“The feckin’ oubliette?” he snarled. “Really? What are we, nine?”
Rían flicked his wrist. The bottle and glass disappeared. “Don’t let your magic get so low and you won’t have to spend your time drinking in a dark, dank hole.”
Tadhg flicked his wrist, and they both reappeared. “Go to hell and I won’t have to look at your dark, dank face.”
“That’s your comeback?” Rían snorted. “Put aside the drink, get some food in your gut, and come up with something better.”
“I’m not hungry,” Tadhg muttered into his glass.
Rían plucked the glass from him and dumped it on Tadhg’s head.
Spluttering and cursing, Tadhg stumbled to his feet.
Its drawers rattled when Rían slammed the glass onto the desk. “Stop moping about. You need to be in Gaul by half eleven.”
“You go to Gaul.”
His eyes darted to me. “I have things to take care of here.”
I wasn’t sure why my stomach tightened. I didn’t care whether Rían was here or not. He could jump off a bloody cliff and it wouldn’t bother me in the slightest.
Tadhg dragged the stopper from the snifter, muttered, “So do I,” and drank straight from the bottle.
I withdrew one of the books from the shelf and opened to a random page, pretending to be engrossed in Tearmann law instead of enthralled by two quarreling princes. Did they fight like this all the time? Keelynn and I rarely argued.
“So, what? You’re going to spend the next twelve months in a drunken stupor?”
Tadhg’s eyes darted to me. “It’s what you did, isn’t it?”
Rían’s shoulders stiffened. “Unless you want me to kill you, I suggest you get down to Eava and put some food in your belly. Once you’ve sobered up and washed yourself, I will bring you to Gaul.”
“If I leave the castle, you know what will happen. She’ll never forgive me if I go off with anyone else.”
Tadhg couldn’t be serious. If he cared for my sister, he wouldn’twantto go off with anyone else. How were men so bloody obtuse?
Rían sneered, leaning over his brother. “We both know you won’t last the year. You pretend that you are different, that you are better than me. But we’re both villains.”
I’d known Rían was a villain from the very first day, yet hearing him confirm it himself struck differently. He sounded almost resigned.
“How about we skip to the end where you accept it and rule your pitiful kingdom?” he finished, patting Tadhg’s cheek.
Shadows writhed from Tadhg’s shirtsleeves, curling in on themselves as he shoved Rían’s hand, stood, and collected the bottle. “You will oversee the executions. I am locking myself in my room with this.”
“I will give you one day!” Rían shouted at his back when Tadhg stalked past me.
Rían dragged open a drawer and rooted around, withdrawing a black leatherbound ledger. The door slammed closed. “I need to go to Gaul.”
“Why?”
“We’re expected to send a representative when Airren authorities execute our citizens.”
A representative.
That’s what he’d been doing that day in Graystones when Charlie and the fortune teller had been killed. He’d been there to watch them die.
He flicked his wrist.
Footsteps pounded from down the hall, growing louder until Ruairi appeared in the doorway. “You bastard! I ought to rip out yer throat.”