A feral roar ripped from his throat as the truth crashed down all around him. She had done it. His heart pounded. She had really given him up to the gods.
“How could you?” he asked, his fisted hands trembling. “How could you give us up so easily? Have I meant nothing to you?”
“You mean everything,” she whispered, tears filling her eyes. “That’s why you were it. For the power of Seelie, I had to sacrifice my greatest desire.”
Taken aback, Lorcan stared. He was her greatest desire? A storm of emotions shook his body. Happiness, that she cared for him so much. Pain and fury, that she had thrown it away like an old, dirty rag.
Nollaig cleared her throat, stood, and then vanished into the cavern. He didn’t blame her. He didn’t want to be here either, faced with the truth of such terrible agony.
“I gave you my heart,” he said bitterly.
“And I gave you mine. This doesn’t change how I feel about you, Lorcan. Nothing could ever change that. This doesn’t mean my love for you is gone.”
He shook his head, speechless. She had never spoken those words, and now they hung between them like daggers of ice, ready to pierce every part of him.
“What it does mean is that we will be ripped apart.”
She flinched, nodding. “It has already started. You have your task. I have mine. Soon, we will be on opposite ends of the world.”
“It doesn’t have to be this way.”
“We don’t have a choice.” With a trembling chin, she reached out, but then let her hand drop to her side again. “We can try to fight against it. We can try to stay together as long as we can. But you would have to leave your kingdom behind. I have to go north, Lorcan, to where the Ruin began. The power is a part of me now, and I took it for a reason.”
“The power,” he said in a growl. “You could have walked away from it. You didn’t have to take any of it at all!”
“Yes, I did,” she whispered, tears pouring down her flushed face. “I had to take it, Lorcan. I have to save them.”
He whirled on her, his body brimming with all-consuming pain. “What about us though, Reyna? Who saves us?”
She shook her head, and her eyes were drenched in sadness. “We don’t get to be saved.”
“I don’t accept it,” he shouted, pointing a finger at the cavern. “Return to the pit and tell Seelie to take it back.”
“I can’t. And I won’t.”
He stormed off, leaving the camp behind to find somewhere he could think. Her face was emblazoned in his mind. He couldn’t bear to see it anymore. Not knowing what she’d given up.
He stopped at the edge of a cliff and gazed out at the dreary, mist-enshrouded expanse. The odds that he and Reyna would have ever met were alarmingly small. They were from opposite ends of a continent that had been ravaged by war for a hundred years. In truth, it was a miracle they had ever stumbled upon each other. And even more of a miracle that they’d survived everything the world had thrown at them, to find themselves in each other’s arms.
For a fleeting moment in time, they had been happy.
How could she have given it up? How could she have tossed away her own happiness, and his, for a chance to save her kingdom?
Because she is Reyna Darragh.
Lorcan closed his eyes and sagged against the rock. This was what he loved about her. Her bullheaded, single-minded determination to protect her people. Her ferocity toward anyone who threatened their safety. She would do anything for them. She never would have chosen any other way.
Letting out a great, shuddering sigh, he suddenly knew what must be done. His entire life had tunnelled into this very moment. When he had lost his mother to the Fomorians. When his father had forced him to become his legitimized son. The years he spent as a spy, standing beside Thane Selkirk and learning the ways of the courts.
And now, losing Reyna and any hope he’d ever had of living a normal life.
Lorcan would return to Findius, and he would become the next king.
44
Eislyn
Eislyn had never been happier to see Snowport in her life. The small city sat on the northwestern edge of the Ice Court’s frozen lands, its shores edged by the glittering Sea of Fomor. The city itself was much smaller than Falias, and the fae who called it home were the sturdiest of them all. Temperatures often dropped so low that the citizens tended to snack on ice when they were thirsty rather than bother with finding water.
And despite its size, Snowport was a booming city. The trade route with the Empire of Fomor meant that merchants from all over the realm would travel far to the weekly market set inside the castle walls. The castle itself had been carved from gleaming white stone, and its windows had been crafted from some of the earliest ice glass mined from the nearby caves. Two towers rose from opposite ends of the sturdy structure, identical in height. It had been built in a way to honor the link between the two continents, forever bound by their centuries-long trade.
From the top of the western tower, you could see Tuath Isle on a clear day. When Eislyn had visited in years past, she’d often peered out the glistening windows in search of foreign ships. Not once had she ever been lucky enough to see a Fomorian.
She wondered if today would be her day.
Vreis shivered as he stared up at the icy city. “It’s beautiful, Eislyn. I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
“You’ll like Falias more. There is nowhere in this world better than Falias. Everything is such a crystal, clear blue. The castle itself looks like it was built from ice.”
Vreis lifted a brow. “Snowport looks pretty icy itself. In fact...where’s the smoke? Where are the fires?”
Eislyn smiled. “We only use fire to cook, and you’ll find ice fae are a superstitious lot. Many avoid fire when they can.”
“I am going to freeze to death.”
“There will be fur, and there are some hot springs just north of the castle. We don’t use them for bathing—we prefer the cold—but the fae here like to use them to cook their meats.”
“So, I would be bathing in your ovens,” he said flatly.
She couldn’t help but laugh and hook her arm through his. “You’re reminding me of Reyna, you know. When we first arrived at the Air Court, she couldn’t stop complaining about all that wind. You would have thought she’d been dropped into a vat of molten iron.”
At the sound of her sister’s name on her tongue, her smile dropped like a stone into the churning sea. Oh, Reyna. She fought back her tears. Even when Reyna had been a Shieldmaiden, Eislyn had seen her almost every day. They’d never gone more than a week apart. It felt like one of her arms had been chopped off and buried somewhere in the ground.
She did not even know if Reyna was safe, let alone alive. And Reyna would have no idea where Eislyn had gone either. She could picture her sister’s face now, screwed up in tormented rage. If anyone was going to kill Aengus, it would be Reyna Darragh.
“You’ve disappeared on me again,” Vreis said quietly, a gentle hand on her back.
She flushed from his touch. “I’m sorry. I’m just—”
“Worried about your sister,” he finished for her. He could always do that, read her thoughts so easily. Despite herself, Eislyn had begun to feel certain things for Vreis that she knew she mustn’t. But he was warm and he was kind and he was good. He saw her for who she was, and he cared for her in spite of it all. She did not know if it went deeper than that for him, but even if it didn’t, she knew she’d found a true friend for life.