“Holed up with drink. Where else?” I slipped my arms into my coat, deciding which glamour to use today. “This is what happens with you fall in love. You turn into a weak, miserable shell of who you once were.” I thought of the man I’d been in the wake of Leesha’s death. I couldn’t claim to love Aveen—I no longer had the capacity for such things. But when she’d died, I’d been almost as lost.
Better to not care at all than to care and have everything stripped away.
“And since my brother is a useless piece of shite, I have to go to Gaul,” I added. “You are responsible for making sure no one kills my hostage and that she does not leave the castle grounds. If anything happens to her, you’ll wish for the dungeons.”
Muireann waved me over to the fountain the moment I set foot outside the castle. “Oh, Rían?”
I didn’t have time for her. “What do you want?”
“Who’s the human?” she said in that irritating tone she used when she was trying to be seductive that made her sound like a snake.
“One of Tadhg’s women.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Tadhg’s, eh?”
I shifted my pocket watch. I would make it in time, but only just. “Did you need something? I’m running late.”
She reached for my hand as I slipped the watch back into my waistcoat pocket. “You haven’t been to see me.”
“I’ve been busy.”
“Come by tonight.”
If I told her no straight out, she’d ask me why, and I didn’t have time to list all the reasons I had no more use for her. “We’ll see.”
Once I cleared the gates, I weaved another spell into the ward’s protective fabric to keep a specific human from breaching them. There was no telling who’d show up to the castle, and I didn’t have time to chase after her to make sure she didn’t get herself killed.
Margaret floated toward me, her white hair lifting and twisting in the air as if she were beneath the sea. “I don’t like to be kept waiting,” she crooned in a deceptively pleasant voice, much like a siren’s.
“And I don’t like dealing with my brother’s shite, yet here we are.”
“Have ye been to see Ned?” she asked.
That was none of her business. Besides, I didn’t report to the Banshee. They reported to me. “Don’t you have loved ones to warn?”
Her black eyes narrowed as she bared her pointed teeth. “We’ve too many deaths, ye see. Flat out, so we are. Half the Danú get no warnin’ at all. Somethin’ must be done.”
I nodded, knowing it was the truth but having not a clue what to do about it. “I’ll look into it,” was all I said before evanescing to Gaul. Those were tomorrow’s problems.
Today, I had life force to consume.
24
The week passedas it usually did. I had one day with Aveen.One. All the rest were spent on my brother’s duties. When I wasn’t in the castle, I found myself daydreaming about what my human was up to.Daydreaming.Like a feckin’ loon.
Although I barely saw her, there was something comforting about knowing she was there, playing away in her dirt, sleeping a few doors down. A spark of goodness amidst the death and destruction consuming the rest of the world. I longed to be nearer to her light, to let her cull the darkness from the deepest parts of me.
Instead, I got to spend my days watching the Danú die.
Evanescing across the island felt like a colossal waste of magic, but Tadhg’s people deserved to be seen. To have someone witness their suffering. To be remembered when they were no more.
Although, if given a choice, I was probably the last person they’d want to be remembered by.
But they didn’t have a choice. And neither did I.
I’d continue to haul myself to the trials and executions until I could find a way to stop them.
Not that I could do that if I had no time to breathe. Before I knew it, another Friday had come. Tadhg had promised to be present.