I couldn’t tear my eyes away from Rían as he finished his drink, discarded the empty glass on a windowsill, and melted into the dark night like a shadow.
My feet started for the open doors. Wisteria and sea salt danced on the refreshing breeze.
Rían could dally with whomever he wished. But not in my home. And not in my bloody garden. Where had they gone? They couldn’t be far. To the koi pond or the willow or the raised beds at the very back?
A feminine giggle blew in from the roses.
Myroses.
The gravel along the path ground beneath my heels as I stalked toward that grating sound, not knowing what I’d do when I found them. I should have told her husband and let him catch them together. It wasn’t too late to turn back, and yet I continued forward.
“Spying is terribly rude.”Rían.
He appeared on the bench beneath a trellis of flowering vines, an ankle thrown over his knee, toying with the laurel leaves at his back. His hair was no longer curly and brown but rich mahogany, with the front swept back from his forehead and the sides cut close to his ears.
He’d gotten a haircut.
I hated that I noticed.
“These aremygardens. I suggest you take your tryst someplace else.”
His eyes glowed faintly, glinting sapphires. “And I suggest you go back to the party.”
I would go back inside when I was good and ready, and not a moment sooner. “Lady Eithne is married, you know. She has a husband right inside.”
“That sounds like her problem, not mine.”
“I should’ve known a . . . a man so lacking in morals wouldn’t care about sacred vows.”
Rían clicked his tongue. “Ah, here now. If you’re jealous, I’d be more than happy to show you how lacking in morals I really am once I finish out here.”
Damn it all if my face didn’t ignite. “I’m not jealous.”
He snorted. “Liar.”
I wasn’t jealous.
Well, perhaps I was a little jealous.
Mostly, I was disappointed. Which was madness. How could I expect someone like him to be anything but a monster? What had happened yesterday when he’d helped me in town must’ve been a fluke.
“You are the worst person I have ever—”
Rían vanished. A hand clamped over my mouth. An arm snaked across my chest, dragging me until my spine collided with a solid frame. Dark shadows leaked from beneath his shirt cuffs as he yanked me back and back, until we blended in with the hedges. Twigs scraped my cheeks. I would’ve cried out, except Rían had gone utterly still.
“Do not make a sound.” Heat from his whispered command left my stomach clenching. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was frightened. Absurd. What could frighten someone like him?
And then I heard it.
Hooves thundering against the earth, growing louder and faster as they approached.
The fetid stench of carrion slithered on an icy breeze, coiling around my throat, striking my senses with its acidic bite. The thunder came to a halt impossibly close. On the other side of the hedge, there was a thud and a jingling of metal. Footsteps, slow and stunted, stalked around the bushes, each one more ominous than the last as they grew louder and louder and louder.
And stopped.
“I smell your fear,” a gravelly voice whispered, not from the direction of the lengthening shadow but from inside my mind.
Rían’s hold on me tightened.