Chapter 2

Two

Rhoswyn

W e ride for most of the day. The Fomorians are eerily silent as they navigate through the hills, then double back, heading for the coast. It gives me plenty of time to sink into my own dark thoughts, and perhaps my guides are aware of that, because they continuously pop up just as I’m about to lose control, distracting me.

“Your Fomorian is laying a false trail,” Maeve explains, when my confusion shows on my face. “Smart.”

“You’re healing nicely,” Titania adds, her hands fluttering over my aching wrists.

How can I tell her that I wish I wasn’t?

Lore’s hat feels worryingly loose on my head. I keep discretely opening the cut on my hand and tugging at the fabric, trying to ‘feed’ it, but the wound is growing smaller and smaller. It needs more. He needs more.

Eero snapped his neck. Normally I’d send energy through the bond, but the stubborn males aren’t taking it. That means I need blood.

Short of stabbing Caed—which I’m sure Drystan would love—I don’t see how I’ll get my hands on enough of it.

The sun is well and truly set by the time Caed pulls Blizzard to a halt. My muscles ache, my head is pounding, and grief sits in my throat like a roiling ball of acid. Despite all that, I’ve been lulled into a doze by the rocking motion and the false sense of security that comes from my body recognising the closeness of one of my Guard.

“Come on,” Caed murmurs, shaking me gently awake. “We’re here.”

‘Here’ turns out to be an old fishing shack by the sea. I can see the silhouette of Siabetha glimmering across the waves, but there’s nothing within shouting distance. Even if there was, the crash of the ocean drowns all other noises out.

How did the Fomorians find this place?

I slip from the saddle with a groan, the muscles of my back protesting. I can’t even feel my wings right now, and my guides hover around me like they know exactly how close I am to just falling on the sand.

“She needs something warm on her back,” Drystan snaps, and Prae rolls her eyes before shoving his head at me.

“I’ve dealt with him all day,” she says at my questioning glance. “It’s your turn.”

“Then you take Caed,” I retort.

Prae snorts. “No deal. They’re both your problem. I’m happily unmated.”

“For now,” Caed sings, striding past us.

“Fomorian, get back here and brush down my horse,” Drystan snarls. “He needs fresh water and?—”

“It’s a magical fucking horse,” Caed retorts. “Practically a unicorn. It’s not going to die, and unless it can drink sea water, it’s just as shit out of luck as the rest of us.”

Sighing, I turn and look at Caed, raising Drystan’s head as I do so. “ Please , stop arguing with each other, at least for tonight.”

The eye contact is deliberate, and even though I don’t really have it in me to reach for Danu to strengthen the magic, it does the trick.

“Rhoswyn,” Drystan snarls.

But I’m not in the mood for it. Too much has happened today for me to put up with them arguing over a stupid horse.

“No. Caed saved me. You can growl and snarl at him once you’ve worked together to figure out a way to get all of our people out of Siabetha. I won’t leave this court without them, even if I have to charge in there and kill Eero myself.”

“As much as I love the direct approach,” Maeve says, laying a placating hand on my shoulder that manifests as a slight chill. “It’s not smart when your enemy is invincible.”

“I’m not insane,” I retort, following the others towards the shack. “Only an idiot would think someone like me stands a chance against Eero, but I highly doubt he’s guarding his own dungeons.”

Everything in me wants to storm the castle and rescue my mates. My high priestess. Wraith. My brothers…

I cut off that train of thought viciously. The only way I’ve managed to avoid sobbing like a baby during the ride here is by deliberately refusing to address what I saw as I tumbled from that window.

It will break me.

I can’t break until my mates are safe.

“Not all of us are in the dungeons,” Drystan replies, looking between me and the spirit. “Bree and Kitarni are still unaccounted for.”

My chest ices over. “Both of them?”

“Kitarni is likely being kept in the temple,” Drystan mutters. “It’s her right to challenge the Grand Clerics until she wins. Bricriu, on the other hand…”

“We need to find him.” I won’t leave him in the place that has taken so much from him already.

