Page 83 of The Crown of Moonlight
“Chyr, tell me this,” Lorcan drawls, ignoring him, “we all know you’d rather burn your own eyes out than sit on Fionn’s throne.But you expect us to believe you happened to find a Maiden in the woods when there hasn’t been one in more than four centuries?”
I haven’t had a good brawl in a long time, and I indulge myself in imagining how good it would feel to sink my fist into Lorcan’s smirking face.He spins his favourite knife across his knuckles, blade over hilt.Nervous.
“Believe whatever you like,” I say.
Thunder rolls outside, and the fire crackles.
Daire flashes me one of his saucy grins.“You’re thinking about hitting him, aren’t you?Go ahead.I’ll watch.”
Flora rests her arms across Bramble’s back.“He isn’t entirely wrong, though, is he, Chyr?You made it sound as if you played no part in any of this.But when did you first suspect I might be the Maiden?”
At the back of my jaw, the muscle twitches into a knot.“I didn’t know, Flora.It made no sense.Too many things argued against it, but that your magic wasn’t Siorai.”
“Not what I asked.”
I let the silence stretch.“Then I’m not sure what to tell you.”
“And there it is.You Evers—”
“Siorai,” Daire snaps, his knuckles whitening on his fists.
“You Evers,” Flora repeats, calmly, glaring at him.“You pick and choose which truths to tell, which laws to enforce, which oaths to keep—”
“We have to keep all our oaths,” I say.“Unless they conflict.”
She turns her eyes back to me.They’re still different from the calm grey of before, still the same silvery-gold as moonlight, but now they’ve hardened to steel.
“You’ve said that before,” she says.“But if you’ve sworn to enforce the Compact, how is it you left your father sitting on our throne all these years?How is it that your oaths never called for you—the Master of the Anvar’thaine—to banish him for that?”
The oathbands flood me with ice that makes it impossible to breathe.But even if I could tell her the reasons, they’d make no difference.
“No answer, Chyr?Any of you?Nothing to say?”Flora prompts.
Daire’s jaw works, a muscle jumping.Then he lunges at her.The Shadehounds growl and run towards her, Shade moving faster even as I run to knock Daire aside.Daire gets to her first, his arms caging her against the wall.I wrench him back.My fist connects with his face, and when the momentum whips his head aside, I follow with a punch that doubles him over.Shade stays and growls at him.
“Don’t ever touch her.”My voice is soft.
“Why?”Daire wipes the blood from his lip.“Because you’re the only one allowed to do that?”
“Because she decides.Always.Do not touch her.Do not threaten her.”
The two of us glower at each other, but because it’s Daire and it’s impossible to contain his chaos, he turns to glare at Flora again.Shadow has pressed her body tight against Flora’s legs, fangs bared and hackles raised as if she’ll take down anyone who dares to come any closer.
Daire’s lip curls as his attention shifts from Flora to the Shadehounds and back again.“Are you really that naïve?”he asks her.“Do you think Chyr chose not to punish his father?Fionn was Master of the Anvar’thaine before Chulainn forced Chyr to take that role.Chyr and the rest of us all took our vows at once because Fionn murdered the other nine Riders who served with him.It wasn’t an honour for Chyr to be chosen.”
“Enough.”I catch Daire’s arm, my fingers digging in.
Daire shakes me off, reaches back to grasp his shirt at the nape, and pulls it off.He leans closer, teeth bared, and points to the single row of runes that circles his arm.
“This—this—is the oathband of the Anvar’thaine,” he says.“But that’s not what Chyr’s uncle had burned into Chyr’s skin.Chulainn made Chyr the Master to punish him.To force him to fail so he’d be banished to the Pit where he couldn’t be a threat.He made him Master to control him.
“Chyr was barely nineteen—little more than a cub and without the experience to understand the oaths he was forced to take.”
Lorcan steps between me and Daire and sets a hand on Daire’s shoulder.“Chyr’s right, Daire.She doesn’t need to hear this.”
“She has no right to judge him,” Daire snaps.
“Actually, she does.”I turn to her, and she’s still backed against the wall, backed into a tiny corner of the rest of her life with no chance to escape.I want so desperately to find a way to change that.“You don’t understand what I’ve done to her.”
