Page 59 of Throne of Dreams
“It’s just as I said before, I—”
“Cut the bullshit.” Tiernan poured them each another shot.
“Alright.” Shay finished it without question, then dropped onto one of the chairs across from Tiernan’s desk. He propped his ankle up on his knee and his grip on the leather arms of the chair was so strong, his knuckles whitened. “Garvan wants her.”
Tiernan’s blood turned to ice in his veins. The darkness inside him stirred to life, growling, ready to seek and destroy. Like hell he’d let that prick of a prince have her. He grabbed the decanter and poured Shay another shot.
“Have you come to negotiate, then?”
“As if I’d waste my time,” Shay scoffed. He inspected his nails and ran his tongue along his teeth. Then he swirled his whiskey once before taking another slow sip. “He’s planning something. I know he’s been working with Parisa, and they’ve been speaking to one another regularly, but he’s shut me out of those conversations. I hate to say it’s due to lack of trust because I sincerely doubt it, but I imagine it has more to do with the fact that Garvan thinks me incompetent.”
In the distance, thunder rumbled, but Tiernan kept it at bay. He inclined his head, calculating the fae male across from him. “Are you expecting me to believe you’re no longer in your brother’s confidence?”
“I am…” Shay began, like he was tossing the idea around, “and I’m not.”
“What the fuck does that mean?”
At Tiernan’s fierce tone, Shay stood, matching him. “It means Garvan is a bastard and I want no part in what he’s doing.”
“But you don’t want him to cut you off,” Tiernan finished for him, eyeing his empty shot glass.
Shay’s arms spread wide, palms up. “Can you blame me?”
He couldn’t, but he didn’t say as much. If Shay spoke out against Garvan, he’d have a target on his back and a bounty on his head.
A dull ache formed at Tiernan’s temples. “Why are you really here, Shay?”
“I don’t want anything to happen to her.”
“Bullshit.”
“No.”When Shay spoke, it was in earnest and laced with vehemence. His hands coiled into fists as his side and his magic—death magic—swirled around him, permeating the air with the earthy scent of damp leaves and decay. “Something happened during the Autumn Ceilie. Yes, Garvan dropped her from the fucking sky because he’s an asshole, but Icaughther. I wasn’t going to hurt her. I couldn’t. You think us similar, but I am not my brother. When she asked me to put her down, I heard a voice in my mind.”
Shay’s gaze sought the floor and when he looked up again, his eyes were bright with the blaze of loyalty. “My mother’s voice.”
Tiernan didn’t want to believe him, but he recognized that loss and related to it all too well. There were times he heard his own mother as well. She whispered to him, called to him, and guided him. But whereas Tiernan’s mother had been taken from him, Shay’s mother had abandoned him. She’d left him and all she loved behind…to save Maeve’s life.
“What did she say,” Tiernan asked quietly, “your mother?”
Shay’s angular features were tight. His brow drawn. But he held Tiernan’s gaze when he said, “Protect her.”
Interesting. “And that’s why you’re here?”
“Yes.” The High Prince’s shoulders dropped, and it was then Tiernan saw the lines of fatigue pulling at him, the way the weight of exhaustion fell across him like a burden. “I know he’s up to something, but there’s only so much I can ask without appearing overly interested in politics.” Shay flicked the cuffs of his coat and straightened to his full height. “Which, as I’m sure you’re aware, is not really my thing.”
Tiernan dipped his head in acknowledgement. “I would agree, yes.”
“Garvan hasn’t always been a dickhead, but it’s worse now. He’s turning on our own people. I mean, he’s taken to hunting merrows, skinning them, and selling their scales. They’re citizens of our own Court and he’s stalking them.” He pointed to Tiernan, not accusingly, but more in a general vagueness. “You saw how out of control the Autumn Ceilie was…it never used to be like that. Not when my parents ruled.”
Indeed. Tiernan remembered it well, though not for the reasons Shay thought.
He remembered watching Rowan sneak Maeve behind a stone wall covered in overgrowth and moss. He remembered them reemerging with her coated in the scent of Rowan’s lust, her eyes glazed, her cheeks flushed, and there hadn’t been a damn thing he could do about it. He remembered watching her cry when he used his power to take control of her body and then forced her to perform a mating dance in a last-ditch effort to keep Fearghal away from her.
But it hadn’t been enough.
The butcher fae had gotten his hands on her anyway.
Tiernan’s jaw ticked, and he kept a stranglehold on his emotions. “And you don’t agree with Garvan’s ways?”
