Chapter Seventeen
SEVENTEEN
There are no more temples left on this isle.
The High King saw to that years ago.
But I think the ghosts that died here haunt this place still.
Or their dreams do, at the very least.
To call the space Talon leads me to a temple might be stretching the facts. Crypt might be a more accurate name. The place is more like a basement mixed with a dungeon, overgrown with mildew and ancient treasures no one has ever bothered to miss.
The boarded-up doors lie hidden behind the kitchens and a closet of crates teeming with moth-eaten tablecloths, where no one but servants would ever need to go.
There’s a still, hallowed taste in the air, thick with dust and the faint bite of long-burnt incense. The remnants of a tattered navy cloak hang over an empty altar.
Talon nudges me deeper into the carved stone arches veiled in heavy shadows.
Candlelight flickers from just two iron lanterns on the rough stone walls. Tapestries hang from all sides. They’re beautiful but smeared and stained with a dark spray that turns my stomach. The scenes beneath are ones I’ve heard since the cradle.
Woven serpents soar through the air.
Mages call down storms from the skies above.
Rivers glow with dark, shimmering liquid, stretching out from each of the Seven Wells marked across the isle of Eireann.
The water is stitched with black thread and tiny black pearls, small as grains of salt, mimicking that shimmering darkness of magic.
Green hills all through the central spine of the isle are woven to give the illusion of grass dancing in the wind.
Wolves prowl beneath midnight skies, standing as high as the waists of the shadowy figures of the Old Ones, their faces shrouded beneath hoods as gathering silvery storm clouds mist around the isle’s shores.
The air in the dusty quiet of the temple shifts. A strand of hair flutters loose from my long braid, and I tuck it back.
“Talon?” I barely raise my voice, but it still feels too loud in the heavy stillness. “What is this place? Why did you bring me here?”
A low, rough voice laughs. “Because I asked them to.”
Wolf steps out of the shadows like he belongs to them. He moves slowly—carefully, as if I’m an animal he’s afraid of scaring at the slightest startle. A slow, smug smirk curves the corner of his mouth, and my hands clench.
He makes a soft tutting sound, tongue quick behind his teeth. Those green eyes snare mine, and Talon—damn them—is suddenly nowhere to be found.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come,” Wolf says, raising one dark brow. His eyes snap to the cut across my forehead. “You’re hurt.”
“I’m fine.” I watch him, wary. “And trust me—if I’d known it was you waiting, I wouldn’t have.”
He actually has the nerve to laugh. “You know what? I believe you.”
“How fortunate.” My cloak feels too heavy, and warmth gathers at the back of my neck. “It’s not like I’ve ever given you any reason not to trust me.” He’s the one clinging so tightly to whatever scraps of information he has that it’s a wonder his fingers haven’t scraped raw.
The scars across the backs of his hands have their own shadows in the flickering light, but there’s little more than calluses on those long fingers. One simple silver ring, worn on his pinkie, but nothing like the heavy jewels Prince Cashel wears.
After a beat of silence, he speaks again. “You haven’t killed the king yet.” Wolf’s eyes flicker over my face.
There’s an easy arrogance in his tone, but the set of his jaw betrays him.
Would something happen to him if I fail?
It shouldn’t matter to me. One hand finds the hilt of one of the knives at my waist, and I meet his guarded eyes.
“It’s kind of hard when there’s an entire entourage outside his rooms day and night.”
The muscle along his cheek ticks. Like he’s fighting with himself. “Not anymore.”
Not rolling my eyes is a battle. I win—mostly. “You expect me to believe you just… what?” I gesture with my fingers. “Waved your hand and cleared them all out? If that’s why you want me down here—”
“I want you here,” he says, lethally soft and quiet despite the hallowed emptiness of this ancient space, “because those maps I gave you are useless now for killing the king.”
How is silence so damn loud? Neither of us moves for a heartbeat, but the race of my pulse is a hammer in my ears. “What do you mean?”
Wariness darkens the green of his gaze. Wolf wavers, hands stroking down the hilts of the knives strapped at his sides, jaw gritting. Old Ones, it’s as if he thinks he’s handing me the keys to the Whisperers’ doom by answering a fucking question.
“We didn’t clear the crowds away from his chambers,” he finally says in that dangerously low voice. “The High King’s been… relocated.”
Cold dread trails up my shoulders. “Relocated?” That doesn’t make any sense. “Where?”
And why?
