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“We both know you do. If you knew where she was, you would have—”
“Waited until the news would have best served my advantage over you? Such as right now, when you once again refuse to bend the knee?”
I gritted my teeth against it. My sister. My youngest sister, she would barely be older than The Lady Sapphire Speaker. She was only eleven when the war started. Still practically a baby in the eyes of Fae.
“Where is she?”
“Accept the betrothal. Do as you are commanded and serve as my sister’s knight until I am healed and able to claim the throne.”
“I will never marry her.”
“I don’t need you to. I need you only to allow the rest of the court to see that if I die, my dynasty will live on in her, bolstered by your savagery. I will heal, in time. And when I retake my throne, when my ass sits atop it once more, I will tell you where she was last seen, and if you wish, dissolve your betrothal to my sister for the final time.”
“I will never marry The Lady Oaken Rose. Not in a year, not in twenty, not in this lifetime nor the next.” I hissed, rage riding me with fear holding its bridle.
Spideog was a child. What horrors had she lived through in these past hundreds of years? Did she know I still lived?
“If she lives, why hasn’t Spideog gotten word to me to come to her in over two hundred years?”
His arms crossed over his chest. “I haven’t the slightest idea, Raven. Perhaps she is a little annoyed that her older brother pissed away the entire court and manor on a whim, and she was forced out into the wilds to fend for herself. Or perhaps she doesn’t trust you, like the rest of us. Young though she was, she wasn’t an addle-headed child. She probably saw you for what we all saw, a beast only good to be used at the end of the leash. So, be a good puppy and heel.”
“I don’t believe you.” I narrowed my eyes and played the one gambit I had.
Calling his bluff.
He softened into a sigh. “I didn’t speak to her, Emrys. I wasn’t even there. I don’t know how true the rumors are, but several Bánánach saw her during one of their rides on the wild hunt. Lord White Throat himself claims he saw her.”
Lord White Throat, a lower lordling of the Samhradh. He was not prone to wild, fanciful tales nor prone to spreading false rumors. If he had uncovered an errant bird of the Dawn, he would have reported it, expecting a reward not to be questioned at length.
Daróg took the boon of my pensiveness and pressed his advantage. “Please, Emrys. Do this for me. They are saying I may not walk again for a long time. I cannot have my sister set before the court unprotected and unallied. You know how she is. She may not be your favorite. She never was, not even when our parents first brokered the betrothal, but she is my sister. And as you would do anything to help Spideog, I would do anything to keep Oaken Rose safe. I cannot do much from this bed. I cannot trust many Fae besides you. I have known you since the cradle. You, I can trust, even if it is to trust you to do the killing I cannot. I know you will treat her with all the chivalry she deserves and not allow harm to come to her as she holds this kingdom back from crumbling in on itself. If you wish payment, I will pay it. Tell me what it is, and it will be yours. And I will also tell you what I know for Lord White Throat’s report.”
His sincerity twisted at my heart. Fae are all but immortal, and whether they fall in or out of love with another, the scars of the piece of their heart they give to another will always bear that Fae’s name. The jagged scar that throbbed Daróg’s name ached.
I drew in a deep breath. She was going to fucking hate me when and if she found out.
“I will do this for you Daróg. On two conditions. One, when you take the throne again, you will tell me everything you know of the reported sighting of Spideog.”
“Done. And the other?”
“When you take your throne again, you will release Cricket to me. You will grant her her freedom, and I will be her guardian.”
Malice, deep and bitter, twisted his face. “Never. She is mine. You will have her bones when I take my throne and nothing more.”
Chapter 37
Ifinished my bath in silence. Dumbstruck silence. The water around me never cooled, but I could not be bothered to find where the controls would have been for such a thing. I couldn’t even find the drain. I left the water there, murky with the muck and filth of Cricket, the blood of Sóna Mac Raith, and the film of naivete that had worked its way over me since I came to this rotten place. And while I could feel myself emerging from hibernation, found the force of nature that I had been before this nightmare, my thoughts kept connecting to him.
My fingers kept drifting to my lips, where they still burned from our kiss.
He had kissed me.
He had touched me with no glove and nothing between us but the skin we resided in. And it was a singular experience that defied all logic. I had been touched by so many hands in my life, had felt the skin of others against mine, but I had never felt whatever that was. It was like the universe had stopped and held its breath. I had been glass before he kissed me, and now I was steel.
It was confusing, and my head swam with the swirling sparks he had left me with. I didn’t want them, but I was getting tired of fighting against them.
“Little bug?”
I was sitting in the wingback chair, naked, finger combing the long tangle of my golden locks, eyes fixed on the wildscape just out of reach, when he knocked on the door and opened it an inch.
