Chapter 31 #2
Daire’s lip curls as his attention shifts from Flora to the Shadehounds and back again.
“Are you really that na?ve?” he asks her.
“Do you think Chyr chose not to punish his father? Fionn was Master of the Anvar’thaine before Chulainn forced Chyr to take that role.
Chyr and the rest of us all took our vows at once because Fionn murdered the other nine Riders who served with him.
It wasn’t an honour for Chyr to be chosen. ”
“Enough.” I catch Daire’s arm, my fingers digging in.
Daire shakes me off, reaches back to grasp his shirt at the nape, and pulls it off. He leans closer, teeth bared, and points to the single row of runes that circles his arm.
“This—this—is the oathband of the Anvar’thaine,” he says. “But that’s not what Chyr’s uncle had burned into Chyr’s skin. Chulainn made Chyr the Master to punish him. To force him to fail so he’d be banished to the Pit where he couldn’t be a threat. He made him Master to control him.
“Chyr was barely nineteen—little more than a cub and without the experience to understand the oaths he was forced to take.”
Lorcan steps between me and Daire and sets a hand on Daire’s shoulder. “Chyr’s right, Daire. She doesn’t need to hear this.”
“She has no right to judge him,” Daire snaps.
“Actually, she does.” I turn to her, and she’s still backed against the wall, backed into a tiny corner of the rest of her life with no chance to escape. I want so desperately to find a way to change that. “You don’t understand what I’ve done to her.”
“Can you stop being such a bloody martyr?” Daire’s voice is low. “If you didn’t want me knowing your secrets, you shouldn’t have taken my sister to bed.”
I glance back at Flora, and our eyes crash together. Her expression is unreadable, and I’m not certain what I even expect or hope she feels.
“Riadan’s a runesmith, remember? And there are no secrets between us,” Daire continues, unaware.
“She read your arm, Chyr. I know all about the petty, personal oaths your uncle made you take: never challenge him, never be disloyal, never disobey him, never believe or speak ill of him, never question him—especially about your father—never believe ill of him or your father. That’s not the worst, though, is it?
I know Chulainn bound you never to speak before the Assembly, seek the throne of Tirnaeve, or enter the mortal realms without his explicit permission.
And he bound you to accept his interpretation of the Compact as the final judgment. ”
A horse shifts—an iron shoe scraping against the stone.
Daire’s challenge is there in the way he watches me, but if he thinks I was unaware that Riadan had read my runes, he’s much mistaken. Not only that, but I was glad.
I am glad.
It’s been nearly fourteen months since I took the risk of showing her, and I had begun to believe—to despair—that she hadn’t told him before we stepped through the doorway. Now, finally, the words I can’t speak have been said aloud.
Flora stares at me, her skin turned pale. She presses back into the cold stone of the cavern wall, her breath catching. “How could you swear to that?”
“It was that or be punished for Fionn’s crimes,” Daire says.
I rock back on my heels—that’s something not even Daire’s sister could know. How did she find out?
Ronan clears his throat and steps into the firelight. He’s soaked to the skin and carries the limp bodies of four rabbits strung on a leather cord slung across his shoulders. Twigs of rowan are tucked into the crook of one arm.
“Since we’re having this discussion now,” he says, “let’s set aside Chyr’s oaths to his uncle for a moment.
” He drops the rabbits and the rowan beside the fire and crosses to where Flora is still backed against the wall, while leaving her plenty of room so she doesn’t feel like she’s being crowded.
“The rest of us aren’t compromised by the king’s politics, and we are still the Anvar’thaine.
Our oaths bind us to uphold the Compact.
If any of us—including Chyr—breaks those oaths, the rest have no choice but to banish them to the Gloaming. Do I need to explain that to you?”
The wind outside is rising, blowing in through the entrance. The fire cracks and sparks. It takes all my control not to seize that wind and make it howl, not to whip the fire into an inferno to match my rage.
I was going to give Flora a little time before I broke this to her. But this is another of Ronan’s talents: he sets a trap and waits for the wild things to come to him. Now he’s the first to grasp what the others haven’t fully processed.
Lorcan likes to fancy himself the clever one in this group, but it’s Ronan who often sees what others don’t.
Still, Flora doesn’t know enough to fully understand the situation yet, and she doesn’t trust him. If he’s hoping for an advantage, he won’t get it.
She slides along the wall towards Bramble. “I assume the point you’re making,” she says, “is that you all have to make very sure I get to Muilean.”
“True, and all of us have to offer ourselves to you as companions,” Ronan says. “You can’t choose Chyr. You do see that, don’t you? Not with the oaths that have him tied in knots.”
Wind drives rain into the cavern mouth. Fat droplets bounce off the stone.
Flora’s eyes find mine again. All the colour has drained from her face, and I can see the panic as Ronan’s words sink in. Every one of the tears that start to spill down her cheeks feels crushing.
My chest squeezes, flattened under a mountain of regret.
If I’m honest, though, I can’t blame my oaths, my uncle, or the war. I should have found a way to stop this. I’m the one who’s responsible, and now Flora is drowning in the fate to which I’ve bound her.