They made it into the city, winding their way through the crowds along Kingsway and through Dunmore’s busier streets, before finally reaching Devlin House, close by the palace.
Devlin House had started life as a royal residence under the old dynasty.
King Aodhán the Cruel, vain and wasteful as he was, had built palace after palace during his reign, indulging himself at the kingdom’s expense.
Once that dynasty fell and Diarmuid the Founder set up his capital here in Dunmore, he’d handed those old palaces out to the ministers and generals who’d earned them.
Crown Prince Tadhg’s old residence had been one of the grandest, with sprawling grounds and more space than any one family could use.
Eventually, it passed to his son, King Ruairí, and became Devlin House.
The carriage pulled up at the side gate, where a handful of servants stood waiting, already told they were coming.
Róisín’s mouth pressed into a thin line at the sight of them.
Aisling’s stepmother had sent letter after urgent letter demanding she return, and now that she’d finally arrived, all she’d bothered to send was a steward.
Said one thing, did another.
They might as well have stayed in Ardmore.
Aisling didn’t let any of it touch her.
She stepped down from the carriage and walked straight into the house.
“My lady, you’re home at last!
The lady’s been thinking of nothing else!”
Róisín was already annoyed enough that the words nearly got a response out of her before Bríd’s fingers found her waist and pinched down hard.
She swallowed it, though her face stayed sour.
“Tell the lady I thank her for her concern,” Aisling said, not particularly moved either way.
She went first to her own rooms to wash and change.
The traveling clothes were replaced with a white robe with a crimson collar and wide sleeves, a layered skirt in crimson and green, and an emerald shawl draped over one arm.
Once she was ready, she let the maids lead her to Ashwood Court, her stepmother’s quarters, to pay her respects.
They sat facing each other on low couches, traded a few empty pleasantries, and let the silence settle.
Then her stepmother spoke, her voice cutting cold through the dim room.
“I hear you brought fifty armed soldiers back with you.”
Aisling kept her eyes down, hands folded neatly, back straight, as calm as still water.
“Yes.
There’s been trouble with bandits these past few years.
My grandfather worried for the road and sent an escort to see me safely home.”
She kept her voice even, giving her stepmother nothing to grab hold of.
The woman looked for a crack and found none.
Instead, she studied Aisling.
Her face, Aisling knew, was the kind that drew attention even in a dim room, no matter how plainly she dressed it down.
Her stepmother had once assumed she would be easy enough to manage.
More than a year in this house had taught her otherwise, though she’d never once found the opening she wanted.
Unsatisfied, the woman cleared her throat and put on her most put-upon expression.
“Lord Eamon means well, I’m sure, but this house is already crowded.
There won’t be room for so many soldiers.
You’ll have to send them back.”
Behind Aisling, kneeling to attend her, Róisín’s head snapped up in outrage.
No room?
The place was enormous.
Only three of them lived here, with rooms standing empty enough that the cleaning staff had complained the previous year about ants getting into ones nobody used.
She was doing this on purpose.
Róisín’s hands curled into fists at her sides, furious on Aisling’s behalf.
Back in Ardmore, Aisling’s grandparents had treated her like something precious, granted her every wish, and her cousins had loved her like a true sister.
Since coming back to Dunmore, it had been one obstacle after another from this woman.
Aisling quieted Róisín with a look before lifting her eyes to meet her stepmother’s directly.
Her eyes looked soft as water on the surface, but there was nothing soft underneath.
“If the lady says there’s no room here, I’ll simply find them lodging elsewhere.”
She didn’t argue.
She didn’t so much as raise her voice.
She simply let the words sit there, calm and unhurried, like nothing in the world could shake her.
That left her stepmother without a response for a moment, though she wasn’t ready to let it go.
She still remembered last year, the match she’d arranged for Aisling, broken off before the engagement could even be finalized when word came from Ardmore and the princess was whisked away.
It had left her humiliated in front of half the noblewomen in the city.
Someone had even asked her outright, in company:
“Is it that Lord Eamon doesn’t approve of the man you chose for her?”
Another had said:
“You’re her mother too, surely you have some say in the Princess of Ardmore’s marriage?”
She’d never forgiven either remark.
She composed herself, lifted her chin, and looked down at Aisling with all the authority she could muster.
