Total pages in book: 177
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 171450 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 857(@200wpm)___ 686(@250wpm)___ 572(@300wpm)
Niamh snorted. “Maybe don’t say that too loud.”
Kierse covered her mouth with a giggle. “Fair. Fair. Think I can still be sneaky?”
“I’d love to see you try.”
They spent the next few minutes trying not to laugh as Kierse slipped a watch off an unsuspecting patron and then found a way to put it back on his wrist when he looked at them giggling too hard.
“Okay, okay,” Niamh said, covering her mouth. “Stop. You’re going to make me burst.”
Kierse held a drink up to her in toast as she leaned against the bar. Her mind was whirring and sloshy. “Can I ask you a question?”
“That was a question,” Niamh teased.
“Okay. Fine,” she drawled, holding out the word. “Do you know anything about ‘The Wooing of Etain’?”
Niamh’s eyebrows jumped to her forehead as she leaned back against the bar. “Do I know anything about one of our most famous stories of all time? Yes, Kierse, I know lots about it.”
Kierse lifted her glass to Niamh again. “Touché. Well, Graves mentioned that I was reliving the story.”
“Because you have Saoirse’s magic?” Kierse nodded, finishing off another drink. “I see where this is going. Graves suggested that you and Lorcan will end up together like Etain and Midir.”
“He said that we were reliving the tale.” She put finger quotes around the last words. “Like how they’re manifesting the Oak and Holly Kings.”
Niamh clearly didn’t like that suggestion. “The Wooing of Etain canonically has multiple endings.” Her voice softened around the words. “There’s the ending where she regains her memories and returns to her first husband to live with the Tuatha de Danann. The most accepted ending, mind you, but not the only one. There’s the ending where her second husband picks her out of a lineup of fifty women and they go back and live happily ever. And there’s the very Irish ending where the second husband didn’t know Etain was pregnant with his daughter and Midir plays a Faerie trick and enough years have passed that the daughter looks just like Etain. The second husband chooses his own daughter, has incestuous sex, and then he kills himself for he truly lost everything. Truly fucked.”
Kierse nearly spit out her drink. “You’re right. That last ending is so very Irish. No happy endings ever after.”
Niamh shrugged. “You’re not pregnant, are you?”
“No!” she yelped. Her hand went to her stomach in alarm. Then she picked up another drink and toasted it to Niamh. “Look at me being one with the alcohol.”
Niamh laughed. “Well, then I think we’re safe.”
Kierse set her hand on the bar, trying to think past the booze. “So what you’re saying is…the story is yet unwritten.”
“Choose your own ending.”
“But surely Graves knows that.”
“Of course he does,” Niamh said on an eye roll. “But he, too, will only see what’s right in front of him. The worst-case scenario as he always sees it. He’s determined to lose to Lorcan. Always has been.”
Kierse let those words settle between them. Graves had been losing to Lorcan for literally hundreds of years. The turning of the seasons constantly reminded him that he would always lose again and again.
In that sense, it explained why he’d look at this dour story and assume that Kierse would choose the hero instead of him.
Determined to lose her to the right man. The whole thing made her sick.
“Let’s forget about it for tonight,” Niamh said, grabbing her arm. “Come on. Let’s dance!”
Niamh set her empty glass down and pulled Kierse out onto the dance floor. With the alcohol coursing through her veins, it was finally easy to release the tension in her body and succumb to the beats pounding through the room. Niamh twirled her in place and pulled her back against her chest. Their bodies swayed side to side, hips grinding. Kierse’s hands were in the air, her long hair flowing out behind her.
She wondered what this life would be like to live all the time. To just be one of the other mindless people in this club wanting nothing more than what was immediately in front of them. Just a girls’ night. Fun, drinking, boys, girls, dancing, sex. It felt like a lifetime since she’d been allowed to relax enough for it.
And still Lorcan got closer.
“I’m going to go…” Kierse said, pointing at the bar.
Gen hugged her and then fell back into Ronan’s arm. Ethan shot a thumbs-up.
Kierse left her friends to find Lorcan waiting at the bar.
“You’re drunk,” he said by way of greeting.
“Nice to see you, too,” she said sarcastically. She folded her arms and planted her feet. “Aren’t we a little past the point of stalking?”
“I’m hardly stalking you. I’m concerned. With this much alcohol in you, you’re a walking target.”
“And you’ve come to save me,” she said with a laugh, teetering sideways into the person behind her. How drunk was she?