“I think your Emyr would have made a wonderful consort for my mother.” I wrinkle my nose. “It’s always the blonds.”
“You bear a grudge? It wouldn’t have anything to do with your very blond mother and sister, would it?”
He’s caught me out.
“All my life I hated my hair,” I admit. While Andraste looked like a perfect little replica of Mother, I was the ugly, dark cuckoo in the nest. “I paid a travelling peddler forty gold pieces when I was twelve to chant a spell that would strip the color from it.”
“What happened?”
“The color faded and the peddler moved on. I was delighted. Until I woke the next morning to find my hair had fallen out. It was all over my pillow, and my mother was furious at my stupidity.” She’d ordered me shaved bald, and I was locked in my rooms, with only a nurse for company, until it grew back. “If it’s any consolation, I find myself partial to green eyes and dark hair.”
Thiago’s gaze darts to mine. “Do you?”
The tension in his shoulders softens as I press my back into the stone of the arch, turning my entire body toward him. “Do you think I’d stand in an open arch with my enemy behind me if I wasn’t bedazzled by his pretty eyes?”
“I thought we were past the ‘enemies’ part of this?”
“I’m still considering the notion. I don’t know what comes after ‘enemies.’”
“That’s easy.” His voice grows rough. “We kiss. We argue. We fall into bed. We fuck.”
My cheeks heat. I’d wondered if he’d mention that.
Thiago brings his hand to my cheek, brushing his knuckles against the smooth skin there. “But you’re the one who makes that decision. I won’t steal into your bed, Vi. You’re the one who’s going to have to do that.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. You only just woke to the truth; you’re entitled to feel confused about it all.” He gives a sly smile. “And for every day you make me wait, I’ll repay you with an hour of sensual torture.”
Help.
I stare at him breathlessly. “Doesn’t that behoove me to make you wait longer?”
Thiago leans closer, stealing a soft kiss from my lips. “That depends.” He takes a step back, finally giving me some space to breathe. “On whether your willpower is stronger than temptation.”
It’s not.
I know it’s not.
I want to throw up the white flag of surrender right here, to taste more of that kiss he barely gave me.
And some part of it must show on my face, because he draws back and laughs. “Willpower, Vi.”
It’s a smoky sound that curls inside me, as though he’s somehow infected me.
“I’m trying to remember why this is a bad idea.”
“Oh, it’s not. It’s a very, very good idea,” he croons. “But we’re supposed to arrive in Stormhaven within the hour, and an hour’s not long enough to do any of what I have planned.”
I close my eyes. Images dance there, of the pair of us tangled together on heated sheets. “That isn’t helping.”
Thiago chuckles under his breath. “It wasn’t supposed to. Come. Kyrian will be waiting for us.”
I can’t help watching him as he strides toward the center of the Hallow. Thiago wears power like a mantle, but there’s a hint of old wounds showing beneath his careful words.
I wondered why he surrounded himself with the misfits and outcasts like Eris and Baylor. In my mother’s court, they would have been shunned and despised, regardless of their powers.
Now I know.
Because he’s an outcast himself. Even here, in the city he rules, they know him as the enemy.
Thiago activates the Hallow.
It’s unusual to have one here, inside a building. They’re usually found in mossy forests or atop old barrows. The stones that guard them like silent sentinels are still here, though the columns line the circular room.
“Ready?” Thiago asks, reaching out to take my hand.
For the Prince of Tides? Never. But I nod anyway.
Thiago gave me two weeks to help find this leanabh an dàn. I’m not going to let one of my mother’s worst enemies bar me from helping.
Thirteen Hallows were created to lock the Old Ones away, but once their other use as portals was discovered, more were created. Not merely prisons, but means of transport between kingdoms.
This is not an origin Hallow.
It’s clear this was built after the wars.
The world flashes past in a shimmer of green as the glyphs light up, and then my stomach starts to turn.
There’s an odd hum within the portal. “Is that supposed to be doing that?”
Thiago frowns.
Power washes over us. Not so much like a soothing tide, as usual, but a raging sea. It sends me spinning, tumbling through a vortex of magic unlike anything I’ve ever known.
Waves of pure magic crash over me, drenching me in its warm liquid gush.
We’re thrown forward, tossed about like jetsam caught in the barrel roll of a wave. I lose Thiago’s hand, tumbling endlessly, endlessly—
This isn’t normal.
It’s never felt like this before.
A hand plucks at my hair, and then a woman appears before me, crafted almost singularly of seafoam. Green seaweed forms her hair, and her brows are dark and frowning over fierce eyes. “You are not welcome here, miatha lin.”
She bares sharp teeth at me, lunging toward my throat.
I scream as her teeth sink into my tender flesh and punch her directly in the side of the face. It’s enough to tear her loose long enough to break free. And then I’m spinning again, churned about like clothes in a copper wash pot. Salt water washes up my nose and down my throat, until it’s all I can taste.
The portal spits me out on a rocky shore, coughing and gagging on seawater.
I’m still fighting, trying to wrestle my way free, only to discover the firm hands locked on my shoulders belong to Thiago.
“Vi!”
I spit out a mouthful of salt, only to find his fingers have captured my chin and he’s tilting my face to the side. I slap it away, but he holds up bloodied fingers.
“What happened?” he demands.
The prince, as usual, looks like he just sauntered out of a bedroom. No sign of wet clothes, only slightly tousled hair. I’m sure I look like a drowned sailor.
“Did you see her?” I gasp, scraping bedraggled hair out of my face.
He offers me a hand. “See who? And what happened to you? Why are you wet?”
I tell him about the woman who tried to drown me, but his eyebrows merely draw together in a frown. “That’s impossible.”
“What’s impossible?”
He glances at the jagged stones that stand on the rocky beach like solitary sentinels. “She sounds like one of the saltkissed, but they were banished along with the Father of Storms.”
The saltkissed.
“But they’re trapped.” I look around. “Here. They were trapped here.”
I know enough of my history to know where each of the Old Ones was trapped. The Father of Storms made his final stand on this beach before being lured between the standing stones.