Page 19 of Shamrocked
I looked over at the gargoyle sitting on the floor near my paint area. Before I could ask, Warwick fetched him over for me and set him gently on my lap. I felt pretty fucking ridiculous turning a stone statue around so he could see the images on the screen. I felt even stupider when I started talking to him. “Do you recognize it? Is this where you are?”
Warwick whistled soft and low beneath his breath. “That’s a fine piece of magic I pulled, if I do say so myself. If he can hear you, that is.”
“Oh, I think he can hear me just fine. I can’t hear him, though, unless I’m sleeping.”
“So maybe you should take a nap then,” Vivi suggested. “You look like hell. Get some sleep, and we can decide how to proceed next.”
“Thanks a lot,” I gave her a wry grin, but I nodded, my eyes already trying to glue themselves shut. “The next big hurdle is figuring out how to get Aidan on our side.”
Warwick chuckled. “That’s the easy part.”
“Oh really, Pointy Ears?”
He gave me a heavy-lidded smoldering look as he tucked his shoulder length hair back behind his very-not-pointed ears. “Aidan talks a mean game, but I guarantee the thought of me helping you—without him—has been eating him alive.”
I frowned. “I’m not going to deliberately try and make him jealous. That kind of petty shit—”
“No, no, that’s not what I meant,” he broke in. “You’re the treasurekeeper.Histreasurekeeper. Well, theirs, at least.” He looked away a moment, his shoulders tight. “He can’t pretend that he doesn’t know where you are, now. He can’t pretend that he doesn’t need to be by your side. That you don’t need his assistance. Because you do. And it’s his own damned fault that he’s not here helping you. That I’m here in his place… like I said, it’s eating him like a cancer.”
I glanced over at Vivi and she tipped her head to the door, silently asking me if I wanted her to leave. I hesitated a moment, my fingers stroking over the statue in my lap, but then I gave her a slight nod. Her lips curled up and her eyes flashed with amusement, glee, and a whole lot of I-told-you-so. “I’m going to head home for a bit and get some sleep too. Call me when you come up with a plan for busting Aidan’s balls.”
11
My eyes were still gritty and sticky, like I needed to sleep a week, but my brain was firing super-sonic fast. There was so much going on that I didn’t understand. I stood on a precarious ledge over a rushing, dark, freezing-cold river that would suck me down at a moment’s notice.
A river that gleamed like the dark emerald of Warwick’s eyes, even though he didn’t look at me.
“What do you mean, I’mtheirs?” I asked softly, watching his reaction, waiting for him to turn around and face me again.
He tipped his head to the side and lifted his shoulders in an elegant, casual shrug, even though he still refused to look at me. “The treasurekeeper is female. The treasures are male. They’re drawn to her, and only come into their power fully when they’re united with her. In this century, I’m sure you have no difficulty understanding what that generally means.”
Now it was my turn to drop my gaze, in case he dared turn and see my reaction. I studied the gargoyle in my lap, turning him over so I could see his face. The crooked, broken nose. The fierce expression staring up at me. If I closed my eyes, I could hear Doran’s rough growling voice whispering to me. His hands sliding up to cup my face as I pulled him down to me. It’d only been a dream, but it had felt right. Natural. Like my body already knew and recognized him.
When I met the other treasures, I’d felt that same instant physical connection. Not merely physical attraction, exactly, though I was certainly attracted to them as well. It was a sense of belonging and completion, like I’d been missing a part of my soul all my life, and hadn’t even realized it until I found them. I’d dared to squeeze Aidan’s junk and wrapped my palm around Keane’s throat while trying really hard not to lock my mouth over his. Even though I’d just met them—it didn’t seem that way. It felt like I’d always known them. The only thing that had saved Ivarr was the table between us, and the fact that his two friends were closer to me. If he’d been sitting there in Aidan’s place, I would have touched him too.
I didn’t think I’d be able tonottouch him. Any of them. It was like a compulsion. A need to be in their personal space and breathe the same air as them and warm my skin with their heat. All four of them. Gah. I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around it. Let alone five…
Am I actually considering it? Five, even four, men?
Shivering, I bit my lip, wondering what Doran would say if I admitted to feeling the same deep-seated need to touch the flirtatious leprechaun. The only man who was willing to help me find him.
“I’m not helping you to put you at a disadvantage, or to make you feel as though you owe me.” The unusually solemn tone in Warwick’s voice drew my gaze back up to his. At least he was looking at me again, though the corner of his mouth quirked with a wry twist of resignation. “It’s been my pleasure to be at your disposal, and I expect nothing else in return.”
I had to remember that he picked up on my thoughts. It was… disconcerting, to say the least. “Because I’m the treasurekeeper. I get it. You must feel the… pull of magic too.”
“Not at all.” When my eyes flared with surprise, he quickly said, “That is, I feel a pull, aye. And it’s magical. But it has nothing to do with you being the treasurekeeper.”
Skeptical, I searched his face, trying to decide if he was being truthful. The fae were famous for not being able to tell a lie, right? Though in the fairy tales, they usually tiptoed along that line and used it to their advantage. He certainly seemed to be the kind of guy who’d love making Aidan or Doran green with envy.
He chuckled and came closer, though all he did was sit back on the table in front of me. “Well, that’s certainly a bonus I’m not regretting in the slightest, though I do feel a twinge of guilt about making poor Doran jealous, when he’s been imprisoned in stone for so long. Aye, we fae cannot tell a lie, though that doesn’t mean you always hear the unvarnished truth, either. It’s easy to lie with silence or pretty words that are meaningless, and if you want my silence because the truth is too painful, I’ll give it.”
I shook my head. “I don’t want lies, or silence, even if it’s uncomfortable. I’m just trying to wrap my head around what all this means. Are the treasures fae too? Immortal or mortal? Are they reincarnated the same every time? Am I reincarnated? Or am I… me?”
“They can and do die. In fact, they have died the last several times they were reborn. Though that’s not the best word. They’re not born as babies. One moment they’re in Tír na nÓg, the Otherworld, living the life of celebrated heroes who saved the mortal world numerous times over many thousands of years… and the next, they’re here, for a very short time. They come into this world knowing what their destiny is, and aye, that burden has become almost impossible to bear after so many times. They’re fully cognizant of how much they’ve lost and endured every cycle. Those memories are still there, even after a period of rest beyond the veil. In many ways, it would be easier for them to die immediately and return to that haven, rather than toil in your world and wait for a brutal death. In that regard, I admire their valor a great deal, despite Aidan’s reluctance to step in and help you directly. He could have given up and ended it a decade ago, but chose to remain and fight, even if that meant watching you or his brethren die again. Doran has been trapped for centuries now, unable to even return to the Otherworld.”
He reached out and lightly touched the back of my hand resting on the gargoyle. I turned my palm and entwined my fingers with his, and the same familiarity pulsed in me, like a melody that’d been playing in my head, though I couldn’t remember the lyrics.
“You are uniquely Riann Newkirk, mortal through and through. You have whatever memories and magic you pull to you as your destiny unfolds, but you are not reincarnated or reborn as a previous treasurekeeper.”
