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“Badb happened,” I said, my voice flat. He carried me out of the mess, handing me off to one of the fifty guards now crowding the room before signaling to a few others to help him with Dagda.
While I’d been trapped and Badb was forcing me to consume Dagda’s blood, I’d seen it again. The dark abyss within, where I could have escaped. A pit of nothing within my caged consciousness. I shivered. Part of me feared if I went into it, I’d become lost forever, but it also might have shielded me from what I’d just experienced. In his bedroom, with his insides coursing hot down our throat, it had called to me. But Dagda’s torture was my burden to bear. And so I’d fought.
And lost.
Only his burning faerie guardian melting the floor out from under us had stopped my sisters.
I wasn’t strong enough to hold them back.
Keelin carefully pulled the sword out of Dagda’s chest and, with those helping, lifted his unconscious body from the rubble. He looked even worse in the guards’ arms, his normally golden skin ghostly pale, making the red stand out in grotesque streaks.
“The queen is to be kept in her room. She is not to leave under any circumstances. We will send healers to tend her wounds,” Keelin said.
The guards around stiffened. “Sir,” one woman responded, eyes flitting to me. “You have no authority—”
“Do as he says,” I said, softly.
The tension held a moment longer, but then they all began to move.
Chapter 18
Ialmostlostitwhen I discovered the healers were sorcerers. When I found out that they knew my attempted assassin—like them, he was a member of the Queen’s Sorcerers—I trembled under their care as they sponge bathed the blood off of me. Niamh had gotten to Morrigan’s own magic wielders. What if, instead of a balm, they applied a poison? I watched warily as they administered a salve that calmed the pain and as they wrapped my wounds up tight.
They left me in the solitude of my room. Confined. Keelin was right. After tonight, I was far too dangerous to roam where I would. And Dagda… I shut my eyes, trying not to picture what Macha and Badb had done to him. Yet, even though the logic of my confinement made sense, I hated being this caged.
A day passed. Meals were brought. I didn’t eat. Roisin returned, but I refused to let her in. From her words on the other side of the door, she wasn’t too happy about it.
Another day passed. I wanted someone to tell me how Dagda was doing, but a tightness gripped my chest and a burning rushed up my throat whenever I came close to asking. Roisin still pleaded at the door. I allowed the healers inside, watching them like a hawk and marveling at my quickly healing injuries. They applied more balm and wrapped me again, promising it would be the last time.
On the third day, the wrap was removed and my skin was clear, like there had been no wounds. I tried taking a bath, but ended up staring at the water, only seeing a large pool of blood that made me dry heave. When food was brought in, I stared at it. I couldn’t even look at whatever dark liquid filled the cups.
That night, the door to my room opened and Dagda stepped in. A stinging started behind my eyes at the sight of him. He looked good as new. His white shirt was open at the neck and tucked into his trousers. His hair brushed back from his face in that careless fashion that passed as stylish and he’d shaved, though he left a purposeful layer of shadow over his skin that always made me want to reach out and run my fingers over his cheek. He appeared perfect, except for the scrunched eyebrows and drawn mouth.
“Roisin says you are not letting her tend to you, and that you are not eating,” he said.
He scrutinized my appearance, my hair loose and unkept, the nightgown I had worn since the night the healers had sponge bathed me and placed me in it.
I watched him. He spoke and carried himself like he’d never been injured. As if Badb hadn’t been halfway to cutting his heart from his chest.
Dagda took another step closer to me. “She told me you ordered yourself confined to your room.”
“I’m dangerous.” My dry voice cracked from disuse.
There was a desperation in his expression. “I know what has happened to you the past week has been… horrific, unbearable. But you cannot let them claim victory over you. They cannot beat you into submission. You are more than that. You are more thanthem.”
He dropped to his knees and laid a hand on mine. His skin was warm. I took in his face, but all I saw was the gag shoved in his mouth, of his body spasming as Badb yanked on the sword, of his blood spilling from the crescent-shaped gouge in his chest.
The whispers started.
I pulled my hand away. Panic clogged my throat. “You have to go.”
“Chels.” His whisper was a plea.
I recoiled from him. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“I am not afraid of you.”
The whispers grew louder.
