Page 40

I could not afford the risk of that message being from my little bug. I could not afford the chance that she would move so far beyond my grasp I could not get to her. Not now that I knew with some reasonable certainty she might be alive.

I did not telegraph my movements nor apologize for them. My massive hand struck out, slamming into the bobbing bulge of the boy's throat, crushing it with a single strike. His eyes blew open wide, and he stumbled backwards, trying to flee as his hands grew the scaled talons of the owl he had sworn fealty to.

Magic rippled like the strike of thunder across the bogs as he attempted to push me backwards with the force of it. My heels dug into the soggy ground and slid back a few inches, but I kept advancing on him, rolling my neck as he fell with the sapping of his energy.

The might of his release knocked the gangly young Fae to the ground, the twisting of its essence turning foul and wretched upon him as bog weeds crawled from the earth and gripped at his clothes. The black mud swallowed his talons as he reached for the medallion of the Crossroads beneath his hood. I was already on him though. There was no calling help. There was no drawing a circle to protect himself. There was no slipping between the worlds and returning to the place the medallion was tethered to.

I let the full weight of my massive body focus into the point of my knee as I dropped down onto him, letting the hardened leather poleyn of my armor collide with the delicate plate of his shoulder blade. It gave beneath me, the boy screaming with the haunting shriek of an otherwise silent bird. The leather of my gloves scraped against his clothes as I ripped his arm back and away from his body. The medallion still in his hand as he clutched the leather thong, fingers desperately trying to reel it in so he could use it.

I sighed heavily and added his face to the hall of my ghosts.

His delicate wrist felt too birdlike in my massive grip as I caught it and used it to lever his arm back on his elbow until it cracked, rendering the limb fully useless.

“I’m sorry, young friend. You were promised a safe vocation, but I cannot allow that message to reach Tromluí Údramáil. You are oathbound not to reveal its contents nor give it to me. You see how we are at unfortunate odds here. But I promise your journey back to magic will be quick. And I will not leave your body in the bog to prevent you from joining your ancestors,” I whispered into his ear.

It was as close to mercy as I could find for him. When I made it clear of the bogs, I would bury his body in a fine meadow. I wouldn’t be able to burn him, as was tradition, but I would at least give him the dignity of release from the eternal prison that the bogs of the Fómhar would have cursed him to.

I clicked at Venom, calling her to me through the bog. She came slow and plodding as I pressed his face into the mud. Venom shook her mane and the change, though not a physical one, from simple sweet mare to hardened warhorse came over her. She would be this Fae’s executioner.

Her steel-shod hooves came down over and over until his head split, cracked and covered her legs.

“I’m sorry, young friend.” I really was, too. I would have preferred to simply slit his throat and bleed him out into the bog but without a knife and unwilling to lock his magic in the bog, I worked with what I had.

I did the dirty work of hefting his lifeless body onto Venom’s back and then pulled the letter from the pack.

You told me to come. Will I be admitted?

Your Pearl

It was a simple message, but it rankled me, nonetheless. She was my pearl. My Cricket. My little bug.

Did she not know that Brittle Spear was already dispatched? When had they spoken? How had they spoken?

The questions haunted and vexed me the rest of our journey through the wetlands and my arduous task of clawing the earth deep enough to bury his body. Even though my fingers bled by the time I had him safely put to bed, the questions crept and crawled within me.

Only when I was saddled on Venom and racing through the last stretch of my journey did I dare to start thinking about her. I rode toward a horizon of her turquoise eyes, the golden curtain of her hair closing in around me as I raced to her lips. I planned out a thousand different ways I would greet her, a thousand things I would say, a million ways I would apologize.

Each scenario played out behind my eyes as I leaned over Venom’s head into the wind with the massive building of the Crossroads Inn coming into view.

I didn’t even bother to tether Venom; I merely slid free of the saddle and leapt up the short stairway into the tavern. The madame of the establishment, Banduic Ulchabhan, The Duchess of Owls, sat sipping human whiskey by a roaring fireplace like her namesake in its nest. The mottled browns of the long-eared owl she modeled herself after shifted as she turned to examine me.

She took one look at my mud-soaked royal livery and flicked her round eyes up to the ceiling before whispering, “Make ye no trouble beneath my roof, soldier.”

I nodded to her over the sudden stampede in my chest. My long legs ate up the stairs, bounding three at a time, until I came to the first landing of the rooms. The hallway seemed to stretch out for miles with door after door all closed and identical. She could be behind any one of them, and I had no desire to spook her by searching every single one.

I closed my eyes and drew deep breaths.

She was my soulmate. My anam cara. Even though color had not truly returned to the world, and that knife in my chest was still twisting, she was here somewhere, and I knew it to be true. I knew in the marrow of my bones, in the depths of my magic that she was here. Somewhere.

I started walking. I didn’t think. I let my heart, my lungs, my magic move me, and I cleared my mind of every single thought aside from the way her lips had tasted with the linen between us holding my magic at bay. I focused on the way she tilted her head back and shuddered with my fingers deep inside of her. The way my gloves would smell of her perfume when I managed to pull myself away from her.

I stopped and opened my eyes to the door I had been drawn to. Hesitation kept me at its threshold. I could open this door, and it could be someone else, and the last leaf of my hope would crumble into the winds. Or I could open this door and she would be there.

Either scenario was just as daunting as the other.

Drawing a deep lung full of air, I pushed open the door.

Chapter 16