“How was Gaul?” I asked.
“That’s none of your damned business, now, is it?”
My nails dug into my apple. If he didn’t stop speaking to me as if I was a nuisance, I was going to—
Rían flicked his wrist. “Gaul was shite. Three leprechauns had been caught ‘stealing’ a farmer’s old cow,” he said in a much calmer voice, keeping the lower half of his face concealed behind the yellowed pages.
What in the world was going on? Why did he need a tost to say that?
I glanced over my shoulder. The merrow was there, sunning herself as she had been the day before. And Oscar was in the vegetable garden.
For some reason, he mustn’t want them hearing about his day in Gaul.
“You don’t think they did it?” I asked.
“What would a leprechaun need with a feckin’ cow? Drink, sure. Gold, most certainly. But a cow?” He shook his head slightly.
“Did they have proof?”
“Proof?” He huffed a humorless chuckle. “Humans do not need proof. All they need are ‘witnesses.’ And the two half-drunk slobs lied through their feckin’ teeth.”
He’d said in Charlie’s case there had been witnesses as well. Witnesses who must’ve been lying, because Charlie hadn’t done anything wrong. “Did you tell the magistrate?”
With a slight shake of his head, he said, “Do you think a human would listen to someone like me?”
He flicked his wrist. “This garden is shite,” he clipped. “Get back to work before I change my mind about the dungeon.” Another flick and the tost returned.
Right.
So not only did he want to keep his trip to Gaul a secret, he wanted his people to think he was treating me like dirt.
I positioned my body to face the wall instead of Rían so no one could see me speaking to him.
“We’re not brought to defend the Danú,” he said, flipping to the next page in his book and raising it higher so that only his eyes were visible. “We’re only there so humans can remind us of how powerless we really are.”
Rían? Powerless? That couldn’t be further from the truth. He could literally flick his wrist and have anything he wanted.
I took another bite of apple, cleaning the juice spilling down my lip with the back of my hand. “So, what? You sat back and did nothing?” Were there no consequences for the people who had lied?
“I never said I did nothing.” There was a smile in his voice.
“Tell me.”
His eyes sparkled when they met mine. “I may or may not have introduced them to my mate Ned.”
Ned.
The Dullahan.
Eithne.
Had her death and Rían’s presence been more than a terrible coincidence? Had Rían orchestrated it all?
I tossed the apple aside, unable to stomach another bite. “Did you kill Eithne?”
“If I remember correctly, I was with you the entire time.”
Rían and his fae non-answers. “You would send your lover to her death?”