Tadhg snorted. “Mostly. Just don’t let him near your wardrobes.”
“Piss in a closet once and they’ll never let ye live it down,” Ruairi grumbled, clinking his glass against mine before drinking the whole lot in one gulp.
I lifted the glass for a sniff, and my stomach lurched.Good god.It smelled like rotting compost.
Another coin fell to the ground. Tadhg groaned as he reached for his glass, cursed when he sniffed it, then choked it down, spilling a good portion on his shirt, which was stained black with dirt and blood.
Ruairi topped up their glasses, then held the bottle toward me, eyebrows arched in silent question.
“No, thank you.”
Tadhg launched a coin, hitting Ruairi square in the forehead. “You’re the only one who likes that shite.”
Ruairi cursed, found the coin where it had landed by his worn boots, and threw it back.
“I see the children are making a mess again,” a familiar voice drawled from the doorway.
Rían.
When he saw Ruairi next to me, he evanesced, reappearing at the corner of the settee. “You will back off, mutt, or I will end you.”
“Spoilt little prince was never taught to share,” Ruairi whispered with a wink before rising and crossing to the wingback.
The spoiled prince was never taught a lot of things.
Rían glared down at me. “Did you not hear me when I said to stay in your room?”
“I heard you perfectly well,” I said turning away from his pulsing jaw to offer Ruairi a brilliant smile. “So, Ruairi. I know Tadhg murders women and Rían torments humans, what is it you do? Dine on children?”
“Whatever it is the lads need done,” Ruairi said with a gruff laugh, saluting Tadhg with his drink.
“Ruairi is excellent at burying bodies,” Tadhg chimed in, pouring himself more. “But shite at kidnapping.”
Bodies?Kidnapping?
I needed to get out of here. The sooner the better.
“Do either of you know the Phantom Queen?”
Tadhg spilled alcohol all over his breeches. Ruairi’s glass stilled halfway to his mouth.
Rían stole my untouched drink, slammed it onto the table, and grabbed my hand. We evanesced into a candlelit room with bookshelves lining two of the walls.
Spread wide on top of a massive mahogany desk was a map of Tearmann. A shadow of black marred the eastern border.The Black Forest.
Rían flicked his wrist, and the map vanished. Another flick, and the air changed. A tost.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he ground out.
I gave him my most innocent smile. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Aveen . . .”
“Rían.”
“In Airren, I played by your ridiculous human rules. You’re in my world now. It’s time to play by mine.”
I shrugged. “If it suits.”