A chuckle. “Brilliant. Neither do I.”
At the gate, Ruairi breached the wards without issue. When I tried, it was like I had hit an invisible wall.
Bloody Rían.
I gave the invisible barrier a kick but swallowed my scream. He would not break me.
“That man is infuriating.” If he were here, I’d dump the bowl of dirt-crusted plants over his head and stab him with my trowel.
Ruairi came back, studying the shafts of sunlight bursting through the murder holes. “Yer only figuring that out now?”
The pathetic thing was, I had figured it out on day one and still hadn’t stayed away.
I longed to feel the breeze swaying the long grass in the fields beyond the gates. Since I couldn’t, I stomped back to the shed and threw the bowl onto the ground.
“Are ye all right?” Ruairi asked in his deep, gruff voice.
If Ruairi hadn’t been standing there, I probably would’ve burst into tears. I had woken up in a strange land, surrounded by strangers, not knowing the day or the month or anything beyond the fact that my sister was dead.
Still, he didn’t need to know any of that, so I said, “I am fine.”
“Ye don’t smell fine.” His eyebrows lifted toward his disheveled raven hair as he sniffed the air. “Ye smell like bonfire smoke and . . . oud.”
I collected my tangled mass of curls, lifting the ends to my nose. Although it could do with a wash, it didn’t smell any different to me. “What are you on about?”
“Yer scent. It changes when yer angry. Which is odd. Fer a human, anyway.” He sank onto the grass, laced his fingers behind his head, and laid down.
Surely he wasn’t going to stay. I couldn’t clear my head with him watching me the whole time.
I nudged his brown leather boot with my toe. “Don’t you have anything better to do?”
“So many things.” His eyes remained closed. “But seeing as the bastard prince told me to guard his hostage, that’s what I’m doing.”
I didn’t want a bloody guard. I wanted to be left alone. “What’s the point if I cannot get past the wards?”
“I’m not making sure ye don’t leave. I’m making sure no one in here kills ye.”
Besides the grogochs who had moved from the carrots to potatoes, the courtyard was clear. Nothing but us, the fountain, the line of empty stables, and the stone walls. “There’s no one here.”
“Doesn’t mean it’s safe. If an abhartach shows up, yer fecked. They don’t feed on humans as often as they used to, but that’s not to say they’d pass up an easy meal if it presented itself.”
The abartach were a race of ancient witches who sustained themselves on blood. So much for the rumor that they were extinct.
Ruairi gestured to me with a giant hand. “Ned could swing by, and ye donotwant to meet him.”
“Who is Ned?” With a name like that, how scary could he be?
“Looks like a man, about so high.” Ruairi held a hand above his head. “Actually, he’s this high since his head isn’t attached.” He drew a finger across his own throat. “Rides a black horse named Lightning or Wind or someshite like that. Stinks of rotten flesh. If ye see him, he’s hard to miss.”
The Dullahan’s name wasNed?
“Ned’s job is collecting the souls too wicked for the banshee,” he went on. “And the Phantom Queen doesn’t leave the forest often, but news of a human in Tearmann is the sort of thing she’d be interested in.” He shuddered.“It’s a good thing yer a hostage.”
The Phantom Queen.
Hearing her name left me shuddering as well.
“It’s only a matter of time before Muireann will want to gut ye.”