“Guilty, Prince Rían.” Her voice broke. “But Maisie was sick, and little Sean needed new shoes, and with the new baby . . .” Her words stopped, as if locked in her throat. As if she knew there was no use. Because there wasn’t.
Still, I followed procedure and shifted Volume II of Tearmann Law into my hands, flipping to the page regarding theft, skimming the relevant section for hope I knew wasn’t there.
Aveen’s hand shot out, catching my sleeve. “I need to talk to you.”
Madden’s eyes bulged so wide, they nearly popped out of his skull.
You fool!I wanted to shout. The room was filled with Danú just waiting for me to screw up, and here she was, requesting a chat. I tore out of her hold but followed her into the study to keep the infernal human from making even more of a scene.
The door closed behind us, and I let every ounce of my irritation seep into my voice. “How dare you order me around in front of an entire room of people. I should send you to the feckin’ dungeon, human.” I flicked my wrist, regaining some of my composure by the time the tost settled around us. “You cannot do that here, Aveen. Do you understand?”
She nodded.
“Good. Now say you’re sorry. And cry, if you can.” That should be enough to keep those nosey feckers out of my affairs. I dropped the tost and gestured for Aveen to get on with it. All she did was blink her big, beautiful eyes.
“Go on,” I mouthed. We didn’t have all day.
She stuttered out a terribly insincere apology that even I had trouble hearing. “Louder,” I whispered.
“I’m so, so sorry. Please forgive me. It won’t happen again.”
Once I had the tost back in place, I told her exactly what I thought of her performance. We really needed to work on her delivery. “Now, say your piece and hurry it on.”
Her gaze flicked to the door at my back for the briefest of seconds. “You cannot kill that woman.”
I understood that she was good and kind and wanted me to be as well, but that just wasn’t reality. “Theft of this sort is a capital offense.”
“It’s just cloth. Surely the law allows for extenuating circumstances.”
It didn’t. Most cloth had to be imported from the other islands or the continent, making it an expensive commodity. We weren’t discussing petty theft. “There is no gray area in this, Aveen. I’m sorry.” And I truly meant that. I was sorry I couldn’t do better for her, but my hands were tied.
“Rían, please.”
I felt sorry for Anwen, I really did. But she had made the decision to break the law and she deserved to suffer the consequences. “Allowing emotions to cloud my judgement will only end in disaster. And if I do not follow the rules, then no one else will either.” I unhooked her fingers from where they’d latched around my arm, hating the distance I could already feel settling between us. “You should remain here until I return.”
Back in the great room, Madden’s smirk had returned, and I secretly wished he’d break a law so I could break his neck. Aveen came barreling out behind me, her blue eyes already swimming with tears. I gave her a silent plea to keep her beautiful mouth shut and returned to my brother’s throne, the wooden seat feeling more rigid than before.
“The law is quite clear in this matter,” I began, watching the way Anwen’s lower lip trembled. From the corner of my eye, I saw her children waiting at the room’s entrance. I saw them but chose to ignore them.
“Anwen, you will be executed at sundown. Take this time to get your affairs in order.”
Aveen’s whimper before she turned and ran for the study would’ve broken my heart.
If I’d had one.
A handful of Danú followed the hysterical woman and her gaggle of children from the room, leaving me with only a few more cases to try. Thankfully, none of them ended in death. Normally, when I finished, I poured myself a glass of something strong and ate a load of shite. Today, I didn’t feel like doing any of that.
Today, I wanted to find my human.
When I did, I couldn’t believe what I heard. She was in the tower, tattling to my feckin’ brother like a feckin’ child. Asking him to help as if he were some sort of hero. He was literally sitting on the floor because he was too drunk to stand. And she wanted him to go over my head andfix it.
What’d he say? He feckin’ promised to do it.
And she thanked him for it.
Heat collected in my chest, and it wasn’t the normal fire that came from being near Aveen. This heat belonged to hatred and indignation. This human, who was living under our roof, eating our food, wearing clothes I’d paid for, who was alivebecause of me, had gone tohim.
And then—and then—Tadhg had the gall to tell her that I didn’t deserve her. Of course I didn’t feckin’ deserve her! No one did!