“Tell Eava I’ll stop by tomorrow.”
“Stop by? Tadhg, you need to come back. I’ve things to be doing.” A shipment of floorboards for replacing the rotted ones in the spare room should be arriving to Marcus’s house any day now.
“I just need a little more time.”
“Give me ten minutes with the human.” My dagger appeared in my hand. Three to convince her to hand over the ring and the other seven to gloat about it.
He tried to hide his horror, but I saw through the mask. “Not happening.”
“You actually like her, don’t you?” Did a bigger fool exist? “The woman wants your head on a feckin’ platter, andyou like her. And I thought I was bad. Why don’t you set your sights on one of the countless women who actually fancy you instead of wasting your time on one who wants you dead?” He could have anyone.ANYONE.
“I don’t—It’s complicated,” he amended.
“How is it complicated? Fuck her and be done with it.” Move on to the next feckin’ woman so I could get back to living my own life.
Tadhg snorted. “Right. Because that’s what you did.”
“My situation is different.” The two of us were nothing alike. He deserved his curse. I didn’t.
“Because you’re in love? That’s a load of bollocks, and we both know it. The only person you’re capable of loving is yourself.”
I may not have been able to love Aveen the way she deserved, but I loved her in every way I could. With a flick of my wrist and a bit of magic, a tost descended over us, drowning out the sounds of the river. “Aveen is my soulmate.” Something he couldn’t possibly understand.
“That’s a load of—”
I jabbed his chest with the point of my dagger. If he said one word about her, I’d flay him alive. “When I touch her, there’s a spark that burns brighter than the light of a thousand candles. Every fiber in my being yearns for her.” Even here with him in this moment, I could feel myself being tugged back home. Not to the castle. Toher. Aveen was my home in a way the castle and the Forest never had been. “Every day I’m forced to live without her is a feckin’ nightmare. You, with your ‘cursed glamour’, with women falling at your feet, you wouldn’t know the first thing about it because you’re more incapable of love than I am.”
Tadgh’s face went slack, the color draining completely as his eyes widened. “Shit.” He just stood there, staring at the hollow trunk of a dead tree. “Keelynn’s my soulmate.”
“What did you say?”
“All that shite you just said. I feel it when I touch Keelynn.”
Oh, shit. “Who is Keelynn?” I choked.
“Aveen’s sister.”
“You’re fucking with me, right? You must be fucking with me.” He was with Aveen’s feckin’ sister? No. No no no.Dammit. No! Why? Why the hell did fate feel the need to screw me over again and again and again?
He shook his head slowly. “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.”
A cursed dagger . . . Surely he wasn’t saying what I thought he was saying? “What dagger?” My hand spasmed, and my dagger slipped, impaling the silty sand at my boot. I grabbed Tadhg, shaking him. “Tell me what feckin’ dagger.”
“Small. Silver. Emerald in the hilt. Kills immortals.”
I shoved him back.Fate. How cruel. How twisted. How feckin’ perfect. My ex-wife was in possession of the one weapon I needed to defeat the Queen. I could get the dagger and the ring. Glamour myself to look like someone she trusted. But who?Lady Marissa. Perfect. She’d question how I found her, but I’d think of something. “This is over,” I told Tadhg. “You’re going straight back to the castle and leaving Keelynn to me.”
“Not a feckin’ hope.”
For once, why couldn’t he agree and keep his gob shut? “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. Shift us something to eat and somewhere to stay the night,” he demanded in the tone I despised—the one that reminded me that he was in charge. He was, but still. Did he have to use that feckin’ tone? Tadhg grabbed the shirt I’d shifted, dragging it over his head and stuffing his arms through the sleeves. “Once I have the ring, I will be back.”
He wanted a place to stay, did he? I shifted a shitty little cottage I’d seen on the way in to Hollowshade and gave the bastard not one bit of furniture. I hoped he enjoyed sleeping on a hard wooden floor with Aveen’s miserable sister.
“You cannot bring her to the Forest,” I told him. “You’ll have to find another way to get the ring.” The Queen would kill her on sight.
I glared at the silent water burbling over algae-slickened stones. He wanted something to eat? Fine. I shifted some fish into the cottage. Tadhg’s “favorite.”