Page 6 of Keldori By Daybreak

But he would.

He’d killed Orla’s mother—his own sister. He’d been ready to kill Orla, too, but Orla still couldn’t reconcile the monster her uncle was with the man who’d loved her like a daughter.

“He can’t,” Ciarán murmured. Orla gave him a wary look. “I won’t let him.”

The tension in her brow loosened as I felt mine furrow.

“What about you all?” I asked. “He knows your names. Why doesn’t he summon any of us and feed us all to rotsbane?”

“But he doesn’t know our names,” Sorcha said simply.

“He knows some of them. Ciarán Grimguard—”

“Grimguard is a title,” Sorcha clipped. “In Skalterra, we keep our true names secret because of the power they hold.”

“Oh.”

“Enough of this! To bed!” Aoife forced authority into her tone and batted Sorcha around her gray fly-aways to usher her towards the door. “We’ve got work to do as soon as the sun sets. Best to rest up. You too, Lady Quill.”

Orla’s reaction to the title was a fraction delayed. She still wasn’t used to it. I understood the feeling all too well.

“Right.” She turned to retreat after the women with her eyes still downcast.

“Orla?” I said. She turned back to me, eyes wide. “It’s okay. You don’t need to worry. We’ll talk when we wake up, alright?”

She nodded, and then disappeared after Sorcha and Aoife into the hall. I took a moment, relishing the dark and quiet of my room now that the others had finally left me alone, and I fell back against my pillows as forcefully as my ailing ribs would allow.

We had a plan. Kind of. Find a Lyrian. Get to Keldori. Make everything normal again. Gams would be angry with me, but it would be better than her being dead. The others didn’t need to know her actual orders were to let her get taken out by a volcano.

“What are you hiding, Blue?”

I yelped in panic and then in pain as I bolted upright again. Ciarán stepped out of where he’d been lurking in my bedroom’s corner.

“You’re an absolute ghoul,” I seethed. “You know that, right?”

The dim glow of his irises offered the only light in the room, and gentle shadows rolled and shifted over my quilts as he approached my bedside.

“You lied to Sorcha.”

I hoped his orange light hid the blush that rose in my cheeks.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I grunted.

He reached around my shoulders to help me lie back against my pillows, and the pain in my ribs forced me to comply.

At least half of them were broken to some degree according to Sorcha, splintered after releasing too much magick at once. Even with her skills in healing, she said it would take weeks before they mended properly.

And then there were the ulcers, but those were getting better. I hadn’t vomited blood since first waking up in our hide-out a week ago, but everything still upset my stomach. Food, water, the way Ciarán was staring at me with those glowing orange irises set against dark sclera—it all made me want to vomit.

“You know you can’t keep secrets from me, Blue.” Ciarán sat down on the edge of my bed, and Jonquil rose from her resting place in the folds of my quilts to pad into his lap, purring. “I’ve been in your head. I’ve seen how you work.”

“Like you’ve been in my head all week without telling me?” I accused.

“Do you want me to keep Ferrin out or not?”

“We don’t know that he’ll try.”

“He has. Twice.”