Page 128 of A Courage of the Chosen

Behind him, forty Dorche stand in four neat rows, swords and shadows ready. It’s not them that makes fire burn like acid through my veins . . . it’s the man next to him.

A lone sword at his hip, and a bow slung over his shoulder with a quiver of arrows to match, he’s dressed in the black shirt and pants he favors.

“We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” Tavish purrs, and those dark threads between us pull taut with our proximity. It takes everything I have not to raise a hand to my chest with the intense way it hums.

Tavish’s hazel eyes spark with the same feeling, and he smiles serenely. “We are the same, you and I. Connected.”

I bare my teeth and he chuckles.

His dark hair has grown longer, but his face is clean-shaven.

No armor. I suppose he thinks he doesn’t need it.

“Did you like my little message?” Raghnall asks, and my attention snaps to him.

He means Erin.

“Yes, and all it did was demonstrate just how cruel you are. The thing is, Raghnall,” his jaw twitches as I use his name. “I’ve been ready for you. So while you think you have the advantage, you don’t.”

That cold, fathomless part of me that I’ve worked out is my Dorche magic steadily unfurls from its slumber, twitching to the surface with each word I speak. “And from where I’m standing, I have the upper hand. Not you.”

Raghnall crosses his arms. “Please explain how you see it that way, girl.”

“Watch how you speak to our queen,” Brodie threatens, becoming the terrifying beast of a man that snatched me from the streets of Claver.

“Well, I have your throne. I have your armies. I have your council. I have a power you tried to smother and failed. It would seem like that definitely puts you at a disadvantage, wouldn’t you think?”

“So naïve. Show them.” Raghnall’s head tilts in Tavish’s direction, and he bristles at the curt order from his father. When the prince hesitates, Raghnall rounds on him with a snarl. “Show them, or pay the price.”

The false king’s dark hazel eyes dart to me and then back to his son. I knew things were tense between Tavish and his father, they always have been, but the pure malice in their heated exchange is a far cry from the thinly veiled civility I’ve seen from them in the past.

Tavish runs his tongue over his teeth, reaches into his shirt . . . and pulls out the Craobh Beatha.

My soul plummets to the bottom of my feet as Tavish cups my family heirloom in his hand. My chest aches with the loss of it, and the patch of skin where it would normally rest tingles as though it’s calling the pendant home.

Even Lumiathar stirs at my hip in its presence, vibrating as Tavish begins to draw power to himself. Invisible but unmistakable.

He raises his other hand, and snaps his fingers.

The guards behind Tavish instantly transform into the fearsome Brollachan. One minute mindless soldiers, and the next, shells of themselves, hellbent on death. Thanks to the cover of the trees, they’re perfectly fine here, and their jaws snap together with ferocious teeth that would annihilate us within seconds.

Tavish snaps his fingers again, and they return to their Seelie form like they hadn’t even moved. If Tavish can control all of the Dorche like this, turn them into Brollachan at his whim, we’re in much more danger than we ever knew.

And the reasons why they wanted the Craobh Beatha become crystal clear.

Callahan calms his mare at the front where she began nervously backing away, and Brodie sits taller in his saddle like he’s preparing to throw himself off and meet them head on.

“Fuck,” Rach curses, and the guards that came with us close ranks while we all attempt to stifle our reactions.

Fuck is one word for it.

“Still think you have the upper hand?” Raghnall coos.

All the frustration and fear that’s been bottling inside me these last weeks, explodes in an instant, and my light responds.

I form it into a spear in my right hand, my gaze firmly locked onto the false king and the way his veins have begun to slither beneath his skin.

“They can still die, though,” I snarl, and throw the spear of light without really aiming for a specific target.