I glared down at those nails, short and stubby, set in hands with protruding veins. “Let me go.” My head was feckin’ throbbing.
Those nails sank deeper into my flesh. “I’ll scream.”
She thought I cared if she screamed? She could scream until her face turned blue, and I wouldn’t give a shite.
Only if she screamed, and I couldn’t evanesce, I’d probably end up getting myself killed. It’d take ages for me to return, and I’d be late meeting Keelynn, erasing any headway I’d made yesterday.
“I’ll tell you once more to stop touching me.”
She sucked in a deep breath. Before the scream could break free, I pressed my mouth to hers.
Her body slumped onto the mattress, blackness spreading from her mouth to her bare chest. I’d have to get Rían to bring her to the castle. Although part of me wanted to leave her there, let her be buried in a pine box and wake up in a year and a day trapped until the air in the coffin ran out. It was only fair. That’s what she’d tried to do to me.
Trap me.
I hated this feckin’ country.
I managed to shift a bath, a bar of soap, and some water, but didn’t have it in me to heat the feckin’ thing. Sinking beneath the icy surface, I welcomed the blessed silence and tried to figure out how the hell I was supposed to convince a woman who hated me to help set me free.
I needed to get out of this shite mood. Pretend everything was all right. Try to build on the goodwill from yesterday.
Yesterday.
When Keelynn had apologized.
When she’d sought me out, braving a green-door pub.
When she’d bought me a room.
Maybe there was hope for me after all.
The moment I resurfaced, my eyes landed on the body.
Or maybe there wasn’t.
9
The revelryin the streets nearly blew the head off me as I crossed the stable to lean against one of the few walls without a shelf or tack or some other horsey shite dangling from it. The stable boys had run out the back door the moment I’d arrived, probably convinced I was going to eat their souls. Didn’t people get tired of jumping to conclusions?
That was the problem with humans. By the time they could think for themselves, they were so entrenched in their views that changing their minds about us seemed like betraying their own kind.
Made no sense to me.
I changed my mind all the time.
Take Keelynn, for instance. A few days ago, I would’ve let her drown in the lake. And yet today, I hadn’t hesitated to jump into the depths and drag her to shore.
Well, maybe I had hesitated a little. But the water had been feckin’ freezing.
Seeing the wasp’s soaked shift sticking to her like a second skin had almost been worth it. Until Padraig had threatened to stab me with the one feckin’ weapon in this world that could actually kill me. All this time, I had assumed the woman was on a revenge mission. After seeing that dagger, I realized this wasn’t about revenge. It was about resurrection.
I was lucky Padraig hadn’t nicked me by accident with the feckin’ thing.
The gray horse Padraig combed looked as though he’d rather eat me than the oats in front of him. Foul beast.
Padraig set the coarse brush aside. “What did ye say to him?” he asked reluctantly.
“I told him to check for himself if he didn’t believe me.”