This made no sense. None of it.
The tears rolling down his cheeks. The way Tadhg held her in his arms, crying, “It wasn’t supposed to be her. It was never supposed to be her. I was the one meant to die. Why didn’t you save her?”
Rían’s eyes lit up like two blue matches. “As weak and pathetic as you are, you serve a purpose,” he spat, standing and brushing dirt from his breeches.
I tore my sister from Tadhg’s grasp, clutching her against me. He didn’t get to touch her. He shouldn’t know she existed.
Unblinking gray eyes stared past me.
“Keelynn?”Please wake up. Please, please wake up.“I’m here. I’m back. Please wake up.”
Tadhg growled, black shadows invading his green eyes. His cold, blood-soaked fingers wrapped around my wrist. “Give me back my wife.”
My wife.
My wife.
My wife.
The Gancanagh had not just called my little sister his wife.
Tadhg ripped Keelynn’s lifeless hand from my grasp, lifted her body into his arms, and stalked toward the crowd of people waiting by a castle’s gate.
Creatures of all shapes and sizes stared at us with a mixture of fury and panic on their faces. In Airren you never saw so many gathered in one place. Unless we weren’t in Airren . . .
Were we inTearmann?
The creatures’ haven on the west coast of the island. A lawless territory where no human could hope to survive.
“Where’s he taking her?” The words rasped from my throat as I rolled unsteadily to my feet. “Tell me what’s happening!”
Something flickered across Rían’s impassive expression. He clasped my elbow, towing me through the crowd of whispering, glaring Danú toward a hulking stone castle with four turrets invading the sky. A strange sensation tickled my skin when we passed beneath the barbican, almost like walking through a cobweb, only there was nothing there.
An empty courtyard waited inside the walls. Crude wooden carts of fruit and veg had been abandoned next to a donkey and a wide, trickling fountain.
Rían didn’t stop until we were inside the entrance of the keep.
Tapestries depicting gruesome battle scenes hung across the stones. Everything in the long, barren hallway echoed. Our footsteps. My ragged breaths. My pounding heart.
“Say something,” I demanded.
He stopped before reaching a round table with a vase of blue roses. “Don’t snap at me. This isn’t my fault.”
“I don’t care whose fault it is! Tell me why your brother murdered my sister.”
“Because murdering her was the only way to save her life.”
Did he even hear himself? That made no sense.
His head tilted as he watched me, bloodstained hands clenched at his sides. “Now instead of being dead forever, she’s only dead for a year and a day. After all the shite I’ve had to deal with over the last six months, I’m counting it as a win.”
Six months. Not a year.
I’d been brought back sooner.
Perhaps I could bring back Keelynn as well.
Dammit. I shouldn’t have to bring her back at all.