The Heartbreak Show (Bound By Ravens #3)

13. CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Glenna Lonan

“One article of clothing for each secret,” Cian spoke against my cheek.

My hands slid up the corset strings along his back. I sighed at his earthy scent.

We snuck away from the gathering the moment Finn and Kalen bunked up in a supply wagon the tribe had partially emptied. Unlike us, they were on a daytime schedule.

Cian and I couldn’t leave fast enough, either.

The sexual tension between us had been building and building . . .

It had been days .

Expressing our fears, our vulnerabilities wasn’t something neither he nor I did easily. We laughed off those darker emotions. But when he touched me, when I kissed him, our souls understood without words.

I needed him.

He needed me right now too.

This man had orchestrated everything since stumbling home drunk from the train station, to help Rhylen and to restore my world—to give me the sweet bite of happiness I had craved for weeks. Aye, I had been annoyed earlier. He chose to share details with an old friend about a cow he hunted objects for before sharing with me. Objects I had unwittingly participated in retrieving for him through our Heartbreak Show.

A smile tugged on my mouth.

Only Cian would need shoes, a garter ribbon, and a hat for a cow.

A cow .

But his brewing insecurities began days, no weeks , before his public courting gift.

With those gaudy boots of nightmares in Owen’s care, Moira busy with Gran, and George locked out, our hearts could finally speak, our bodies comfort, our souls intertwine.

“If you have more secrets than the clothing we wear?” I asked him.

“Only enough secrets to undress you .”

“How do I then undress you?”

“You won’t,” he murmured in my ear. “I’ll remove one article of clothing for each desire I confess.”

I would enjoy every second of watching him strip for me too. But I wasn’t sure I’d survive his honeyed-tongued confessions. Already my pulse was racing from how he planned to undress us both.

Unfastening the top button of my shirt— his shirt—he dragged his mouth to mine in a sparking trail of fire. The warm press of his lips was sweet, almost chaste. But the sensual way his excited breaths tangled with mine ignited my blood into flame.

And I was burning . . .

Always burning for this man.

“The Maiden,” he whispered, “she appeared to me in the woods the night of our first coin beggar’s show.” I sucked in a quiet gasp. Cian ignored my reaction and pushed the now unbuttoned shirt down my shoulders, letting it drop to the floor.

“She told me,” he continued with the next secret, “it was time to claim my birthright. A faerie cow named Glas Gaibhnenn.”

Green Cow of the Smith? A green cow?

Cian gripped the hem of my camisole and pulled it over my head. My black curls fell down my arms and to mid-back.

I would laugh at the absurdity of a cow being one’s birthright—a faerie cow, no less. But the seriousness of his tone sobered me. It was so unlike his sunny personality, a knot of dread tightened in my gut.

“Feck, you’re gorgeous,” he moaned under his breath.

Biting a corner of my lip, I leaned back onto my elbows across our messy blankets and shook the loose strands from my shoulders to give him a better view of my breasts. Anything to cheer the lad. It was the least I could do.

Like a moth to flame, he caged me in, his hands on either side of my hips, and devoured me in a hungry kiss. A quiet sound of pleasure loosed from the back of my throat. Dark skies, his tongue, his lips, the delicious feel of his hair brushing my face . . . I was melting into the covers.

There was a desperation in the sweep of his mouth dancing across mine, though. As if he were kissing me for courage before battle. Or to reassure himself that I wanted him . Truly wanted him .

The muscles in my stomach tightened again.

Protecting his sister had been his purpose until her and Rhylen’s mate bond. Before The Wild Hunt, his entire identity was that of a mortal life too. Despite possessing magic since birth, he didn’t receive a familiar until right before the Autumn Night Market either—unlike Filena.

My fingers brushed along his wrist.

Freedom . . . he now owned his life, and for the first time in his twenty-three years.

Gods above, my heart began breaking for him all over again.

Our kiss slowed and he quietly groaned, a sound of pleasure I felt clear down to the tips of my toes.

“My obsession,” he spoke across my lips before pulling away.

With a gentle nudge, he encouraged me to straighten and scoot up to our pillows. Then he dipped onto the bed, lips flushed, eyes bright.

“Three more secrets.”

“I only wear trousers and drawers.”

“A bonus secret, darlin’.” I snorted as he started unfastening my pants. “I was told to fetch three items and follow a trail of broken hearts to find Glas Gaibhnenn.”

A trail of . . . my mouth fell open. “Seren?” Those who chose not to sacrifice to the Love-Talkers traveled “brokenhearted” to the City of Stars. “The faerie cow is on Seren ?”

Cian pulled his trousers down my hips, down my legs, and dropped them to the wooden floor. “Finn said Ren Cormac hid my Cow of Plenty inside Stellar Winds Casino.”

My cow ? He was already claiming this faerie cow as his actual birthright?

