Niall stared at him for several breaths before getting to the inevitable issue. “You gave me your vow of fealty.”

“True.” Irial reached out and took Niall’s glass.

When Niall didn’t react, Irial drank from it.

The Dark King still didn’t respond. So, Irial leaned forward, flipped open the front of Niall’s jacket, and retrieved the cigarette case from the inside pocket. To his credit, Niall didn’t flinch when Irial’s fingers grazed Niall’s chest.

Silently, Irial extracted a cigarette, packed it, and held it to his lips.

Niall scowled, but he extended a lighter nonetheless.

Irial took a long drag from the now lit cigarette before speaking. “I’m better at this game, Niall. You can be the intimidating, bad-tempered king to everyone but me. We both know that I wouldn’t raise a hand to stop you if you wanted to take all of your tempers out on me. There’s only one person I’d protect at your expense…and her life span is but a blink of ours.”

“You’re addictive to mortals now.”

“I know,” Irial agreed. “That’s why I won’t touch her. Not ever again.”

“You still love her.”

Irial took another drag on his cigarette. “Yet I did the one thing that would assure that I can’t be with her. I am quite capable of continuing to love someone”—he caught Niall’s gaze—“without touching them. You, of everyone in this world, know that.”

As always, Niall was the first to look away. That subject was forbidden. Niall might understand now why Irial had not stepped in when Niall offered himself over to the court’s abuse centuries ago, but he didn’t forgive—not completely.

Maybe in another twelve centuries.

“She is sad,” Irial said, drawing Niall’s gaze back, “as you are.”

“She doesn’t want…” The words died before Niall could complete the lie. “She says she doesn’t want a relationship with either of us.”

Irial flicked his ash onto the sidewalk. “Sometimes you need to accept what a person—or faery—can offer. Do you think I’d come see her if she didn’t want me to?”

Niall stilled.

“Every week she is at the same place at the same time.” Irial offered back Niall’s half-empty glass.

Once Niall took it and drank, Irial continued, “If she wanted to not see me, she’d have only to change one detail. I didn’t come one week, and a faery—one whose name I will not share—came in my stead to watch her response. She looked for me. She couldn’t focus—and the next week? She was relieved when she saw me. I tasted it.”

Niall startled. “I thought that you were…the ink exchange was severed.”

“It was severed enough that we are unbound,” Irial assured him. “I don’t weaken her.” He didn’t add that Leslie weakened him, that he came to watch her each week so she could do just that. It wasn’t conscious on her part, but she drew strength from him. Irial also suspected that his own longevity decreased as hers increased. That wasn’t something Niall needed to know.

“You are hiding things.” Niall took the cigarette from Irial’s hand and crushed it in the ashtray. He slid forward one of the full glasses that a waitress had wordlessly delivered.

“Nothing that harms Leslie.” Irial accepted the glass. “That’s the only answer you’ll get.”

“Because you don’t want to know how I’ll feel about what you’ve done.” Niall lifted not the untouched glass but the one from which Irial had drunk. “If your actions harm you, I would be upset. I hate that it’s true, but it is.”

“I’m glad.” Irial reached out so his hand hovered over Niall’s. He avoided touching the Dark King during such conversations if possible. Because I am a coward. “Go see her. I cannot give you what you’d like in this life, but I can promise that I mean her—and you—only happiness.”

“Life was easier before.”

“For you, perhaps. I could taste all of your emotions then,” Irial reminded him. It wasn’t a lie; he had been able to taste them. He just didn’t mention that he still could. “You never hated me.”

“It was easier when I thought you didn’t know that.” Niall watched mortals walking along the street. “I still don’t like that you see her.”

“You are my king. You could command me to stop seeing her.”

Niall turned his gaze to Irial. “What would you do?”

“Blind myself, if you were foolish enough to use those words.” Irial stood, pulled out a few bills, and tucked them under the ashtray. “If not? Break my oath to you.”

“What good is fealty if I can’t command you?”

“I would follow any order you gave me, Niall, as long as it didn’t endanger Leslie…or you.” Irial emptied the glass. “Ask me to carve out my heart. Tell me to betray our court, the court I’ve lived to serve and protect for longer than you’ve existed, and I would obey you. You are my king.”

The intensity of Niall’s earlier anger was equaled now by hope and fear in even measures.

“You both need me, and”—Irial set the glass down, pushed in his chair, and let the moment stretch out just a bit longer as Niall’s hope overwhelmed his fear—“I will not fail either of you ever again.”