Chapter 47
Aoife
“So you didn’t say it back to him?” Marsten asked as I paced back and forth in front of him.
“Is it bad?” I bit my nails.
“Well, it’s not good,” he said from where he sat on the couch in Ceri’s dress shop.
“Stop scaring her.” Niamh shoved Marsten from where she sat next to him.
“Nothing scares Aoife the Warrior Queen.” Meera lifted her head from where she lay on the floor, stretched out and looking like she hadn’t a care in the world.
That clearly wasn’t true. This—Lor’s profession—terrified me.
Ceri appeared in the door that led to the upstairs apartment, holding a tray full of radishes, turnips, carrots, and roasted sweet potatoes, a creamy yogurt dish in the center with flecks of green that I knew was fresh dill. A Fair Folk recipe she’d gotten from our family dinner the other night.
“What’s wrong?” Ceri frowned as she set the tray down on the table in front of the couch. “Why does everyone look so sullen?”
“Well, we did just get news that the brotherhood are less than a week’s trek from our doorstep.” Marsten tapped his chin. “And that it’s almost certain they know where we are and are planning to attack once they get here. And that they might be bringing an army of the dead with them?”
Ceri’s face paled. “Is that all?”
“Also Lor professed his love to Aoife and she didn’t say it back,” Enid said from the other side of Marsten.
Her pet vine, which was coiled around the back of the couch lifted its tail and poked her. “What? She asked.” Enid leaned forward and grabbed a carrot slice, popping it in her mouth.
Vine just shook its head and lay back down.
“Well, the brotherhood part is very bad. The Lor part? That’s not so bad,” Ceri said, and from the way her voice wavered, I could tell she was lying.
“You’re a terrible liar,” Marsten said. “Amazing given how well you lied to yourself for years about your feelings for Cillian.”
Ceri rolled her eyes and dropped into the arm chair next to the couch.
“Did someone say wine and cheese night?” Margaret appeared in a painting behind us.
Marsten wrinkled his nose, looking at the plate that sat in front of us. “Well, it’s more like wine and vegetable night . . .”
“I wanted to make this yogurt dip from our family dinner.” Ceri leaned forward and dipped a sliced radish in it. “It was so delicious. I’ve been dreaming about it ever since.”
“I feel sick.” Niamh held her belly. “Oh wait, no, I think I’m hungry.”
“You can’t even drink wine or eat cheese,” Marsten said to Margaret.
“Oh, I know. But wine and cheese night means gossip.” She trilled out the last word. “And I need something to distract me with this looming brotherhood attack.”
I scrubbed a hand down my face. This was a disaster, and I wished I’d never told any of these people my predicament.
But I hadn’t seen Lor since that day at the border that he’d made me come with his fingers.
Afterward, he’d given me a gentle kiss and told me he’d see me later, but then he never came to my room that night, and he didn’t invite me to his.
It made sense given that the brotherhood was closing in, and Lor and I had been working nonstop with the royal guard to come up with a plan of defense. We’d taken shifts so that while one of us was with the guards, the other could be getting rest.
That was the most likely explanation for why I hadn’t seen him. Except . . . what if I’d hurt his feelings by not telling him I loved him back? Maybe he’d realized I was too difficult after all, not worth the trouble of loving. Maybe he’d given up trying to breach my walls.
“What’s wrong with me?” I groaned. “Why couldn’t I just say it to him?”
“Do you love him?” Niamh asked, the whole room suddenly silent, everyone staring at me.
I was nearly four thousand years old, and I wasn’t sure I knew what love even was, wasn’t sure that I wanted to know. “It’s so . . . binding, those words.”
Niamh’s face softened. “It is, isn’t it?”
“It’s terrifying,” Enid said, voice thoughtful, and her eyes glazed over like she was in another time, another place. “It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.”
“Really?” I asked. I stopped pacing, looking at each one of these women who loved a Wolfgang brother.
“Oh love is never easy,” Niamh said.
“But I didn’t say it back.” I squeezed my eyes shut. “I wanted to. It was there, on the tip of my tongue, but I just couldn’t.”
“That’s okay,” Ceri said. “You don’t have to say it if you’re not ready. There’s no rush.”
“They have been married for over two years.” Marsten crunched on a carrot, and this time it was his back that Vine poked.
“Ow,” he said.
“Why don’t you sit?” Ceri gestured to the chair across from her.
I listened, dropping down, knees bouncing. “He hasn’t talked to me since then. He’s avoiding me.”
“Or he’s busy ruling a kingdom and preparing for an impending attack?” Ceri pointed out.
I huffed. “Perhaps.”
“Lor isn’t a child,” Niamh said. “He’s mature, and he would never expect you to say something you weren’t ready for.”
“But why am I not ready?” I asked.
Niamh leaned forward and put her hand on my knee. “Wolfe kissed me, told me he loved me, and then said we could never be together.”
My mouth dropped open. “What?”
“Oh, that was a good story,” Margaret said, her voice a little too gleeful.
Niamh nodded. “It’s true. And look how it turned out for us.” She gestured to her round belly.
“I stabbed Nevan with a syringe that put him to sleep so I could run away and leave him forever,” Enid offered.
My gaze swiveled to her.
“I forgot about that!” Margaret chimed in.
Ceri tugged on one of her golden curls. “I was chosen to participate in magical marriage trials that forced me to confront my feelings for Cillian.”
“How have I never heard a single one of these stories?” I asked, shocked by these admissions. “Every one of your relationships sounds . . .”
“Complicated?” Niamh said with a raised brow. “That’s because they were.”
“They are,” Enid said. “That’s what happens when two people come together and promise to love each other. It’s always going to be complicated.”
“But it’s worth it,” Ceri said softly, a wistful look in her brown eyes.
“I think the point of all this is that you will figure it out,” Marsten said. “You’re married. It’s not like either of you are going anywhere, and from what Margaret’s told me, you two are getting along very well these days.”
I shot the painting a look, and she gave me a guilty smile. “You’re very loud.”
Niamh rested her hands on her belly. “You’ll say the words when you feel them.”
“What if I never feel them?” I asked. No one could give an answer to that. “I don’t even know what love feels like. No one taught me that.”
“No one taught me either,” Enid said. Vine rose up and jabbed her in the arm, and she glared at the green plant.
“You ingrate. Okay, yes, you taught me to love.” She rolled her eyes.
“Let me rephrase that: no one taught me how to be in love. I just knew I never wanted anyone by my side other than Nevan.”
“I know you don’t ever want to be chained again, beholden to anyone, but I think Lor has proven that he doesn’t want that either. I don’t think loving Lor is a path to enslavement,” Ceri said. “I think it might be a path to freedom if you open yourself up to it.”
I took a sip of my wine as the chatter continued, the conversation moving on to Niamh’s baby, to Enid’s healing business, to Ceri and Cillian’s plans to expand their little home behind the dress shop.
To everything but the war on our doorstep that no one wanted to think about.
I was only half-listening, thinking about Lor and love, and if I could ever reconcile the two if we survived all of this.