Aeden had learned that Maeve wasn't one for silence. She was blunt. She spoke quickly. But she didn't spend hours of travel without saying a word, one hand curled a little too tightly in Aeden's mane as he carried her up the mountain, angry energy burning the air around her in faint, crackling currents.

Well, she usually didn't.

The moon had emerged from the clouds as they made their way up the mountain, lighting up the rocky path enough that even Ronan, with his human eyesight, was able to navigate it. They were only a short walk from Morrigan's home when Maeve swung her legs over Aeden's side and leapt off of him. "That's it," she hissed. "We're far enough, aren't we?"

Aeden twitched. They were very close to what safety Morri could offer, as a matter of fact, but Maeve didn't look like she'd be amenable to avoiding the confrontation any longer. Even though it was still night, her amber eyes were alight from the force of her rage. Aeden wondered if she knew she was doing that.

Maeve interrupted his thoughts by grabbing his ear. "Shift back and explain. What the hell was that?"

He tensed and slipped back into the form of a human, knocking her hand away with a sharp motion. "Keep your hands off of me," he growled, not bothering to hide his own anger in that instant.

"Oh? Like you did for Ronan?"

"I didn't touch him."

"You would have!" she yelled, prodding his chest. For a woman with such a soft face, freckled and round, she could look ferocious.

Aeden thought about it. Amidst the haze of anger, he had struck out. "I wouldn't have killed him," he said.

"You weren't in an exactly gentle mood, Aeden. With all your strength, would a human survive your punch?"

He opened his mouth, then closed it. Smoothing his expression, he cast his gaze out to the mountainous landscape beneath them. The forested hills stretched out for miles in all directions, a shadowy, dark mass even to one with his eyes. The Rene was reduced to a glittering ribbon of silver that cut the landscape, winding towards the distant sea. Where had Cael gone, in all that mess? Where was Shayne?

"Don't place all the blame on him," Ronan said, breaking the taut silence. His eyes were calm as he watched Aeden. "Consciously or not, I attacked him first."

"Perhaps." Maeve stabbed her walking stick into the ground beside Aeden's feet, bringing her face mere inches from his own. "But you should've known better. You lost your head, Aeden. You'd best have a damn good reason as to why."

Aeden stared down into her eyes, a dull emptiness settling in his chest. He grinned, drumming his fingers against his leg. "There were all sorts of things to be upset about in that situation. A sídhe controlling humans—using iron—against another sídhe. I'm not partial to being hunted down like that, Mae."

"Aye, you're a wild thing. But I know anger," she snarled. "There's more. You haven't told us everything."

Reluctance curdled in his chest, but Aeden knew it was hopeless. He needed Maeve's help; this wasn't something he could handle on his own. There was a gash along his side frome one of those men's spears. Pain still sparked along it, sharpened by the ghost of iron's touch. Exhaustion lingered deep in his body from dozens of sleepless nights. His smile slipped. "It's not much of a secret."

Her amber eyes burned into him. "Then tell us."

Aeden lifted a hand to placate her. He looked westwards, deeper into the heart of Ríenne. "To put it simply, I'm angry. It distracted me."

"To put it simply—Aeden, don't you start that. I need more and you know it."

"You want the truth?" He looked down at her and laughed, feeling none of it. Power stirred in his chest, an icy flood that scratched and ripped at his insides. "I watched him kill my family on a whim. They spent the final moments of their lives in agony. Do not take what I said lightly: I am angry, Maeve, in every sense of the word." Down to the very roots of his soul, the fury lingered. It had every day. And it would remain forever, a grudge that was ingrained into his being. Shayne's crime was unforgivable. Not even his death would cleanse it.

Maeve's expression softened, just a tad. The golden light in her eyes faded. "When?" she asked, quieter than before.

"Several years ago. It was winter." Aeden swallowed his anger, not willing to let it show. It felt like liquid fire in his throat. This was not a story he wished to recount. He focused on the most necessary details, enough to explain away the curiosity of the two before him. "My parents, my sister, and I lived together. Like a family—a human family."

