Chapter Twenty-Two
TWENTY-TWO
You would what?”
The poison must be playing tricks on my mind, muddling my senses. There’s no way he just said what my ears think they heard.
His navy eyes sweep over my face.
“You heard me.”
I draw in a slow, cautious breath. “Doesn’t mean I believe you.”
Cashel’s expression hardens. “Whether you believe me or not doesn’t make it any less true. I want to help you. Whatever you’re doing, whoever you’re working with, I will help you. My father’s lost control. He’s dangerous. We have to act now.”
“He’s always been dangerous.”
“Not like this.”
There’s a shudder of remorse across Cashel’s smooth features. The tight set of his jaw that follows, though… that’s pure resignation. His mind is made up.
He looks at me intently. “Ever since my mother died, he’s gone too far.”
Does he mean with banishing the Martyr? Banning magic? Or with how the High King handled the uprising? I don’t dare ask.
Cashel’s voice drops, and there’s a rough hunger in his eyes that straddles the line of hope.
“Eireann had a golden age once. We could bring that back.” His hand finds mine, just barely brushing the soft skin at the base of my wrist. “A better king could make things right,” he vows. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
Is it?
I want the magic that’s ours by right. I want what my mother was willing to risk everything for.
I want a life with hope.
I want our people to build something better than what we have now.
Old Ones, I want it so badly, I can taste it.
I swallow hard, wrestling with the twist of fear. There’s one thing I need to know from him before I risk saying anything more. “And Cymrea?”
Two words. They’re nothing yet everything at the same time. Any possibility of what could be hinges on his answer.
If he sees a place for Cymrea in the new Eireann he wants to build, there’s no hope for us.
A volatile shadow twists behind his eyes. “Cymrea,” Cashel says in a deadly soft voice, “can get fucked.”
Relief surges deep in my chest. Old Ones, I think I might understand now why the Whisperers want the High King dead and would accept Cashel in his place.
He isn’t perfect—far from it.
No king ever could be.
But if there’s a chance he would be better than his father, that he would protect our right as an isle to decide our own future—then maybe the Whisperers can save whatever magic might be left in the Seven Wells while he keeps the Cymreans from annexing us.
Maybe we can convince Cashel to let us use whatever magic is left in the Seven Wells when the famine comes.
An uneasy silence settles in the scant space separating us.
Not a truce—we’re a million miles from anything resembling that.
But something shifts. Between the traitorous words we’ve offered one another and what information he’s managed to piece together about me, we each hold the power to tear the other’s world down to the ground.
My stomach picks that exact moment to growl loudly.
Blood flushes my cheeks, and a small smile softens the hard edges of his mouth.
“To be fair, you have been unconscious for three days. You must be starving.”
“A little,” I admit. “And I think I need…”
“Bathing chamber’s through there.” He nods toward a door in the far side of the room. “I’ll get you some food. While I’m gone… just promise you’ll think about what I said?”
I promise him nothing.
A promise to a prince would be a dangerous game.
But I don’t look away when his navy eyes hold mine, even when he brings his hand to the curve of my cheek.
I draw in a shaking breath—but the touch doesn’t come.
Cashel pulls his hand back, brow furrowing again as he clears his throat. “I’ll be right back.”
“Wait.” I don’t know why I need to know right now, but I do. “The others in the test…”
“Just the one dead. Neve.” A self-satisfied curve works at the edges of his lips. “But you made the few people who were smart enough to bet on you quite a lot of money by not dying.” Amusement skates across his expression. “Including me.”
He turns toward the door, and I catch a glimpse of crimson-and-black uniforms lined up outside. They part quickly to let him through, then close ranks again. No one is getting past them until he gets back. In or out.
My mind whirls. Cashel knows nothing about me, but he would have known the noble daughters for years, his whole life. There’s no logical reason for him to bet on me.
Unless…
Maybe this is the kind of thing Wolf had in mind when he made me bait for a prince. Cashel is clearly clever—that’s obvious—if he wasn’t lying about going down to the dungeons and seeing the girl the gardai had brought in as the peasant in the Assay before the Whisperers planted me.
Is that why the Whisperers want him distracted?
Hot water has to help. I remember the way it unraveled the knots in my shoulders in the baths with Aoife, how it was almost enough to make the rest of the world fall away.
My entire body feels like one giant, painful bruise.
