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He looked around at these competent, broken men who’d saved his life too many times to count. He felt almost cleaved in two by the pain of watching them slowly commit suicide, and the fury of it.
“I would not trust you to watch a star in the sky,” he snarled.
Máel made a sound that resembled a growl. Rowan blew out a laugh that was not a laugh at all. And Fáelán smiled that cold, cold smile.
Tadhg leaned forward, his chest pressed against the hard edge of the table. “You cannot ‘take her.’ She is beyond your means, the sort of woman you could never dream of in your black heart, and I swear to all the gods, old and new, I am taking her home.”
Silence echoed. From the other room, Maggie stared in. Words were not required to detect this hot, humming tension.
The false, faint smile haunted Fáe’s lean features but his hand, still gripping the dagger, tightened into white knuckled fist. Then he snapped his hand up and flung the dagger at the far wall.
It tumbled end over end, flashing steel as it hurtled through the air. Everyone leapt to their feet as it passed an inch from Tadhg’s face—he rolled back just in time—and embedded itself in an oak post on the far wall.
Fáelán pushed to his feet. “Go home, Tadhg. Good luck in your quest for what shall never be. We are not meant for home or happiness.”
Tadhg felt his heart hardening. “I am. I claim it.”
“Then go claim.”
He left the room.
Tadhg’s face contorted in a mess of emotions too complicated and intense to name.
With a guttural curse, he strode to the wall, ripped the dagger out, and stalked out of the room, passing the others with a low biting curse.
“You let him die, you moulting desert rams. That is why I left. Because you are all going to die, in here.” He thumped his chest. He snapped his gaze to Máel. “You are already dead. Fáe is next.” He glanced at Rowan. “They’ll drag you down with them if you let them.”
He strode out, into the front room where Maggie sat waiting for him, innocent and, as Máel had predicted, all but doomed for that sin alone.
Chapter Forty-One
MAGGIE HAD WATCHED the tawny-haired beast march out in Tadhg’s wake, and followed them with her eyes.
The long room, more than half a block in length, was separated at intervals by huge oak beams, but no doors, so she could see all the way down to the far end, where Tadhg stood with his ‘brothers.’ He was on his feet, spine to the wall, looking up at the ceiling, while the others sat and stared at him coldly.
She was observing the silent tableau with such intense focus she gave a start when someone cleared his throat behind her.
Hand to her chest, she turned and stared in astonishment at a boy who stood there, peering back at her with great earnestness, holding a bowl of soup cupped in his hands.
“Stew, my lady?”
“Why, I…” He set it down and slid it closer. “Thank-you.”
“Welcome,” he replied with an airy, casual disregard that bespoke either someone not taught his place, or someone with a very great place indeed. As this one lived in an outlaw’s den, she suspected the former.
He began clearing away dishes and mugs scattered across the oak table.
“My name is Magdalena,” she said, for lack of having anything other to say, but overcome with the need to say something to this self-possessed youngster, a child in the house of outlaws.
He glanced at her from under a mop of unruly hair. “Pleased to meet you, milady. That’s a fine name.”
She smiled, surprised and faintly charmed. “Thank-you.” She hesitated. “And yours?”
“Lóegaire.”
“I am pleased to meet you, Lóegaire.” She examined him a bit more closely. “How old you are you?”
“How old are you?” he retorted, and she couldn’t help but laugh. At the far end of the room, the men turned and looked her direction. “I am nearing my thirtieth year.”
