Grimacing, I pressed a chaste kiss on Keelynn’s cold cheek. A sigh escaped her lips.
There was no time to over-analyze what it could mean. It was a sigh. That was all. The ribbons binding us together vanished. I dropped her hand, slipped my arms beneath her, cradled my wife against my chest, and hurried back to Brigid’s door. With my hands full, I gave the barrier two swift kicks.
Brigid yanked the door open. “I already told you—”
“She’s one of us now,” I said, showing her the black band around my ring finger that matched the one on Keelynn’s.
“She’s as good as Danú in the eyes of the law,” Rían announced, appearing by my side.
Keelynn’s social standing would be stripped away, and she’d be cast aside by every human she knew. Everyone human she loved.
“You said you’d heal her,” he finished with a sneer. “Now, do it.”
Brigid stomped into her sitting room and motioned to the rolled-arm sofa. “I cannot believe you tied yourself to a feckin’ human.” The betrayal in her dark green eyes didn’t touch me. If she had healed Keelynn as I’d asked, we wouldn’t be in this situation.
I laid my unconscious wife on the sofa.
Wife.
I had a wife.
And my wife started to convulse—
“Do something,” I begged, my voice cracking. “Please don’t let her die. Please.” Feck it all, if she died, I didn’t know what I would do.
Brigid told me to move back. I couldn’t leave Keelynn. Instead, I crouched where her dark hair fell across the cushions. She didn’t flinch when Brigid shifted a dagger and slit the dress across her abdomen, or when the blood-soaked bandage was cut free. Worry furrowed Brigid’s brow, and my stomach sank when I saw how far the curse had spread. Webs of black had reached her ribs. Soon it would be in her heart.
Swearing, Brigid shifted herbs and bottles to the space beside where she knelt. Using a mortar and pestle, she crushed them together in a frenzy, then lathered them onto the gash.
Keelynn cried out. I’d never heard a sweeter sound. She was hanging on. She was fighting.
“Once, I cut holes in the back of an old crier’s cloak,” I whispered, running a hand across Keelynn’s fevered forehead, stroking her matted hair. “He ended up showing his arse to the entire market.”
Her lips didn’t so much as twitch. I’d give anything to see them smile. Or frown. Or tell me I was a monster.
I kept talking while Brigid worked, interlacing incantations and spells with pungent herbs, not wanting Keelynn to think she was alone. I told her about the time I’d hogtied Rían to a fencepost. When I’d goaded Ruairi into the north sea in the dead of winter. The time they had joined forces and I’d woken up in the courtyard fountain stark naked.
“Tadhg?” Brigid said quietly, carrying the bottles strewn across the floor to a sideboard beneath the window. “I’ve done all I can.”
The wound was wrapped again with crisp, white bandages. It could’ve been my imagination, but the blackness seemed to have stopped at Keelynn’s ribs.
“Only time will tell if she’ll survive the curse,” Brigid said quietly. “With that ring, there’s a chance.”
At least I’d done something right by giving back the ring. I tried to take some solace in that. “Thank you, Brigid. Sincerely. I owe you a great debt.”
Brigid’s dark eyebrows drew together as she stared down at Keelynn. My wife’s breathing was steadier now, and she had stopped shaking, but her skin was still too pale, and I didn’t like the look of the sweat beading on her brow.
“I’ve given her something to help her sleep. Would you join me for a cuppa in the kitchen?”
“I’d rather stay here.”
“She’s asleep, Tadhg. She won’t know if you’re here or in the next room.” When I didn’t budge, Brigid told me that I looked like death warmed up. “I can imagine you’re hungry as well,” she said, her skirts swaying as she made her way toward the hallway, “and I have fresh apple crumble.”
My stomach gave a pitiful gurgle. Eating would help restore some of my energy, and I would need all of it once Keelynn woke.
Ifshe woke.
“One slice,” I agreed. I could bring my plate into the sitting room and eat it in here.