A Cursed Kiss (Myths of Airren Book 1)

by Jenny Hickman

  “Now you have it.”

  Tell me you love me . . .

  Had no one ever loved him? How was that possible? He was beautiful and kind. Rude and uncouth as well, but also funny and fiercely protective. “That shouldn’t be hard for you. You’re not hideous.”

  He snorted. “High praise, indeed, Maiden Death. Every man wishes a woman would refer to him as ‘not hideous.’”

  “You know what I mean.” I smacked his chest and snuggled closer, nestling my head into the crook of his shoulder. His heart beat strong and steady beneath my cheek. “You’re handsome, and you bloody well know it. Surely you could find a woman to fall in love with you to break your curses.”

  “If only love was that simple,” he said through a heavy exhale.

  He had a point.

  Love was complicated.

  I’d loved Robert and look where I’d ended up.

  “There’s something I need to tell you,” he said at the same time I said, “We need to talk.”

  We both laughed.

  “You first.” I wanted to delay the inevitable for as long as possible.

  “Ladies first. I insist.”

  Leave it to Tadhg to start acting like a gentleman when it was inconvenient. “All right.” I extricated myself from his hold and propped myself up with my elbow. Tadhg had a hand tucked beneath his head. His body stretched across the mattress like there was no place he’d rather be than here with me. Silver scars dotted his sculpted chest. Muscled ridges in his abdomen led to the deep cuts of his hips peeking from beneath the white sheet. I wanted to map every scar and hear the stories behind each one. But it wasn’t meant to be.

  “I’ve decided to return to Graystones.”

  His smile vanished. “But we’re only a few days out from Tearmann.” He sat upright and shoved himself against the bed’s wooden headboard.

  “I’m not going to Tearmann. Not anymore.” I slipped the ring from my finger and held it toward him. “Take it. It’s yours.”

  He hesitated before accepting the ring. “I don’t understand. Aveen—”

  “Is gone.” Somehow I managed to keep the tears at bay. Once he left, I could cry. For my sister. For Padraig. And now, for Tadhg. “And I cannot sacrifice another person’s life to bring her back.”

  He glanced at me from beneath his lashes. “So you’re giving up.”

  “I’m going to do what you said. I’m going to do nothing.” I’m going to spare your brother.

  His eyebrows came together, disbelief clear in his searching gaze.

  “You’ve opened my eyes to a whole new world, where monsters aren’t monsters at all,” I explained, my voice catching. “If I killed the Gancanagh, even after what he took from me, I’d be no better than he is.”

  Tadhg stared at the ring as though he couldn’t believe it was in his possession.

  “I want you to take the ring and go home.” I leaned in to press a kiss to the corner of his mouth. He jerked away as though I’d been about to slap him.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, slipping the ring on his littlest finger. “Force of habit.” The kiss he gave me was nothing more than a polite peck.

  I turned away and focused on drawing the sheet to cover myself instead of on the disappointment blooming in my chest. I had given him the key to breaking his curses and all I got was “sorry”?

  Tadhg flicked his wrist, and his clothes were back on, like he’d never removed them in the first place. He shoved out of the bed and bent to retrieve his boots.

  He still hadn’t said anything.

  Surely he had something to say.

  Once he’d slipped his arms into his overcoat and settled it over his shoulders, he finally looked at me. But it was as if he were staring through me. As if I wasn’t even there.

  “Thank you, Lady Keelynn.” Gone was the teasing tone from a few moments earlier. The voice that’d replaced it sounded cold and formal. The voice of a prince. “I appreciate this gesture of goodwill more than you will ever know.”

  He appreciated it?

  What was I supposed to say to that? Somehow “you’re welcome” didn’t feel quite right since I was lying naked in a bed we had just shared. Tears burned the backs of my eyes, but I refused to let him see me cry.

  In the end, I only nodded.

  Tadhg opened his mouth as if to say something more. He must’ve thought better of it because he shook his head and left via the door. I fell back onto the pillow and pressed the heels of my hands to my eyes. This didn’t feel right anymore. It felt wrong.

