Chapter Twenty-Three
Ash
My heart felt like it was going to explode as I slowly straightened and looked over at the broon standing close to the dining table. He was clutching an empty tray, having just set down our dinner on the table, and when he sensed my gaze on him, he froze. Little brown eyes stared back at me, wide and fearful.
My stomach squeezed into a tight ball. I didn’t know what to do.
If I refused, the Brid would know that I had my second name. That she couldn’t control me. What would she do to me then? Get her King of Boars to gore me? Tell the Carlin that she was welcome to have me? I still wanted to kill the Carlin and her sons, but now that they were here, in front of me, I didn’t feel ready. My heart pounded wildly. Sweat beaded on my hairline.
Would I have time to escape into the forest if the Brid realised I was no use to her and decided to kill me? Nua had made it. But Nua wastruefae. I had my fae skin, but was I really like the rest of them? I still had my mortal life. My mortal memories, which made me softer. Weaker. Just like the Carlin had said.
If I ran, the Carlin would come after me again. I knew that without a doubt. And I would have nowhere to go. I couldn’t go to Nua and Gillie’s. I would never risk them.
I had nowhere else. I could try to kill as many of them as I could, but eventually my arrows would run out. Eventually I’d have nowhere to run or hide.
I couldn’t just stand here. I had to do something. When I glanced at the Brid and saw her brows twitch first with confusion, then suspicion, panic made me reach for my bow and nock an arrow.
When I pointed it at the broon, my heart hammering, his brown eyes flared with terror.
“No—please—”
I forced myself to release the bowstring. Forced myself not to flinch or shut my eyes or look away as the arrow drove into the fae’s forehead, giving him a clean, painless death.
But he was still dead. I’d killed him.
I’d just murdered him for absolutely no reason.
Somehow my hands remained steady as I put away my bow, but my eyes stayed fixed on the dead fae on the floor. I couldn’t look away. My breaths escaped through my nose in trembling exhalations that I desperately hoped the Brid couldn’t hear.
“Do you see now?” she asked the Carlin with a smirk in her voice. “He ismyweapon to wield. Not yours. You have your precious assassin son,” she added with a sneer. “Now I have my hunter. He will kill who I say he will. He will do what I want him to. He ismineto control.” She looked over at me and smiled widely, reaching up to cup my cheek. “Shall we eat?”
I stared at her, trying to mask the horror. Eat? She wanted to eat? The fae’s body was still on the floor.
It stayed on the floor throughout the entire meal. The Brid didn’t order anyone to remove it, so it lay there beside the dining table in a pool of blood as I choked down meat and bread before pushing my plate away.
I couldn’t stop looking at it, my eyes darting over there repeatedly. I felt cold and clammy, my heart still racing like I was on the verge of a panic attack.
The body stayed there as we rose from the table, and the noble Folk awkwardly mingled while the Brid returned to her throne to smirk at the Carlin, who sat at the far end of the other table with Balor, seething quietly. Bres was drinking, muttering to a vacant Cethlen whose head was cocked as he listened.
I edged my way towards the side door that led to the Brid’s private part of the palace. As far away from the corpse as I could. And then I was slipping out, walking quickly through the palace until I burst outside into the little rose garden that was always empty.
I killed someone. I killed someone.
I’d killed countless guards, but that was different. They’d been looking for me to drag me back to the Carlin. That fae had just been… there. Doing his job. And now he was dead.
I tried to suck in air as I blindly walked through the twisting walls of the garden. My body reacted to the faint sound of footsteps behind me before my brain had even registered it. I whirled round, my chest heaving with awful adrenaline.
A beautiful fae with black hair and sorrowful black eyes stood there. I frowned in confusion. I didn’t recognise him. I hadn’t seen him inside with the rest of the Carlin’s contingency.
But he looked unseelie. He was wearing the sleek black leather armour that the rest of them were. It hugged his lean, long-limbed frame distractingly, and I jerked my eyes back up to his when I realised I’d been staring.
“What are you doing?” I asked suspiciously, fingers twitching for my dagger. “Why did you follow me?”
The fae swallowed, arms hanging at his sides. When my gaze dropped to the blade at his hip, I tensed and drew my dagger in the next breath.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he told me in a low, husky voice that made my skin tingle, for some reason. “I… You seemed upset.”
I tensed even more.