“You would stay here with me and fight?”
“Well, yes, of course,” she said with confusion in her voice. “What ever else would I do?”
“Return to the court,” he said. “Abandon this fool-hardy quest. Save yourselves.”
Nollaig stiffened. “I am not leaving your side. You are my prince, my liege. Whatever you might think of me, you must know I would not leave you behind to fight the wood fae alone.”
He noted that she didn’t ask whether he would leave Reyna in Oxgrove so that they might return safely to Findius. She already knew the answer to that. He would stay and protect her healing body with his dying breath if he must.
“I appreciate your loyalty, Nollaig,” he said quietly. “More than you’ll ever know. But here is not where I need you. There’s something else I need you to do.”
“And what is that?” she asked crisply, clearly unhappy that Lorcan did not wish for her to stay and throw herself into a fight against an army too large to even contemplate.
“I need you to go ahead and return to Findius. Warn the court of what’s happening.”
“I just told you I’m not leaving your side,” she growled. “And even if I wanted to, the king would have my head.”
“Somehow, I doubt that.”
Nollaig answered with a moment’s pause, and then, “I’ll do this, but only on one condition. We need to make the Wood Court believe that all of us have gone. Otherwise, they might come here looking for you.”
Lorcan exhaled in relief. For a moment, he did not believe that she would go. He might be the prince, but she was his father’s creature, not his. She would always defer to the king. He need not forget that.
“What did you have in mind?” Lorcan asked.
“We’ll make plenty of noise and leave behind a lot of mess. When we camp, we’ll make it look like there was five of us instead of three. When Reyna has healed, take a small boat instead of the tunnels. It will take longer, but the wood fae won’t expect it. And if they show up unexpectedly, run, use the boat. They won’t swim after you. The salt burns their skin.”
Lorcan nodded. “I hate separating our party like this, but Reyna is not ready to go. She needs to heal.”
“Yes, she does,” Nollaig said quietly, and Lorcan knew that if he could see her eyes, there would be a glint in them. “I’ve never seen you like this, you know.”
“Like what?” Lorcan narrowed his eyes.
“So focused. So determined.” A pause. “You were going to save that lass no matter who and what stood in your way. You would have ripped apart the very fabric of the world. I daresay she knows it, too.”
A snake squeezed tight around his heart. “I betrayed her, Nollaig.”
“Hmm.” Nollaig turned to go, but then paused in the open doorway. “One last thing I thought you should know before we all return home to Findius. I wasn’t going to tell you yet, but your actions have proven you to me. Your father does not hold Eislyn Darragh captive. And he doesn’t have your Thane either.”
Nollaig vanished out the door. Lorcan’s hands clenched and then unclenched as he ran Nollaig’s words over and over again in his mind, just to be sure he had not misheard her.
“Father,” he growled to himself, rage rising up within him even as relief loosed the hold of fear around his heart. Thane was not only alive, but he was safe. The king of the shadows did not have him in his grasp, and he would not be able to kill him at any moment with a single-worded command. Lorcan staggered to the side, placing a palm against the rough wall to hold himself steady.
Thane was fine. He was safe. He would not die by Bolg Rothach’s cruel hand.
His father had lied to him.
For once, he had lied. Bolg Rothach had been able to make this bluff because he had followed through on his cruelty so many times in the past. Painful memories flashed through Lorcan’s mind. The faces of old friends. Cadman of Comharra, the only father Lorcan had ever truly known, even if they hadn’t been related by blood. Aoiffe, the old snarky widow who had made sure he’d had a sword as soon as he could hold it in his hands without falling over from the sheer weight of it. And little Elen. Lorcan’s heart ached. The new babe of Comharra. He’d never even had a chance to meet her. Because Lorcan’s father had murdered them all.
“Lorcan?” A soft voice dragged him back to the present. Lorcan pushed away from the wall and turned toward Reyna. She peered up at him, her hair spread like ice across the pillow, concern flickering in her clear eyes. “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing is the matter,” he said in a rough voice, striding to her side at once. “Nollaig just informed me that my father has been lying about his prisoners. He doesn’t have your sister, Reyna. Eislyn is safe. He can’t harm her. And he doesn’t have Thane either.”
Reyna jolted, and a strangled choke ripped from her throat. Her entire face crumpled as she pressed a shaking hand to her heart. And then she started to cry. Heaving, painful sobs that shook her entire body. Lorcan did not quite know what to do. He’d never once seen Reyna Darragh break. He didn’t think she could. Her fear for her sister must have been twisting around her entire body like a venomous snake all this time.
His hands fisted. Bolg Rothach had done this to her.
“Reyna,” he said softly, dropping to her side and wrapping his arms around her. Her sobs were almost violent now, shaking her entire body. They sounded like a deep rumble that came from the deepest part of her soul. “It’s okay. He doesn’t have her.”
“I will kill him,” she said in a hiss.
“Only if you let me help you do it.”
She pulled back and gazed up at him, her tear-streaked eyes searching his face. “He has been playing both of us. He used what we love and twisted it against us so that we had no choice but to do what he said.”
“That’s what he does,” Lorcan said quietly. “If you love something, you can depend on my father to rip it apart or use it to hurt you. Often both.”
Realization dawned in her eyes. “He’s done this to you before.”
He clenched his jaw and glanced away, staring hard at the door where Nollaig had disappeared. A part of him wanted to call after his old shadow fae friend and make her explain why his father had done this to them. But Nollaig knew as well as he did that there was no point in explaining. Because Lorcan already understood. The King of Shadows had a plan. He wanted to reign over the entire continent and crush the other courts beneath his boot. And he would do anything to make sure it happened.
“The village I told you about,” Lorcan said in a haunted voice. “The one from my childhood. You remember it?”
Reyna nodded. “The one from Beltane when the Fomorians chased you through the grasslands. Yes, Lorcan. I remember. To be honest, I’ve been thinking about that village a lot lately. When I first realized you’d captured me for the Shadow Court, I thought you’d been lying about the village, too. But I don’t think you were, were you?”
“I was not,” he said through gritted teeth.
“Tell me about it,” she said softly as she slipped her small hand into his. Her touch was warm and strong, even though she had been on the brink of death only a couple of days before. He took comfort in it.