“You’re Fae, and your kind have been torturing us all week. He won’t trust you, but he’ll trust me.”
“If you harm him?—”
A short, sharp laugh had Cillian wanting to soothe the edges of Bran’s fear through the migraine pounding through his head. “I traded myself to keep him alive when Ainmire had us. Do you think I’d hurt him now?”
Bran’s words penetrated the fog wrapped around his mind better than an alarm. Cillian groaned, forcing his eyes open, staring up at a wooden ceiling, the bed beneath him swaying with a motion that wasn’t him but wherever they were. “Bran?”
The other man’s familiar face appeared above him, and the state of it had Cillian moving before he realized that was probably not a good idea. Pain stabbed through his entire body when he got an elbow underneath him, and he hissed, resisting the urge to flop back down on the bed. His head ached, pain spiking through his skull.
“Lie down,” Bran said, grabbing him gently by the shoulders andeasing him back anyway. “Apparently, being skinned by Etain takes it out of people.”
Cillian gripped Bran’s arms, blinking up at the other man’s bruised and swollen face, everything coming back to him in jagged segments. Ainmire and the cell. Etain and whatever her magic had done to him. And Bran?—
“What did that bastard do to you?” Cillian rasped.
Bran blinked down at him, his dark brown hair falling over his forehead, one eye half-swollen shut above a bruised cheek. His lips were swollen as well, the holes from thread cutting through them barely scabbed over. “Besides be a creep? Not what you’re thinking.”
Cillian tightened his hold as best he could on Bran, searching his eyes. “You’re sure?”
“You were worth everything I gave up.”
“Bran. What did you trade?”
“I got on my knees and begged to ride with you in that carriage, but that’s it. Ainmire said yes.”
Bran wouldn’t quite meet his eyes, and Cillian knew there was probably more to that interaction than Bran was letting on, but he decided not to push. “You’re okay?”
“Other than my face and our current situation? Yeah. I’m okay.”
Cillian tensed. “Current situation?”
Bran moved to sit on the edge of the bed. Cillian didn’t want to let him go but reluctantly did so. Bran turned his head, and Cillian followed his gaze. “Niamh helped take us from the carriage. You were unconscious when it happened. She took off Ainmire’s collar for me, too, along with the shackles they had on your wrists.”
The Fae in question stood nearby, dressed in knee-high boots and skintight pants, a white blouse, and a black corset, making her look not unlike a pirate. A bandolier was slung over one shoulder, small throwing knives attached in a neat line over the front. A gold necklace hung from her throat, the round pendant embossed with a crest depicting a sword pointed downward through the image of a crown framed on either side by a bird of prey. Her long blonde hair was tied back in a single braid, pointed ears devoid of any jewelry. Her golden eyes more than made upfor the lack, their brilliance impossible to look away from as she stared at him.
Cillian’s eyes widened when she dipped into an elaborate curtsy, her gaze never leaving his. “My prince.”
He jerked his gaze to Bran, sucking in a breath as he remembered what he’d glimpsed in the mirror of that bathing room. He’d thought it was a dream. “Bran?”
Bran’s jaw twitched before he leaned over and grabbed something off the small shelf nailed to the wall beside the bed. It turned out to be a handheld mirror, and when he held it up, Cillian didn’t want to look at it.
“Etain removed the glamour you’d been living in,” Bran said quietly, not meeting his eyes. “You’re Fae, Cillian.”
“No,” Cillian said, but the truth was staring back at him, the face in that mirror all features that were his but not quite and pointed ears he’d never seen before. “That’s not me.”
Bran set the mirror down on the bed, still not looking at him. “It is. I’m sorry. I don’t know how or why, but—everyone here seems to know you.”
Cillian stared at him in disbelief before glancing over at Niamh, the Fae still looking at him as if he was about to disappear any second. “I don’t knowthem. Bran, I grew up withyou. In Pelham. I’mhuman.”
He said it desperately, as if maybe that would make it true and the mirror a liar.
“I know. I didn’t imagine you.” Bran swallowed, shoulders hunching a little. “Maybe you were a changeling.”
“He is not,” Niamh said sharply. She stepped closer, going to one knee before the bed. She kept her hands to herself, though, for which Cillian was grateful. “You are no changeling, Cillian. You are the Winter Prince returned to us by the Cauldron’s blessing.”
“I’m not,” Cillian said raggedly. “I’m not who you think I am. I can’t be.”
But he remembered, just then, that eerie voice when he and Bran had passed through the wyrding, the way it had called to him.