A bruise that’s on fire.
I stand slowly, wincing at the nerve pain needling along my palms, between my fingers.
Everywhere that I felt the squeeze of hands in mine when the creatlach nearly killed me.
The pain almost steals my breath, but my head is clear enough now to realize there’s a dulling effect that wasn’t there when the pain first hit in the training yard, right after I drank the poison.
The antidote, maybe?
Stumbling across the room to the door in the wall, I press one shoulder into it—and gasp.
By the fucking Old Ones.
The entire bathing room gleams in ceramic tiles inlaid with jewels. Sunlight filters through a glazed window carved into the wall, and dances off the neatly cut facets of thousands of tiny mosaics carefully set across the floor.
Eireann, laid out in a bird’s-eye view.
This one doesn’t have any of the strange discrepancies the tapestries in the temple or the hall behind the castle baths did. The crown marking where Dyfflin lies has two peaks, not three. And seven dark pools mark the estates of the Seven Families in chips of obsidian and jet.
My hands work the strange metal knobs along the tiled walls as I study the details. A burst of water pours out from a spigot in the ceiling, and I gasp.
Now, this—this is magic.
Although the water initially hits my skin like needles, soon the relief is pure bliss, washing away the filth of the last three days, stripping me clean. I tilt my head back to let the warmth pour over me. My hair’s a tangled mess, and working through it takes at least ten minutes.
I hear the click of a latch outside and wonder what kind of food a prince brings to his rooms.
I pluck one of the amber stones from a woven basket just out of the water’s reach, and sniff.
The spicy smell of him hits my nose. The brick suds up where the water falls over my hand—soap—so different from the rough bricks of lye and animal fat we use in Quayside that I have to fight the instinct to put it back down and find something less precious.
There must be a dozen of them, all piled up like little gems of amber in the basket.
Surely, he won’t mind if I use one. And if he does, what’s he going to do about it now?
My stomach growls again, and I rinse away the lather, turn the spigot off, and reach for one of the thick towels waiting on a wooden table beneath the window.
It’s luxuriously soft against my raw skin.
I manage to tuck the ends into something resembling a fold to keep it in place around me and pad back out to the bedchamber.
But there’s no food.
No Cashel.
The curtains at the edge of the massive window shift, and a figure cloaked in black leather and simmering wrath steps out. Wolf’s lip curls, tugging at the scar down his jaw, and he moves so close I can see the coals flaring in his eyes. “Why the fuck do you smell like him?”
I manage to keep from yelling in shock, but just barely. How I manage not to drop the towel is beyond me, and I clutch at the knot keeping it in place above my breasts.
“Fuck, Wolf! I’m not wearing anything.”
His green eyes flare with something inexplicably close to relief as his gaze flies over my bare limbs, as if he’s checking me for bruises.
In the span of a second, a lethal stillness settles over him. “You look entirely too comfortable. And here I’ve spent the last three days worried you were on your deathbed.”
“I was.” I’m not sure what he’s insinuating, but it makes the hairs bristle up the back of my neck. “Because of a test you forced me into.”
Green eyes darken. “What have you told him, Maeve?”
The way he says my name is equal parts dire and raw.
“I haven’t said a damn thing.” I fight to keep my voice level.
He’s accusing me of betraying him when he and the rest of the Whisperers are keeping the truth about magic from everyone?
He could’ve told me the truth in that temple.
And he chose to let me keep believing the lie.
But one hint of a raised voice, and those gardai outside could come running in.
“How about we start with how the fuck you keep sneaking in here,” I hiss.
He prowls forward, face hardening with dark resolve.
His grim expression leaves no room in me for doubt—and neither does the tight, resigned grip of his scarred knuckles as he draws a dagger from his side and positions himself between me and the table where mine are spread out.
What did Talon say about the peasant girl in the dungeons? She was a necessary sacrifice.
If Wolf thinks I’ve put the Whisperers in jeopardy, I’ll be next.
Even if it’s not by his hand, there’s no doubt in my heart that the mage Fang would kill me, a loose end in their plotting, for lesser faults than betrayal.
Wolf steps so close I can see every flit of the thoughts behind his eyes, even if I can’t decipher them all. But there’s conflict, clear as a fresh dawn—hurt too. And ruthless, aching determination.
I still instantly.
“How about we start,” he says, voice low, “with you telling me what you’ve let slip.”