The bastard had brought me back and let Keelynn die.
I picked up my wife’s body, cradling her against my chest. Sightless eyes reflected the clouds while her black mouth gaped at the crows soaring past. She felt like a doll, lifeless and limp.
“It wasn’t supposed to be her.” Rían should’ve known, and yet he’d resurrected me anyway. “It was never supposed to be her. I was the one meant to die. Why didn’t you save her?” He could’ve used Fiadh’s life force to bring her back and he’d wasted it on me.
She was gone. Not forever. I knew that. I did. But in that moment, it didn’t matter.
“As weak and pathetic as you are, you serve a purpose,” Rían snarled, pushing away from the ground, turning to face Aveen as she stumbled toward us.
“Let her go!” Aveen roared, voice hoarse and dry like the morning after a night on the drink. Her knees cracked off the ground. She took Keelynn from me, touching her hair, her face, her throat. Crying and pleading to ears that couldn’t hear because she was dead.
Dead.
Dead.
Dead.
Magic leaked from my pores, not as strong as I remembered but stronger than it had been for centuries. Darkness lurking, a coiled snake prepared to strike.
I caught Aveen’s hand. “Give me back my wife.”
Aveen’s mouth opened and closed. Panicked blue eyes darted to a grimacing Rían. Let him deal with his own feckin’ woman. Mine was dead.
I took Keelynn from her sister, carrying her through the crowd of Danú hiding behind the wards. Cowards, the lot of them. Not one had come to our aid.Not a feckin’ one. I’d ruled them for centuries.Centuries. And they couldn’t even take a feckin’ step beyond the wards to aid us. They’d come to me week after week, expecting me to help them. And they hadn’t even tried.
The moment I breached the wards, I evanesced into the castle, unable to stand being near them a second longer.
My wife’s corpse felt like a leaden weight in my arms. I started down the hall where the other bodies were kept, then stopped.
She didn’t belong down here. I needed to keep her somewhere safe. Somewhere far away from these people who had left us to die.
With a flick of my wrist, I shifted Aveen’s coffin back to the room where Rían had kept her for the last six months. At the top of the highest tower, overlooking the sea, I laid my wife to rest beneath the sun-drenched window.
If Keelynn had never met me, she’d be alive.
If she had never met me, she’d be happy.
If she had never met me, she wouldn’t be dead.
But she had met me. And I’d have to live three hundred and sixty-six days without her smile. Her laugh. Her warmth. A year of her too-short human life wasted. A year we could’ve spent making memories.
I could think of only one way to get through this. One way to survive.
I sank onto the ground and shifted a bottle.
EPILOGUE
(Three-ish Weeks Later)
“Get out of bed,you sad sack of shite.” Rían’s voice cut through me like a jagged piece of glass.
I didn’t know what day it was. Didn’t care. He’d probably end up telling me at some point in one of his rants that had become frequent as of late.
“Go away,” I groaned, rolling over, pulling one of the extra pillows over my face. “And close the feckin’ curtains.” My eyes were on fire.
“I said, get up.” He grumbled something else and stomped to the door.
“Close the feckin’—”