Page 36 of The Robin on the Oak Throne

Graves looked between them as if personally affronted by their lack of knowledge. Niamh cocked one hip and flipped her hair, waiting for him to explain.

“You’ve read the stories,” Graves said. “Surely you can piece it together.”

“So you haven’t changedat all,” Niamh said with an eye roll. “Can’t give a girl a single straight answer.”

“Niamh,” he snarled.

The way he pronounced her name,Neev, with a slight Irish lilt instead of his customary British accent, knocked something loose in Kierse’s mind.

“Like a wren?” Kierse guessed.

“But for the Oak King,” Graves said with distaste.

Kierse was Graves’s wren. A bird that was aligned with the Holly King, able to enhance his power up until the winter solstice. Traditionally, wrens were hunted and killed the day after Christmas to symbolize the return of spring. Kierse had heightened Graves’s power during that time before she’d known any of these Celtic myths were real.

After leaving New York, she’d read every story she could get her hands on regarding the Oak and Holly Kings. Tales of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight—a classic tale of the separationof the seasons—but also of the Wild Man, a Dionysian-esque figure, and the most famous Divine Kings who were mortal representations of the seasons, sacrificed to sustain their relentless cycle. Yet, while the stories were fascinating, none of them compared to meeting the actual Oak and Holly Kings.

The tales were incredibly vague about the role of the wren and the robin. They mentioned a wren in relation to the Holly King and a robin aligning with the Oak King, but they made the connections seem metaphorical. Since Kierse knew them to be more fact than fiction, that meant…Niamh was here for Lorcan.

“No,” Kierse said, shaking her head. “Niamh is our friend.”

Graves scoffed. “I’m sure Lorcan would want you to believe that.”

“Niamh?” Gen asked in a small voice. They had been particularly close in the intervening months. It was Gen who had convinced Kierse to get the apartment down the hall from Niamh after befriending the girl in the bookstore. “Is all this true?”

“Okay. He makes it sound bad,” Niamh said. “It’s not so dramatic.”

“Did Lorcan send you?” Kierse demanded.

“Yes, but…”

“Then itisthat dramatic.”

“I am notreportingto him,” Niamh said with another eye roll. “Fuck Lorcan Flynn and all his drama.”

“Then why are you here?” Gen asked.

“Let’s see her twist this one up,” Graves said. “We all know why she’s here. She’s here to spy on you for the enemy.”

“Drama,” Niamh muttered.

“For the record,youwere spying on me, too,” Kierse argued. “You knew that I was going to be in Paris.”

“I had someone making sure you were safe. I didn’t send an agent in to pretend to be your friend and monitor your actions,” he said, as if they were two different things, when it sure felt like two sides of the same coin.

“Hey! Iamtheir friend,” Niamh argued.

The glare Graves shot her was deadly. She knew that, at any moment, he might actually murder Niamh—it wouldn’t have been the first time he’d acted similarly. And as much as she wanted answers for Niamh’s behavior, she did like the girl.

“Can we all calm down?” Kierse asked. “You’re going to freak Gen out.”

“Already there,” Gen said. “Just tell us the truth.”

Niamh gestured to Graves. “Like he even knows the definition of truth. Can’t believe half of what he says.”

“Why don’t you let us decide for ourselves?” Kierse said.

“All right,” Niamh said. “Lorcan did send me as his robin. But I don’tworkfor him, and I didn’t report on you.”

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