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I nodded hesitantly. Was I okay? I didn’t really know. I wanted to be okay, though. I wanted to pretend that none of what had just happened had happened. It would be so convenient. Just fold it up like a winter scarf, place it in a shoe box, stuff it at the back of the closet, and forget it even exists.

After all, we all know that whatever lives at the back of the closet no longer exists. It cannot plague you anymore. It cannot haunt the tombstones of your heart and sneak up on you in the dead of night when you least expect it to leap. It merely fell neatly into the void and disappeared.

And I wanted very much for this tacky scarf to disappear into the void.

If it wouldn’t disappear, though. I was satisfied that the room around me—hell, even the man who I straddled and huddled against mirrored the shambles that were my insides. I was wrung out. I was shattered. I was breaking every single one of my neat and tidy rules. So, it felt fitting that nothing surrounding me was crisp, clean, and whole. If I didn’t get to be, why did they?

Guilt pricked at me as a drop of The Raven’s blood slid down his spattered face. He didn’t seem to notice, though. The rich greens, browns, and horizon gold of his eyes stayed locked on me as he tucked a strand of hair that had come loose from my braid behind my tipped ear. His gloved hands buried themselves into the base of my hair, and before I knew his intentions, he crushed me against his chest again. The vigor, the strength in which he did so felt desperate, terrified, like a man crushing something he thought was lost to him before it was snatched away again.

The sound of his heart was no longer steady. It was frantic, a swarm of pissed-off bees rumbling through the hive of his chest. Before I could take the full measure of it, he was pulling me away again.

“I can’t get you reassigned, Cricket. He insists. I’ll keep trying, but eventually, he will get annoyed with my attempts. Perhaps I can get another to work with you. Maybe he won’t be such a boar with someone else to stand witness to his cravenness. Maybe I can start dragging him out to more hunts. Maybe . . .” He was rambling, the adrenaline of the events finally cutting into him and riding him like it had me. I reached up to press my finger to his lips to quiet him, and he crushed me against him again, preventing me from doing so. “I’ll figure something out.”

“You’re the Captain of the Guard, Raven, not my guard. His. I’m not your burden to care for. I’m a daoire, remember?”

My cheeks were smooshed against the sticky blood slick of his leather armor, and I felt like a fish when I tried to talk.

A rumble of disapproval rippled through him bordering on a growl. “Your kin’tha. It didn’t attend you today. Where is it?”

I shrugged against him. “No idea. I don’t exactly tell it when and where to go. It just sort of does. I assumed until the Bandrui told me otherwise that you controlled it.”

He snorted and pulled me away from him. “If only. I’ve already felt that things bite more than once on our journey here. I bought you from Rictus, and he said it would not be parted from you. Slimy old bastard claimed that it was for my own good. As unhinged and feral as you were. He failed to mention that the moment he put you into the blasted thing, he too was unable to go near you without its approval.” He tipped my chin up so that our eyes met and lingered, though our lips had not touched the long passionate kisses our eyes shared felt more intimate than anything I had ever experienced. “When you see it next, explain to it that it should not leave your side when you are in the palace. In the warrens is fine—you are protected there, I suspect. But in the palace, you are not. His Majesty might torment your mind and force you to bear witness to all manner of heinous things, but with the kin’tha there, I can be sure that he will not ever touch you again. Well . . . not if he wishes to have an arm afterwards.”

We both snorted a laugh, and it felt like a shared shower. The horror all around us washed clean with that simple gesture.

I nodded my agreement to his request, and he slid his gloved hand from my hair, lingering at the tip of my long braid. Our gaze drifted to the spun gold being rolled through the tattered black leather of his gloves. We fell into a comfortable silence as we watched it.

“Well, I have an appointment it seems with the Bandrui, seeing as I fell afoul of a feral, armed hellcat,” he grumbled good-naturedly with a flick of the braid.

I had the good sense to look bashful. “Yeah, uh . . . sorry about that . . .”

The rumbling roll of his laughter blew over me like a gentle spring breeze. “Don’t be. I’m glad to see that if needed, you have the stones to wield a weapon against your enemies. It’ll help me sleep at night knowing that whomever is fool enough to sneak up on you will not walk away unmolested for their trouble.”

He picked me up from his lap. Even with a dagger stuck deep in him, it took him no effort at all. I might as well have been a stuffed animal or a kitten that he was setting on their feet.

“Now, go on back to the warrens. I will have one of the guards escort you. I’ll have one of the courtiers come in to clean this up. Tell them the King was so outraged that they would turn him down that he tore it apart. Even if they hadn’t turned him down.”

“Not going to lie, Raven. I have no idea why anyone would be so cock starved for him. It was pretty unremarkable.”

He snorted and pushed up from the floor. “He could have an acorn for a cock, and it wouldn’t matter. He’s the Ard Rí. Politically, the most powerful Fae in the entire kingdom, and that is not to even mention the cache of magic he has stashed away.”

“They need higher standards,” I snorted.

“They do indeed, Cricket. Now . . . off you go. I will see you in the company of a guard before I go to be healed.”

He escorted me to the door, and when the guard bristled at the sight of his injuries, he shook his head and gave me a long look. The guard nodded and extended an arm for me to lead the way.

When I looked back, The Raven had his back to me. He stumbled a half step, caught himself on a sturdy table, and trembled. Another guard was quick to his side and was lifting his uninjured arm over his shoulder when the pair disappeared from my view as we passed into another hallway.

Chapter 20

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

“You need to get your shit together,” growled one of my chief co-conspirators, Prince Sorrow.

He was pacing the delicately carved and inlaid wooden floorboards of the infirmary of the temple. His smart, crisp, rigid riding doublet and breeches were speckled with blood, casting crimson across the otherwise starkly well put together Fae.

Sorrow had once been a messy boy like Daróg and I. Our shared childhood was a gilded manuscript filled with pages of us running through dense old forests, wallowing in mud, muck, and moss like we were no better than the beasts we hunted. The war had changed him, too, like it had changed me. It was not The Raven of the Dawn and The Prince of Sorrow that had run those game trails but The Wings of Hope and The Morning Star’s Glory that had fallen through thickets after a four eared hare. He had lost his left eye, and I had lost all hope.