  Nearly two weeks together, and he’d left as if I meant nothing. As if the experiences we’d shared, the journey we’d been on, hadn’t happened.

  “You fool.”

  I jerked upright and clutched the sheet where it had slipped down my chest. In the corner beneath the cobwebs stood Fiadh in a dress the shade of shadows and with eyes the color of hell.

  This couldn’t be happening. This couldn’t be real. I was dreaming. Fiadh was not in my bedroom.

  “What have you done?” Fiadh hissed, her hair dragging behind her as she floated toward the bed.

  How had she found me? Did she know I had given Tadhg the ring? “What are you doing here?”

  My gaze flicked to the rumpled dress on the floor and the glowing emerald dagger discarded on top. There was no way I could make it to the dagger before the witch.

  “We had a bargain, you and I.” Darkness leaked from beneath her skirt, flowing toward me like fog on water. Magic crawled over the edge of the bed, creeping like a thousand shadowy spiders. I clamped my lips shut, refusing to breathe as it slithered beneath the sheet. Over my chest. Around my throat.

  Fiadh’s pointed black nail dragged down my cheek. The breath trapped in my lungs screamed to be let go.

  I inhaled quickly.

  Magic pounced.

  “There you go.” Nails dug into my skin when she clasped my jaw. “Drink it in. That’s it.”

  A dull haze clouded my senses, like I’d had too much faerie wine.

  “You were to lure the Gancanagh close enough to kill him. Do you remember?” The witch’s grip tightened as she nodded my head for me. “And you remember me telling you to guard the ring with your life?”

  Again, she forced me to nod. “Did you do any of those things?”

  She shook my head.

  Her lips grazed my ear as she whispered, “I want to hear you say it.”

  “N-no. I d-didn’t. But it wasn’t my fault,” I cried, tears welling in my eyes. “We never made it to Tearmann.”

  The dagger appeared in Fiadh’s hand, the glowing emerald casting her face in green light. “Tearmann?” Her eyes widened. “Why the hell would ye go all the way to Tearmann? Ye could’ve killed the bastard when ye met him in the Green Serpent.”

  The Green Serpent? What was she talking about?

  Dread filled my belly even as I said, “I’ve never met the Gancanagh.”

  “Never met him?” she cackled. “You just shared his bed.”

  It couldn’t be true. Tadhg couldn’t be the Gancanagh. “Then who is Rían?”

  The witch adjusted her grip on the hilt of the blade.

  And buried it into my stomach

  Pain ripped the air from my lungs. Burning, burning, burning my innards.

  “Rían,” the witch whispered, twisting the blade in my gut, “is the Gancanagh’s brother.”

  19

  The thick, damp grass was cold but soothing on my bare feet. My body craved the chill as fire engulfed my torso. The silver silk gown I wore swayed in the breeze, and the ribbons on the bouquet of hydrangeas tickled my thigh. Tadhg stood across from me, swearing.

  I wanted to shout at him, but my lips refused to move.

  He took my hands in his, right to right and left to left, crossed like an infinity knot.

  Ruairi and the other pooka waited in the dense shadows, yellow eyes glowing like lanterns.

  A man in a dark hooded cloak stood before us, holding a length of gre
en lace, the ends undulating and twisting. He spoke a jumble of meaningless words as he wove the ribbon over and around and between our hands. I peered into his hood but saw only darkness.

  Tadhg drew my attention back to him when he started whispering. The words came so fast, I couldn’t understand them. I opened my mouth to ask him to speak up, but something else entirely sprang from within me, like the words were forced from my throat.

  Tadhg pressed his lips to my cheek, leaving a searing mark.

  I stared at our bound hands, fairly certain I should protest.

  Then I saw a bloody red stain spread across my abdomen, drip down my knees, and fall onto my bare toes.

  20

  Someone sighed and turned a page in a book. In the distance, a bird chirped. A door slammed—not close by, but far away. I kept still, allowing myself to wake slowly, terrified of what I would find when I finally opened my eyes.

