She had died.She had come back.And now, she was caged.
The tower room was high above the palace. A place no one visited. No one asked about. No one cared to remember.
A forgotten princess for a kingdom that wanted her gone.
The only light came from a high slit of a window, barely wide enough for a bird. The door was barred from the outside. Her food was delivered in silence. Her voice remained missing—stolen, perhaps, by the rope that had nearly killed her.
But even if she could scream, no one would have answered.
No one except him.
Cianán.
He came every week. Like a clock wound too tightly.
Each visit was worse than the last.
He never struck her, but sometimes—she wished he would. A bruise could be tended. But words? His words poisoned her slower than the rope ever did.
"You tricked me," he said once, circling her like a wolf with too much time. "You deceived me. You made me love you."
She said nothing.
"You kissed me and fed me poison."
Her throat pulsed at the memory of his lips on hers.
"You watched me die while smiling."
She blinked—just once—and he slammed the wall with his fist.
"Say something!" he shouted. "Say you're sorry!"
She opened her mouth.
Nothing.
Not a whisper.
Her voice was gone, and with it, the last sliver of self she had held onto.
One day, he brought her a dress.
It was the same color as the gown she wore the night she was accused—deep forest green with a silver sash. Torn at the sleeve, smelling faintly of bloodroot and wine.
"Do you remember this?" he asked, laying it across her cot. "The night I nearly died. You wore this. You looked beautiful."
She didn't move.
He crouched beside her. "I wanted you to be my queen," he murmured. "I gave you everything."
You gave me a noose.
He didn't say anything else that day.
He simply left her with the dress and locked the door.
She did not cry anymore.
Not when the wind blew so hard through the tower window that frost crept into her bones.
Not when she heard the maids whisper her name like a ghost story.
But when she caught her reflection in a sliver of broken mirror—saw how gaunt her cheeks had grown, how her once-bright eyes were rimmed with shadow—something inside her cracked.
The girl he'd loved was gone.
All that remained was hollowed-out fury.
She did not expect to see anyone else again.
Until she heard voices outside the door.
Two men. One of them low-voiced and amused.
"She's still alive?" the stranger asked. "What's the point?"
"A warning," the other replied. "To others. To her. To him."
The stranger laughed. "He doesn't care. He's obsessed. If he had proof she was innocent, I swear he'd burn it just to keep hating her."
The voices faded.
But Éirinn had already stopped breathing.
Proof?Innocent?
That night, she didn't sleep.
She paced.
She scratched marks into the wall with a jagged stone—one for each day of her captivity.
And when morning came, she waited.
She didn't have to wait long.
The door opened.
But it wasn't Cianán.
It was a man she'd never seen before, cloaked in midnight and wearing the crest of the king's cousin—Lord Ronan, a man known for his ambition, not his morals.
He looked her over with a tilted head and an expression that made her skin crawl.
"Well, aren't you a surprise," he said. "Still breathing. Still… dangerous."
She stepped back. Slowly.
He smiled wider. "You were always a tool. I just never thought you'd last this long. But now, you might finally be useful."
He snapped his fingers.
Two guards entered.
And just like that, she was no longer imprisoned by Cianán.
She was a hostage in someone else's war.
They brought her to the balcony of a high eastern tower, wrapped in chains she could barely move against.
Ronan stood with her, arms crossed behind his back.
Cianán stood below.
His face was hard. Cold. Empty.
"I have what you want," Ronan called out. "But she's less of a threat than I hoped. Seems your rage is more reliable than your reason."
Cianán's gaze flicked up to Éirinn. His lips tightened.
"She means nothing to me," he said.
Her breath caught.
Not even denial.
Just… dismissal.
"I could throw her right now," Ronan said, nudging her toward the edge. "Shall I?"
Cianán didn't flinch. "Do as you please."
And then it happened.
Ronan shoved her.
She fell.
The world twisted. The sky turned sideways. Her body screamed.
She waited for the stone.
For death.
Again.
But the pain never came.
Instead, she felt… power.
Heat surged through her spine.
The air split open.
Her skin burned—not with fire, but with something deeper. Something older.
Her back arched.
Her limbs glowed.
And then—wings.
Massive, scaled, black-streaked with grey and blue. Her skin shimmered as if carved from polished obsidian. Her hands lengthened. Her teeth sharpened.
And she did not hit the ground.
She flew.
She soared back up before Ronan could blink.
Snatched him by the neck.
Held him over the same edge he'd thrown her from.
"Still think I'm nothing?" she hissed—voice returned, but unearthly, thrumming like thunder.
He screamed as she hurled him into the gorge below.
Then she turned to the figure standing frozen beneath the tower.
Cianán.
She descended like vengeance given wings.
And without a word, she bit into his right arm.
He howled in agony as stone spread across his flesh, freezing the limb solid.
She looked him dead in the eyes.
"I didn't poison you," she said coldly. "But now I have."
Then she soared into the sky.
And left them all behind.