Maeve left her horse tied up and crept through the rushes.

The mists were lifting off the lake, and sunlight glimmered on a flock of ducks that rose in a cacophony of squawks.

The whiff of decay from her father’s body pushed her toward the north shore of the little island, almost cut off from land by the water. Her pulse skittered. Perhaps she had only been lucky before, when she stole her father’s sword. This trespass might rouse the wrath of the sídhe in earnest.

She saw a movement through a thicket of blackthorns. Maeve froze and dropped. It was the man she had run into that night in the forest. Gods, it pained her to remember how in that moment of glorious madness, the royal sword fiery in her hand, she had kissed him, mindless and overcome with her daring. Was he one of the immortals?

He was walking along the shore as if he had just come from the water, his deerskin trews wet and stuck to his thighs. A great tattoo curled over his chest — a spiral that traced from heart, to belly, to breastbone. Maeve dragged her gaze from it. His long hair was a dark auburn, trailing about his face. He did not swagger like a warrior, with flexed shoulders and brawny arms. He was taller and more lithe, his graceful steps appearing to flow with the land, as if the air parted to let him by.

It was disconcerting, and Maeve did not like the sensation.

A strip of deerskin hid his eyes, as if he was blind. Maeve searched her memory of tales about the sídhe. Was this a mark of sacred sight?

The sídhe was gliding along the sand, smiling at something in the water. As he drew close to Maeve, he squatted and unfurled a hand toward the lake. The muscles along his shoulder-blade rippled, the hollows between his ribs glistening.

A snub head appeared, pushing through the water-grass. Maeve glimpsed a humped back and the flick of a tail.

The sídhe was murmuring. To Maeve’s astonishment, the otter clambered out of the water and put its paws on his knee. Maeve’s mouth fell open.

The sídhe stroked the otter’s flank, and when the creature chittered, he laughed. That made his belly shake, which prompted the otter to hop off, flashing a look of injury at him before diving again into the water.

The sídhe lay then with face lifted to the weak sun, as if drinking it in. The next moment, he scrambled up, turning toward the blackthorns where she hid.

Maeve’s legs were trembling, but she made herself stand. She stepped into the open, whipped out her father’s blade and knelt with it across her palms. “Forgive me for my mistake in the forest. I…was not in my right mind.” She paused to steal a glance at him.

The sídhe’s shoulders had tensed. “So this time you give me a chance to run before striking me down.”

Maeve blinked. “I…ah…have come to beg the forgiveness of the Shining Ones. I can give you much in return.”

His mouth quirked. “You think you can bargain with the sídhe?”

“Everything is a bargain.”

An ungodly snort startled her.

The sword slipped to Maeve’s knee, and she frowned. “As Queen of Connacht, I will ensure my people avoid your lakes and hills and leave you in peace.”

His brows arched above the blindfold; his mouth drew into a line.

Maeve tensed as an old hurt surfaced from the past. Help me. Twice, she had prayed to them, and twice, was met with silence. It was hard to speak. “The sídhe owe me.”

He turned on his heel and flowed back along the shore. “I lost my sight.” He sounded distracted now. “Do they owe me?”

Gods, he was not a sídhe, but a man. Stupid…stupid… Maeve’s limbs sprang to life and she ran after him. “Who are you?” She reached to halt him, and only then saw the blindfold had slipped, and above his brows was an older mark — the horned spiral borne by druid-kind.

Maeve clasped his arm, but did not get anything else out.

This time, something poured from him into her. First a flood of heat that loosened muscle and bone, then a rippling of her body, as if she was no longer solid.

She was sinuous…curling through sunlit water in a spiral of lithe muscles.

Maeve’s hand dropped away.

Glimmering bubbles all about her... 

Maeve spun, sheathing the sword. She stumbled into a run, expecting a shining wave of water and light to crash over her, fill her nose and throat until she drowned as a punishment for her daring.

She threw herself onto her steed’s back. “Fly,” she gasped to her horse, her knees prodding him into a gallop.

All the way home, that potent tide surged and ebbed through Maeve. She could not feel the shape of her own body — and she had never been more afraid.