Page 113

“Great. I’ll just be a walking billboard of your ownership, then?”

He shrugged and ushered a servant in who brought us our dinner. The conversation went quiet as they placed the dinner plates before us. It wasn’t one of the humans I knew from the warrens. I’d never seen him before, and I noted that for later. As soon as the door closed, The Raven turned back to me and continued as if the conversation had never had a pause.

“Until you have your own heraldry, yes. And when you have your own symbols, I will bear them with pride of place.”

“Would you teach me about them?” I said, inclining my head toward the shattered crest above his bed while he served me a portion of the roast venison, potatoes, and a medley of other vegetables.

The venison looked repulsive.

His eyes followed my gaze, and he nodded, licking his fingers clean before leaning back to the bookcase a distance away. He searched it and then found what he was looking for. “I assume you can read. Most of the newer humans can.”

He placed the book on the table. The title was embossed in glittering, curling, decorative copper letters. The Onomastic Priority. I let my finger trace over the raised letters, and he tapped his gloved finger on it. “This stays in this room. But you are welcome to come here whenever you wish, with or without me. I will grant you sanctuary here, which will allow you to walk the corridors freely and pass through the wards. Listen, little bug, no one can enter this room without my leave. Only you and I have access to this room. Not even the Ard Rí.”

His brows were drawn down as if to impress upon me some unspoken threat and promise. It was a haven for us both, a place I could access that Daróg could not get to me. A place where The Raven could keep me safe. Unlike the prison below. Unlike the warrens. Unlike anywhere else in this entire palace.

My heart thumped with a twisting sentiment I dared not name for the gift he had given me. I hadn’t had a safe place to call my own in all the time I had been here, and while I must share this space with him, it was safe from everyone but him.

We fell into a comfortable silence as I thought of what each of the sigils I had seen were and of the book that lay in my hands, waiting to impart its wisdom. I hoped that, somewhere within its pages, I would be able to find more information about the House of Magic and my parents, my lost lineage.

I set the book aside after I had picked at all the vegetables on my plate and pushed the slab of venison around enough to not draw his attention. I could almost imagine the pumping heart that had once flowed through the sinews and muscle.

“Raven . . . can any Fae alter the body of a human?” I tilted my head and sipped the milúll wine he had served into fine earthen mugs.

He finished his bite and washed it down. “Yes. For the most part. Humans are open conduits of magic. They lack their own, but they conform to our magic easily. Most Fae can also transform their own bodies or the bodies of others with their consent or if they are anam cara.”

“What’s that? Anam cara?”

I had heard that phrase before, hadn’t I?

“I think humans call them soul mates? It is a bit different for Fae. We have no concept of a soul like humans have. We are at our core magic that took form in flesh and blood for one reason or another. Our soul, as it were, is a heartbeat of magic. Not an individual but a piece of the whole. An anam cara is another Fae whose magical essence is akin to your own. It becomes bound up with each other, my magic would be the magic of my anam cara, and their magic mine because it would become indistinguishable from each other. Which would make altering their body as simple as sculpting soft butter.”

Jealousy twisted in my guts and shredded them along the barb of its hate. I wanted to ask him if he knew who his anam cara was. I wanted to know if he had found them yet. Was it Daróg? Was that why he was unable to walk away from him?

I couldn’t, though. I didn’t have the strength to hear that someone other than me was destiny bound to be in his life and in his bed. So, I pushed the bitterness down and pushed on.

“Could you alter my body?”

He frowned deep and set his cup down to watch me. Suspicion and distrust warred in his beautiful eyes, and I had to look away before they pierced down through me and found the tender heart of the reason I asked.

“I could if I wanted to. But I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you are beautiful as you are.”

“But this is not what I look like. This is not who I am. This is what Rictus made me to look like.”

He hissed and leaned forward, “Sóna Mac Raith, you are the sun among the stars. Brilliant and bright, chasing shadows from their dark corners and scorching them with your beauty.”

“Stop saying that! I am not beautiful! I am what others have made me!”

“Then, they have done a masterful job, and I would no sooner mar that work than I would slit my own throat.”

I glared at him across from the table, fire licking in my gaze. “What do you want for it?”

My tone had been a deadly gauntlet, and I waited for him to take it up.

“You would make a pact for this?”