Page 21

The cold seeps through my coat as I huddle beneath the sprawling oak.

I move closer to the anaemic fire sputtering at my feet, feeding it another handful of damp twigs. They hiss and pop, releasing more smoke than heat. Each gust threatens to snuff out the weak flames and abandon me to the dark.

All because I’m too stubborn to walk away from him. From us.

A shadow detaches from the gloom, and my heart stutters a painful beat.

For a moment, he seems to waver and dissolve into curling tendrils of mist—more spectre than flesh.

But then Kiaran resolves into solid form at the edge of the firelight, his striking features limned in flickering gold and darkness.

Even half-obscured by the night, he steals my breath. Too beautiful to be real.

“Why are you still here?” His voice skates down my spine, smooth and lethal.

I tip my chin up, meeting that unnerving stare without flinching. “I said I would be. Have you come to say my name?”

A muscle tics in his jaw. “No.”

“Ah. Well, then.” I wave an imperious hand at the desolate vista of blackened branches, broken only by his ominous tower thrusting up like an obsidian spear.

“As far as I can tell, my only means of egress from this miserable scrap of rock you pulled from the sea floor is to either sprout wings and fly or wait for low tide to wade to shore. Perhaps you should have considered that logistical complication before erecting your aggressively phallic tower out here. It’s rather uninspired as far as villain lairs go. ”

His eyes narrow at the word ‘phallic’. I hide a smile, perversely delighted by the reaction.

“It has been low tide several times since you started haunting my doorstep.” He looks me over, reading the exhaustion in my trembling limbs. “And you remain, despite your obvious misery. Clearly, I’m in no mood for company.”

I shrug. “And I’ll stay. This is where I want to be. I’d like to be warmer, but I won’t quibble about the details.”

The air around us thickens, thrumming with the electric crackle of barely leashed magic. Impatience warring with something far more urgent beneath the surface. A fierce, desperate thing that threatens to rage out of control.

He takes a calculated step forward.

“Leave,” he says, very softly, each word precise as a dagger’s point, “before you force my hand. You’re not human enough to enjoy the protection of Catri′ona’s vow. Not if I wish otherwise.”

My spine stiffens, but I refuse to let him see me flinch.

“If you’d like a corpse for company, get on with it.

Fair warning, though—I’m cold and exhausted, so I won’t promise a dignified end.

” I gesture to the dwindling flames. “Of course, if you’d prefer me alive a while longer, contributions to the firewood supply are welcome. ”

A dark brow lifts. “You must be delirious if you believe I’ll enable your stubbornness.”

“I’ve been called worse. Mostly by you, if I recall.” I extend my pale, bloodless fingers toward the struggling flames, soaking in the faintest suggestion of heat. “Might as well sit. As you can plainly see, I’m not going anywhere.”

“Human—”

“Name,” I bite out. “You know what I require. Say it or don’t, but I won’t respond to anything less. I made myself quite clear this morning.”

He’s silent for a long moment, the space between us charged. Taut. When he speaks again, his voice emerges low and rough. “And would hearing your name from my lips change anything?”

“It might. I miss the sound of it. Even if only to scold me.”

The tense lines of Kiaran’s body ease a fraction, and he drops into an easy crouch across from me. “And if I compelled you to go?”

“I don’t believe you could. And if you tried, I’d fight my way back to you. I’ve already crawled out of the ground once. I’ll do it again without hesitation.”

Silence stretches, broken only by the soft crackle of burning wood. Kiaran is motionless, a statue carved from moonlight and frost. But I catch the momentary clench of his fist. The muscle flickering along his jaw.

“Out of the ground,” he repeats at last, as if tasting the shape of it. Testing for truth. As if the words have been dredged up from some dark, secret place.

I nod, a sharp jerk of my head. “Yes. I fought free of my own grave. For you. I walked miles of unfamiliar forest with no memory. For you. I dreamed of your face when everything else had been stripped away.” I lean forward to poke the fire with a stick, sending up a gout of embers.

“Apologies about your trackers, by the way. They startled me before I recalled how I ended up alone in the woods. Aithinne played no part in their demise.”

Kiaran’s gaze darts to the palace gates, where his soldiers’ lifeless bodies littered the ground before he got rid of them. Disposing of corpses is an old habit of his, especially those felled by my hand. “And my sentries?”

“They stood between me and your undivided attention. In fairness, I asked them to take me to the throne room, and they gave me a rather violent refusal.”

He makes a noise. Almost amused. “Only you would demand an audience with the Unseelie King by painting a bloody swathe through his sentries.”

My heart gives a strange, painful lurch at his amusement. A fleeting thing, precious. “So you admit I’m me. My name, Kiaran. Say it.”

But he looks away, studying the twisted tree trunks ringing the clearing. His throat works on a hard swallow. “You still haven’t told me why you’ve come. Or why you insist on remaining when I’ve made my wishes quite clear.”

“Your mother spoke of a book when she brought me back.” I watch his profile in the dancing firelight, cataloguing each minute shift. “One that could break the curse binding you against Aithinne. I mean to find it. It’s called—”

“The Book of Remembrance.” He sounds bored. “A legend, nothing more.”

“The Cailleach seemed convinced of its existence. Given your esteemed mother predates even your ancient, mouldering bones, I’m inclined to trust her judgement.

” I pause, gauging his blank expression before I press on.

“I’d like my consort at my side for this particular hunt.

