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i_read_whatSo last time, Keely let slip about Rory and his raiders and the boys have gone after them.
This could get tense!
The downside to keeping a secret is that when you finally blurt it out by mistake, you don't usually get a chance to include any mitigating circumstances like "they saved me from real bandits" or anything. Oops. Well, hopefully a character I like doesn't get murdered.
As I said before, Rory's a fairly decent guy and I don't THINK he'll kill the boys, but misunderstandings do happen, so it probably is a good thing that Keely's decided to go after them.
Actually, it's kind of funny, but for all Keely's boasting about having the advantage because she knows where to find Rory's camp, she gets there like three paragraphs before her brothers. And she, at least seems to think she's saving Rory from her brothers. I'm a little more skeptical, but okay.
And then they, too, were crashing through the brush, if on horseback, to join us, and Rory's men spread out to include two more Cheysuli in their thinning net -of steel.
Eight men—nine, counting Rory—and two warriors with lir. Not enough, I knew, not nearly enough.
It made me proud; it made me uneasy. It made me frustrated.
"No," I told my brothers.
I had, I knew, succeeded in astonishing them as well as Rory and his men, which amused me—or would have, had I the time—but all it got me was a reassessment of circumstances.
And then Brennan was glaring at me, much as Rory had. "What are you doing here?"
"More right than you," I retorted. "I know this man; do you?"
...I mean, who's fault is that again, Keely?
It's been very hard to track how time works in this book, to be honest, and the repeated scenes don't really help with that. But I feel like Keely's had plenty of time at this point to tell her brother what happened and, y'know, that the Erinnish "bandits" in question were basically harmless and actually saved her that one time.
Actually, what is Rory actually DOING out here? ARE they robbing people? Because that actually would be a bit of a problem. And, well, they DID rob her. Even if they were hot and sexy when they took her horse.
I do rather like the cinematics of this:
Brennan's glare was replaced by a certain familiar grimness. "Aye," he said, "I do. He is a thief. He is the man who stole my horse. That is enough, I think; the situation hardly warrants an introduction."
In the shadows, Sleeta growled. The sound climbed from deep in her throat, rising in pitch and promise. There is nothing, even to me, quite so unsettling as a mountain cat expressing hostile intentions. I saw Rory's men come to an abrupt and unhappy realization that what they faced required something more than they had assumed. Men are one thing, even Cheysuli; a mountain cat is another.
Rael shrieked overhead and came smashing down through branches to settle on Hart's outstretched arm. Not a stoop, but close enough; enough to startle them all. Enough to make them realize, yet again, what manner of men they faced.
The white hawk bated, stretching wide black-etched wings, then lifted and flew through the clearing to settle in a tree very near a still-recumbent Rory.
That said, I kind of think Brennan's being a bit out of character here. He's usually a bit more thoughtful than this. I suppose I can explain it away as being under a lot of stress in this book, but I'm a little annoyed nonetheless.
That said, this bit is pretty funny:
Are you quite finished? I asked sourly.
Rael said he was.
Hart glanced at me, eyes amused, but swallowed the crooked smile. He was trying to look very fierce; laughing would not help.
"No," I said again.
"No, what?" Brennan was irritated. "No, this is not the man; no, this is not the horse; no, these are not bandits?" He shook his head. "Decide on one, Keely, or we will be here all day."
Hart asks how Keely even made it here, given the amount of alcohol she drank, which annoys Keely as she doesn't particularly want Rory to hear that. She asserts that she's there to stop them from harming a man who gave her aid when she needed it.
You know, something she could have told them all along.
Rory decides to posture:
"The man," Rory announced, "can speak for himself, lass." He got to his feet, ignoring Sleeta's accompanying rumble, and brushed his leathers free of clinging leaves and debris as he fixed his gaze on Brennan. "Your colt, is it, then? The fine bright lad?'" He pursed lips as Brennan nodded. "So, then, I am addressing the Prince of Homana?"
Brennan, as always, was precise. "As well as the Prince of Solinde."
"Two princes!" Rory showed irreverent teeth through the bush of his beard. "Then I'll be thanking the gods for this day, and telling my children about it."
Keely is annoyed, but it is probably worth remembering that Rory is the bastard son of a King himself. And well, Keely COULD have straightened this out a long time ago.
I glared. "You at least owe them courtesy! Have you no manners at all?"
He grinned. "Oh, aye, lass, I do ... but I'm for showing them only to those who are deserving. This man called me a thief."
"You are," Brennan said coolly.
Rory's brows slid up. "Am I? Am I, then? And I was thinking I got him in payment for saving the lass' life."
Hart asks Keely about it. And Keely's reaction is...
I was heartily sick of the subject. "Nothing," I said impatiently. "He did me a service, aye ... some thieves—other thieves ..." I scowled at Brennan. "I told you this already."
