The latent desire.
The overwhelming need to be near someone even when she hated me.
“Shit.” That was it. What I’d been missing.
I’d assumed these . . .feelingsand my body’s intense reaction to Keelynn’s touch, her presence, were just side effects of my curse. Had I been so focused on getting that ring—and keeping the wasp alive—that I’d missed what should’ve been plainly obvious?
Because Rían’s yammering about the way his body responded to Aveen sounded a helluva lot like the way mine responded to her sister.
Fate. What a cruel, twisted bastard.
“Keelynn’s my soulmate.” The words tasted bitter, but the truth usually did.
The hand holding Rían’s dagger dropped. His eyes began to glow like sapphire flames. “What did you say?”
Bad. This was so feckin’ bad. “All that shite you just said,” I muttered, the tightness in my chest unbearable. I raked a hand through my damp hair. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t. “I feel it when I touch Keelynn.”
Rían’s face went white as my shirt. “Who is Keelynn?”
Shit.
Shit shit shit.
“Who is Keelynn?” Rían demanded.
“Aveen’s sister.”
“You’re fucking with me, right? You must be fucking with me.”
I shook my head, still reeling from the revelation. “She caught us in the garden that night. She’s the one who has the ring. The one who wants to kill me with that cursed dagger.”
“What dagger?” His own dagger clattered to the ground. He grabbed my arms, giving me a bone-rattling shake. “Tell me what feckin’ dagger.”
“Small. Silver. Emerald in the hilt. Kills immortals.”
He let me go with a snap, twisting on his heel to pace to the edge of the water and back again, kicking sand onto the stone and my clean shirt. “This is over. You’re going straight back to the castle and leaving Keelynn to me.”
Leave Keelynn to him? I may have lost my mind, but I wasn’t that far gone. “Not a feckin’ hope.”
“You don’t understand—”
“No,youdon’t understand. I helped you with your ‘soulmate’even when I thought your plan made no feckin’ sense. Now you get to help me with mine.”
He stilled, hands flexing into white-knuckled fists.
“Shift us something to eat and somewhere to stay the night,” I told him, ripping the shirt from the ground. “Once I have the ring, I will be back.”
Rían’s jaw worked, but he flicked his wrist. As much as he hated me, I had been born first. The throne was mine. His duty was to obey me. And as unpredictable as my brother could be, he always put duty above all else.
“You cannot bring her to the Forest,” he ground out, eyes wide and wild. He shook his head, hair falling over his forehead. “You’ll have to find another way to get the ring.”
Did he think me a fool? I’d already planned on meeting with the feckin’ Queen to ensure Keelynn’s safe passage. “If you’re finished poking your nose in my business, I need you to kill someone.” I described the man who’d robbed Keelynn and killed Padraig while Rían took in the information with a maniacal gleam in his too-bright blue eyes. The moment I finished, he collected his dagger from the ground and evanesced.
With my sopping clothes in hand, I climbed the bank to find a tiny cottage in the clearing. He could’ve shifted something larger, but I didn’t complain because the moment I stepped inside and found a fire blazing in the hearth, my body gave up.
And then I saw the fish lying on the floor beside a stack of wood. That bastard knew I hated fish. And they weren’t even cleaned. Once I had the energy, I’d shift their guts into Rían’s favorite pair of boots.
15