Chapter Three
THREE
Finn whirls, sword flashing.
And she might be twice as strong as I am, more practiced from years of weapons drills and sparring and doing Old Ones know what on the streets—but I’m faster.
The hand on my neck releases, and the clang of steel on steel screams. A figure steps out from the shadows, blade bracing against my sister’s sword. Before the figure can make a sound, I snake up behind them and press my long knife to their neck.
The pulse beneath my knife flickers. I’m close enough to smell the distinctive scent of sea salt and the bitter residue that comes from too many hours spent working with hemlock.
Relief floods through me, the blade almost falling from my hand.
It’s Keeva.
“Old Ones,” I curse, and throw my arms around her shoulders. Soft curves press into me, and the warmth that always seems to radiate from her dulls the chill in my bones. “What were you thinking?”
“Some thanks for trying to keep your sorry asses out of trouble.” Keeva’s eyes crease into a smile that quickly darkens.
She taps the smooth ebony stump of her left wrist against her side—an anxious tick, and a difference she’s had as long as I can remember.
“Or hadn’t you heard? The gardai are on the hunt. ”
“You fool.” Finn yanks Keeva out of my embrace and pulls her in close. “I could’ve killed you!”
“If anyone was going to kill me, it would’ve been Maeve.” Keeva winks at me, and a little curl of pride unfurls in my chest. “Looks like all the training’s paying off.”
“You know what the Málmars say.” Finn squeezes my shoulder. A tremor runs through her hand—exhaustion, probably. “A woman with a weapon is like lightning at midday. Just as dangerous as a storm at night. All the more deadly if you don’t expect it.”
Keeva laughs, but a darkness lingers in her brown eyes. It’s unnatural for someone who always seems to have a sly grin tucked at the corners of her mouth.
She nods at my mud-splattered cloak, parted down the middle from where I threw my arms around her. The tunic underneath is still a dull green. “Weapon or not, we need to get Maeve inside. Especially wearing that.”
Finn frowns, and a bead of sweat gathers at her temple. “What do you mean?” A flicker of something I can’t decipher passes between her and Keeva.
I pull the cloak tighter to fight the chill of the misty air.
“Didn’t you hear?” Keeva finally answers, glancing sideways at me. “The High King’s gone mad. He had a dream rebels in green are coming for his throne and sent the gardai out hunting anyone wearing it.”
A hard scoff breaks from me. “You say that like he wasn’t already out of his damn mind.”
Finn shakes her head. “He wasn’t mad when he banished the Martyr, or when he burned the temples down.
He was a tyrant, and he was brutal, but there’s a difference.
” She taps the side of her temple. “He was still here until a month ago, even when he was in a rage at the Martyr for not saving his first queen, or terrified at how close the uprising came to—”
Keeva shoots her a warning look, and Finn’s words cut off in a low breath.
“People like to imagine magic can change the rules of nature,” Finn says more softly, shrugging.
“But it’s just the isle’s raw energy, and mages are just people who’ve studied enough to shape that energy, to bend the elements to their desires.
Air, water, blood, earth, fire. Magic can influence them—whipping a calm sea into waves or scorching an infection out of your blood. ”
Another tremor twitches her fingers.
“But the rules of nature can’t be changed, no matter how powerful the mage.
Death can’t be reversed. The rising and setting of the sun can’t be stopped, even if a mage can tear storms from the skies or conjure the air into fog thick enough to blind a whole army.
” She lets out a breath that turns into a cough.
“I have to think that for a king, realizing magic is beyond his control is… terrifying.”
Keeva shares a look with Finn, and her mouth tightens into a thin line.
We step through puddles of crimson, and I try to let my brain believe it’s nothing but water. Just pools of rain that I’ve trudged through a hundred times before.
Each twist and turn we take is deserted, thank the Old Ones.
“I don’t understand.” My voice sounds so loud in the deathly quiet. “How do you know about the High King’s dream?”
Keeva’s shoulders stiffen. “I overheard a few of the gardai in the merchant quarter.”
“Wait.” I pull Keeva to a stop. Finn was in the merchant quarter just before all of this too. “Were you together?”
“Maeve.” Finn’s voice takes on a warning tone I’ve never heard before—not from her.
I flinch back, hurt slivering between my ribs as I understand.
My sister doesn’t trust me—and I have no idea what I’ve done to deserve that.
I pull the cloak more tightly around me and tug the hood up over my head. It hides my stinging eyes.
Keeva shifts uneasily and elbows Finn.
