Chapter 27

Twenty-Seven

Bricriu

R ose’s scream will probably haunt me for the rest of my immortal life. It nearly deafens me, and my ears flatten against my skull at the pain, but I don’t draw them in.

If my hearing hadn’t picked up the hissing. If I’d been a second later…

“Don’t look.” I pull her away, cradling her head against my chest so she can’t see. “Rose, he wouldn’t want you to see this.”

Drystan curses, and a glance reveals he’s looking over us at the severed head in the closet.

Bram’s eyes are wide in death, and the sun-shaped brand on his forehead is framed by decaying skin. The smell is awful; a mix of rot, decay, and the damp stink of reptile excrement that seeps into the room like a plague, making the back of my throat itch.

I finally manage to pull Rose away, out of sight of the closet. My heart is still pounding. If I’d been just a fraction of a second slower to recognise?—

Cutting the thought off savagely, I pass her to Jaro, who cradles her as her breath hitches in a half-sob, and crouch beside the head. Drystan takes the spot on my other side, both of us examining it for clues.

Lox nudges at my mind, and I hold my hand out for him to drop the head of one of the snakes into my palm. With a grumpy caw, he disappears back into my skin as I turn the dark snakehead over in my fingers.

Nathairs. Young ones, given their size, but still deadly.

Someone wanted to sentence our mate to a long, painful death.

Beneath it is an empty chest that must’ve held the snakes, and I pick it up, grimacing. It’s a jewellery box, the kind one might give to a child, and it’s charred and blackened, though Drystan’s fire left the wardrobe untouched.

At the top, in tarnished silver letters, is a single name. Máel .

I drop the box.

“Eero did this.” It’s so out of character for the seelie that I doubted it at first, but this is so targeted—so personal—that it can’t have been anyone else.

“His spies must have reported that she was here,” Drystan mutters, picking up the box I dropped. “And he was making a point.”

“Can I kill him yet?” Lore asks, and there’s a manic kind of glint in his eye as he blinks onto Drystan’s shoulders, swinging his legs. “I have plans to try every single knife I own on him until I find the one that breaks unbreakable skin.”

“Lorcan,” Drystan growls. “Please take Rose and Jaromir to the market to purchase some new clothes. She’ll need them when she reaches the Winter Court. Jaromir, glamour her. They can’t know she saw this.”

It seems callous, to expect her to focus on something as banal as shopping right now, but I understand his reasoning. Letting Eero’s spies see that this has affected her will only put a target on the back of anyone Rose cares for. That knowledge doesn’t stop a part of my soul from shrivelling at the thought of Rose being away from me. Someone literally just tried to kill her.

A blade digs into Drystan’s neck in the next second, poking out of the heel of Lore’s boot.

“Leaving me out of the revenge plot would be rude,” Lore comments, as mildly as if he were commenting on Spring Court weather patterns. “You wouldn’t do that to me, right, dullahan?”

For once, Drystan doesn’t lose his cool. He simply shakes his head. “No. I believe whoever did this deserves every single second of whatever crazed vengeance you can deliver. Bree and I will hunt down this assassin until you return.”

“And then I can flay his cock and gift it to Rose.” Lore blinks away with a grin. “There are so many blood vessels down there?—”

He blinks our mate away before I get to hear the rest of the sentence, and my chest tightens.

The instant she’s out of sight, the dullahan rounds on Caed, whose face instantly tenses.

“I had nothing to do with this,” the Fomorian protests. “When would I have the time? You’ve been having me watched since Siabetha.”

The dullahan looks away, unable to take his words as anything other than the truth.

“It has to be Eero.” Drystan puts the box back.

“I got this.” Lore grins, popping into existence standing on one hand, grabbing the box, and then blinking across the room to the door. He opens it and yells, “Wraith!”

The barghest barrels around the corner a second later, and Lore holds the box out.

“Find!”

The giant canine sniffs carefully at the box, then at the air before taking off down the sunlit hall.

“Go, puppy, go!” Lore grins, bouncing and tumbling after him like an acrobat.

“Make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid,” Drystan mutters. “I’ll ensure Prince Bram’s remains are taken care of delicately and pack our things.”

“She was right,” Caed points out, as I leave the room. “Rose had a feeling that we should leave.”

Drystan only grunts, like it physically pains him to hear.

It’s easy enough to follow the trail of devastation left by a giant furry beast. People have been knocked over, someone has died—though I suspect, given the stab marks, that was Lore’s doing—and servants are quivering.

A second later, a piercing scream pushes me to move faster, and when I round the corner, there’s a maid pinned to the floor of the next corridor by the pile of angry white fur. Her dark hair is splayed around her, her youthful face pinched with fear.

“Don’t let him eat me, please! Don’t let him eat me!” She sobs. “I’m just a maid.”

Lore crouches beside her head, petting Wraith’s ear as he regards her in false confusion.

“So you didn’t put a box of nathairs and a severed head in the Nicnevin’s wardrobe? Are you very sure?”

“I would nev—” Her voice chokes off at the lie, and she gasps. “I swear I have no—” Another choke. “I’m innocent!”

That catches my attention. If she’s innocent when she clearly committed the crime, that would suggest she wasn’t responsible for her actions.

Rubbing my hand over Espen, my tongue transforms in my mouth, flicking out to taste the air.

Her perfume is strong, painfully so, and I grimace as the notes of it hit me. There’s something there, beneath it all. Something nauseatingly familiar. Gin and rosin and sex.

“She’s been charmed,” I whisper.

