Page 40 of Iron Crown

When I returned to the house, Dairo was there waiting for me, leaning against the banister of the grand staircase that led to the Vasiliev castle’s front door.

“Care for a smoke?” I offered.

To my surprise, he pinched one of the cigarette butts and put it in his mouth.Interesting.He’d quit for a while.

“What ails you, Dairo?” I asked, handing him the silverZippo lighter.

“Nothing,” he lied. Then he winced and amended, “Nothing of consequence, given these circumstances.”

“Is that right?” I pried, happy to care about someone else’s drama for once.

Since Shiny and Ajax had been married, we’d been sorely lacking in gossip among the Irish families. O’Malley was a fucking saint, and had no drama to speak of. It was nice to think of someone else’s problems.

“Rose is unhappy,” he said, letting out a long stream of smoke with a sigh. “I don’t know how to fix it.”

Then he dropped his head. “I don’t know if I’m the cause of it.”

“God, isn’t that our lot in life?” I chuckled, letting out my own smoke, enjoying the smell of it, because God damnit, I loved the smell of my Dunhills. But I also swore not to smoke around my son. “The Green curse.”

“Marriage,” Dairo chuckled. “The cause of, and solution to, all of our problems.”

It was funny because it was true. The curse of my father, and his father, and probably our grandparents before that as well. Would our children be so haunted as well?

“They do keep things interesting, though,” Dairo said, letting his smoke out in a long white stream.

“Interesting?” I scoffed. “God, I want nothing more for my boy than a long and absolutely boring and predictable existence.”

May you live in interesting timeswasn’t a well-wish. It was a curse.

“May our sons fall for simple women, and live long, uneventful, fruitful lives. May they never fire a gun in anger, or be shot at by an enemy,” I said, thinking of all the ways I wanted my son to live a life different from my own. “May they never doubt that they are unconditionally loved by their fathers.”

Dairo didn’t agree or disagree. He simply stood beside me. His silence, I knew, was agreement.

I took in one deep breath, before saying the thing that had been plaguing my mind since I stepped out of the dining room and went on my little walk around the Vasiliev estate.

“Swear on your life you’ll keep Cillian safe,” I said, not wanting to dance around what I needed to hear. “That you’ll support Kira, should she ever need it. Support her as you would me.”

Christ, I hated the earnestness in my voice. But it couldn’t be helped. This would be the single most important thing I ever asked of him.

“I swear onyourlife that I’ll keep Cillian safe,” Dairo said with a small laugh. “And on my own children’s lives, Eoghan. I’ll treat him as my own. You know that.”

“Aye, I do,” I said, taking in a sharp breath, feeling relief course through me. “But I needed to hear it anyway.”

We smoked in silence for a while, and it almost felt like it did when we were fifteen, running through the damn woods like big men, pounding our chests, and acting the fool. We used to smoke and stare out at the stars. I wondered if Cillian would have a friend like that himself one day.

“If something happens to me—”

“Don’t fucking say it, Eoghan.” Dairo ashed his cigarette, scraped it on the banister until the red ember died, then flicked it out into the lawn. “Dramatic Irish.”

“English twat.”

The women and children departed the next day with nothing but the clothes on their backs.

At the end of their private flight, they’d get whatever they needed.

Kira very sternly told Dairo the brand of toothpaste that Cillian liked and the diapers he wore. She wrote it all down, and made Dairo swear to read it before they landed in Scotland.

My dear cousin failed, again and again, to show the right amount of eagerness to obey every item on her painstakingly written list.

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