Page 65 of The Robin on the Oak Throne

“Is there anyone else who would have the spell?”Shannon asked. “Surely the knife is enough for aname.”

“There is another,” he said thoughtfully. “You wouldn’t like it. He hasn’t been much connected with Druids and wisps since he was on the outs.”

“If he’s not connected, that’s what we want,” Adair argued.

“I haven’t met him personally, but he’d have the spell.”

“Who?” Adair asked.

“Cillian Ryan.”

“He’s a rogue Druid!” Shannon cried.

“Then he won’t spill your secrets.”

“And a sociopath,” she tried next.

“And exactly what you need,” Graves argued. “If Lorcan hasn’t killed him, then he’s doing something right.”

Shannon shot her husband a stern look. “We can’t go to him.”

“We must,” Adair said. “We came here for a way to hide our girl. This is what we have to do.”

Shannon looked down at her daughter and brushed her blond hair aside. She sighed, resigned. “You’re right. Anything for you.”

Graves’s eyes landed on the little girl. Kierse saw a brief look that was almostwarm, before he wandered off into his library again. He returned after only a moment. “The knife is worth more than the name.” He tossed a palm-size metal piece down on the table. “Take this amulet and trade it for the casting.”

Shannon stared down at it uncertainly. “What’s the trick?”

Adair grabbed the amulet quickly. “Who cares?”

Shannon glared at Graves a moment. Finally, reluctantly,she stood, thanking him for his help. And itwashelp. Kierse could see that plainly. A mystery she was still grappling with as the memory dissolved.

Interlude

Oisín flipped the lock on the bookstore.

Today had made him heartsick. He rubbed the spot under his robe where the Fae curse still sat in stark silver against his heart. On days like this, when the veil was thinnest, so close to a Celtic holiday, he could almost feel his wife’s fingers pressing the gift where it now rested. The last thing he had from her.

Now it hurt like a wound predicting the rain, reminding him that faerie was still out of reach. As it had been for so very long.

Sometimes he felt like he was a snap of his fingers away from his faerie bride, Niamh, and sometimes he felt every single year down to his bones. He was an old man and had been since the curse took root. He would remain an old man until the day faerie opened and he could return to his beloved. He hoped she still loved him as the man he was now instead of the wide-eyed youth he’d been when she had claimed his heart.

Ah, but such ruminations were for another day. Nothing to be done now.

He collected books and, despite Niamh’s pestering, set them down on top of another stack he hadn’t put away, where they would rot for a few years before he needed something in them.

He had been doing the same thing when a young Graves had stepped off a fishing vessel from England. The bookstore hadn’t quite been in operation at that time, but he’d been collecting volumes for all the years since his return. Anything to help him find a way back to his Niamh.

Graves should have been unimportant enough to pass notice, but it was impossiblenotto notice him. He didn’t act like the rest of the fishermen, who never looked up from the goods they exchanged. The British crown had come over with their army and nominally claimed his Ireland by that time, but they were still largely autonomous. Something that would crumble in the next hundred years.

But Graves didn’t look at the country like a conqueror come for battle. Oisín had been heir to a small kingdom in his earlier life, and he knew the look. Instead, Graves was a man on a mission. Young, determined, ambitious. Looking for something…or someone.

When he went in for a pint that night, Oisín made sure he was already at the table. The locals cringed around his British vowels, and he did his best to understand the lilting Irish. He showed complete incomprehension over the Gaelic Irish being spoken, mostly about him.

“What’s your name, son?”

“Brannon,” he offered freely. “Brannon Graves.”

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