"A little," he agreed. And then he looked past Rory to the colt, who had recovered himself enough to wander back into the clearing. "But—did you really give him in payment?" His tone sounded uncharacteristically forlorn.
Hart snorted inelegantly. "If she did, rujho, surely she is worth the price."
Brennan's mouth hooked down. "Perhaps. Sometimes. Not today." He looked at me pointedly. "Nor last night." Then his attention focused itself on Rory again. "My thanks for aiding Keely—leijhana tu'sai, in the old Tongue—but I will make the payment in coin."
How can you be sick of a subject that you mentioned once, Keely?
Also, it occurs to me that since you didn't really bother to mention that there were TWO sets of bandits, Brennan may well have believed that these guys attacked you to begin with.
Hart though is less emotionally invested.
Hart, oddly, was watching me instead of his brother. "Let him go, rujho."
Brennan shot him an unappreciative scowl. "Who— the colt or the thief?"
Hart's gaze was unwavering. "Both, I think."
I was hot, suddenly, and strangely unsettled. Light-hearted, good-natured Hart was more perceptive than I appreciated.
Brennan glanced at me briefly, sensing something in Hart's studied lightness, but apparently learned nothing from my red-faced expression. He shook his head, swung a leg across his saddle and jumped down. "No. I came to fetch home my colt, and so I shall."
So this is an interesting use of Keely's unreliable narration. And I have to admit, if nothing else, I appreciate this book for giving me a better appreciation of Hart. It's a shame we didn't get more sibling dynamics in Pride of Princes before they split up because I like THIS Hart a lot.
Keely thinks about Sean, possibly dead of a broken skull. She thinks about Rory possibly getting a shredded throat. She steps between them.
The resulting argument is described, sadly, rather than in dialogue.
In the Old Tongue, Brennan told me to get out of his way. He also called me a fool and a dithering female, which I did not particularly care for, and suggested I might do better to differentiate between my possessions and his, before I was so generous with their disposition.
Equally glib, I called him a pompous, humorless ku'reshtin and suggested he give his cheysula a large portion of the respect and affection he reserved for his precious horses . . . which was not fair and did little to soothe his temper, but made me feel better nonetheless, if only briefly. Then I felt guilty.
Brennan is a fair man, and even-tempered most of the time, and does not react rashly to the provocations others, and I, give him. Usually. But he is Cheysuli, and none of us are made of stone; he had, upon occasion, lost his temper entirely, and people suffered for it.
Certainly Rory might.
It might help reinforce the idea of Brennan being sexist if we actually got to hear him say something sexist. On the other hand, I've been getting pretty sick of seeing Keely use Aileen to hurt her brother. Which she does again here.
Hey, here's a thought, Keely. Why don't you mention that this dude is Aileen's brother?
Because if he's Sean's half-brother, Liam's son with some other woman, then he's AILEEN's half-brother too. And maybe, just maybe, she might have an emotion or two about this.
Instead she decides to hand Rory her knife, a gesture that does not surprise Hart, but does surprise Brennan. I'm wondering exactly how that's supposed to help. But okay.
And wait. This just went a little sideways. In a way that I don't remotely understand.
This one is going to be long.
He looked at Rory, who cradled the long-knife in his hands. He looked at the knife itself, as if he needed to assure himself it was what he thought it was. And then, white-faced, he looked at foe.
I said nothing at all, knowing there was no need. Not for Brennan's benefit; who was Cheysuli, and knew.
He swallowed tightly, reining in the shock, the dull anger, the sudden hostility. The latter puzzled me until he spoke. "Keep your mouth from Maeve."
I was, suddenly, hot, so hot I was wet with it. I wanted to tell him he was wrong, wrong, but to do so revoked the gesture, diluting its purpose entirely. Destroying the meaning altogether, and therefore the protection.
Maeve, who was his favorite of the Mujhar's daughters. Whom I baited to her face and ridiculed behind her back, even before the brother who most loved her of us all.
"Aye," I agreed hoarsely.
Brennan turned back to Bane, his fidgety black stallion. He swung up, gathered reins, stared hard at me down the blade of his aristocratic nose. "Sean," he said tightly, "may be a bit discommoded."
Hart let Brennan go, holding his own bay gelding back. He looked at Rory, looked at me. "Or not," he said clearly, and swung the bay to follow his brother.
OK. OKAY.
I get it. I GET IT.
When Roberson is good, she's very good. I was confused because this is the first time we've had a culturally Cheysuli female protagonist. (Alix is more Cheysuli than Keely is, in blood, but raised utterly Homanan.)