  A mound of quilts covered me on an unfamiliar sofa in someone’s sitting room. The room had been painted red, and a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf ran the length of the far wall. Very little light came through the latticed window framed by heavy black drapes. Was it late at night or early in the morning?

  The scent of lingering magic tickled my nostrils, and a bitter metallic taste coated my tongue. My stiff limbs felt as if they were made of wood.

  Another page rustled, and I turned to find a figure lounging on a chaise beside a brick fireplace, reading.

  Was I dreaming? “Tadhg?”

  Kohl-blackened eyes lifted from the book.

  “What are you doing here?” My voice cracked with dryness. I had sent him away with the ring. Hadn’t I? “Why aren’t you in Tearmann?”

  He didn’t say anything. He just kept staring.

  I nudged the stifling blankets to the whitewashed wooden floor. Someone had put me in a gown of silver silk that clung to my body like liquid moonlight. “What am I wearing?”

  The chaise creaked when Tadhg shifted. “It’s a dress.”

  Red stains marred the material at my waist. They looked an awful lot like blood.

  Blood drenched sheets.

  A blood drenched blade.

  This was my blood.

  I shoved off the sofa. Waves of dizziness knocked me back, forcing me to steady myself against the rolled velvet arm to keep from falling over. My hand slid down my stomach, searching for stitches. There should’ve been stitches. There should’ve been pain. There should have been some sign of the trauma from the witch’s dagger.

  “Fiadh stabbed me.” My gaze connected with Tadhg’s, and I stilled. “She stabbed me and said . . .”

  Slowly he rose and abandoned the book on the chaise.

  “It can’t be true,” I whispered, taking a halting step toward him. The witch had been lying. That was the only explanation that made any sense. “Tell me you’re not the Gancanagh.”

  Silence stretched between us and then Tadhg grimaced. “I can’t.”

  It was true.

  Oh god.

  I had slept with my sister’s murderer.

  “You bastard!” I launched forward, beating his chest with my fists, hating him for lying to me. Hating myself for not seeing through him. “I trusted you!”

  I was such a fool. A bloody fool.

  Cool fingers locked around my wrists. “Calm down, Keelynn.” Tadhg’s grip tightened, and he dragged me against him. “Stop fighting me, dammit. I know you’re angry, but I had no choice.” The strong arms that had held me so gently were like a steel cage.

  “You could’ve told me the truth!”

  “And have you run me through with that cursed dagger?” he growled against my ear. “From the moment we met, all you’ve done is claim you need to kill the Gancanagh. Did you honestly believe I would raise my feckin’ hand and say, ‘here I am,’ and let you steal my life? It may not be worth much, but it’s still mine.” He let me go and straightened his pristine black waistcoat. For the first time since we’d met, his clothes weren’t missing any buttons.

  It may not be worth much . . .

  Tadhg’s life was worth nothing after what he’d done. To me. To Aveen. If I still had the dagger, I would’ve stabbed him in his cursed heart. “I slept with you!”

  The corner of his mouth lifted. “I remember.”

  The memory of those sinful lips on my body was too raw. Too painful. And to think I had started to care about the deceitful lout. “All this time you acted like you didn’t know who Aveen was, but you knew. You knew she was good and kind and selfless, and you murdered her anyway.”

  “I didn’t murder her.”

  “I saw you kill her with your poisoned lips.” He’d stolen her last breath. He’d taken my sister away from me.

  “For the last time: my lips are cursed, not poisoned,” Tadhg groaned, lifting his eyes toward the ceiling.

  “Like it makes any bloody difference! Aveen is dead because of you!”

  “She’s not dead!” he roared. A pulse of magic threw me onto the sofa, knocking the wind from my lungs.

  Not dead.

  Not dead.

  Not dead.

  “She had no pulse.” The room spun like the dancers the night of the ball. Around and around, becoming nothing more than blurs of color and light. Aveen was dead. “I picked out her dress for the casket.” Aveen was dead. “I gave the eulogy at her funeral.” Aveen was dead.