His mouth is a tight slash of frustration. “We’re not sure yet. As far as Talon’s been able to gather, a small group of gardai moved him late last night. Only those gardai and the High Queen know where he is now.”
Both hands press against my eyes until I see stars. Even if I hadn’t landed on a plan yet, all those hours of poring over maps and thinking about how I might be able to get in and kill the High King was for nothing if we don’t even know where he is.
“Fuck.”
Wolf’s eyes flash to mine. The shadows in them waver. “For once we agree.”
The moment stretches out between us like a bridge, fragile and taut. And even though part of me is inexplicably afraid of shattering it, there’s one question that’s stuck with me ever since he found me before the First Look.
And if I don’t ask now, I’ll regret it.
“Are the Whisperers burning harvests in the north?”
Wolf’s expression goes carefully, maddeningly blank. He tilts his head, then steps forward to close the space between us, black cloak rippling behind him. “Now, what would give you that idea?”
Damn it, he smells good. Leather and smoke and sweet, woodsy sage. Scents that draw to mind not the prospect of safety—but of escape and release.
“I know someone is.” Fighting to keep my breathing steady, I inch back again from him.
Wolf matches each step of my retreat with a slow, wary advance of his own, not stopping even when I draw one of his knives from its sheath at my side.
“Noble daughters talk.” I shrug, as if the closeness of him doesn’t have my heart racing. “Especially ones trying to make alliances with others who can’t feed their people.”
Those dark green eyes ensnare mine. The scar on Wolf’s jaw twitches as the muscle there tightens.
Old Ones, what leaves a scar like that? For reasons I refuse to think about, my fingers itch to ghost along the lines of it. As if just one touch would reveal something and fit the jagged pieces of him together a tiny bit more neatly.
Wolf leans in an inch closer, so the tip of my knife meets the supple leather at the top of his thigh. He’s testing me—seeing if I’ll actually bite.
One inch is all it takes, and my knife shifts just enough toward what I have to imagine is one of his favorite body parts to make him hiss.
He shifts back, eyes lingering on my face. Those full lips curve again, and there’s something akin to… satisfaction in the way his gaze stays on mine.
Wolf rubs one hand along the stubble of his jaw, avoiding the scar. “Tell you what. I’ll make you a deal.”
“I’ve had enough of your deals for one lifetime.”
“And yet you still haven’t fulfilled ours. Some might call me generous offering you another.”
“Some might call you a lot of things.” I glare up at him. “Most of them aren’t fit for polite company.”
“Then it’s a good thing I’m about the furthest thing you’ll ever find from polite company.” His gaze taunts me. As if whatever he expected from me, it wasn’t this, and he… enjoys it. “I’ll answer your question if you answer one of mine.”
“And I’m just supposed to trust that anything you tell me is the truth?”
His skin is warm enough to heat the small space between us as he sidesteps my knife and leans in close enough to whisper in my ear.
“You might not like the answers, but I’ve never lied to you.” A whisper of relief that makes absolutely no sense trails soft fingers up my ribs, stirring something in my core. “I don’t lie. For all my faults…” He says the word with all the bite of an old wound. “That’s not one of them.”
His words are embers, burning away the last of my resolve.
“Come on,” he challenges, dark eyes daring. “Just one little question.”
I grit my teeth.
It’s only the closeness of him that makes me waver, I tell myself. The contrast of the cool air outside with his heat so near to my skin in this crypt. Temple. Whatever he calls this place.
The crack in my resolve has absolutely nothing to do with the wary hunger flickering in his deep green eyes, or the way he bites ever so slightly at the edge of his lip as he studies me.
“One question,” I whisper back to him, caving.
Wolf’s eyes roam over my skin. In the dim light, and the solemn stillness of cold stone all around, this place feels like it stands outside time. Like the world could burn down beyond these walls and all the secrets between us would still be right here.
“We’re not the ones burning harvests in the north,” he answers roughly.
“Word hasn’t made it into the city yet, but there are Cymrean fighters in pockets around the isle.
They’re the ones burning the grain. Though I admit…
” He tilts his head, like he’s testing me.
“We are the ones stealing the caravans.”
Grim understanding turns my breath to a rasp.
“You’re stockpiling.”
“Yes.” Wolf looks away then, hands trailing down his knives.
“There’s a famine coming, whether this harvest holds or not.
I’ve seen the records from the granaries.
There isn’t enough if the harvest falters even by half to feed everyone through the winter.
” Hesitation weighs across his face, and his words shift into a rough vow.
“I want to make sure we can feed as many people as possible when it happens.”
When. Not if.