” Lifting my hand, I examine the unblemished skin of my palm in the wavering firelight.

The place his mark once shone is empty. Smooth and unlined, all evidence of our history erased.

“When your mother reconstructed my body, she healed every scar. It’s as if they never existed.

” I curl my fingers closed, aching for the familiar patterns and ridges.

“But I miss your claim. I’d take back every scar and every torment I ever endured if I could have it again. ”

His hand constricts, and I glimpse the scar that I gave him. No longer glowing. As dead as our bond. “You always did have such relentless optimism in between the stabbings and the throat cuttings.”

A tiny smile tugs at my mouth. “One of us has to since brooding pessimism is your speciality.” I stretch my legs out, nearly close enough to brush his.

“If you insist on lurking, we might as well trade tales to pass the time. I’ll go first. I have a riveting story for you about a human whose life was saved by the Unseelie King. ”

Kiaran arches a brow but doesn’t leave. I take it as tacit permission.

Pitching my voice low, I begin. “Once upon a time, in a world not so different from this, but with far fewer ruins and more excellent pubs, there lived a woman. She spent her youth training to guard the world against monsters with beautiful faces.”

Kiaran stills. I feel the weight of his gaze, the electric prickle of his undivided focus. It unspools a slow, liquid heat through my veins.

“The woman’s mother called one of them in particular a stone-cold butcher.” I watch him, studying his reaction. But Kiaran’s face betrays nothing; his features are as remote as carved marble. Only the subtle tension thrumming through his frame reveals that my words have found their mark.

“But the woman—only a girl then—wasn’t so easily scared.

She would plague her mother with questions, determined to learn more about this mysterious monster.

” I slip one of Aithinne’s blades free from my sleeve, admiring the delicate etchings along the metal—a latticework of vines and thorns, beautiful and deadly.

I’d know Kiaran’s metalwork anywhere. “What sort of beast could craft such exquisite weapons that fit so sweetly in her palm? She would spend hours imagining him melting the metal, folding it again and again. Pouring a piece of himself into each stroke of the hammer. Weapons meant for a woman who reviled him, so she might gift them to the daughter raised to do the same.”

I sweep my thumb over the blade’s edge, marvelling at the artistry.

The care taken with each groove and whorl, as if the dagger itself were precious.

Kiaran’s eyes follow the dagger’s path, dark and intent.

I feel his gaze like a physical touch as it traces the motion of my hand, lingering on the bared skin of my wrist.

“I fell in love with you through your weapons, long before I ever saw your face.”

“And when you finally saw my face?” he asks. Like the words have been dragged from someplace deep.

A rueful laugh escapes my lips. “Oh, I drove my fist into it in greeting. Right over my mother’s grave. A perfect beginning.”

His answering sound of amusement sends a warmth blooming beneath my ribs that has nothing to do with the fire. “I remember.”

“I loved you for letting me rage that night. Letting me hurt you when I was grieving and didn’t know what to do with the pain.

For giving me exactly what I needed.” I stretch out my fingers, feeling the phantom throb of bruised knuckles.

The sharp ache of torn skin. “And I loved you when you carried my broken body from Calton Hill and offered me your mark to save my life.” I lift my head to catch and hold Kiaran’s gaze, stripped of all pretence.

Only truth between us, raw and bleeding.

“You can perch on that hideous throne and demand I go until your voice gives out. Hurl your threats and condemnations until the stars fall from the sky. It won’t change what my soul knows.

What it recognised that first night we fought together. ”

Kiaran leans forward almost involuntarily, an invisible cord pulling taut between us. I match him, our foreheads nearly touching over the dwindling flames. This close, flecks of violet limn his irises. Beautiful and inhuman.

“It’s always been you.” The words emerge barely louder than a whisper, but they seem to ring out through the clearing.

An oath. A promise. “It will always be you, even in death. When my mind is emptied. When I have no name and know nothing else of myself. You’re why I clawed my way out of the ground.

Why I’m still here on this miserable island.

Because I love you, Kiaran MacKay. Kadamach.

Unseelie King. I love every part of you.

Even the parts that are determined to despise me. ”

The air around us thickens, thrumming with barely leashed magic. I watch the war wage across Kiaran’s face—yearning and fury, grief and devotion. So much history binding us together. So many shared scars and broken, bleeding things.

An endless moment passes. The space between heartbeats.

He grasps my face between surprisingly gentle hands, the shocking cold of him leaching into my bones. But I barely register the discomfort. Not when he’s suddenly right there , filling my field of vision. Violet and silver and midnight.

The first press of his mouth to mine is a revelation. A discovery. I fist my hands in the front of his tunic, silk tearing under my fingernails as I haul him closer.

He tastes like the first snow—clean and sharp, edged with rain.

I pour everything into that kiss. Every prick of longing.

Every scrap of devotion and need clawing beneath my skin, ripping me to tattered ribbons.

I want to burrow into him, to live inside the cage of his ribs.

To twine myself around the space his absent heart left behind.

Every shattered piece of me belongs to him. Always has.

When we finally break apart, both gasping, Kiaran rests his forehead against mine.

“Say my name,” I rasp out, still clutching him. My nails bite into his shoulders.

Say my name. Say it. Remember us.

But he only exhales slowly and pulls away. Without a word, he turns and disappears into the trees. Nothing but wavering shadow and icy wind to mark his presence. The tether binding us snaps back, released all at once.

I whispered my love into the dark and I think I felt his soul whisper back.