Maeve blinked.

"Unusual for the aes sídhe, I know," he said, "but it's true. That was the only time I had a home." He tracked the land to the west, letting his gaze settle on a valley between the mountain they stood upon and the next. If he headed there, he knew he would find the remnants of the house. It would be hidden beneath the tree's shadows at this time of day. It would be torn apart and burnt, just the way he'd left it. "Shayne was close to my father. Very close. They acted as brothers."

Ronan shifted. "And did you also...?"

"We got along." The words felt like acid on his tongue. He had been a fool to trust that man. To ever believe he was good. "He was overbearing, but Shayne helped raise me and my sister. He'd made a geas to protect us."

"A what?" Maeve asked, frowning.

That was odd. She should have known that instinctively. "A binding vow. One we aes sídhe can create and cannot break?"

"Oh, that has a name?" She glanced between him and her brother. "Don't look at me like that. I knew our promises cannot be broken. I simply wasn't aware there's a word for it."

There was a beat of silence. Ronan rubbed a hand over his face before his attention shifted to Aeden again. His face revealed a hesitant softness that instantly wound discomfort around Aeden's chest. "You had a sister?"

"Aye." Aeden refrained from saying anything further—if he let himself speak freely, he wouldn't escape the memories. Grief only left him vulnerable, his emotions raw and laid out like strings on a fiddle. So easily snapped.

"What was her name?" Ronan asked gently.

Aeden kept his face neutral. He wasn't going to think about her, how she'd watch the stars with him, how she'd come along to slip into taverns and listen to the human spin tales of their kind, how she'd taunted their mother by refusing to tame her brown hair. He certainly wasn't going to think about her blood spilling between his fingers. Her choked breathing as she died.

"Sorcha," he said.

Ronan said nothing, pity flickering across his eyes. Aeden's skin crawled. He moved on.

"So, Shayne acted as our uncle. Niamh never bothered with the charade, but she wasn't hostile. Not like she became at the end." His memories of the woman mainly consisted of her turned back, or her sparse, contemptuous glances. It was a far cry from the hatred in her icy eyes as she tried to drown him. "It was gradual, their insanity. Niamh grew angrier. At everything.

"And Shayne..." Damn it. He didn't want to talk about Shayne. Aeden ran a hand over his face. It was no secret, but it was difficult to force the words out while keeping a neutral expression. "He also became... erratic. Obsessed with keeping my sister and I safe. What he really wanted was control, of course. Everything had to be just so."

"That's unnerving," Maeve said.

Her bluntness drew a chuckle from him. "My father made the mistake of arguing with Shayne about that. He attacked without warning—he murdered my father, then my mother when she tried to stop him, and my sister was caught between them. He tore them apart, and then he tried to take me with him." Aeden kept his smile in place, curling his fingers into the hem of the cape Maeve's mother had given him. "Said I was too reckless for my own good, that it was dangerous to leave me on my own. He was insane."

He looked at the soft ground beneath his feet, giving himself a moment's respite. Maeve and Ronan's gazes rested heavily upon his shoulders. Do not think too deeply of it, he chided himself. It's only a summary. "Morrigan was the one that... saved me. I stayed with her for some years before leaving. Shayne caught up to me once I did, which is where our little chase began. I suppose he didn't know Niamh wanted to kill me," he added lightly.

"If... if Sorcha died, would that not mean he broke his geas?" Ronan asked, frowning. "Would that not kill him, or have some other terrible consequence?"

"Not quite." Aeden shrugged, disgust prickling beneath his skin. "He promised to protect us, but he didn't specify what he would protect us from. The wording of such contracts is so easily twisted. Perhaps he thought death was what she needed."

"I see." Maeve winced, leaning against her walking stick. There was a long pause before she spoke; her voice was softer, but she held his gaze as firmly as ever. "Well. Don't try to hit Ronan again."

That sounded like the closest thing to forgiveness she'd give. Aeden swept into a bow. "As you wish." Another pause. He straightened, grinning at them. "That became rather too solemn, didn't it? Are you both ready to keep moving?"

