The house of Liam the Protector reflected the man. Set between the hard rise of a mountain and the meandering dance of a stream, it was square and practical and spare. It wasn’t that it was badly made or miserly, just the space of a man who put no store in comfort. Orla took one look at it and wondered what she was supposed to do with it.
“You’re to be presented to the king tonight at the banquet,” Liam said, setting down his sword and dagger on the bare wood table in his front room. There weren’t even any rugs on the floor. “One of the women will bring the rest of your clothing. Since you will not be given your own raiment or stones until Eibhear names them, you will remain in the color you wear.”
“Eibhear?” she asked, standing flat-footed in the doorway and feeling a strong lack of welcome within these walls.
Liam stopped where he was ladling himself out some water. “The Stone Keeper.”
Orla couldn’t help but laugh, thinking of the fussy little creature who had saved her from consummating her marriage in public. “Him? Named ‘strong as a bear’? Sure, the goddess has a sense of humor.”
Liam turned on her. “The god. The Dubhlainn Sidhe follow Lugh. You will also.”
Orla bit her tongue. “He’s that jealous of his power he can’t acknowledge the creation of the goddess?”
“He has no need of her, as we don’t.”
Orla shook her head. “Well, sure, isn’t that spoken like a man? And without the female, who would do the birthin’, I’d like to know? It’s a sure thing no man would.”
Liam’s frown was as mighty as his shoulders. “Don’t be spouting such blasphemy beyond these walls, woman. It would be sore resented.”
Orla raised an eyebrow. “More resented than it is inside them?”
Liam straightened and closed his eyes, as if praying for patience. “It’s going to be a long life if we can’t agree.”
“It’ll be a sure sight longer if you can’t compromise. Faith, have you so soon forgotten the part about how I’m of your clan and you’re of mine? Did it mean nothing to you?”
He let loose an inelegant snort. “By the great stones of Cúchulainn, you don’t believe that drivel, do you?”
Orla fought for patience. Was this what the minutes of her life would amount to, then? Bickering over every word she uttered?
“Give me enough room to breathe, Liam the Protector, and I’ll do the same for you.”
He lifted an imperious eyebrow. “You’ll do nothing for me, woman, but cook and clean and be available for the convenience of my cock. Are we clear on that?”
Immediately images exploded in her head: the hot, carnal touch of him back in the little hall. The delicious pain of fullness when he drove into her. Goddess, he could coerce a woman into surrender, so he could.
But she saw the same images reach him, too. His eyes darkened. His pupils flared, even as he stood before her, tight-lipped and silent.
So even though her own skin skittered with the memories, she slowly straightened, her shoulders back, her head high. Sure, he didn’t need to know she was sweating with the sudden heat—and more so with the fear of her next move. Would he take away even the lovemaking if she challenged him?
Ah, well, there was nothing for it but to find out.
“I’ll be and do what the goddess wants of me,” she said in her most regal tones. “When I have the time for your little friend Eibhear, we’ll know just what that is, then, won’t we?”
“What you were wasn’t enough?”
Ah, it was all-out war, then.
“What I was, was criminally naive. Sure, didn’t I let an enemy through my gates and count on his honor to protect me?”
He flinched as if she’d struck him. “I’m thinking we might not want to be discussing honor when the last time you saw me it was to ask me to drive a mortal to madness for you, princess.”
Orla lost her breath entirely. Ah, he knew where to hurt, this beautiful man did. “And we were both wrong,” she said. “He didn’t have the protection for it, and it hurt him.”
“I know it well, lady. I also know that if you’d been in my place, you wouldn’t have wasted your chance at the Coilin Stone, either. You think my people don’t deserve it, after the site of the Dearann Stone has been hidden this long while?”
“I think you were inexcusably lax to lose the thing in the first place.”
He leaned over her, as if his size would add weight to his argument. “I’d say that the jury still has to be out, sure, on just what word should be used in the case of the Dearann Stone. How are we to know, then, that the Tuatha didn’t steal it themselves and aren’t keeping it hidden away where its rightful owners can’t find it?”
It was Orla’s turn to do the eyebrow trick. “We know because if the Tuatha had had both stones, sure, we would have wiped you out of existence long since. Once we get it back when you’ve failed, though, we might just be kind enough to let you see it.”
He laughed again and backed up. “You really think you’ll find it when generations of Dubhlainn couldn’t?”
