When he turned back, she lifted her head and met his eyes. Whatever came next, she would not cower.
“And those things,” he said, stepping toward her again. “What were they?”
He gestured with his glass, wine slopping over the side.
“How did you perform the trick?”
His voice was sharp and cutting, with a fracture of uncertainty underneath it. His mind was still trying to deny what his own eyes saw. This time it wasn’t the glimpse of an animal at the edge of the forest. The Athraith had stood before him plain as day; it was hard to deny it.
“They were no trick.”
The words came more quietly than she had expected. She steeled herself before continuing.
“They came,” she said, “because Inis Morra itself hates you.”
Halverton laughed, loud and sharp and wrong. A forced thing that did not suit him.
“Superstitious nonsense. You think fairy-stories will frighten me?” His grip tightened on the glass. “I know it was a trick. And I will find out how you did it.”
The wine trembled in his hand, catching the light.
“I gave you everything,” he went on, voice rising, finding his footing again in anger. “Clothes. Safety. Food. While the rest of your kind starve.”
He took a step toward her.
“And this is how you repay me? By making me look a fool?”
He slammed the glass down on the sideboard and crossed the hall, stopping barely a foot from her. He was close enough that she could see the tension in his jaw, the tightness around his eyes.
“You should be grateful.”
Aoife’s heart hammered so hard it made her chest ache. She breathed hard, the words she wanted to say tangled in her throat. What was she doing? Surely whatever she said would only make things worse? A flame of anger burned in her, and the words came almost without her consent.
“I never asked for safety bought with their suffering.”
Her whole body trembled, part fury, part fear.
“You gave me nothing I needed.”
Halverton’s lip curled. “Ungrateful wretch.”
He took another step, closing what little space remained, his wine-filled breath hot on her face.
“Without me, you would be rotting in a ditch. I lifted you out of the muck, and you dare to stand there and sneer at me?”
Aoife didn’t move.
Didn’t step back.
“You didn’t lift me,” she said, her voice steady, clenched fists shaking at her sides.
“You caged me.”
His hand twitched on the glass. The stem creaked faintly under the strain of his grip, knuckles whitening.
He leaned in to her, like a lover whispering in her ear. “You would be nothing without me.”
Aoife shoved him away from her.
