“And you would both serve a king like this?” Reyna asked, shaking her head from a strange mixture of horror and awe. Bolg Rothach had once been nothing more than a minor lord, who had only risen to the throne because of the vacuum of power after the exile. What Reyna could not understand was why someone else had not murdered him to take his place. He was terrible and cruel and weak.
“Your father is a High King,” Nollaig said. “What would he do to traitors?”
“I…” Reyna fell silent. Her father had been responsible for his share executions. As the High King, he’d had little choice. Traitors must be dealt with swiftly and surely to prove a point more than anything. Anyone who made a move against the crown was deemed an enemy of all. They were marked by death. If rebels ever thought they might live after staging a revolt, others would quickly follow in their footsteps.
But that was different. Her father was nothing like the shadow king.
“There is a very long path from mild disobedience to full-on treason. It sounds as though your king cannot see the difference. My father is a friend of mercy, as well as justice.”
“Your father sold out his daughters to an enemy,” Lorcan muttered, suddenly appearing out of the shadows of the cave. “As I recall, he was more than willing to wed Eislyn to the court you despised so much that you planned to murder them all.”
Reyna scowled even as her heart throbbed in her chest. She had not been prepared for his sudden return to the group. He’d reappeared just when she’d least expected it. Her guard was down; her heart was lacking steel. His familiar face sent a jolt of pain through her soul.
“I did not plan on murdering them all,” she snapped. “You are getting your courts mixed up, Prince Lorcan. It’s the shadow fae I plan to destroy. Every last one. Including you.”
“Threats begin to lose their shine when you repeat them every hour of every day,” he said with a wry smile. “Careful. We might stop taking you seriously. If we ever took you seriously.”
A low growl rumbled from her throat.
“Lorcan.” Nollaig sighed. “Must you constantly agitate her?”
Lorcan didn’t answer. He simply vanished into the shadows again, leaving a gulf of cold air where he’d stood. Reyna sucked in a sharp breath, her body itching to feel his presence again. Her soul longed to see his face again, just so that she might spit in it.
She hated everything about it. She did not want to see him, and yet she hated that he wasn’t there. The whole situation left her endlessly annoyed.
“Honestly, he is the most frustrating male I have ever met in my life!” She glared at the rolling hills, desperate to just get on with the damn quest. The sooner they tracked down the wood fae’s army, the sooner they could return to Findius. And the sooner she could go back to avoiding Lorcan every minute of every day.
“How exactly are we to cross these hills and enter the forest without being seen?” she snapped at Nollaig, though she knew she shouldn’t take out her anger on the rest of them. They weren’t the ones who deserved her wrath. Lorcan was.
She blinked. Where had that thought come from? They were still her enemies, same as Lorcan. Just because he was the one currently riling her up didn’t mean she could forget they were just as terrible as he was.
“We’ll wait for nightfall,” Tarrah said, turning the group’s attention back onto the task at hand. “That is when we cross. The wood fae will not see us. Then, we camp and make for Craobhan in the morning.”
Reyna frowned. “What makes you so certain we won’t get shot with arrows as soon as we step out into the open?”
“Because Unseelie told me,” Tarrah said, blinking those wide, vacant eyes of hers.
“Wonderful. We’re relying on an invisible death god to keep us from dying.”
To Reyna’s relief—and slight irritation—they made it into the Forest of Thorns without incident. She didn’t want to trust Unseelie nor believe Tarrah’s visions were real to anyone but the girl herself. But not a single arrow flew their way when they made their hasty trek across the hills. It seemed the wood fae were nowhere near this section of the border.
They settled in to a small clearing a few hours into the forest. Teutas got a fire going and found a rabbit for them to share for a meal. Lorcan even reappeared, though he stayed far from Reyna, taking a seat on the opposite side of their strange mix of a circle.
Reyna glared across the fire at him, watching the shadows of the flames dance along his sun-kissed skin. He sat with his sword draped across his knees, his body tense, his eyes darting through the trees. He looked so much like the male who had come to her aide in the Air Court. Why had he even bothered to help her then? If he’d only planned to capture her and bring her to his father, what had been the point of it all? She had asked herself those very questions so many times throughout her captivity. Not once had she conjured up a logical answer.
His eyes landed on her face. Instinctively, she stiffened and blood rushed into her cheeks. It’s anger and nothing more, she thought. She hated him so fiercely that she could have kicked the burning logs of their camp right into his chiseled face.
“Reyna, I want to understand something,” Tarrah said quietly from her side, jolting Reyna’s attention away from her arch-nemesis and her desire to see him pay for what he had done to her. Tarrah was staring into the flickering flames, her eyes wide and distant. “You wanted to kill Thane Selkirk. Why?”
Reyna frowned and glanced back at Lorcan, absentmindedly petting Wingallock’s soft feathers. He’d returned to searching the trees. He must not have heard Tarrah’s question. “I’m not sure how much you know about what has been happening in Tir Na Nog these past few decades. The war still rages on, even now. Have you ever heard of the Battle for the Shard?”
Tarrah tore her gaze away from the fire and shook her head. “The Shard is the piece of land that stretches between your two kingdoms, yes? Between yours and the Air Court’s?”
“That’s right. It’s all ice fae land. It belongs to our kingdom, a single strip of ice as wide as a bridge. It protects us from an invasion from the south. The Air Court tried to take it so that they could set up their army just north of it. If they controlled the Shard, it would have been a death sentence for us all.” Reyna thought back, remembering. It was all so vivid in her mind, even now. “The Air Court has the superior army. Better steel. More warriors, most far better trained than ours. We are a peaceful kingdom. The ice fae are not good at being fighters.”
“You are,” Tarrah pointed out. “I’ve seen you in my visions. You are a force of nature, Reyna Darragh.”
Reyna gave her a wry smile. “I thought you couldn’t see my face in your visions.”
Tarrah stared up at her with those unnerving hollow eyes. “My god has given me several visions of you, Shieldmaiden. Ones that show your face. In many of them, you fight.”
“So, it was a lie then,” Reyna said with a sigh, turning back to the fire. She’d suspected as much. “You knew your god wasn’t showing you my younger sister.”
As she gazed across the fire once more, she noted that Lorcan no longer sat in his place between Nollaig and Teutas. Frowning, Reyna glanced around. Where had he gone? Back into the shadows again? Perhaps he had overheard their conversation after all.