She laughed right back. “I think you couldn’t find the door if the knob’s in front of you.”
He leaned even closer. “Sure, I can find your cunny with my cock.”
“Only if it’s here to find. Keep speaking to a princess of the realm that way, little man, and you won’t even have a sock to shove that thing into.”
His laugh was full-throated. “‘Little man’?” he demanded, incredulous. “You screeched like a mare in heat when you took me inside you, woman.”
“Just as you did when you did the driving. When I say ‘little,’ I speak of your spirit, little man, not your various appendages. I’ll blame that elven sire of yours for those. It certainly couldn’t have been your fairy mother.”
“You’ll never speak ill of my mother.”
“As you won’t mine. And that includes accusing her of the petty theft of your stone. Are we agreed?”
“Great gods of thunder,” a lilting voice interrupted from the doorway. “Agree on something before the entire village shows up outside for the entertainment. I could hear you all the way to the borderlands.”
Orla turned to find Eibhear himself leaning his slim, puce-clad hip against the doorway, and wasn’t he grinning like a fool?
“You feel you have the right to trespass on private conversations now, Eibhear?” Liam demanded.
Eibhear’s laugh was tinkly and light. “Well, now, I’d say no, if the conversations were actually private. But your uncle the king asked me to break up the noise down here so he could get some work done.”
For a second Liam just stood still, as if struggling for control. Then he grabbed his long gray cape and stalked to the door. “Grand,” he snapped. “You keep her company if you want to. I’m full to my teeth with her.”
Eibhear gracefully stepped aside. “From the looks of the fireworks over the ceremonial hall,” he muttered, “I’d say it was the other way around, altogether, wasn’t it?”
Liam screeched to a halt, mere inches from the smaller fairy, and bent over him. “And that’ll be the last of our business you’ll be involved in, Eibhear son of Bran.”
Eibhear just grinned. “Not if you can’t find a way to lower your voice when you share love words with your wife, it won’t.”
Liam evidently had nothing to say to that. He straightened and swirled his cape around his shoulder, barely missing Eibhear’s nose. “I’ll be with the Coimirceoiri,” he literally growled. “And won’t guarding the borders be a better way to spend the day than dancing with the likes of you two?”
“Borders?” Orla retorted, her temper lighting her fear. “What do you bother with the border for? Am I not enough of a payment for peace between us?”
Liam stopped stone cold. “And you think you’re the only enemy that prowls the edges of our lands, do you?”
She blinked. “Aren’t we?”
His smile was almost feral, and it frightened her all over again. “Ah, little fairy princess. Don’t you have a lot to learn, now, about being a Dubhlainn Sidhe?”
“Well, she won’t be learning it if you’re out prancing among the high mountains,” Eibhear said.
“You teach her, Stone Keeper. I have real work to do.”
“Ah, sure, you already did the real work, lad. And wasn’t the king fair generous to offer it to you?”
Liam’s nostrils actually flared. But he said not another word, just pushed past the little man and stormed out of the house.
Left behind, all Orla could think was that the very air had left the room with him. That terrible thing returned, the yearning she wanted nothing to do with. It ached in her chest like an infection and robbed her of her breath. It made her watch him as if the mere sight of him were food and drink as he strode down the dusty lane, his stride long and strong, his shadow eating the ground before him.
She would not lose herself to him. She couldn’t afford to. But goddess, it was all she could do to keep her feet where they were. She trembled with the wanting of him. Her body remembered him in all the private places only a fierce, hard man could touch.
Rather than make a fool of herself, she deliberately turned away from the door. She looked around for a comfortable chair, but sure, there wasn’t a one of them. She was reduced to the hard-backed little dining chair by the front window.
“A force of nature is our Liam,” Eibhear said gently as he took up the other chair.
Orla’s laugh sounded sore, even to her. “Well, speaking as the sapling in his way,” she said, rubbing at the bridge of her nose, “I can’t say I appreciate the grandeur of him.”
“Ah, sure you can and all,” Eibhear disagreed with a delicate wave of his beringed hand. “Doesn’t he just take some getting used to?”
“Battle takes some getting used to, little man. Cataclysm. Disaster. He’s beyond me entirely.”
For a second she was greeted with silence. She looked up to see a curiously familiar light in Eibhear’s eyes. Faith, didn’t he have the look of Kieran himself about him?
