“Because I want to. Let me. Please.”

“Are you all right?”

“No. I’m going to sleep.”

The pixie, giving Croi a concerned look, reluctantly leaves the room.

Croi closes her eyes and pulls the blankets overhead, trying to coax herself to sleep. Perhaps her other self aids her, because it doesn’t take more than a minute before her consciousness fades and she yields to Morpheus’s grip.

Her dreams are color and chaos and entirely bereft of Irial.

The second taste of grief has the bitter notes of despair.

Croi opens her eyes again, unaware of the time that has passed in the interim, knowing only that the day hasn’t ended. She finds her pillow wet and her cheeks damp. She sits up, feeling like an old woman. Her heart is hot in her chest; every single breath hurts.

We should have held him tighter. Looked at him longer.

“It is easier to die than to be left behind.” Croi stares down at her hands and remembers that not more than twelve hours have passed since she held Irial. Now he’s nothing more than a name in her heart and a picture in her mind. His warmth has faded, and the sun in his eyes has set.

Is he really just gone? What do we do?

“What can we do?”

Give the SoulSeed to Uaine’s sister. Then, probably, die.

Croi’s face sharpens at her inner self’s mention of the SoulSeed. With some difficulty, she drags her pack out from under the bed and removes the wrapped SoulSeed from it. Without feeling the need to check on it, she places the SoulSeed in her pocket. “What’s happening outside?”

It is far noisier outside the pavilion than it should be considering the Robber Queen’s only son was murdered in the wee hours of the morning.

Possibly the envoys from Uisce kingdom and the Aer kingdom have arrived. After all, the Saol ceremony will go ahead no matter who dies. More importantly, why do you think Mabh summoned us to the Otherworld? What possible use could she have for us? When will we find out?

“Soon enough, I should think. You don’t think our mother will let us die in peace, do you?”

Are we going to let her do what she wants with us?

Croi squeezes her hands into fists, not even feeling the pain of her nails digging into the tender flesh of her palm. “How do we resist her? She will take whatever she wants from us whether we want to give it to her or not.”

Are we giving up so easily?

“Why not? What’s the point of continuing to live in this world? It has no space for us.”

Is it because Irial is gone? We barely knew him.

“We wanted to, though. You can’t deny that. We could have known him. He could have known us. We could have loved him. Maybe he would have loved us had he the chance to. But he didn’t. We didn’t.”

And now we never will.