  A pair of scuffed black boots stepped in front of me, and the spinning stopped. I looked up to find Tadhg watching me. “You’re right. Technically, she is dead. But she won’t be forever. My lips are cursed,” he repeated slowly, as if speaking to a child.

  “I heard you the first time,” I snapped.

  “You may have heard, but it’s obvious you don’t understand. If my lips are cursed, then whoever kisses me is—” He opened his mouth, but no words emerged. His features contorted in a pained wince. The same thing had happened the night he’d asked for the ring.

  He tugged at the dark cravat tied loosely around his throat and unbuttoned his collar. His hands fisted at his sides, and he took a deep breath. “Whoever. Kisses. Me. Is—”

  Beads of perspiration broke across his brow; a vein in his forehead pulsed. Whatever he was trying to say remained on his tongue.

  Tadhg was a cursed monster with a cursed kiss.

  Cursed kiss.

  If Tadhg was cursed, then anyone he kissed would be . . . “Cursed.”

  Aveen was cursed.

  Cursed, not dead.

  Cursed, but not forever.

  For how long?

  “A year and a day.” It couldn’t be that simple, could it?

  Tadhg blew out a relieved breath and raked a hand through his dark hair. Firelight reflected off the exposed tips of his ears. “It’s about feckin’ time you figured it out.”

  “She’s coming back.” The words didn’t register. Aveen is coming back. That night in the pub, when I’d asked Tadhg what I should do, he’d said that killing the Gancanagh was excessive and unnecessary. It had been true. All of it.

  There was still one piece of the puzzle that didn’t fit. “Why did you do it?” What had possessed him to prey on my sister in the first place?

  Tadhg dragged a hand down his face, smearing kohl across his cheekbone. “I promised Aveen I wouldn’t tell, but I think you already know the answer.”

  I will fix it, Aveen had said the night she’d died.

  You have to trust me.

  I love you, Keelynn. No matter what happens, please remember that.

  Had Aveen sacrificed herself for me?

  What was I thinking? This was exactly the type of thing my selfless sister would do. Give up a year of her life so that I could marry the man I loved. If she had called off the engagement, Robert’s father would’ve been shamed and never considered a union with my family. But with Aveen presumed dead, my husband would have inherited my father’s estates and fortune. And with the bargain already struck between our families, I would have been the obvious choice fo
r Robert’s wife.

  It was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant.

  And there was no doubt in my mind that it would’ve worked—if I hadn’t been a selfish fool and gone into that hallway with Edward.

  I dropped my head into my hands to keep from spinning out of control. All this time, I’d believed I had a role to play in this story, that I could save my sister.

  My mission, my purpose. All pointless.

  A warm hand settled on my shoulder. I shrugged it off. Tadhg could keep his false comfort and pity. I didn’t want either.

  “You could have found a way to tell me.” If I had known the truth, Padraig would still be alive. I wouldn’t have let Tadhg share my bed, and I wouldn’t have gotten stabbed.

  “Not while you possessed one of the only weapons capable of killing me.” He crouched so we were eye level but did not try to touch me again. “I’ve spent the last two centuries drowning under the weight of these curses. I thought that ring was my only chance at freedom, and I wasn’t letting it out of my sight.”

  A ring enchanted to neutralize curses.

  A ring that he had asked me to wear so he didn’t kill me when we kissed.

  Now that I knew the truth, I understood why he’d lied. It didn’t make things better, but I understood.

  The person I’d been when we first began this journey wasn’t the woman I was now. That Keelynn would have killed the Ganganagh without a second thought. As painful as it was to admit, Tadhg had been right to keep his secret.

  “You may not believe me, but I am deeply sorry for deceiving you,” he said, his shoulders falling. “I never meant for any of this to happen. I just wanted the ring. You weren’t supposed to get caught up in this disaster.”

  I believed him. How could he have known I was going to go off with Edward? How could he have known I was going to track down the witch? The answer was simple: he couldn’t. Everything that had happened in the wake of Aveen’s death had been my fault.

  “Where’s my sister now?”

  His mouth pressed into a tight line. “She’s in the underworld, but her body is being held at my castle. My brother and I retrieved it after the funeral.”