If they’ve hurt a single hair on his head, I will raze that city to the ground. I will make what happened to the Toxic Orchid look like a parlour trick.

If I take that route, innocent people will die, I remind myself, trying to smother the Goddess’s rage and my own with some deep breaths.

“Can you contact them?” Caed asks Drystan, shoving open the door to the shack and revealing a cramped, but dry interior, full of nets and old fish traps. The two of them are completely oblivious to the murderous urges I’m battling, and oddly, that helps.

“Ugh, it reeks of fish,” Prae mutters, ignoring us as she shoves inside and drops her pack on the ground with a clank.

There isn’t even a real floor, just some old rugs spread out over the sand.

“My mouth and ears are here,” Drystan reminds him, and it’s not quite a snarl, but close. “My body can perceive auras while my head is gone, but everything else is a blurry mess of black and white. I can make out structures, but that’s it. If you think that I can communicate well enough to organise a breakout, you’re going to be disappointed.”

“So what do you know then?” Caed asks. “Come on, you must have seen something useful.”

Is he…? My gut does a somersault as I realise he actually sounds like he’s going along with my plan.

Drystan hesitates, and his eyes are locked on me as he speaks. He just can’t seem to bear to talk civilly with Caed, and at any other time, I’d find it funny.

“Jaro, Lorcan, Wraith, and Prince Dare are near me, along with another I don’t recognise. We’re in cages, and there are aquatic animal auras far beneath us, so I assume we’re?—”

“Under the archway.” I rub at my eyes, trying to envision how to get to them. “Then that solves it. I’ll fly up?—”

“You just flew for the first time today,” Drystan reminds me. “And judging by how stiffly you’re moving, you won’t be doing it again for a while, either.” He pauses, giving me a look that lets me know all of my careful efforts to hide the throbbing of my shoulders have been in vain. “Fomorian, rub her back or she won’t be able to move in the morning.”

“No.” I jerk away from Caed reflexively, almost tripping over a crate. “I’ll be fine.”

I would rather ache than have Caed at my back. I need his help; that doesn’t mean I can forget…Swallowing the memory, I shake my head again.

Drystan isn’t so easily appeased. “Rhoswyn, your muscles?—”

“I’m immortal. I will heal.” I’m pretty sure he’s said the same words to me before. “Besides, aches and pains are nothing.” I dealt with worse every day I thought I was human. “Now, back to getting you out of there.” I sit on the crate I just fell over, shoulders slumping as I turn to Prae. “You’re an inventor. Do you have anything that could help us get up there?”

The Fomorian princess shrugs as she works on striking a fire. “Funnily enough, my workshop is in Fellgotha. What about you, all-powerful Goddess? Is there nothing up those frilly sleeves?”

“We’re all in iron cages,” Drystan dismisses. “Rose’s powers can’t do anything. If you let her anywhere near us, she’ll just get sick. Which is why it would be more sensible for her to head back to the Spring Court and use Aiyana’s vow to force Spring to launch a counterattack.”

I shake my head. “Eero has too many hostages for that to be an effective option, and I refuse to kill my own people in a pointless war.”

“Then you’re playing right into his hands.” Drystan tuts under his breath. “As queen, you are going to have to send fae to die at some point.”

“Yes,” I admit, swallowing. “But Eero isn’t trying to invade the rest of Faerie; Elatha is. It makes sense to deal with the bigger threat before?—”

“You need his army—the Summer Court army—remember?”

Cradling his head in my lap, I let my eyes fall closed as I fight not to let the impossibility of the situation overtake me. Talking with Drystan is getting me nowhere.

“Maeve, I need you to stake out the dungeon where they are,” I say at last. “Try to find us a way in. Search for Bree, Bram, and Kitarni while you’re there.”

The warrior queen will enjoy the challenge.

“Rhoswyn, Bram is—” Drystan’s voice has a note of sorrow to it that I just can’t stand.

So I don’t let him finish the sentence. “I need to rest?—”

Caed interrupts then, his voice quiet. “You haven’t eaten since this morning.”

I’m surprised he noticed. He searches amongst the bags for something, and when he returns, he’s holding out some strips of dried meat like a peace offering.

