Page 82 of The Pirate Queen

“I don’t want to go! You can’t make me!” Merrick, always stubborn.

“Ssshhh. You’ll wake the dead,” Grace says, then thinks she might cry now that she’s finally home, in the place she loves most.

It’s been no more than a week but her children have grown like weeds. Taller and rangier. Eóin, so like her own father. And Margaret so like herself. It amazes her, still, whenever she sees them again after any length of time. Only Merrick looks like his father’s people. Such an O’Flaherty—all wiry and cunning, even though he is barely ten—that she wonders how he came from her at all. Had she not carried and born him, she would never believe it. He’s looking at her, his face framed by light from the nearest lantern, and those dark eyes remind her so much of her husband’s that she winces. She is not prepared for this.

Their father is dead.

And she must be the one to tell them.

Grace pulls them tighter. Inhales the scent of Margaret’s soap and Merrick’s skin, like a wet puppy, all boyish and sweaty. And Eóin? He smells of leather and bread and ashes, like he’s been at the ovens with Cook all day. He smells like a man.

Grace clears her throat. “I—”

“Gráinne.”

She scowls. “Gutty. Please. I need—”

“Your father.”

“Yes. I do need him. But not for this. I need to tell my children—”

“Gráinne.” It is the first time that she has ever heard her name spoken like an order from him. Look at me, it demands. And she does. “Your father is very ill. And if you want to speak with him again”—Gutty hesitates—“ever again, you need to come with me right now.”

“I am dying, bird.”

Eóin O’Malley, Chief of the Name, husband and father and grandfather, is sitting up in the big canopied bed that he has shared with Maeve since he brought her to this tower house almost forty years ago. And there is Gráinne, looking stricken as she approaches.

“Da,” she says, her voice cracking.

He swats at the word as though it’s some bothersome midge. “Was bound to happen, wasn’t it?”

“No.” She shakes her head. “Never. Not to you.”

Eóin has always known he would die. One day. But he only accepted that fact in theory. He knows that time steals everything, but death had belonged to some distant future. He’d thought himself more likely to die on a raid with a sword in his hand or while confiscating an English vessel at sea. Yet here he is, dying for no good reason at all. Betrayed by his own body. He is bent and thin now, brow beaded with sweat and chest working too hard to draw each breath. The indignity of it infuriates him.

He pats the bed. “Come here, bird.”

Gráinne crawls onto the mattress like a child, and he aches at the sight.

“How long have you been sick?” she asks.

“Almost a year.”

The answer from across the room, in a chair beside the fire. Maeve. Sounding as if she carries some great weight upon her shoulders. Lines run like cobwebs around her eyes, and her hair has tamed, a dying fire streaked with pale ash. Even now she takes his breath away.

“Mam! I didn’t see you. I’m sorry. I—” Gráinne moves to get off the bed and go embrace her mother.

“Stay with your da.”

Eóin’s dry, cold hand covers hers.

“The fleet,” Eóin says, then coughs. It is a wet gurgling in his chest, a phlegmy weight pulling his lungs inward. He hacks. Swallows. “We need to talk about the fleet.”

“Not now. It can wait.”

Again that cough, harder now. “There is no time, bird. The fleet must go to you.”

“Niamh?”