Ruairi’s massive hand slammed into my back. “It’s late, lad. I’m heading up.”
Lorcan and his wife Deirdre, the owners of the Arches pub, lived upstairs. They’d gone to bed ages ago, after plying me with drink and prodding me with intrusive questions. Friends did that. Asked too many questions. Not for gossip but out of genuine concern. You know what came with concern? Pity.
I may have been in a pitiful state, but that didn’t mean I wanted their pity or anyone else’s.
“Are ye comin?” Ruairi asked with a poke.
I didn’t want to spend the night in the apartment upstairs. I wanted to spend the night with Keelynn.
God, I loved that woman.
She didn’t love me, though. No, she didn’t. Not at all. She loved Robert.
Robert.
Stupid name, that. A stupid name for a stupid human.
I slid off the stool, catching myself on the edge of the bar. “I’m staying somewhere else.”
Ruairi’s golden eyes glowed in the dim light. “Where might that be?”
“None of your business, now is it?”
“Tadhg—”
Before he could give me a lecture, I evanesced straight todarling Robert’sback garden.
Why did the lights in Keelynn’s room have to be off? Why couldn’t she be reading at the window by candlelight? Or staring into this shite garden, pining for me? Was she even in there? What if she’d gone to Robert’s bed?
I should probably check.
No. Bad idea.Baaaaad.
A terrible, awful idea. But I just had to be sure. And then I would find her bed empty and know all hope was lost, and I could move on.
Ha. Move on. Who was I kidding? It’d taken me centuries to get here. I wouldn’t be moving on any time in the next hundred years at least.
Biting my lip, I glared at that dark window. What if Fiadh showed up? She could, you know. And then Keelynn would be killed. But not if I was inside. Fiadh would stab me with that dagger instead.
And I’d let her.
Right, so.
I had a duty to go in. End of story. I was going to do it.
Magic hummed beneath my skin. I focused on the room above me, and with a burst of power, I found myself inside. My eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness. My heart leapt in my chest when I saw a still form with dark hair lying in the bed.
It shouldn’t mean anything, except it meant everything.
If hope was for fools, then I was the most foolish of fools because seeing Keelynn asleep on her own left tears prickling the backs of my eyes.
I blamed it on the drink.
I stepped forward in the darkness and accidentally rammed into something hard.
Feckin’ table. Who put that table there?
ProbablyRobert.