“One moment.” I cupped his face in my hands and forced his head back toward mine. “We need to move Drayce into the Palace of Bóinne. Can you see through that darkness?”
He nodded.
“Will you take us?”
He nodded again.
“Thank you.” I squeezed my eyes shut and rested my head against his warm muzzle. It was probably my imagination, but gentle whiskers tickled my cheeks. His warm breath washed over me, and my muscles loosened with relief.
Enbarr drew back from our embrace with a snort I interpreted as a demand to hurry up and save Drayce. I turned to Aengus, who stared at me as though I’d just had a conversation with a specter.
“Can you saddle a horse?” I asked him.
He narrowed his eyes. “You don’t expect that—”
Enbarr lunged at him with a blood-chilling screech that sent the guards racing toward the carriage door.
“Alright!” Aengus backed away. “We’ll untether the capall and get the skeleton to carry us through the darkness.”
Chapter 11
I returned to the carriage, my spirits soaring at the prospect of Enbarr taking us to the Palace of Bóinne. Rosalind stepped after me and guided me to the royal suite, where Drayce continued to lie within the white sheets. My heart ached, my eyes grew heavy, and every fiber of my being pulled at me to fall asleep at his side.
Apprehension tingled across my nerve endings as though they were crawling with gnats. Nessa was right. The curse became stronger the closer we got to the Summer Court. Without meaning to, I edged across the suite’s dining area, but the trickling of water caught my attention before I reached the bed.
“What’s that?” I turned around.
Rosalind stood at a cupboard that contained a basin and a spigot that poured warm, rose-scented water. “You’re covered in mud.” She turned off the stream, extracted the bowl with both hands, and placed it on the small dining table. “Let’s get rid of it before you meet the Dagda.”
I lowered myself into the dining chair and stared at the pink and white rose petals floating on the water’s surface. “Did you accompany Queen Pressyne on her journeys?”
She dipped the edge of a washcloth in the bowl, and dabbed at the side of my neck. “We were seldom parted, Your Majesty. I was always at your grandmother’s side until Princess Melusina returned from the mist.”
“What happened?”
Rosalind rinsed the mud off the washcloth and sighed. “Her Majesty wasn’t the same after we banished the Fomorians.”
My brows drew together. “But faeries were their slaves.”
“Her Majesty served as King Balor’s concubine and bore him a daughter.” Rosalind lifted my hair and wiped the mud off the back of my neck. “A thousand people, including Queen Pressyne, volunteered to sacrifice their lives to send the Fomorians to the realm of the gods, but the enchantment took the infant princess instead of her.”
I glanced at the other side of the suite, my heart pining for Drayce. This was the story he told Queen Melusina when he disguised himself as the gancanagh.
The carriage lurched forward, sending the water bowl skidding across the table. Rosalind caught it and dipped the washcloth back into the warm water. “When Princess Melusina returned from the mist, Queen Pressyne wouldn’t listen to Osmos’s warnings that her intentions were malevolent. Even when Her Majesty saw the monster her daughter had become, she still ignored her wickedness.”
“What do you mean?” I stared out of the window, my stomach tightening as the carriage moved from the sun-drenched field into the shadows.
Rosalind hesitated, her throat tightening. She tore her gaze away from the window and wrung out the cloth. “High faeries don’t feed on humans, but Princess Melusina kept druids locked in her chamber.” Her lips tightened. “We all knew what she was doing to them. And when her offspring always disappeared and were never mourned or buried, it was obvious to anyone that she was more fomorian than fae.”
“The queen let her continue living?” I asked.
“Her Majesty was blinded to her daughter’s evil,” Rosalind said, her voice mournful.
The carriage sloped toward the huge wall of black, and a creeping sense of dread overtook my senses. My first and last time of visiting the Summer Court had been with Drayce, and I had slept through most of it in his arms.
I turned my gaze to the end of the room, and my spirits plummeted with a mix of longing and drowsiness. Five minutes. If I lay at his side for five minutes, I wouldn’t feel quite so bad.
“Rosalind,” I whispered.
“Yes, Your Majesty?” she replied.
“The curse is calling at me to sleep.”
She dropped the washcloth into the water, reached for the seeing-mirror on the table, and flinched, snatching back her hand. “Ouch.”
I raised my head and stared into her panicked, violet eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“It’s hot.” She pulled the washcloth out of the water and placed it on top of the glass. It sizzled with the contact, making her rear back. “Nessa needs to see this.”
Fatigue pulled at my senses. I gave her an absent nod and dipped my head. When I opened my eyes, I stood within knee-high moss, staring at four splintered trunks surrounding a collapsed bed of moss consumed by brambles. Drayce no longer stood by the window, and the door lay broken in two pieces.
I dashed out of the room into a large chamber where a tall, dark figure sat on a golden throne whose back stretched seven feet high. A doe with bright, yellow ears slumbered at his feet with her head on his lap, and the figure’s long, spindly fingers stroked her head.
“Who are you?” I asked, already suspecting the answer.
As he stood, the doe slid off his lap, and opened eyes that shone like cut emeralds. The figure’s limbs stretched inhumanly long like the stilted legs of a crane. His arm unfurled toward me like lengthening shadows.
“Neara Cruachan,” he rasped in a voice unused to speech. “Welcome—”
“Your Majesty!” Rosalind