“Ah,” she said wearily. “You’re going to be after tellin’ me that it’s up to me what I make of this particular disaster, aren’t you?”
“Well, then, there’s one stone you’ve already earned for your rings,” he said gaily. “Sure, don’t you demand the moonstone for the sight, then, girl?”
She closed her eyes. “There’s no sight involved,” she said. “Wasn’t our own seer at this advice long before you?”
He was studying her; she knew the feel of it, even from behind her eyelids.
“What stones would you be wanting to replace your own, then, fairy princess?” he asked.
Finally Orla opened her eyes. “You ask me an unanswerable question, Stone Keeper.”
“Can I ask what happened to the stones you had?”
She looked out into the afternoon, where the rhythms of a fairy village carried on beyond her reach. Gray-clad women gathered by the well. On the green, children sat in a little cluster around a gentle-faced old woman who was obviously telling them stories. A group of men passed on horseback, their black attire well matched to their black steeds, which were fiercer than any fairy horse she’d ever seen. Smoke curled from the little houses, and flowers topped the fences. This place looked so achingly like her own, but just that much different at the same time.
“The colors are so dim here,” she found herself saying. “Does no one wear anything brighter than gray?”
“Maybe that’s the task you’re sent to perform, daughter of Mab. Maybe it’s color you’re bringing to this fairy realm.”
Orla just shook her head, sure he was wrong.
“My stones,” she said, looking now at her empty fingers. Every person outside this house had stones of their own, down to the tiniest children, whose first stones had been bestowed on their naming day. She had nothing.
Nothing.
“Sure, didn’t I lose them by making the fatal mistake of letting your protector prince into my realm in the hopes he’d help me secure my mother’s throne?” she said.
Eibhear stayed still. “There’s nothing a queen resents more than someone after her place, now, is there?” he asked quietly.
“Ah, no,” she said. “I can’t have you speak so against her.” Orla smiled. “Sure, she’s a proud one. Wily and sly and terrible in her times. But it wasn’t the trying for the throne that condemned me. It was the dishonor I brought my people by torturing a guest at my mother’s court. Worse, it was the death I brought to my clan and the forfeiting of our great Coilin Stone that cost me my place. Charges I deserved altogether, I’d think. Wouldn’t you?”
“Aye,” he said honestly. “I’d have to say I would.”
She nodded, her gaze on the sky outside, her attention on her loss. “I was the leannan sidhe. It was my goddess gift and my purpose. And, oh, Stone Keeper, wasn’t I the best, a legend among mortal men, proud of my own place and secure in it. Now, though, my sins have cost me all I know.”
“You wore citrine and smoky quartz, then?” he asked.
She could do no more than nod, the missing gems throbbing on her empty fingers.
He sat silent a bit longer. “No,” he said. “They’re your stones no longer, fairy princess.”
And didn’t she know that better than anyone? It was a fair chore to keep her voice calm and even. “And how do I find new ones, Eibhear?”
“Ah, well, I’m afraid that’s a question I’m not allowed to answer, princess. Isn’t it my job to be watching only?”
Orla couldn’t help but nod her head. “I know it, Eibhear. My sister Sorcha is Stone Keeper of the Tuatha. Haven’t I grown with her responsibilities alongside me all my life?”
“Then you know I can do nothing to help,” he said, reaching out to lay a hand across hers.
It was the first sign of acceptance she’d received in this terrible place. Didn’t it almost bring her to tears, when the last thing she could allow in her life here were tears? Still, she couldn’t bring herself to take her hand back.
“I’ve gone on alone before, Eibhear. I know the way of it.”
“Well, then, for now you must keep the brown, Orla, and the empty fingers, although through my office I can gift you with plain silver to keep the place of the stones, if you’d like.”
“I thank you. I’ve not been without my rings in my memory.”
He nodded, growing brisk as he retrieved his hand and stood. “Orla,” he said, and smiled. “As misnamed as I am, aren’t you the same, girl? ‘Strength of a bear’ indeed.”
Orla followed to her feet, offering a wry smile of her own. “Aye, and my name means golden lady. Faith, the only thing golden about me was my stones, wasn’t it?”
Eibhear tilted his head, his eyes mischievous. “Ah, now, I’m not so sure. Black-headed and green-eyed you might be, but I’m thinking there’s gold in there somewhere, Orla, Mab’s daughter.”