“You’re seventeen now.
As your mother, it falls to me to see you well married, otherwise people will say I’ve neglected you.”
The concern in her voice was about as real as the affection behind it.
Aisling let nothing show on her face.
Only the warmth slowly drained out of her eyes as she held her stepmother’s gaze.
“You needn’t trouble yourself so much, my lady.
Though perhaps you haven’t heard, my marriage isn’t a matter so easily settled.”
Once she’d left Ashwood Court, Aisling headed for Willowmere.
Róisín couldn’t hold her tongue any longer.
“That woman is unbelievable!
She’s doing this on purpose, my lady, trying to make trouble for you.
We cannot let her win this!”
Even Bríd, usually so measured, couldn’t help herself.
“My lady, you mustn’t let yourself be wronged like this.
If she keeps this up, you ought to write to your grandfather and ask him to step in.”
Aisling understood why they worried.
She stopped and took both their hands, letting a little playfulness creep into her voice for once.
“Don’t fret so much.
If she keeps at me, I’ll just go crying to my grandfather.”
Lightly as she said it, though, her thoughts had already turned serious on the subject of marriage.
Her stepmother herself was manageable enough.
Her grandfather’s name alone could put the woman in her place.
The real problem was King Cathal.
Her stepmother had never once cared about Aisling’s marriage before, not until a few visits to the palace the previous year had put the idea in her head.
And every candidate she’d since floated shared one thing in common.
Not one of them held any real military power.
The king, clearly, was worried about exactly one thing.
That Aisling might end up married back into Ardmore.
She had no intention of marrying a cousin, but simply stalling wasn’t a real answer either.
Maybe the smarter move was finding someone to work with instead, someone whose match would ease the king’s worries and serve them both.
That, at least, seemed possible.
Aisling turned candidates over in her head as she walked, barely noticing the distance, until she found herself already at the entrance to Willowmere, where her father lived.
A branch of the River Liffey had been diverted to circle the grounds, with a single pavilion built on the small island at its center.
There was only one way in, from the east.
Water closed it off on the other three sides.
A young manservant stood guard at the door as Aisling approached.
“Is my father inside?” she asked.
The boy startled at finding her there so suddenly and froze until Róisín called out to him.
“My lady!
You’re back, the lord is inside, but—”
“But what?” Róisín pressed, impatient with his stammering.
He said carefully, “But the lord’s been drinking again today.
He’s likely still deep in it.”
Aisling nodded.
It didn’t surprise her.
Ever since her mother died seventeen years ago, her father had drowned himself in grief, shutting the world out and letting himself go.
When her twin brother died ten years back, he’d sunk even further, living most days in a drunken fog, indifferent to everything around him.
It had been this way for years now.
Aisling pushed the wooden door open, and the smell of drink hit her hard enough to sting.
She gave herself a moment, then lifted her skirt and stepped inside.
The room sat dim behind drawn curtains, unnervingly quiet.
Empty wine bottles were scattered across the carpet.
A small table on the couch had been knocked over, wine soaked into everything.
She picked her way carefully around the mess, past a folding screen, black on one side and red on the other, embroidered with birds and flowers.
And there he was.
On the floor.
Her father.
He looked to be somewhere in his thirties or forties, with a short beard, fair skin, tall and thin beneath a fine silk robe gone crooked and wine-stained.
His feet were bare.
Nothing about him looked like a man of royal blood.
Something must have alerted him to her presence because he opened his eyes slowly.
First, he seemed to notice the edge of her green shawl trailing near the floor, then the embroidered hem of her skirt.
He struggled up onto one elbow and craned his neck to look at her properly.
Drink, or bad eyesight, or both, made him stare at her for a long moment like he was trying to place a face from memory, an old acquaintance he couldn’t quite name.
His eyes went wet, but recognition never came.
“Who are you?” he finally asked.
“It’s me.
Your daughter’s home,” Aisling said, the same way she’d said it a hundred times before.
She folded her hands and bowed to him, her expression not changing at all.
His face went blank for a moment, then slowly cleared.
He nodded, drawing the word out.
“Ohh…
Aisling.”
“Why…
hic…
have you come?” he asked again.
“I’ve come from far away to pay my respects to you, Father, and to the lady,” Aisling said, calm as ever.