By giving Rory her knife, she just, basically, said that he was her romantic partner. That's why Hart isn't surprised, because he'd picked up the vibes first. It's why Keely is embarrassed. And it might even by why he brings up Maeve, which threw me. But Keely's been giving Maeve a very hard time for her relationship with Teirnan.
That said, this may be the very first time where I actually agree with Roberson about the Cheysuli being, maybe, a little less sexist than Homanan society. Because Brennan clearly believes his betrothed sister is having an affair with this man, and his reaction is pretty restrained for it.
I mean, it'd be hypocritical for him to get too judgmental. But when does hypocrisy matter in this setting?
Now, Hart's reaction is interesting too. But we'll put a pin on that.
So Keely's been left with Rory, who gives her her knife back. He notes that she smells and her hair is a mess. He invites her to the fire for a mug of Erinnish liquor.
She begs off, but he says it's the only thing that will help with her hangover symptoms.
Keely, meanwhile, seems to have realized that she's bitten off more than she can chew. But he urges her to stay and drink it all.
She thinks about the Rampant Lion and why she was drinking in the first place. She studies Rory:
Rory drank liquor straight out of the skin. His eyes were very calm, mostly shielded beneath lowered lashes. A strong, tough, proud man, made for better than outlawry. Made for a throne, I thought, as much as Brennan or Hart or Corin.
But, he is bastard-born. Even if Sean were dead—
The liquor stilled my belly. It also cleared my head and gave me an odd, bright courage. "Why not you?" I asked. "You said Liam had acknowledged you— that your paternity was no secret from anyone in Erinn ..." I drew in a deep breath. "Why not you?"
It's actually a fair question. If Sean IS dead, then Liam needs an heir. And Rory is his acknowledged son.
Keely notes that when kings have no heirs, they "make shift where they can". Rory turns it back on her, pointing out he'd said the same of Brennan and Aileen.
"Aye, and I told you what Brennan would—or would not—do." I paused, wishing I could be delicate; knowing it was not a particular gift of mine. "Do you mean Liam would turn from Ierne and wed another woman in hopes of getting a new son—an infant—rather than make legitimate a full-grown, proven man?"
I mean, Rory is, theoretically, the guy who MURDERED Sean. That would theoretically get in the way of Liam putting Rory on the throne.
This bit is weird though:
I looked at Rory again. He had less right, perhaps, than Teirnan to a throne, being born out of the line of succession, and yet I believed him far more worthy. And far more dangerous, if he set his mind to have it.
Um, Keely. How does he have less right than Teirnan?? Teirnan is ALSO born out of the line of succession. Isolde, his claim to the throne, was Donal's illegitimate child. Rory is the acknowledged son of the current king, not the nephew of the king's bastard sister.
But this is a moment for Keely and Rory. He asks if she thinks he's fit for it. When she says yes, he points out that she hardly knows him. Which is true. She's met him four times now, where he saved her life, stole her horse, told her he'd murdered his brother, and antagonized the heir to the throne of this realm in front of the heir to a different one.
Seems built for kingship to me! Sure!
Rory focuses on something else.
Rory's gaze was unwavering. "If I'm fit for a throne, lass, am I also fit for you?"
I nearly dropped the mug. "What?"
Deliberately, he said, "The heir to the House of Eagles is betrothed to Keely of Homana."
Something stirred sluggishly within me. Not anger. Not fear. Something like—anticipation.
I was curiously light-headed. "So he is," I said.
Rory's eyes changed. "No," he said abruptly, and I felt the tension snap.
Keely thinks this means Sean is dead. Rory...seems pretty certain that he's not. But the scene goes different:
"I'll take nothing not offered, lass ... neither a woman nor a throne."
A blurt of bittersweet laughter scraped my throat. "In Brennan's eyes, I am."
"What d'ye—?" And then, comprehending, "Oh, lass, no."
Keely explains what the gift of a knife from a man to a woman means in Cheysuli culture: it's similar to the hearth-friend thing, but means the woman IS sharing the host's bed.
Rory just repeats "only if invited". He thinks Hart knows better. But the problem for Keely is that Brennan thinks that he is. By offering the knife, she was extending protection to him. Offering "clan-rights".
Hm, does that mean she'd have to go to the clan elders to end the relationship like Maeve does? (I'm not really sure why Roberson didn't make Maeve and Teirnan married except that Keely would have less to look down on her about.)
Anyway, Rory ends up inviting her to a meal, some liquor and a bed (not in the sexual sense), and the chapter ends with a bit of banter.
This could get tense!
The downside to keeping a secret is that when you finally blurt it out by mistake, you don't usually get a chance to include any mitigating circumstances like "they saved me from real bandits" or anything. Oops. Well, hopefully a character I like doesn't get murdered.
As I said before, Rory's a fairly decent guy and I don't THINK he'll kill the boys, but misunderstandings do happen, so it probably is a good thing that Keely's decided to go after them.
