“How about instead of trying to ‘help’ me, you try going two days without getting absolutely scuttered?” he shouted at my back.
My brother’s clothes may have looked worse for wear, but he was just as much of a stubborn bastard as ever.
5
AVEEN
Ruairi stomped in a circle,something I’d seen him do every time he got irritated. Which seemed to happen at least twice a day. “Yer wrong. It’s more a tingle than a burn.”
“I think I know what evanescing feels like,” Tadhg countered with a hard shove against the pooka’s chest. “I’ve been doing it since I was ten.”
Ruairi shoved him back, straight into a bloody tree. If they didn’t stop bickering, this poor forest wasn’t going to survive another training session.
“Well, I’ve been doing it since I was nine, so that makes me the expert.”
“Bollocks. No one can evanesce that young.”
Ruairi folded his thick arms across his chest. “I could.”
I stood back and watched my two trainers spat while Phil crunched on a carrot. Despite Tadhg and Ruairi’s “help,” I still hadn’t been able to wield magic. Tadhg suggested that my human blood may have had something to do with the blockage, but if that were true, surely I wouldn’t have been able to return from the dead.
There had to be some other reason, and we would never figure it out if the two of them didn’t stop arguing. I’d tried evanescing on my own, evanescing holding one of their hands, holding both of their hands. Nothing worked.
“Does it really matter who learned first?” The question earned me a matching pair of scowls. Here we were, another day wasted, and I was no closer to learning how to evanesce. No closer to seeing my sister when she came back from Tadhg’s curse in seven days.Seven.
My suggestion to bring Keelynn’s body to the cottage so she could wake up there had been shot down immediately. I was all out of ideas and quickly running out of time.
Tadhg and Ruairi went back to bickering like children. I closed my eyes and did my best to tune out their cursing. My lungs expanded as I drew in a deep breath, focusing on the latent heat in my heart, willing it to expand through my chest.
Fire sparked in my veins. Nothing to be excited about since I’d gotten this far before. My blood zinged the same way it did every time Rían touched me.
I missed him so bloody much. All those wicked smiles. The crisp cinnamon scent of his magic clinging to his starched shirts. The decadent tang of cherry tarts on his lips the first night we spent together.
A different sort of heat flooded my body, pooling between my thighs as my head began to spin.Notthe way I wanted to feel with two irritating men standing so close. “When you’re finished, I’ll be over there,” I said, gesturing to a gap in the trees where sunlight streamed through. If I was destined to fail, I may as well do so while basking in the sun’s warmth. The yearning in my core grew with each step. By the time I reached the patch of grass, my magic hummed in my chest.
With my instructors otherwise occupied, I sank onto the soft earth and tipped my face up to the sky. If Rían were here, I knew exactly what we’d be doing to ease this frustration. I dragged a hand along my neck, wishing it belonged to a wicked fae prince.
He was harsh breaths. Sinful whispers. Slow, trailing kisses. Lingering touches igniting bare skin. The way he would touch me… The fire in his fingertips would build on this latent heat like it had that night in his townhouse when we’d first made love.
Every time I’d tried to evanesce before, I’d focused on getting to the castle in Tearmann. But in this moment, with delicious pressure building low in my stomach and tingling my spine, my mind drifted to a different place. A small living room overflowing with fuchsia. Golden plates and a tray of cherry tarts. A man whose body I longed to feel against my own. A prince who could set fire to my blood and make me revel in the flames.
My rushing heartbeat filled my ears. In this moment, if I could’ve gone anywhere on this island, I would have gone back to that townhouse, back to that night where I discovered how Rían could make me burn.
The world around me fell away. The ground under me no longer felt soft but hard and unyielding.
My eyes fluttered open, settling on a ceiling with a crystal chandelier hanging high above. To my right, I found an empty hearth surrounded by marble.
I was no longer in a forest but in the middle of a small living room. In Rían’s bloody townhouse. In bloody Graystones. Laughter bubbled up inside my chest.
I’d done it! I’d actually—
Oh, no.
I’d done it.
Panic doused the fire in my blood, and I screwed my eyes shut. I tried as hard as I could to hold on to the heat, but my magic evaporated, stealing my elation with it.
Think of the sounds of chirping birds.