“Needed a refuel?” I forced myself to laugh, but my mind was still reeling from what I had learned. That there were other dryad tribes out there that did not practice the brutality my people seemed to crave so deeply. That there were dryad males who laughed and flirted and respected a female when she flattened her ears at him.
Ciaran smirked in response, but I understood his real intentions when he made us cross the street near to where the thieving orphans were still hiding. They shrank back into the shadows at our approach, but Ciaran merely set the warm meals down on the cobblestones and continued on his way with me.
I glanced back and could not help smiling when I saw them creeping into the light, blinking at us in confusion. Each of them quickly snatched up a bundle of food and disappeared into the dark again.
“You will have all the strays following us before we are done here,” I guessed, but Ciaran merely shrugged.
“Then I will ensure they get breakfast too.”
Chapter thirty-one
THE RECKONING
Nuala
The familiar metallic clang alerted me that someone was approaching my cell. I sat up from the straw that was so compressed from me sleeping on it that I could feel the cold stone floor through it.
That dreaded sound had once evoked the worst kind of fear in me: a debilitating terror that flooded my body with the adrenaline to fight. But that rush of panic and anguish often wrecked me almost as much as what they did to me, and it had never once made it better.
Fight. Defiance. Pleading. Surrender. Indulgence.
I had tried all of it and none of it had made it easier or less painful until I finally turned it off. It had been so long since I felt anything, I was perfectly and blissfully numb, and only the worst pain could elicit a response from me. Once I decided to vacate my own mind, they had become bored of me, thinking me broken like one of those china dolls from my childhood. They came to me less after that, and so I stayed gone. I stayed numb and vacant.
I often dreamed of that cell and my personal monsters, but it felt as if I were more awake than asleep as I listened to the clang echo in the dark. I realized why once a light flared to life, and I recognized the face outside my cell.
My heart gave a desperate throb that was painful after years of feeling numb. The jump of my pulse jolted my frail body, andI trembled as I scrambled toward him.
He stood just on the other side of the iron bars of my prison with a torch. He was so close I could have reached through and touched him if the bars were not imbued with magic to contain me.
But I knew better than to reach for this creature.
My memory of him dulled in comparison to the reality of his beauty with sapphire eyes that gleamed unnaturally and hair as black as oil. He was still dressed so strangely in a leather jacket over a white shirt and jeans.
“Not yet,” I whispered with an anguished desperation as I stared into the cold and impassive eyes of a dark god. “Please. I need more time with him.”
He merely tilted his head at me curiously as the tears, hot and fat, began to roll down my face. It had been years since they had fallen and it hurt. Ithurtto feel again.
Another clang echoed along with the familiar sound of men’s laughter that made me cringe in horror.
“Bring me their ashes, Nuala,” he commanded with the deceptively soft voice that still haunted my dreams.
Then he was gone before I could object again.
I woke with tears already rolling down my cheeks and a hollowness in my soul.
I didn’t have to turn my head to know Rian was sitting behind me on my cot by the fire in Ornella’s tent. One of his arms draped over his bent knees while he stroked Éadrom who lay next to him. It was the closest I had seen the two of them sit together since I arrived in Ahnnaòin.
“Do you often cry in your sleep?” Rian asked, his tone intentionally flat in an effort to conceal his true feelings.
I did not answer as I sat up to begin putting away the cot as Idid every morning when I woke. Éadrom moved off the bedding and padded to the corner where he lay down to watch us. Rian rose and stood in uncertainty.
“Why are you sleeping on the floor?” he asked a little more sharply. He was annoyed with my silence.
“Is there something you need?” I asked quietly instead of answering, still unable to look at him.
“Are you not still my Seer? Or was that commitment conditional on my compliance with your manipulations?” Rian demanded bitingly.
I froze, hearing the pain of betrayal he tried to mask beneath the venom in his voice.
