Page 84 of Crown of Roses
She told him everything, from the way they called her “little wild one,” to how Garvan let her free fall, to Shay’s demand to know her true identity.
Tiernan was rigid. Unflinching. Unmoving. She wasn’t even sure if he was breathing.
“And then?” His low words reverberated through the room.
“And then I ran. I found Lianan, or more so, she found me.” Maeve pulled her legs up under her. “I made a deal with her, something that seems to happen to me fairly often now, and she gave me the information I needed. Then I went back to the party. That faerie blew pink smoke in my face and then you tried to drown me.”
“The Black Lake washes away all enchantment.” He grit his teeth, then leaned back. “Besides, I assumed you knew how to swim.”
“Well, I can’t.”
“Why not?”
She folded into herself. “I hate the water.” She meant for it to sound firm. Confident, even. But he saw right through her false conviction.
“Why?”
“Why do you care?” she countered.
His hands returned to his pockets and he lifted one shoulder, then let it fall. “I don’t. I’m merely curious.”
“It’s a…thing.”
Tiernan ran his teeth over his bottom lip. “I like things.”
“I’m sure you do.” She had no intention of revealing any sort of weakness in front of him. She didn’t want to give him any ammunition to use against her. But water was water, and she was on a fucking faerie island. He already knew she was incapable of swimming. What did it truly matter if he knew the reason behind it?
“My mother knew I was cursed since the day I was born.” She pointed to her ears, where they pointed just enough to not be human, but not long enough to be considered a full fae. “But it was a few years before any signs of magic showed. I think she was hoping it was a fluke. That maybe I just had these fae-like ears and nothing else.”
Maeve crossed her legs under her while she told him her story. “I used my magic for the first time when I was five years old. She put the cuffs on me then—to control the magic, to control me. And as a punishment, she put me in a giant metal cage.”
She could remember it, all of it, so clearly. Carman swooped into the courtyard on that bitterly cold day and she’d dragged her to some room on the east end of the castle. She’d deposited her in a space far enough away from everyone else so that the servants, and handmaidens, and soldiers wouldn’t hear her cries. She created the cuffs from molten liquid she crafted them with her sorcery, then imbued them with magic from the virdis lepatite, and clamped them upon Maeve’s wrists to keep the power of her curse restrained. She was crying, scared, and hungry. But Carman had taken her to the Cliffs of Morrigan, to where the old cage groaned and creaked in the wind. To where the angry waves thrashed the coast, and where the jagged rocks below shot up from the frothy sea like the teeth of a raging monster.
Maeve locked the memory away, knowing the fear would continue to linger. “The cage hangs between two branches from an old oak tree. Or it used to, one of them broke the last time I was in it. The wind keeps the metal cold, so cold it burns my skin every time it rocks through the air. And the ocean is below. The waves there are always violent, and their roar haunted my dreams for years. Sometimes they still do. She put me there and left me overnight. The cage was my punishment from then on.”
“I see.”
There was no sympathy. No pity. No understanding.
She wouldn’t expect anything less.
She yawned and tugged the plush comforter back, then crawled under the blankets. The soft silk curled around her skin, wrapped around her like a dream. The mattress cushioned her weary bones. Her eyes were heavy, and fatigue pulled her under. She tucked the comforter under her chin, and snuggled down deeper, and prayed to any god or goddess in the sky for a dreamless sleep.
“One more thing.” Tiernan spoke like a whisper and it tickled the damp hair draped across her neck.
She hadn't realized he’d moved so close. “Hm?”
His touch sent the faintest charge through her, when his finger brushed over the tattooed skin of her thumb. The mark of the Strand. “What did you give her? The will ó wisp? In exchange for the information you sought?”
She stifled another yawn and peered up at him. His twilight eyes were inches from her face. She blinked again. Slowly. “I agreed to a favor, one she’ll call in later. And I gave her a secret.”
Her eyes drifted shut once more.
“What sort of secret?” Tiernan crooned.
“One that will die with me.”
The deep timber of his chuckle rumbled across her like thunder, and then Maeve was alone, and she succumbed to the sweet desire of sleep.
