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A similar scent lingered in the air in her bedroom, where there was a huge dark stain on the floorboards beside her bed. The staff had scrubbed and scrubbed at it, Lonan told me, but it wouldn’t lift. So he’d told them to stop trying.
“Let her remain nothing more than a stain beneath our feet,” he said, before giving me a smile and leading me from the room.
We spent an evening at Sloga’s sidhe with him and Idony, sharing a meal and drinking wine as we talked. Idony asked me lots of questions about the mortal world with morbid curiosity, things like, “But how do you all eat if none of you hunt and forage anymore?” and, “What’s the reason for those long pointy things you wear around the neck of your shirts?”
It was nice to talk about mortal things, like TV shows and my time at university and what soda tasted like. I gave up midway through trying to explain the internet when all of them, even Lonan, just stared at me blankly.
We were both tipsy when we left to go back to the palace, laughing and stumbling in the dark, then getting distracted once we were a good distance from the sidhe. This time, I was the one pushing Lonan up against a tree and sinking to my knees as I fumbled with the front of his trousers.
We slept less than we should have, staying up late when we were finally alone to talk. And fuck. I’d always been the more dominant one, but Lonan started taking charge more when we were in bed. He pinned my wrists down as he pounded into me, keeping his mouth locked on mine even when I started letting out muffled cries of pleasure against his lips. He pushed my knees up to my chest to rim me until I was begging him to make me come. He lounged back against the headboard and guided my head with languid fingers in my hair while I knelt between his legs and sucked his cock, shivering as he murmured directions to me in his husky voice.
I didn’t want to go, but it wasn’t fair to leave Nua and Gillie in charge for much longer back on seelie, and there was one more thing Lonan and I had to do before he could draw a line in the sand and finally start this new, happier phase of his life, all the terrible ghosts of his past expunged.
Balor’s head had been burned in the fireplace in the Carlin’s deathcraft chamber, before Lonan locked the door and ordered it to be boarded up. He’d carved a warning into the wood, as well as several charms that would prevent anyone from getting inside.
The guards had returned from depositing Bres in his new home—a remote old sidhe on the edge of the crumbling seaside cliffs to the south. They’d left him with some food and a crate of whisky, per Lonan’s order, and said he’d spent the entire journey mumbling to himself, the words slurred and incoherent thanks to his ruined tongue.
There was just one brother left. The one who banged on his locked door every time he heard us in the hallway and shouted for Lonan, sometimes angrily, sometimes pleadingly, sometimes sly and full of empty promises about things he could tell him. We’d ignored him, but now Lonan had decided that it was time for Cethlen to be gone.
“Okay, so I’ll meet you at the Midsith in three days,” I said to Lonan as we stood in the front hall, my satchel slung over my shoulder and my bow on my back. “I’ll bring the stuff, you bring Cethlen. Will you be alright with him?”
Lonan snorted, pushing a stray curl behind my ear. “Of course I will.”
I chuckled, then glanced back at the doors with a sigh. “Hopefully it won’t take me too long to get back.”
“It took me two days to get to unseelie,” Lonan warned. “You can’t predict journeys through Orna.”
“Fucking forest,” I grumbled. “I’ll send a letter if it does take me that long. It better fucking not, though.”
Lonan chuckled. “Why don’t you take one of the horses? I trust you to return it,” he added with a teasing smile.
Heat crept into my cheeks. “I, um, don’t know how to ride a horse.”
“Ah.” Lonan nodded, pursing his lips to hide his smile. “Something else for me to teach you, then.”
I laughed, pressing a firm kiss to his mouth. “Sounds good, but I am not riding a horse naked.”
“Alright, I suppose I’ll allow clothing for those lessons.” He cupped my jaw and kissed me again, then slid his arms around my waist as he buried his face in my neck with a sigh. “I’ll miss you.”
“I’ll miss you too.” I was already dreading the journey back, but it wouldn’t be long before I saw Lonan again. Holding him tight, I pressed a kiss to the pointed tip of his ear. “And maybe after this, I can stay again for a while. Assuming nothing’s happened on seelie while I’ve been gone.”
Lonan lifted his head to nod, offering me a small smile before nuzzling my cheek. “Be safe on the journey back.”
“I will. Pretty sure there’s no one left out there who wants to kill me.”
I’d said it as a joke, but the words made that insidious paranoia creep into the back of my mind. I cut it off before the thoughts could start forming. I wasn’t going to let myself indulge it—Lonan would be able to tell, and then he’d worry about me. He had enough to deal with here.
I knew there was a ways to go before I cut out all the terrible little parts of the Brid that had infected the power now living inside me. But I was determined. I wasn’t going to let myself turn into her.
“Are you sure you don’t want me to accompany you back?”
I blinked and smiled at Lonan, cupping his nape. “No, I’ll be fine. You’ve got stuff to deal with here. And it’ll take us twice as long to do this if we go all the way there then have to come all the way back to get Cethlen.”
“True.” He frowned. “At least let me walk you to the forest.”
“I know my way back,” I said with a laugh. After giving him one final kiss, I added, “I’ll see you in a few days.”
He sighed. “Yes, alright.”