Why would Ren Cormac hide a faerie cow?

What if it burned down with the casino? Feck, I hoped not. Poor cow.

No, the Sisters Three wouldn’t send Cian on a doomed mission. At least, I didn’t think so.

Cian crawled up my body then sat back on his knees. Pools of blue satin rippled around us as he straddled my hips in an old skirt—the one he wore at our coin beggar’s show this evening. The pensive pinch between his brows returned. He blew out a shaky breath. And my body stilled.

I took his hand in mine and he studied our lacing fingers.

“The Maiden gifted me the gancanagh’s pipe with no explanation.” He visibly swallowed. “I was too overwhelmed to ask. My magic it—” Cian’s face quickly drained of blood. He squeezed his eyes shut in a long, panicking blink and hissed, “Shite!”

This was the first time I had heard him mention his magic. It was no mystery Cian was magical—he was related to the Sisters Three and had a familiar. But he continually riddled around the topic when it was brought up.

“You have the Sight, aye?” The question spilled from me before I could stop myself. Still, I asked, even more softly, “Like Filena?”

“Filena doesn’t know how deep my magic runs,” he rushed out, a thread of fear in his voice. “Only that I’ve seen a handful of futures. Mam suspects, but I’ve told no one, Glenna. I don’t want people to know what I see or that I can.”

I lifted our joined hands to my mouth and kissed his fingers. “I promise I will never tell a soul you have the Sight, Cian Merrick. I make this bargain with you.” His body relaxed. “You never have to tell me how your magic works either. I shouldn’t have asked you.”

Cian considered me for several long beats without meeting my eyes. “I see what others try to hide,” he whispered. “Their fears, their secrets, their desires, their shame. I see their past; I see their present. Sometimes, though rarely, I see their future.”

If he looked in their eyes, that is. The portals to a person’s inner-being. He didn’t need to say that part aloud, though—

Oh. . .

The thundering pulse in my chest stilled.

If I got too close, I would have died of a broken heart.

His confession hit me with sudden clarity: for years, he had suspected that I loved him and had protected us both by refusing to truly look at me.

I only know how to obsess and you would ruin me.

And we would have destroyed our families like Rhylen and Filena almost had.

I would have pined for you until I wasted away to nothing.

After his courting gesture, I no longer questioned if his love was romantic or if it was just friends reaching for one another.

But I was dying to know how long he had actually loved me.

A muscle worked in his jaw. “I don’t know why the Maiden gave me that pipe and it’s driving me fecking mad.”

I snapped out of my thoughts. “You believe you could be a gean cánach ?”

“What if I am?”

“What if all the legends are wrong?” I tossed back. “What if being a Love-Talker is about intention?”

Fae and witchling magic were heavily based in intention. If I fae marked Cian, I could make him my thrall. Or I could mark him as mates did, with a piece of me for him to carry always. The ritual and the magic were the same. The intention, however? A gancanagh with good intentions may speak actual words of love and not for any manipulative or malevolent reasons.

Cian’s chest heaved a heavy sigh. “That wouldn’t frighten you?”

“No,” I whispered. “Nothing about you frightens me, Cian Merrick.”

“Next secret.” He visibly swallowed.

“You haven’t removed my drawers.”

A strained smile was my only reply. “The Maiden claims that I’m a re-souling of Cian of the Tuatha Dé Danann.”

The warrior god?

My eyes rounded. “You’re the actual god . . . Cian?”

He looked away with a small shrug, as if embarrassed. “Part of me is, I guess. Another part of me is the Sisters Three. And . . . and the son of a mortal monster.” His voice cracked on the last words.

I sat up and cradled his cheek. But he refused to look my way. “Cian—”

“I’m not ashamed of who I am,” he interjected quickly, his voice faint. “I never stopped being . . . me .” He gritted his teeth. “Not even when my own da wanted to beat those sacred parts of myself from my soul. Not when Kilkerry accused me of being possessed. Not when West Tribe owned my life and could trade and sell me at a moment’s whim.” Tears rimmed his lashes. “Cillian . . . ‘bright headed,’” he angrily whispered one translation for his birth name. “Cillian . . . ‘from the temple,’” he translated the other. “Hamish named me.”

He gestured to his bright-headed tresses. The color of Lugh’s sunny locks. The Mother’s golden-wheat hued strands too. “Did he know the son who wore dresses was divine?” The question came out in a choked whisper. “Did he know who I was before I was born?”

Stars above, my heart . . .

Those beautiful silver-blue eyes of his traced my cheek where the scratch was mostly healed. Blinking back the anger, he leaned into the fingers holding his face, and my thumb traced the corner of his mouth.

“I didn’t tell you these secrets”—he drew in a trembling breath—“because . . . for the first time in my life, I’m afraid of what I am and . . .” His eyes snapped to mine. “And you are perfection.”