Again she fought the sudden tightness in her throat. “We’ll have to be after seeing about that, now, won’t we, little man?”
Offering his arm as if escorting her to the throne, Eibhear smiled. “That we will, Orla. That we will.”
And the two of them walked out the door to meet the village.
He had to get away from her. It was all Liam could think as he stalked through the glen toward the high mountains. He would patrol the wastelands where he could feel the wind against his face and watch the hawks spiral, where he could escape the overwhelming urge to throttle her. To bed her until she screamed again. He would break something with his hands just to hear the splintering of it, instead. He would escape for as long as he could from the disaster his uncle created for him.
A wife.
Gods, even a consort would have been more than he could handle right now, and he was stuck with a lifetime mate. And what a mate she was. Argumentative and proud and hard as penance. But, ah, couldn’t he still smell her? Couldn’t he hear the soft, breathy moans she’d gifted him with as he claimed her lithe, bright body?
She’d humbled him with her hunger. She’d met him toe-to-toe, eye-to-eye, and demanded as much from him as she herself gave. He’d never known such soul-searing heat, not in his long life. It wasn’t that he hadn’t ever enjoyed sex. It was a celebration, after all, a gift and a reward from the god that every fairy cherished.
But no fairy had ever met him with such fury in her eyes. None had left him battered and sated the way Orla, daughter of Mab, had. Not one had tempted him to allow her anything if she would only lie down with him again, or pushed him until he stood mere inches from murdering her.
His wife.
If only they could leave it at the sex and jettison the rest. He didn’t want her in his house, in his head, in his heart. There was no room. Not now. Not ever.
“Well, and why aren’t you home enjoying the love-lights of your new wife?” he heard behind him.
He didn’t even break stride. The last thing he needed right now was the cajoling of friends. “Why aren’t you patrolling the eastern borders, then, Faolán?”
“I’ve just come in,” his friend said, stepping up alongside him. “It’s quiet, but by the shriveled balls of old Aengus, I’m feeling itchy out there lately.”
A redheaded fairy who stood several inches shorter than Liam, Faolán had a voice that could soothe a mad bull, and a grin that was guaranteed to court a lady. He was also Liam’s Captain of the Coimirceoiri, and his best eyes at the front.
“Aye, me too,” Liam admitted. “That’s why the patrols have been stepped up.”
Faolán flashed him a brash grin. “Faith, I thought it was because you thought we were all bored with the Coilin Stone safe in the Treasury and all. Which reminds me, now. Have you seen Cian about lately?”
“Keeper of the Treasury Keys?” Liam thought back to the moment he’d handed the Coilin Stone to the king. Cian had been standing behind him, impatient to lock the stone away where it could be safe.
Faolán nodded. “The keys are in their place. But sure, the key keeper isn’t.”
Liam snorted. “Faith, he’s forever sulking about something. He’s probably run back to his mother. Set somebody to looking, anyway.”
“I already did. For now, don’t I have far more important matters to address?”
Liam looked over to see him lift a hurling stick off his shoulder. “Is it practice you’re off to, then?”
“If you’re not too exhausted from all your fireworks,” Faolán said, “we’ll be at the great field.”
Hurling. Exactly what he needed right now, a bit of mindless violence and enough sport to work out his devils. By the time they were finished, he would have just enough time to collect his wife for the banquet.
“My stick is at the house,” he said.
“And you’re too afraid to go back and get it?”
For the first time since he’d gotten the dire news of his punishment, Liam managed a smile. “Wouldn’t you be?”
Faolán slapped him on the back and turned them for the hurling field. “Ah, well, I’m sure there’s someone with an extra stick for you. Since you haven’t worked off your bad humors yet and all.”
“With that woman?” Liam asked as if he actually were amused. “Faith, she’d argue about the position of the sun. There’s no rest in that one.”
Astonishment. That was what was in her. Awe. The kind of raw sensuality that brought strong men to their knees.
“She can sure take the eye of a man, though,” Faolán said, he who had been at the forefront of Liam’s honor guard that morning. “You know what she reminds me of?”
“Full-pitched battle?”
Faolán laughed. “Ah, no, man. She reminds me of a bird, all bright plumage and fluttering wings. She makes you want to hold her in your hand and stroke her, you know?”
