Page 66 of The Edge of Darkness

She slowly rose, and the bushes nearest to where she stood, wilted.

Silas snapped his wings behind him, which broke the awkward tension. “If you don’t mind, I’ll have a word with my sister.” He stepped past us.

Niall took my hand and led me out of the garden, back toward the cottage. Roirdan followed, making sure not to touch anything on his way out.

Behind us, I could hear Nivelle’s voice rise and fall alongside Silas’s.

“Why didn’t you tell us your plan?” Roirdan asked Niall.

“Because I needed to feel Torin out and choose the right moment to make the offer. I didn’t want anyone getting desperate and saying something before me.” He cast Roirdan a pointed look over his shoulder. “And patience is something you don’t like to practice, my friend.”

The commander chuckled. “Fuck off. No one has time for patience.”

“Those who are smart do. You should try it sometime.”

Roirdan shook his head and laughed. “Not really my style. I have to commend you though. I didn’t expect her to agree to help at all, but why ask to conscript the Dionachs first and not the witches?”

“If I’d begun by asking for the witches, she would have denied me from the start. I figured if I played my hand right and asked for something else, she would offer the witches like she did before.”

“And thus we’d gain both,” Roirdan thought aloud. “Clever.”

“Torin may pretend that she was too hurt from her last alliance with the fae to ever make that mistake again, but she’s a god. All gods have some level of ambition—be it for good or ill. And if I were her, I’d sure as fuck take any bargain I was offered if it meant getting off these isles.”

I glanced around the space as we walked. In the growing darkness, it was hard to make out the fine details of our surroundings, but the small slice of this illusory forest that Nivelle called home seemed well kept and cared for.

“Nivelle wasn’t going to summon Torin,” I said. “Why?”

“I haven’t quite figured that out yet,” Niall answered. “That’s why I used my power to bypass her.”

“That was rude of you, by the way.” I squeezed his hand.

He squeezed back and grinned. “Desperate measures and all that.”

Roirdan snorted.

“As long as you know what you’re doing,” I said, blowing out a breath as we came to the foot of the stairs to the cottage.

Roirdan looked back at Silas and Nivelle, who were still hashing through their discussion in the garden. “Giving them a place in the mountains . . . You sure you know what you’re doing?”

We all watched the Dionach and the witch for a moment before Niall sighed heavily, and answered. “Are any of us ever sure?”

Some hours later, after Nivelle had glowered around her cottage, packing her things, we set sail back to Anbrya with her in tow.

Once the storms and their clouds were behind us, and only the star-flecked sky flickered above, I decided to try and make conversation with the witch. She hadn’t moved from the corner of the quarterdeck that she’d claimed as hers the moment we boarded the ship. In fact, she hadn’t taken her eyes off the isles, even as they shrunk to black specks on the even darker horizon, then faded from sight.

The males all gave her space, opting to keep their eyes ahead, in the direction of the fae lands, which allowed her and I some privacy. I strode up beside her and folded my arms over the wooden railing. She didn’t acknowledge me, which was no surprise.

“Have you ever left the isles before?” I asked as neutrally as I could, trying to avoid being overly pleasant, hoping she might respond better to a tone similar to her own.

“No,” was all she said.

“Would you like to know what to expect in the fae lands?”

“No.”

I looked sidelong at her. Her hands were folded on the railing, and she stood in perfect stillness, hardly even blinking. After a moment, I tried again, abandoning the previous approach. “I wanted to say thank you for agreeing to come with us and help.”

Her eyes lowered to the waves—the only sign that she was listening. “I’m just following orders.”