Chapter Twenty-Two #2
A lock clicks, and Wolf shifts in a blur of black leather, one arm snaking tight around my chest.
Metal settles on wood, and the smell of eggs and butter fills the room.
Cashel sets the tray on a table beside the door and shuts it without a word.
He doesn’t call for the gardai.
He doesn’t draw his broadsword.
I hear the catch of Wolf’s breath and the hammer of his heart suddenly racing against the bare skin of my shoulder as their eyes lock on each other.
Cashel raises both hands and steps toward us as his mouth twists into a dangerous, knowing curve. “I was wondering how long it would take you to come for her.”
The air itself crackles.
I can taste the hair-raising charge, like lightning on the verge of exploding, electrifying the distance between the two of them—and then there’s me, caught right in the middle.
The hard lines of Wolf’s chest go stiff as a board at my back, and the knife he holds so tight in the hand across my chest slips, nearing the skin of my neck.
I hear the hard drag of breath in his throat, like he’s warring for self-control as his hand pulls me in closer against him, angling the knife precious inches away from my throat. My muscles lock in place.
“Wolf,” I whisper, as softly as I can. There’s a rough, strangely protective weight to his arm across my chest, and a wild thrum to his heart hammering in his chest against my back as he keeps his eyes locked on Cashel.
I feel Wolf twitch, like he’s wrestling with himself. His arm tightens around me again, as if Cashel is the danger right now. “You,” Wolf snarls at him.
Hate as black and thick as grease slicking the pikes of the Black Quay radiates in furious heat from every inch of his skin.
Cashel strides forward, leaving the tray by the door, unsheathing the sword at his side.
His eyes flash with recognition—no, not just recognition but satisfaction.
As if Wolf has stepped exactly where the prince wanted him to all along.
“It’s brave of you to come back here. My father made sure every gardai has a sketch of you, so they know who to kill on sight. ”
I go cold.
“You never could turn down a chance to kick a hornet’s nest.” The prince’s tone turns taunting. “Even when we were boys.”
What the—?
“Some nests need a good kick.” Menace drenches every one of Wolf’s words. “Others deserve to be scorched.”
He shifts his grip on me and levels his blade at the prince.
With the arm he’d used to hold me to his chest, Wolf grips my bare shoulder and twists me behind his back, putting himself between me and Cashel. My balance shifts, and I stumble: a combination of hunger, weakness, and the dull, stubborn pain from the poison.
“Get your clothes on.” The command in Wolf’s words is steel. “Now.”
Neither of them takes their eyes off the other for even a second.
Their focus on each other gives me a modicum of privacy, at least. My things are strewn all over the bed and the table at the edge of the wall, mixed in with washcloths and towels and blankets.
After a long moment, I find what I need and struggle into my leathers, fighting to keep my balance as they cling to my still-damp skin.
My chest band and tunic follow—except it’s not my tunic at all.
This one’s about three sizes too big and smells faintly of warm spice.
It’s too late to grab another. I hoist my belt around the waist and let it swim over me.
“And your knives. Every fucking one of them.” Wolf jerks his head to the table but never breaks his glare on Cashel.
“Keep your voice down,” I snap, and shove the blades into their sheaths. “You know there’s a dozen gardai outside that door?”
“None of them will come until I call,” Cashel says with easy arrogance.
“And how long will it take you to run to them this time?” Wolf tilts his head. “If I recall, last time was, what—all of an hour after I tried to save your fucking neck?”
“Not even that.” Cashel’s eyes turn to storm clouds as his fingers tighten on the hilt of his broadsword. “And I’d do it again rather than be your mother’s hostage. She had no right—”
“She had every right. Your father let her sister die, then married the woman who killed her.” A vicious gleam scorches in Wolf’s eyes.
My stomach pitches. They’re cousins? The connections click into place in my head. That would mean Wolf’s aunt was the High King’s first wife… and Cash’s mother.
“Or were you actually stupid enough to believe your father’s lies about…” A mocking smirk twists Wolf’s features. “What was the excuse—a fever? One even the Martyr couldn’t heal?”
Aoife’s words from the baths come rushing back to me.
Two noble families were caught scheming in the uprising five years ago. A whole family was wiped out after the prince discovered their plotting and told his father, Aoife had said to me in the baths. That’s why people call Cashel the Bloody Prince.
In Quayside, we always heard that he had wiped out the family of his closest friend over an insult, and my mind races, fitting the pieces together.
No. Wolf would never risk—
My breath freezes in my chest as a horrible realization slams into me. Who would be closer friends than two boys growing up in the same dangerous court? Two boys who share blood—who would taste betrayal as the worst kind of insult imaginable?