“Ohh,” he said, as though remembering all at once.
He waved a hand.
“Fine, fine, your father’s fine…
off you go.”
His voice trailed lower, and within moments he seemed ready to slide back under.
In the year and more since she’d come back to Dunmore, Aisling could count on one hand the times she’d actually spoken with him.
Every time, he was too drunk to hold a real conversation.
She still couldn’t say whether there was any real fondness left in him for her as his daughter.
If there wasn’t, why drink himself into this state day after day?
And if there was, why show so little sign of it?
Part of her wanted to ask him outright whether her stepmother was planning to marry her off.
She held it back.
“Yes.
I’ll take my leave,” she said, bowing once more before showing herself out.
As she turned, she caught a glimpse of him pressing a hand to his head, a headache from the drink, most likely.
The young servant was still waiting outside.
Aisling thought for a moment, then told him, “Your lord’s unwell from the drink.
Fetch some tea to help clear his head.”
He nodded quickly and hurried off.
Up in the palace’s northern quarter, inside Rosemount Palace, things had gone somewhat chaotic.
A girl of sixteen or seventeen, dressed in bright, expensive silks, shoved straight past the palace maids trying to hold her back and burst into the hall, a trail of anxious attendants scrambling behind her.
“Princess!
Princess, please, slow down!”
She ignored them entirely, skirts hiked up as she rushed toward the inner room.
“Mother!
Mother, I heard the Prince of Dunmara entered the city today!”
“They’re saying he’s here for an alliance marriage.
Is Father really going to give him one of us?
Is he going to marry me off?”
“Those savages are brutal.
I heard they eat raw meat, drink blood straight from the kill, and the Prince of Dunmara especially, they say he looks like some kind of leopard, an actual beast.
If I had to marry him, I couldn’t bear it.”
Aoibhinn worked herself up further with every word, shaking now, like she could already picture the horror of it.
“Aoibhinn!”
The woman seated at the mirror, fastening an earring, finally turned, revealing a face both lovely and severe.
She looked about thirty, skin pale as snow, beautiful in that sharp, practiced way, her eyes carrying real warmth underneath the polish.
This was Lady Neala, King Cathal’s favorite.
“Nothing’s decided yet.
Why work yourself into such a state?” she scolded, though there was indulgence buried beneath the sharpness.
“How could I not be scared!” Aoibhinn wailed, throwing herself against her mother’s arm.
“All Father’s older daughters are already married off.
I’m next, aren’t I?”
“Mother, you have to talk to him.
I won’t marry a savage, I won’t!
What about my sixth and seventh sisters?
Let one of them go instead!”
Lady Neala ran a hand, nails painted deep crimson, along her daughter’s soft young face, her voice gentle but certain.
“As long as I’m here, even if you were the king’s only daughter, I would never let you marry into that wilderness.
I’ll find you someone worthy.”
Aoibhin’s whole face brightened, worry melting into relief.
“I knew you wouldn’t let them take me away.”
Neala flicked her daughter’s forehead, her tone shifting.
“Enough fussing now.
Your father will be here shortly.”
Aoibhinn, guessing correctly that this was for her own good, let herself be led back to her own rooms by a maid.
Before long, the bell rang, announcing King Cathal’s arrival at Rosemount Palace.
Neala hurried out to greet him.
Maids bustled in and out with food and drink.
After the meal, once they were alone behind the curtains, Neala brought up the matter of the alliance with the Prince of Dunmara, saying she couldn’t bear to send the daughter she’d raised and cherished for over a decade off to some savage land.
She’d expected him to agree without hesitation.
Instead, he went quiet.
Neala’s heart started racing, and her hand went to her own chest without meaning to.
She pushed the unease down, wrapped her pale arms around his shoulders, and pressed her face to his chest.
“Your Majesty.
Something’s troubling you?”
King Cathal’s eyes narrowed toward the direction of Ashgrove Gardens, whatever pleasure had been on his face draining into something darker.
“I sent an envoy to greet him today.
That Ronan actually had the nerve to make a demand of me.
Said he wished to choose his own wife.
Hmph.”
“A savage, that arrogant?”
Neala’s own heart sank right alongside his.
Aoibhinn was so bright, so lively.
What if that man took a liking to her?
No.
She had to think of something.