’s head turns towards me, tears shining in her eyes.
The Pit take me, I didn’t mean for her to hear the ache in my voice, the despair. But I’m damned if I know how to hide them. The knowledge that she must hate me shatters me to my soul.
Daire has stripped off his coat and rolled up his sleeves. He’s crouched by the ashes of yesterday’s fire, coaxing dried moss and kindling to light, the flame turning his gold hair nearly the same shade as Flora’s and making the power runes glow across his jaw and down his throat.
Soft-footed as a wraith, Ronan stops beside him and drops a load of knotted old gorse roots as thick as his wrists to the ground. Then he turns to me with his arms folded across his chest.
“We’ll discuss the Maiden later,” he says. “First, tell us how Tuirse and Oran died. Tell us where you left them.”
One of the horses releases its bladder, and there’s a long cascade of piss streaming against the stone.
It feels appropriate—this is one of many conversations I’ve been dreading. With the Hunt compelling us to go after Flora, I delayed giving them the details. There’s no way around it now.
I set the saddle down with the fork resting against the stone beside my foot. “When you left to draw off the Greys that followed us—”
“When you ordered us to leave you,” Ronan says.
“We were slowing you down,” I respond. “The Greys would have picked us off as soon as they caught up. I gave the only order that gave all six of us a chance to survive.”
“Then why are they dead, and you are not?”
“Are you accusing me of something, Ronan?” I pull myself up to snarl at him. “Speak plain.”
“Great Mother, what is wrong with you?” From where she is rubbing Eira down with bog moss, Flora whips towards Ronan. “Aren’t you supposed to be the next best thing to brothers? Chyr was a thread away from death.”
Ronan barely glances at her, his jaw tight and his teeth gritted. “Siorai don’t die of wounds like that. We’ve all had worse.”
“Any given week,” Daire says.
“But again, Oran and Tuirse are dead. Chyr isn’t.” Ronan shifts his attention back to me and rakes a hand through his russet hair. “So how is that?”
“Because of her.” I wave in Flora’s direction. “There was celestial iron deep in the wounds—ground into a fine dust that was slowly poisoning us from the inside out. We were dying from the moment we were ambushed.”
My throat closes at the thought of how much Flora has given me and how I’ve repaid her. Shaking my head, I try to push away the guilt, lock it away along with the anguish of those long final miles with Tuirse and Oran. It will come back—guilt always does.
“Tuirse could barely sit up in the saddle,” I continue, “but he was telling a joke about what Vheara’s Greys wore under their uniforms. Oran was leading the dappled mare and walking beside me.
I heard Oran laugh, then the next thing, he was dead on the ground.
The mare tried to carry them both, but Tuirse insisted on walking. He fell and didn’t get back up.”
“Fuck.” Daire’s shock is mirrored on Ronan and Lorcan’s faces.
“Dying of a wound after leaving the battlefield? That’s never been a possibility,” Lorcan says, pulling out his favourite knife and tossing it blade over hilt, the way he does when he’s excited or upset. “I guess that almost makes us mortal.”
Ronan shoots him a filthy look. “Chyr isn’t, apparently.”
“Flora healed me. She buried Tuirse and Oran when I couldn’t, and she hid me when the Greys came. She’s kept me alive ever since.”
The three of them turn to stare at her, but she ignores them. Little does she know that’s the surest way to get Lorcan and Daire’s attention.
“What do you mean, she healed you?” Daire stands up now that the fire is crackling. “You said you were poisoned by celestial iron.”
“She cut out most of the infected flesh, used magic to draw out the iron, and knitted the wound back together. Think about that the next time you cretins are inclined to be disrespectful.”
Flora’s pretending not to listen, but even in the dim light I can see the blush blooming in her cheeks.
She finishes grooming Eira and has moved to work on Bramble, and we all watch her silently.
Exhausted, furious, scared—she’s clearly all of those things.
She’s also the damned Maiden, and the most fierce and beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.
I know better than to ask her to sit down and let me take care of the horses for her—especially in front of the others.
I beat down the impulse, and I swallow the growl that fights its way up my throat at the way the Riders are looking at her.
As if he’s heard it anyway, Ronan snatches up his bow and quiver and strides to the cavern entrance. “I’m going out to hunt,” he says. “There’s another storm coming, and the Maiden will need to eat.”
He vanishes into the early light, and I suppose I can’t be surprised. Ronan’s first instinct when he adopts a wild thing is to feed it.
Thunder cracks outside. Within the cavern, the silence stretches. Lorcan and Daire exchange one of their long, silent looks. Daire shakes his head.
“Chyr, tell me this,” Lorcan drawls, ignoring him, “we all know you’d rather burn your own eyes out than sit on Fionn’s throne. But you expect us to believe you happened to find a Maiden in the woods when there hasn’t been one in more than four centuries?”
I haven’t had a good brawl in a long time, and I indulge myself in imagining how good it would feel to sink my fist into Lorcan’s smirking face. He spins his favourite knife across his knuckles, blade over hilt. Nervous.
“Believe whatever you like,” I say.
Thunder rolls outside, and the fire crackles.
Daire flashes me one of his saucy grins. “You’re thinking about hitting him, aren’t you? Go ahead. I’ll watch.”
Flora rests her arms across Bramble’s back. “He isn’t entirely wrong, though, is he, Chyr? You made it sound as if you played no part in any of this. But when did you first suspect I might be the Maiden?”
At the back of my jaw, the muscle twitches into a knot. “I didn’t know, Flora. It made no sense. Too many things argued against it, but that your magic wasn’t Siorai.”
“Not what I asked.”
I let the silence stretch. “Then I’m not sure what to tell you.”
“And there it is. You Evers—”
“Siorai,” Daire snaps, his knuckles whitening on his fists.
“You Evers,” Flora repeats, calmly, glaring at him. “You pick and choose which truths to tell, which laws to enforce, which oaths to keep—”
“We have to keep all our oaths,” I say. “Unless they conflict.”
She turns her eyes back to me. They’re still different from the calm grey of before, still the same silvery-gold as moonlight, but now they’ve hardened to steel.
“You’ve said that before,” she says. “But if you’ve sworn to enforce the Compact, how is it you left your father sitting on our throne all these years? How is it that your oaths never called for you—the Master of the Anvar’thaine—to banish him for that?”
The oathbands flood me with ice that makes it impossible to breathe. But even if I could tell her the reasons, they’d make no difference.
“No answer, Chyr? Any of you? Nothing to say?” Flora prompts.
Daire’s jaw works, a muscle jumping. Then he lunges at her.
The Shadehounds growl and run towards her, Shade moving faster even as I run to knock Daire aside.
Daire gets to her first, his arms caging her against the wall.
I wrench him back. My fist connects with his face, and when the momentum whips his head aside, I follow with a punch that doubles him over. Shade stays and growls at him.
“Don’t ever touch her.” My voice is soft.
“Why?” Daire wipes the blood from his lip. “Because you’re the only one allowed to do that?”
“Because she decides. Always. Do not touch her. Do not threaten her.”
The two of us glower at each other, but because it’s Daire and it’s impossible to contain his chaos, he turns to glare at Flora again. Shadow has pressed her body tight against Flora’s legs, fangs bared and hackles raised as if she’ll take down anyone who dares to come any closer.