“It’s not much, but you need it.”

Drystan is silent, and I get the sense it’s because he’s unwilling to agree with the Fomorian, even on this. I take the food silently, chewing it slowly as I watch Prae and Caed work together to set up two bed rolls.

“I’ll take first watch,” Caed says, and when I frown, he continues, “We’ll make a plan when your ghost gets back with the information we need.”

Prae is already tucked into her bedroll, her silhouette rising and falling with even breaths, though whether she’s actually asleep or feigning it, I can’t tell.

The door slams shut after Caed, and Drystan takes that as his cue.

“Rhoswyn,” he begins.

I hesitate, debating whether to remove my tattered dress or not. In the end, I decide to leave it. I don’t have anything else to wear, and even if Prae decided to lend me something, she’s far taller and less busty than I am. I guess I’m stuck in a ruined gown for now.

“Rose,” Drystan tries again, but I sigh, setting him down on the crate above my bedroll, and slip between the covers instead. “Huntress, please, look at me.”

I’m tired, bone-weary, and I don’t have the energy to argue with him. Perhaps all of that is conveyed in the heavy-lidded look I finally grace him with. His mouth twitches with sympathy.

“I don’t want you on the front line of this war.”

“Do you not think it’s a little late for that?” I ask softly. “The war is here, Drystan. Danu and my mother decided I would face it before my birth.”

I sigh, pausing as I look him over. His ear has healed, but his braids are matted, and his amber eyes are crinkled with frustration. “How you’re feeling right now—the helplessness? That’s how I felt every time you charged into battle and left me behind in a glowing, protected bubble. It sucks, doesn’t it?”

He’s not one to back down, even when he knows I’m right. “You’re not a soldier.”

“No,” I admit. “I’m not a great leader, or a survivor, or a healer, or even a diplomat. But I am the Nicnevin. I have the advice of three females with thousands of years’ experience in all those things at my fingertips. I have to do this. No one can do it for me. Not even you. Letting you continue to coddle me is no longer an option.”

My blind, childlike trust in them is what led to this. If I’d just followed my gut when Jaro first went missing, perhaps this would never have happened. Perhaps we’d all be together and plotting Eero’s downfall around a nice, cosy campfire.

“But this is Caed ,” Drystan protests. “Can you really trust him to stay by your side through this? He could turn on you at any point.”

“He could.” If this goes further, and I let Caed in only for him to turn around and betray me, it will ruin me, but I don’t confess that fear to Drystan. “But he hasn’t yet. Until he does, he stays. Besides, right now, he’s the only protection I have.”

Drystan hums but can’t disagree with me.

“Get some sleep,” he says instead, followed by a long pause. “Rhoswyn?”

I turn and face him, the frown of annoyance dying on my face at the unexpected vulnerability in his eyes.

“Yes?”

He sighs. “I need you to keep my head close. If my… separation from my body continues for longer than we hope, and Cedwyn hears of this, he will come for it.”

I frown. “Why would the king of winter want your head?”

“He enjoys playing hide and seek.” His flat tone makes it clear that it wasn’t a fun game. “Like this, I can be shut in a box, and then the rest of me is rendered mute and deaf. Headless, I’m at my most powerful, but also my most vulnerable.”

His words from weeks ago, when we were discussing our limits, circle in my mind. He doesn’t like others touching his neck because someone—probably Cedwyn—has done those things before. He hid the truth of what he was from the rest of us because he never wanted anyone else to take advantage of him like that.

How terrifying must it be to be locked in darkness while half of you wanders around, unable to communicate?

Now, part of what he feared has manifested. His body is in the hands of the enemy and is still separate from his head. No wonder he’s seemed extra grouchy since Prae retrieved him.

A muscle feathers in his jaw, and I take a deep breath. “Thank you for telling me.” It can’t have been easy. “I’ll protect your head and Lore’s cap with my life.”

“No need to be dramatic,” he murmurs dismissively, but I’m pretty sure there’s the slightest tinge of pink on his cheeks as he looks away. “And I told you to stop thanking fae.”