Page 69 of The Crown of Moonlight
““You are the last person I ever wanted to hurt.Please believe that if nothing else.”
“Am I?”she asks too quietly.“Tell me, did you have to bed me to keep your oaths?Or was that just a bonus?”She searches my face for a moment, then nudges her horse forward without waiting for me to answer.
The question echoes, and hearing that cold, dead tone in her voice is when I know that what I’ve done—what I’ve broken—is beyond repair or mending.
I bedded Flora because she burrowed into my heart.Because she’s become a craving.I bedded her in spite of my oaths.But I can’t deny that if what I am starting to hope proves to be true, she will be hurt even more.
And that will break us both.
Chapter 26
The Shadehounds Know
Flora
S
cant light pierces the canopy of white-trunked birch trees that stand like wraiths in the darkness.Chyr creates a small, round scoutlight that illuminates the ground in front of us.It’s enough for me to give Eira her head, and the mare picks her way through the moss, roots, and fallen branches along the slope.Rain patters on the loch and drums on the leaves above us.I’m glad of the excuse not to talk, because if I say anything more to Chyr, I will regret it.
I let myself behave recklessly with him, and despite his warnings, I believed in the wounded Rider who was trying to save my world.I failed to see he was only claiming it for himself.
He gave me his true name, Cóirneach, and he told me his friends call him Chyr.I should have known then that something was wrong.True names have too much power.Why would an Ever give one away so willingly?
Unless he needed it to hide behind.
Chyr is the rebel king.Teàrlach Solas, the man his supporters call the Bonnie King.
The man to whom I gave my body is the son of the Ever who took everything from us, from my family, from women, from Alba Scoria.Our lives, our gods, our right to rule, our magic, our self-respect.He ripped what was left of our bloodline from our islands and drove us into the hills.
I believed Chyr when he spoke so earnestly of oaths and promises.If those meant anything, his father would have been banished the moment he broke the Compact—but Tirnaeve did nothing.For four centuries, the Sun King lorded over us from his stolen throne.
It took Vheara killing Fionn for Tirnaeve to send Chyr and the Anvar’thaine—not to save us.To take the kingdom back.To the Evers, we have never mattered.
The Raven Queen should never have been our war.We shouldn’t have to spill our blood to stop her or die to put an Ever—any Ever—on the throne of Alba Scoria.
The beat of the horses’ hooves through the birch woods is a war cry to my anger.Rain soaks through the plaid I’ve wrapped around myself as a cloak, and water streams down my face.With Chyr behind me, I feel even more alone.
As though they sense my mood much in the way Rab would, the two Shadehounds who followed us from the village stay close, like sentries keeping to the edge of the soft light Chyr is casting on the ground.
The trees thin eventually, opening onto an old drovers’ track.I push Eira into a canter while we have the opportunity, until we come to a burn swollen by rain and snowmelt.The water is a dark strip, its depth a mystery, but there’s no going around.I give Eira a long rein and pat her neck as she plunges in.
Water churns above her knees.She moves cautiously, stopping to test her footing until she scrambles up the opposite bank.Chyr is faster on Bramble, and he stops ahead of me on the track.
“We could eat here,” he says.“You’ve had nothing since the rabbit last night, and the horses need to drink.”
He’s right, though I don’t want to acknowledge it.I want to grieve what I felt for Chyr, what I believed about him.What I was starting to believe about myself.
I search for somewhere to sit out of the rain and far away from Chyr’s brooding silence.The wool of our plaids grows warmer when it’s wet, but tonight, there’s ice building in my chest, and the chill seeps into my bones.
There’s nowhere to shelter, so I huddle on a narrow rock along the riverbank, with my knees pulled up as I watch Eira and Bramble drink.Chyr unwraps one of the oilcloth bundles, puts half away again for later, and hands me more than my share of the rest.I refuse to argue with him.I take it, and hunger makes the cold mutton, cheese, and bannocks taste like the best meal of my life.
Chyr stands with his back and one foot braced against a tree behind me.I can feel him waiting for an opportunity to talk.
“Don’t,” I say.“Whatever you’re going to say, I don’t want to hear it.Leave me to settle what’s happened in my mind without making the situation any worse.”
“Tell me how I can make it right between us.”
“Asking me how to mend your betrayal is another betrayal.”I tear off two morsels of the mutton and offer them to the Shadehounds.