My eyes fly to Cashel just as he lunges, sword arcing down for the crown of Wolf’s head.
Both my hands clamp over my mouth, muffling my choking scream.
But thank the Old Ones, Wolf is fast. I knew it from the night we struck our bargain, but that speed was nothing compared to this. He ducks and dodges a brutal slash from Cashel’s heavy sword and slams the fist not gripping his dagger into the prince’s jaw.
I hear the crack as Cashel staggers backward.
“It was poison.” Wolf positions himself again, bracing for another strike, loathing burning in his eyes. “And you know exactly who gave it to her.”
Cashel lunges, faster this time. The room is large, but the way it’s laid out, it’s not big enough for wielding a broadsword—and the satisfaction in Wolf’s eyes makes it abundantly clear he knows that too.
Focus burns in his glare, like he’s waging a battle inside himself with every quick, controlled movement.
He ducks a slower, heavy slash of Cashel’s sword easily to reach out and slice the tip of his dagger deep into the prince’s upper sword arm.
“Fuck!” Cashel drops the sword, and it clatters on the marble.
“Your Highness?” A rough fist pounds on the door—and my heart stops.
Wolf freezes, and for the first time, a flash of fear brightens his green eyes. Mine fly to the telltale crimson staining the elbow of Cashel’s velvet tunic.
One command, and his gardai will be on us.
We’ll be dead before we can take another breath—or handed off to the Lady of Shadows for torture if our luck has really run out.
“Stay the fuck out!” Cashel barks at the door.
But those gardai will obey for only so long if they think their prince is in danger. One scream, one clash of steel too loud, and they’ll storm in.
“Have you lost your fucking mind?” I ask as quietly as I can.
My eyes are on Wolf, but I’m not entirely sure which one of them my words are for as I put myself between them, and Wolf’s eyes flare with a sudden, ferocious light that steals my breath. With one steady hand, he reaches out to grasp my shoulder, pulling me back to his side.
Cashel’s chest heaves from the attacks.
Wolf’s is steady, controlled. And it hits me—Wolf never struck first.
For all the malice and hatred seething off him, Wolf never took a killing blow. And Old Ones, he could have. Just from watching them fight, it’s clear. The prince is no match for him. If Wolf wanted his cousin dead, he’d be dead.
Green eyes flicker to mine. Is that… hurt flaring behind the mask he pulls into place? There’s torment, too. A tortured kind of grief, there and gone in an instant.
“You have no idea what he’s done, Maeve.”
“I know what he’s offering to do,” I say softly, as if the words can stay just between us.
His gaze sharpens on mine. “What do you mean, what he’s offering? What did you tell him?”
“Oh no.” Cashel’s navy eyes shift to me, and the feeling is like knives on my bare skin. “She hasn’t said a word. I figured this out on my own.”
“Figured out what, exactly?” Wolf’s eyes narrow on Cashel, the same predatory darkness I saw that first night we met in the safe house. “Go ahead. Tell me what you think you know.”
“Wolf.” Taunting the man who could get us killed with one call to the gardai outside is a risk we can’t afford right now.
“Wolf?” Cashel smirks. “What is that, some secret rebel code name? You don’t seriously think anyone here forgot your real name—or that my father ever stopped hunting you after you escaped.” He tilts his head, and my stomach clenches. “How did you manage that, by the way?”
A self-satisfied smile turns Wolf’s expression mocking. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”
“Escaped?” I look to Cashel.
His brows knot. “Don’t tell me he pulled you into all this and hasn’t even told you how he got that… distinctive scar?”
Wolf’s shoulders go rigid. “Don’t.”
Cashel glances from him to me, eyes cold. “I’m the reason his family is dead. I’m the reason for that scar down his face, and about a dozen others I would bet this entire kingdom he hasn’t even let you see… yet.”
The insinuation heats my cheeks. “Why?”
Part of me doesn’t want to know the answer.
Cashel’s cold stare flickers to Wolf, debating his next words.
“His mother’s army wanted me as… leverage. But we were like brothers, so he told me just enough to keep me out of their grasp.” Pain wrenches my heart. “And I told my father.”
Raw, brutal hate burns in Wolf’s eyes. It twists his whole face into ravaged lines—the kind that come not just from loss, from betrayal, but from guilt.
Too many questions do battle in the hollow ache of my heart.
There isn’t time for any of them. The gardai could force their way through that door the second Wolf’s barely held restraint snaps, and I don’t trust our current luck will hold.