My wings are out before I can fully process it. The urge—the need—to get to Rose is so undeniable that I break into a sprint, heading directly for the window at the end of the corridor.

I smash through it and out into the sunlit forest, wings beating as I grab hold of the Call in my chest and follow it to her. Perhaps I’m racing to conclusions. Perhaps I’m going mad.

All I know is that Torrance—a known agent of the Summer Court—said he was departing for the Forest of Whispers, and now, there’s an assassin who claims to be innocent yet clearly committed the crime. A pretty one who wears his scent in an intimate way.

It has all the hallmarks of my father’s handiwork.

The crowd scatters as I drop down onto the doorstep of the tailor’s shop and shove inside.

Jaro is there, between me and our mate, in a flash.

“Don’t.” The urgent undercurrent in his tone conveys what his quietness doesn’t. “She’s only just stopped crying. If you’re here to bring her more bad news?—”

“I’m not,” I swear. “I just have to see her.”

Jaro steps back, surprising me once again with how smoothly someone of his bulk can move. “She’s behind the screen with the seamstress.”

Hearing the unspoken order not to disturb them, I draw a glamour over myself and step just around the edge.

Rose is standing stock still, her expression pensive and her eyes closed as a high fae female uses her magic to stitch a heavy fur mantle around her shoulders. Her grief is etched into her body in a hundred invisible cuts, and I curse myself all over again for not catching the sounds of those snakes faster. If I’d just stopped her from opening the wardrobe…

Then the clothes slip from her frame, folding themselves and leaving her in just her underwear as more fabrics whirl past. The seamstress tuts, testing the tones against her creamy skin.

My eyes drink her in, hating and loving in equal measure the scraps of lace concealing the most intimate parts of her from me. Ever since she last welcomed me into her body, I’ve wanted to fuck her again, and I’ve been terrified to, in equal measure. It seems too good to be true. Surely next time, something will go wrong.

Good things like Rose don’t happen to people like me.

Only the presence of the others allowed me to go as far as I did. Honestly, I can’t believe that none of them have mocked me for how quickly I finished, but then again, I suppose they understood.

It’s not like I was the only one enraptured by her in that bedchamber.

I want to fuck her again, and again. Both with the rest of the Guard, and alone where I can take my time. I want to kiss every inch of my mate and worship her like the miracle she is and maybe regain a little of my pride by lasting longer next time.

Pacing back to Jaro, I take a spot just behind him, unwilling to trust myself as the seamstress fits Rose with a thick pair of leggings.

“She’s okay,” I whisper to myself, leaning against the bookcase, my tongue darting out, searching for the slightest hint of sloe gin in the air.

Lore is out there alone. I freeze, wondering if I’ve made a mistake, before casting the thought aside. For all his febrile energy, the redcap is thousands of years old. More than capable of shrugging off the effects of my father’s charm.

“You gonna tell me why you burst in here like your ass was on fire?” Jaro asks, slowly, cautiously, like I’m a rabbit he’s trying not to spook.

“My father is involved,” I admit, cautiously. “I had to make sure…”

The wolf shifter straightens. “You said he was banished from Siabetha?”

“By Máel, yes. But Eero isn’t one to let a bard leave his service so easily.” And Torrance was far too blasé about the exile, like he knew it wouldn’t matter. “He’s Lyarthorn, after all. The name alone opens doors.”

Or it did once. Goddess only knows what he did to our reputation while I was imprisoned.

“Everything okay?” Rose asks, peeking out from behind the screen.

“Bree’s father is involved,” Jaro says, without missing a beat. “Be careful.”

Rose’s eyes flash with something that looks awfully like fury, and I tense, only to realise it’s not directed at me.

“He charmed a maid,” I explain. “That was how they delivered the snakes.”

I refrain from mentioning Bram’s head, because although Rose looks fine, the Call tells me she’s not. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a glamour over her face, hiding the puffiness from her tears.

She should never have had to see that. I can’t help but worry that this won’t be the last body part they’ll send either. The Summer Court are experts at psychological warfare, and they’ve already proven they’re willing to use dishonourable unseelie tactics. They’ll use everything at their disposal to weaken Rose.

“We have to assume that if Eero knows we’re here, the Fomorians do too,” Jaro says. “They could come down harder on the Autumn Court…”

Rose disappears back behind the screen, and I silently urge her to hurry.

Torrance is here. Inside the palace. Every passer-by whose shadow crosses the floor through the window is a potential threat. My skin is crawling, made worse by the knowledge that the stakes are infinitely higher than they were before. Now that the Fomorians are involved…

“We need to leave,” I whisper to Jaro. “As soon as we can. Before?—”

“Rose was right,” he agrees. “Kitarni already told us we should follow the Nicnevin’s instincts. From now on, whatever she says, I’m backing it. Drystan will try to walk all over her otherwise, and Lore’s no help.”

“Agreed,” I murmur. “But her training…”

She’s made huge progress since we arrived. In less than a week, she’s mastered commanding a ballroom full of ghosts to dance and managed to give them all corporeal form. If she can do the same thing with warriors, they’d be an invincible army of the dead.

But if she loses focus, even for a second, the situation will get out of control fast.

“We can order Cressida to write her instructions, like Florian did. The rest…” Jaro trails off.

She’ll have to figure it out on her own. It’s not like that’s unusual for most Fae, anyway. The diverse and unpredictable nature of fae magic means it’s rare for anyone to have a tutor. We just have to hope that the five of us can keep Rose safe while she learns.