Page 15 of Heart Cradle
Eiran didn’t respond with pity or platitudes.
“I had to be the best,” she said eventually, kicking at the sand. “Always. Didn’t matter if I was tired, broken or hanging on by a thread. I outdid everyone. Out fought the biggest blokes in training. Proved I wasn’t just a tick-box recruit.”
Eiran’s voice was quiet. “They should’ve seen you coming.”
She snorted, bitterly. “They did and that’s why they came for me.”
The words slipped out before she could stop them, and she swore under her breath.
“You don’t have to fight like that anymore,” he said. “Not every second, certainly not with me.”
She looked at him then. The fae prince with finally wind-mussed hair and eyes that somehow knew exactly when to push and when to wait. There was a kind of mischief resting behind his gaze, the promise of laughter and trouble, but it never pressed or intruded. He simply was. Sitting beside her in the sand, knees bent, elbows on his thighs, like he'd been made for moonlit, midnight beaches. The sea rolled in and out before them like a breathing thing. Their shoulders almost touched and time passed without urgency. The conversation wandered, soft-edged and low. They spoke ofOrilan and his love for his family, of Taelin’s stubbornness and the long, demanding shadow of command. Eiran did impressions of his brothers that made her snort into her sleeve. Branfil’s bemused stare, Soren’s theatrical sighs, Calen’s swagger and Fenric’s permanent state of barely contained chaos.
He was warm, she realised. Warm in a way that reached through armour, the kind she'd been building since her twenties, reinforced every day over the last six months. Eventually, she told him about her father’s dry wit. How he used to narrate nature documentaries in ridiculous accents. Her mother’s laugh, so full-bodied it could shake the kitchen windows. Her voice wavered as she spoke, like a step taken on ice too thin. “I haven’t heard either in over a decade,” she said. “But I still remember the sound of both. It’s strange, what the mind keeps.” She looked down, tracing invisible lines through the sand. “I forget birthdays. I forget names, but I remember how they laughed. Isn’t that stupid?”
“No, not at all,” Eiran said softly. “You’re remembering their love.”
His voice was quieter now. Different, no teasing, or edge of charm and flirtation. Just the kind of gentle gravity that lets grief breathe. She didn’t look at him, but she felt his gaze shift. Felt him watching not just her face, but the way her body tensed, the catch in her breath, the walls she didn’t quite know how to drop.
“I think they would’ve liked you,” she said, surprising herself as the words came out too fast.
“I hope so,” he said. “But I’m glad you do.”
There was a pause then, as if the night itself was holding its breath. Maeve swallowed. She wasn’t used to being seen without being dissected, but somehow, with him, she didn’t feel like a puzzle. She was just a person, still breaking, still building, but still there.
The waves kept rolling, and for once, she didn’t feel like she was drowning. Maeve turned the pouch over in her hands, thumb brushing the embroidered threads. For something so small, it felt weighted, not just by magic or age, but by meaning. Slowly, she placed the Chain inside, tied the cord, and extended it towards Eiran. “I think this belongs to you.”
Eiran didn’t move at first. Just stared at her, the moonlight casting soft shadows across his face. “Are you sure?”
She shrugged. “It’s not exactly mine, is it?”
“You felt something,” he said, accepting it gently. “You could keep it, and half the realms would fall to their knees to follow.”
“Bit bloody dramatic, Eiran.”
“I’m fae, it’s our way.” He smirked, but his fingers curled protectively around the velvet like it held the whole of his world.
Maeve laughed. “God, you sound like a bloody villain. ‘Bow before my pouch of destiny!’”
Eiran clutched it to his chest, mock-affronted. “This pouch is sacred.”
She lay back on the sand, hands behind her head, laughing until it faded into silence. Her dress rode up slightly with the movement, and one of the long, pale scars along her thigh caught the light. She saw him glance, not out of curiosity but with something fiercer and she didn’t cover it.
“I need to tell you,” she said, voice quiet now.
He turned, mirroring her position. Close, so close, but not touching.
“I work in the robberies team. We were hunting a gang who were pulling off high-value hits. Serious money, serious planning. It was like they were bloody invisible. Left nothing behind, no forensics, no cameras, no patterns. Every job was a total fucking humiliation.” Her mouth twisted, the bitterness like a blade under her skin. “The Met was desperate. We were desperate. Command kept hammering us, we had to find them, before they made us all look like total bloody idiots again.”
She exhaled roughly through her nose.
“My boss warned me. Told me I was getting obsessed, that I needed to step back before I lost perspective. He didn’t really mean it though. Not when every day we didn’t catch them made us look shitter. We needed the win.” She looked down at her hands like they were remembering things her mind tried not to. “I kept pushing. Getting closer, much closer than I realised. I started to feel like I was being followed. After work, on the tube and near my flat. Threatening letters started arriving at work, emails and texts from numbers that didn’t trace anywhere. My flat didn’t feel safe anymore, nowhere did.”
She blew out a slow breath, her face tight.
“I stopped sleeping, and basically lived at the office. I thought if I caught them, it would all stop.” Her jaw flexed, once. “One night, I came home late after a long shift. I was dead on my feet, my head was pounding,stomach empty, I was totally fucked. All I could think about was a hot shower and sleep. I didn’t even notice the latch was off. I just turned the key and stepped inside. There were six of them. Waiting in the dark, no masks, or weapons drawn. Just standing there, calm, like I was the one intruding.”
Eiran didn’t move, but his hands had gone perfectly still.