My sister’s face darkens as she glances sideways at me, but she only leads us into the tangle of streets twining behind the trading post, away from the blood-soaked market and the bodies lying in the mud.
“Think they’ll cancel the Assay?” Keeva breaks the tense silence.
Finn shakes her head. “Not a chance. The Bloody Prince is twenty-one. Eireann’s constitution says the heir has to marry at that age or lose their claim to the throne.
Not to mention, the High Queen probably sees this as the perfect timing to get a future queen who’s friendly to the idea of Cymrean annexation lined up for the throne. ”
My sister stumbles, tripping over nothing but her own feet, and lands hard on both knees.
“Finn!” I reach out for her, but she brushes me off.
“I’m fine,” she says, and a fresh sliver of hurt needles through me.
“You’re not.” I turn to Keeva. “She’s hurt. It’s from something on her side. She keeps trying to hide it. I swear, she never got hit while we were running from the gardai, so I don’t know…”
Keeva’s eyes harden. She kneels at Finn’s side and helps her back up. “You know better than to hide injuries by now. Out with it.”
In all the years they’ve been together, I’ve never seen my sister refuse Keeva.
Not when Keeva wanted the last piece of crusty bread, or when she asked us to stay far, far away from the market when the Lady of Shadows might make a visit, or when she needed help tallying up taxes from her stall of poisons.
But Finn meets Keeva’s stubborn eyes now, defiance flashing bright and hard along with something softer—something pleading.
Keeva just nods, tight and quick.
I bite my tongue and don’t say a word as we loop our arms around Finn’s waist. By the time we reach our little lane an hour later, all three of us are drenched from the thickening tingle of the silver mist.
Secrets are your greatest shield.
Not just for you but for the ones you love too. That’s what our mother always said.
If my sister is keeping secrets from me, there’s only one reason. She must think whatever she knows could hurt me, too.
One look at her is all it takes for my heart to crack.
Finn is as pale as moonlight. Auburn hair sticks to her cheeks as she stumbles through the door to our shack. Keeva offers a hand to help Finn over to her worn bed in the far corner, but my sister just shakes her head slowly, collapsing in the nearest chair with a low groan.
Our father lumbers out from the back room, flinching when he sees me, his eyes darkening. “Did you get the fish? I ask you to do one thing, and—”
Finn cuts him off with a cough. “My fault. Gardai raided the market. I had to get Maeve out of there.”
The lie rolls off her tongue. That wasn’t just a raid, and we both know it.
I feel our father’s eyes hover on me, but he says nothing—no sound of agreement, not a hint of a care for the heaps of grime and blood sticking to my cloak. Just like he always looks at me, with a dark flash of pain.
I don’t react, not anymore. I’ve had five years to accept that just the sight of me hurts him now.
Everyone always said I was the spitting image of my mother, from my chestnut hair to the lone dimple in my right cheek to my gray eyes.
He staggers into the back room as a cold gust comes through the cracks in the front door.
Pity is a strange thing. It both weighs heavy and lingers in the air.
I feel it in Keeva’s eyes the longer they watch me, so I turn to put my back to her.
The stove casts off peat smoke that fills the shack with a familiar sweet earth scent. I scrub my hands with a bar of soap with little yellow flowers pressed into it and wash the smoke and muck off in the bucket we keep by the door.
There’s a steaming pot of mushroom broth over the small hearth—I scoop out a mug of it for Finn, making sure to ladle out the best bits with extra lentils and barley for any strength I can give her.
She takes it gratefully, bringing the salty broth to her lips and sipping slowly before rising on unsteady feet to use the privy out back.
Keeva settles onto a low stool by the fire, her eyes on the door until Finn comes back through. She helps her over to the bed, ignoring Finn’s protests. Only when my sister slumps onto the covers does Keeva bring her tight, dark gaze to Finn’s side.
“Show me.”
For a long moment, I think Finn’s going to refuse her again and I’ll have to rip the tunic up over her ribs. I might be hurt, and I might even be angry with my sister for not trusting me. But none of that matters in the big scheme of things. Nothing matters compared to her being okay.
Her being alive.
Finally, Finn reaches for the hem with trembling fingers and draws it up.
The air slams out of my lungs.
“Finn.” My voice cracks.
The cut down my sister’s side is short and shallow, a thin streak of red the length of my finger. It’s the tendrils of black crawling from it, and the vicious yellow edges of the wound, that make me forget how to breathe.
But the wound isn’t bleeding. It isn’t even weeping anymore. The cut is new but not fresh—it must be several hours old, if not almost a day.