Page 106

“It’s a simple question, really. Did you share her?”

“She’s his sister!”

“Oh, I’m sorry. I guess I know something you don’t know.”

Dark storms built in the sky over his evergreen eyes. “Explain.”

“The day that the Ard Rí was stabbed, I was in his room, cleaning as usual. I heard him bringing in another one of his whores. I was stuck into the corner as far as I could go. And when he appeared, he was making out with The Oaken Rose. He was balls deep in her when the Fae who snuck in stabbed him in the back. So, I assumed since you love sharing me that you would have shared his sister between the two of you. Silly me.”

Thunder struck as he reached out and wrapped his bare hand around my lower jaw, drawing me to him. Electricity arced and snapped where his bare skin touched mine. I felt a heat flowing through me, filling up an empty place in my soul I had never noticed before. The longer he glared down at me, the more lightning poured into me and sang in my veins as it was pumped through my body.

“Never repeat that outside of this room, Sóna Mac Raith. Swear it to me.”

His voice was a sharp growl pushed through gritted teeth.

“Let me go,” I bit back through my own locked teeth.

“Never,” he hissed back. “Swear it.”

“I won’t protect your dick of a king, and I certainly won’t protect his whore of a sister. So. No.”

Stubbornness swirled with the gunpowder that flowed into me.

“Foolish woman! I don’t give a fuck about either of them. If he’s fucking her, I don’t give a shit. I don’t even care if they planned on fucking in our would-be marriage bed. He means less than nothing to me. She even less. You will fucking swear it to me because that is knowledge that will get you killed, and I have the weight of one mass grave on my soul, I do not want another so soon.” He gripped my cheeks and pushed them together until my lips bulged under the pressure. His gaze locked on them as he hissed his curses. “Do you not know it already, little bug? I would burn all of magic out of existence to keep you warm at night.”

He sealed his oath with a kiss.

I hadn’t expected the way his kiss crashed over me, liquefied my bones, and rebuilt me into something new and whole all at the same time. I hadn’t expected that the simple, vicious assault of his lips to mine would unmake me. I hadn’t expected that, the moment our lips touched, the very floor beneath us would shift, and all the firmaments I had built within me would come tumbling down around me.

“Fuck.” He hissed and ripped himself away from me like I was a white-hot piece of iron he had foolishly bumped into.

Passion, as sharp as the one that wound itself through me, reflected at me through the mirror of his deep-green eyes.

We were both panting, gasping for the air that we had stolen from each other, frozen in place. I, standing in a copper tub, dripping wet and bleeding from the newly reopened hole in my shoulder. Him, fully clothed and his clothing drenched from where my body had wantonly pressed against him. We looked like two statues, regretting both the kiss we had shared and the fact that it had ended.

Where he found the willpower when I could not, I don’t know, but he turned on his heels and fled the room without another word.

Chapter 36

Ard Tiarna Emrys of Breacadh an Lae, The Raven of the Dawn

Iscrubbed my hand down my face, noting that stubble had started to gather on my chin again. I wasn’t spending the magic on my usual grooming regimen. Instead focusing it all on holding the forces, which were pressing in all around me, at bay. Everywhere I turned, the narrow walls of my enclosure were starting to crumble in on me.

And now he was lying in the infirmary, and I was hiding her in my room. She should be hanging in the Maw. Any soldier with half an ounce of courage in him going in to check on her would find the dragon empty of its treasure, and the alarms would sound of her escape. She should be in shambles, crumbled under the might of my torture.

Even with Brittle Spear shackled to a wall deep in the dungeons for the alleged crime and awaiting his impending execution, Daróg had not pardoned her yet, and she should be in the dungeon until that happened.

Which is exactly why, even though I would rather be curled up with her in the bed across from the tub I had left her in, I was escaping to the temple’s infirmary. I would rather be anywhere but here. I never wanted to see his face again, but the sloppiness of the assassination attempt had left too many questions, and as the Captain of his blasted fucking Guard, I was required to see it through to the end.

Fucking Fae oaths.

I stopped at the wash station at the door to the infirmary located at the back of the temple. Rich, thick lather from soap made by Faolán’s drui that smelled of milúll, comfrey, and lavender filled my senses. Brushing away the cobwebs of a thousand thoughts that tangled in each other like spiderlings on a gale force wind.

I cleansed my hands, my arms, and my face of any dirt, rinsing it down into a hidden basin that would empty into a marshy glen that would, in turn, filter it and return the water to the creek before taking a seat to remove my boots. Simple protocols of cleanliness kept all the ill beyond the copper doors from getting sicker from diseases and filth brought in by their visitors. My boots came free and were set aside. Then my garments were replaced by the simple garb provided for this purpose, and my large feet were shoved into too-small slippers.

Taking a deep breath, I pushed down on my knees, groaning at the aches in my weary bones. I was getting too old for this shit. Fae might be eternal, but that didn’t mean we felt eternal.

I wandered the glittering, polished dark-grey marble hallway, wincing a few times when the soft scented candlelight hit a vein of gold to mirror back a blinding flame.