Ronan began to move forward, but Maeve threw an arm before his chest. She raised an eyebrow. "You never apologised."

"Maeve," Ronan said, a brief hint of exasperation showing on his face, "I don't need—"

"You haven't shown a hint of regret," she interrupted, staring Aeden down. "That smile you've been faking doesn't help, of course, but I want to know if you at all care about us."

Aeden stiffened. He looked at her, lit up with that fierce, protective anger. There was a cut on her cheek, he realised. A thin trail of blood leaked from it, tracing a path down her jaw and neck. Ronan remained still at her side, one hand subtly supporting her by the elbow. His eyes were focused on the open land behind them, calm yet a little dark. He seemed to be thinking of something else.

"It was never my intention to harm either of you," Aeden finally said, meeting Maeve's gaze and then Ronan's. That much was true, and he hoped it showed. Even if he found this a little too dramatic, considering nobody was hurt. Whatever makes them happy, I suppose. "I'm sorry."

Maeve squinted before nodding. Ronan offered a small, warm smile, and Aeden was struck with how easily that man had forgiven him. An odd sensation stabbed through his chest. Perhaps he should've been more careful—Ronan was really quite decent for a human, and their lives were short enough as it were.

Shaking the guilt away, Aeden motioned for them to follow him up the path. It was a thin, winding thing left by wildlife, shaded by trees on either side and choked with underbrush. Moving up it in a human form was awkward, but before he could shift Ronan spoke up from behind him. He was helping Maeve along, who had her jaw clenched tight. "How much farther?"

"To Morri's house? A fair distance," Aeden lied, leaping up a particularly steep part of the trail. He paused at the top to watch the two struggle up the rocky slope. Maeve crawled up a few rocks, saw him looking, and promptly made a rude gesture. He chuckled. "Far, one might say. We might be at this until morning."

"Shut up," she growled.

"Would you mind carrying Maeve again, then?" Ronan asked, hovering behind her as she climbed. She nearly jabbed the walking stick into his stomach as she shifted, a blow he neatly dodged.

"You shut up, too. I'm fine," Maeve grunted. She hauled herself over the top of the little hill beside Aeden, raised her head, and gave him a thoroughly unamused look. "You think you're funny."

He grinned. "I surely do."

"I know, Maeve," Ronan said evenly, not having heard them, "but your leg will only get worse."

"Aye, Mae, you'll need the help." Aeden offered an arm to Ronan as he reached them, letting the young man pull himself up and see the clearing they'd entered. Morri's little cottage stood in the middle, framed by trees with low-hanging boughs that swayed in the wind. Flowers grew about it in scattered patches, though their colour was somewhat washed away in the moonlight. It was a quaint image. Aeden tilted his head; nothing had changed, not even the scent in the air. "Those last dozen paces might do your leg in."

Ronan silently regarded the sight before them, and his lips pressed into a thin line. "Aeden..."

"Oh, don't use that tone. That was funny."

He cast Aeden a glance that lingered somewhere between disappointment and sympathy. "It wasn't that funny."

"I think it was," Aeden sniffed.

"That's because you're an eejit." Maeve prodded him with the end of her stick before getting to her feet, leaning heavily against it.

"No, you're simply too grumpy to let yourself laugh." Aeden bounded ahead towards the cottage, gesturing grandly at it with one arm. He felt the prickle of energy as he crossed the threshold of her territory, grating oddly against his skin. It was something he'd grown used to during his time with her; this had always been her home, not his, so he'd been doomed to the role of an intruder. "Welcome to Morrigan's abode. I know it's dark, but try not to step on her flowers."

"Will she be angered if we do?" Apprehension lingered in Ronan's voice, and he ducked his head to examine his feet.

"No, but she may cry." Aeden shrugged before knocking on the door, though she no doubt was already aware of their presence. She often observed such pleasantries. "The woman's cared for them longer than any of us have been alive." A scuffle reached his ears from the other side of the door; he plastered a smile on his face and stepped back. It opened.