He was right, of course. Liam had seen it right away, even in the darkness when he’d first met her at the edge of a storm, and he wondered now what had happened to the women of his own clan that this one fairy should stand out so with her raven hair and hot green eyes.
An exotic bird, and Liam knew the exact one Faolán meant. They’d come across it on one of their forays into the other realms on a mission to maintain peace. It was in the world of the yellow sky, and the bird had landed on a blue branch right in front of them, singing its heart out. Its wings had been so iridescent you couldn’t quite tell the colors between emerald and sapphire and amethyst, and its song seduced with a rare, harsh beauty. A feathered jewel a man wanted to possess with everything he had.
On that plane, capturing such a creature was a crime and carried a punishment of madness. He wasn’t so sure it wasn’t the punishment on this plane, too.
“Well, now, the problem with this bird,” he said, walking purposefully down the lane, “is that she’ll be after changing everything about me. I’ll get home from hurling, and won’t there be rugs on the floors and curtains at the windows? Lacy, flouncy things a man would destroy with one wrong swipe of his hands.” Wouldn’t she move right in and push him to the periphery in his own home? And if she met him again as she had in that little hall, sweat-sheened and panting, he might just let her get away with it.
“And have you never had such comfort before?” Faolán asked.
“Sure, my consorts knew better.”
His consorts. Another topic Liam couldn’t address right now, another weight piled on his sore heart, and didn’t Faolán know that, too?
The redhead clapped Liam on the back and handed over his own hurling stick.
“Ah, well, at least she’ll probably be able to cook better than you.”
“She’s a royal princess,” Liam snorted, weighing the beautifully balanced ash stick in his hands. “You think she can so much as recognize an egg in its shell?”
“I think she can tell the difference between venison and pudding.”
Liam shot his friend a dark look. So his brief foray as a housekeeper had been a disaster. It still wasn’t enough of a reason to wish a wife on him.
“It’s a wager, then. If she can manage a full meal within the week, I’ll offer up my own hurling stick,” he said.
Faolán actually stumbled to a halt. “The one handed down from Cúchulainn himself?”
Cúchulainn, greatest of hurling champions. And there were few things a fairy honored more than a great hurler.
Liam looked into the afternoon sun. “Ah, sure, if she takes over my life, I won’t have time for the game, anyway, will I?”
Faolán’s smile was wolfish. “You’ll be after knitting doilies.”
“Baking cookies.”
“Leaving the milk out for the cat.”
Decorating the night with red and gold sparks. He would make sure of it. If she took over his life, he would be sure to take over hers, as well, and he wasn’t sure he would ever let her out of bed.
Unless they made use of the stream. Or the dining table. Or the rocky ledges of Sliabh Corcra.
He didn’t realize he was smiling until Faolán smacked him again. “Ah sure, it seems your penance isn’t as bad as all that, now is it?”
“Oh, it’s bad,” Liam disagreed. “It’s the worst.”
But couldn’t he at least enjoy the one benefit of it while surviving the cost?
He almost turned back from the hurling field. It was only Faolán’s arm guiding him in the right direction that kept him going.
Later. Maybe later. After he figured out how to tame her.
Faolán laughed as if he’d heard the thought.
Dusk was falling. Fireflies danced among the tiny sprites who dwelt within the leaves of the trees. The dryads who inhabited the great oaks whispered to each other, and the children murmured sleepily from the little houses. The moon had risen and peeked her silver face from behind one of the sharp mountains that made up this place.
Orla didn’t like those mountains. They were too harsh, too unrelenting. Too sharp and bare, with no softness to them anywhere, their shadows consuming the land. Much like her new husband.
He’d left the little house early in the afternoon and not returned since. And now she stood alone in the doorway of that house she didn’t really belong to, watching the people making their way toward the great hall where the banquet would commence soon, and there was no one to escort her.
Where was he, then, this husband of hers? Why hadn’t he come to escort her to meet his king? And if he didn’t arrive, what was she to do? She’d walked around a bit that afternoon with Eibhear, but he’d gone long since to see to the preparation for a new babe’s naming day, leaving her in her brown robes and plain silver rings to wait for her husband.
Who hadn’t come.
Just how long was she supposed to wait? Was there anyone she could call on to escort her, instead? Who would welcome her to this most cherished ritual in the fairy world?
