Keelynn’s mouth dropped open. “Why on earth should I apologize to you?”
Was she serious? “You have been nothing but rude and condescending since the moment we met. I’m helping you, remember?” And I used the term “helping” in the loosest sense of the word.
“Helping me?” Keelynn’s pale cheeks looked like they’d been painted with Clara’s rouge. Her hands clenched her black skirts. “You haven’t beenhelping. You’ve been hijacking my carriage and using threats to keep us traveling in the wrong direction!”
I knocked the flask against my knee, anger and rage and hate simmering close to the surface, a volcano about to erupt. “Did it ever occur to you that I have a reason for heading south?Feckin’ hell,” I muttered, praying for patience. “That I know more about my world than an ignorant human?”
“I am not ignorant!”
“You are if you believe that you can best an immortal who has been on this earth for centuries.” I launched my flask into my bag and dug my nails into my legs to keep from strangling her. “I try to keep an open mind when it comes to humans, but you’re making it exceedingly difficult. First you want to murder an innocent man and then—”
“The Gancanagh isnotinnocent. He’s a murderer who seduces maidens and kills them with his poisoned lips.”
Wait. Was sheserious?
I couldn’t help but laugh at the ridiculousness. Poisoned lips? What was this? A feckin’ storybook?
“Where did you hear that load of bollocks? From your nursemaid? A crier?” I threw a hand toward the novel she’d been reading all week. “One of yourfairy tales?”
“It’s the truth,” she insisted, lifting that haughty chin. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to say it.”
How could anyone with a modicum of intelligence be so incredibly naïve? “Let me explain how a truth curse works. You won’t be able to tell an outright lie or break your promises, but if you areignorantand truly believe the myths and lies spouted by bigots, then you can say it without feeling like your skull is being crushed. If Fiadh didn’t use dark magic, this, like most curses, will last a year and a day.” And if shehadused dark magic, then Keelynn would be cursed until the day she died or fell in love.
Keelynn’s eyes narrowed. I wouldn’t put it past her to fly across the carriage to pummel me with her small fists.
While I was at it, I may as well set her straight about myself. “Now, let me give you a second lesson. The Gancanagh is a shapeshifter. You know what that means, yeah?”
She folded her arms over her heaving chest.
She was angry.
Good.
I was angrier.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no.’ Don’t worry. We can circle back.”
The lies people spread about me used to be harmless. But these . . . these had obviously been bad enough to spark Keelynn’s inner vigilante.
“As I said, the Gancanagh is a shapeshifter who determines his lover’s deepest desires and seeks to fulfill them.” The quickest way to escape a woman’s bed was to give her what she wanted. So I did what so many men seemed unable—or unwilling—to do. Ilistened. To every soft sigh, every whimper, every cry, every word spoken and unspoken to learn exactly what would send her over the edge.
The subtle change in Keelynn’s demeanor left my stomach tightening.
The slight hitch in her breathing.
The faint tremble of her lips as her tongue darted between them.
The involuntary shiver.
The darkness inside me began to stir, ready to answer the invitation.
“His lips arecursed, notpoisoned,” I explained, “and he doesn’t go around kissing women unless they understand the consequences.”
And, even knowing it would kill them, women had begged. For escape. For release. For a chance to break my curse. But lust and love didn’t live in the same place.
And despite my centuries’ worth of experience with women, I’d failed to learn how to move beyond the first to find the second. Fiadh hadn’t needed to curse my lips to keep me from finding the one thing that could truly set me free.
That part of me, the part that knew how to love someone more than myself, had always been broken.