“So how did you meet Aodhan?” I asked as I took the pipe from Rian to take my own deep inhale.
He hesitated, and the grin he tried to repress was so infectious that it made me smile too.
“Well… let us just say that I found myself in a certain establishment where your brother was performing.”
“He worked there?” I guessed, releasing a puff of the vapour I was holding in my lungs with each word.
“He did. He was… anexceptionallytalented dancer,” Rian revealed, and my brows rose in surprise. “He was so talented, in fact, that I delayed returning to Ahnnaòin.”
“Really?” I laughed.
“He was still wary of being seen by someone from the Rowan Wood at the time, so he always wore a deer skull mask while he was performing. And I had decided I was not leaving until I had unmasked the enchanting dancer,” Rian explained. He passed the wine after I released the last of the smoke in my lungs.
I smiled, my chest aching with a strange wistfulness as he breathed life into a brother I would never know now.
“You said you were together for two decades, but you met him sixty years ago,” I pointed out in confusion.
Rian winced slightly before he nodded.
“I have never been a very easy person to be close to,” he admitted hesitantly.
“Really? I like you just fine,” I assured him with a grin as I raised the pipe in one hand and the wine in the other. Rian laughed and tilted his head back to smile at the yurt ceiling above us.
“That is only because you are not in my bed. Nor do you have an interest in being in it or trying to control who else might be in it,” Rian pointed out significantly.
“Ahh,” I grunted with a knowing nod. “Aodhan did?”
“Not at first,” Rian admitted with another wince that seemed filled with painful regret. “I returned to Ahnnaòin under the assumption that I would never see him again, but I could not seem to… stay away. I returned every few months and spent as much time as I could bear the heat of the Summer Court. That went on for almost ten years.”
“Wow,” I mumbled thoughtfully. “I suppose you could not be together when you were from different courts.”
“No,” Rian agreed and scrubbed a hand over his face before he hung his head. “And I used that fact as a safety net for myself to let him get close to me,” he gritted out.
I hesitated, lowering the wine bottle I had been about to take a swig out of and looked at Rian’s lowered head in shock. I had assumed the reason he was reluctant to tell me about his history with my brother was that he did not think I deserved to know it after I killed Aodhan. But it had nothing to do with me. He hesitated because he was ashamed of howhehad treated my brother.
“The truth is that I was inexcusably selfish with him,” Rian continued as he stared straight ahead with his fingers tightlyinterlaced. “I knew all along that I needed to stop seeing him, especially after he started to feel more for me than I was comfortable with at the time. He even became willing to move to the Vale after he heard that fey from all over the Four Courts could exist there together. I told him it was impossible, since I could not abandon my brothers. But what I did not tell him was that… I would not have gone with him even if I was able to leave the Wild Hunt,” Rian confessed through his teeth. “Not because I did not care for him, because Idid, I was just…” Rian trailed off, uncertain how to put his insecurities into words.
“People rely so heavily on you, but you have only ever been able to rely on yourself. Trusting someone else with your heart was too terrifying a risk to take,” I guessed.
Rian glanced at me in surprise that I understood him, but his admission had made it clear to me that we shared similar fears and insecurities. Carrick once told me that Rian seemed to feel like he had to shoulder everything all on his own, and I knew that burden. I knew from my own experiences how it felt to be reduced to little more than a resource that other people sought to abuse. And then to be betrayed and denied even the most basic loyalty in return. It had not been until Sage showed me that he’d choose me over everything, even his brothers, before I started to trust him with the pieces of my heart.
Rian gave a nearly imperceptible nod and then reached for the wine and pipe that had been forgotten in my hand. We sat silently while he took a swig from the wine bottle and then a long pull from the pipe.
I was not sure where the impulse came from, but Sage must have been rubbing off on me because I reached for Rian’s hand to give it a quick squeeze. It surprised me as much as it shocked Rian, which made us both laugh.
“Aodhan had become quite familiar with my brothers over the years, but he was especially close with Keelan. The rider Ciaran eventually challenged,” Rian explained. “The two of them got drunk enough one night that Keelan let it slip howriders were chosen. And I suppose Aodhan thought he had finally found a way for us to be together while I continued to serve the Hunt.”
“Oh,” I groaned knowingly, and he nodded.
“The next time the Wild Hunt joined me in Sumarra, he challenged and defeated a rider called Niall in battle.”
We were both silent while he worked up the nerve to say what I had already guessed would come next.
“I was angry with him for a long time. I knew at the time that I was being unfair, and that I should have been more honest with him about my feelings. The breakdown of our relationship caused a rift in the Hunt for some time. He felt used and deceived. I felt trapped. For many years, we were unkind to one another. We would parade lovers in front of one another and exchange the cruelest words. We even got into physical altercations.”
“Wow,” I muttered. “So when you say that you were together for twenty years, you must mean the last twenty in which I assume you reconciled?”
“Correct,” Rian sighed with his eyes on the bottle he was twirling with the tips of his fingers on the neck.