Not the women she’d met already, sure. To a person, they’d watched her with wary eyes and still tongues, obviously waiting for her to betray her unworthiness to be among them. Pale wraiths who inhabited the long shadows of this place, they’d mistrusted her for walking in the sun. Walking in the sun, she hadn’t understood their preference for the dark.
The bean tighe had welcomed her, true. A tall, dignified woman with cautious eyes and upswept silver hair, she’d been nothing like the healer in Orla’s own plane. Her very own Bea had been the most untidy, unlovely little being the goddess had ever put on a plane, some kind of cross between a gremlin and a brownie, with pointed ears and sparse brown hair. But she’d had the dearest, most whimsical eyes a child had ever seen.
It had been Bea who’d dispensed comfort when Mab’s daughters had needed it. Bea who’d dispensed the secrets only a woman would know or need. This healer of the Dubhlainn Sidhe—who was worthy, sure and competent, Orla made no mistake—this bean tighe wouldn’t be the one to take the fear of a woman’s changes from a child. Orla couldn’t imagine sending anyone to her who needed comfort.
But the woman had offered the only welcome Orla had received besides that of the capricious Eibhear. Other than those two, the Dubhlainn Sidhe had made it a point to stay away from Orla’s house.
Liam’s house. It was what each of them had called it, as if Orla had no rights to it. She stood in its doorway now, more alone than she’d ever felt in her life, and wondering how long she should wait for the husband who obviously wouldn’t come. Wondering exactly how she should present herself to a strange king’s court without the escort he’d specifically chosen for her.
It had been a little while since she’d seen the last fairy flitter toward the great hall at the edge of the trees, and Orla was still torn. Which would be more humiliating—showing up alone, or not at all? Pretending her husband had kept her late, or disdaining his absence? And what if he were in the hall before her, conveniently “forgetting” to come get her?
Well, there was only one way to find out.
She’d always thought she had courage to spare. After all, she’d conquered innumerable men. She’d led the great fairy archers into battle, with only her elven armor and her strength to protect her. But the effort to take the first step out of her house was almost too much for her.
She did it. One foot, then another, clad in soft brown shoes, beneath a dun-brown dress, the color muting her into invisibility. Making her a brown wren. Worse, making her feel like a brown wren, and sure, what was she to do with that?
Only keep walking.
She’d made it halfway to the edge of the little village before she heard it, a splashing and a curse coming from the stream. So focused was she on her progress that she almost didn’t stop. But then she recognized that voice and turned.
She froze.
He was naked. Stepping up onto the bank of the tumbling stream, he was wet, shaking his head so his hair tumbled in damp curls at the edge of his jaw. He was gleaming in the fading light, and the scar on his chest stood out like a brand. Suddenly Orla couldn’t breathe. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t believe it when she saw his cock stir and rise.
Finally she looked up to see him watching her just as closely.
“You’re going somewhere, then, wife?” he asked, his voice as dark as the shadows that collected along the edges of the stream.
“I’m accepting the invitation the king offered me, husband. I decided that since every other fairy in the realm had already left, rather than insult my host, I should go, as well.”
“Even if it meant insulting your husband by showing up alone?”
“And how was I to know he was still coming to escort me?”
For a moment it looked as if Liam might respond with an attack. Orla could even see him rise to the balls of his feet. Instead, he turned abruptly and yanked on his clothing.
“I was just washing off the men’s business I’d been about this day,” he said. “Working to protect my new wife from threats she doesn’t see.”
“Threats I’m sure she’d like to learn about—if her husband would stay near long enough to inform her.”
Clad again in his deep, dramatic black, her husband stalked over to her and grabbed her by the elbow. “When the time is right. For now, the king awaits.”
Orla had no choice but to walk with him. “Indeed? Had I but known…”
“Don’t push me, wife. I’ve accepted this marriage. I will participate. When we get home tonight, I’ll even pledge my devotion by setting off a shower of sex-lights that will keep the village awake. Until then, try to behave.”
I’m not ready, she couldn’t help but think. Stop here. Reassure me that everything will be all right. That somewhere I’ll find acceptance, even if not comfort, in this cold, dreary world. Promise me I won’t live in regret the rest of my days. Lie if you have to, but promise, just for tonight.
But Liam, not hearing her thoughts, remained silent, and Orla had to find her own courage as she walked to meet his king.