Actually, it's kind of funny, but for all Keely's boasting about having the advantage because she knows where to find Rory's camp, she gets there like three paragraphs before her brothers. And she, at least seems to think she's saving Rory from her brothers. I'm a little more skeptical, but okay.
And then they, too, were crashing through the brush, if on horseback, to join us, and Rory's men spread out to include two more Cheysuli in their thinning net -of steel.
Eight men—nine, counting Rory—and two warriors with lir. Not enough, I knew, not nearly enough.
It made me proud; it made me uneasy. It made me frustrated.
"No," I told my brothers.
I had, I knew, succeeded in astonishing them as well as Rory and his men, which amused me—or would have, had I the time—but all it got me was a reassessment of circumstances.
And then Brennan was glaring at me, much as Rory had. "What are you doing here?"
"More right than you," I retorted. "I know this man; do you?"
...I mean, who's fault is that again, Keely?
It's been very hard to track how time works in this book, to be honest, and the repeated scenes don't really help with that. But I feel like Keely's had plenty of time at this point to tell her brother what happened and, y'know, that the Erinnish "bandits" in question were basically harmless and actually saved her that one time.
Actually, what is Rory actually DOING out here? ARE they robbing people? Because that actually would be a bit of a problem. And, well, they DID rob her. Even if they were hot and sexy when they took her horse.
I do rather like the cinematics of this:
Brennan's glare was replaced by a certain familiar grimness. "Aye," he said, "I do. He is a thief. He is the man who stole my horse. That is enough, I think; the situation hardly warrants an introduction."
In the shadows, Sleeta growled. The sound climbed from deep in her throat, rising in pitch and promise. There is nothing, even to me, quite so unsettling as a mountain cat expressing hostile intentions. I saw Rory's men come to an abrupt and unhappy realization that what they faced required something more than they had assumed. Men are one thing, even Cheysuli; a mountain cat is another.
Rael shrieked overhead and came smashing down through branches to settle on Hart's outstretched arm. Not a stoop, but close enough; enough to startle them all. Enough to make them realize, yet again, what manner of men they faced.
The white hawk bated, stretching wide black-etched wings, then lifted and flew through the clearing to settle in a tree very near a still-recumbent Rory.
That said, I kind of think Brennan's being a bit out of character here. He's usually a bit more thoughtful than this. I suppose I can explain it away as being under a lot of stress in this book, but I'm a little annoyed nonetheless.
That said, this bit is pretty funny:
Are you quite finished? I asked sourly.
Rael said he was.
Hart glanced at me, eyes amused, but swallowed the crooked smile. He was trying to look very fierce; laughing would not help.
"No," I said again.
"No, what?" Brennan was irritated. "No, this is not the man; no, this is not the horse; no, these are not bandits?" He shook his head. "Decide on one, Keely, or we will be here all day."
Hart asks how Keely even made it here, given the amount of alcohol she drank, which annoys Keely as she doesn't particularly want Rory to hear that. She asserts that she's there to stop them from harming a man who gave her aid when she needed it.
You know, something she could have told them all along.
Rory decides to posture:
"The man," Rory announced, "can speak for himself, lass." He got to his feet, ignoring Sleeta's accompanying rumble, and brushed his leathers free of clinging leaves and debris as he fixed his gaze on Brennan. "Your colt, is it, then? The fine bright lad?'" He pursed lips as Brennan nodded. "So, then, I am addressing the Prince of Homana?"
Brennan, as always, was precise. "As well as the Prince of Solinde."
"Two princes!" Rory showed irreverent teeth through the bush of his beard. "Then I'll be thanking the gods for this day, and telling my children about it."
Keely is annoyed, but it is probably worth remembering that Rory is the bastard son of a King himself. And well, Keely COULD have straightened this out a long time ago.
I glared. "You at least owe them courtesy! Have you no manners at all?"
He grinned. "Oh, aye, lass, I do ... but I'm for showing them only to those who are deserving. This man called me a thief."
"You are," Brennan said coolly.
Rory's brows slid up. "Am I? Am I, then? And I was thinking I got him in payment for saving the lass' life."
Hart asks Keely about it. And Keely's reaction is...
I was heartily sick of the subject. "Nothing," I said impatiently. "He did me a service, aye ... some thieves—other thieves ..." I scowled at Brennan. "I told you this already."
"A little," he agreed. And then he looked past Rory to the colt, who had recovered himself enough to wander back into the clearing. "But—did you really give him in payment?" His tone sounded uncharacteristically forlorn.
Hart snorted inelegantly. "If she did, rujho, surely she is worth the price."
Brennan's mouth hooked down. "Perhaps. Sometimes. Not today." He looked at me pointedly. "Nor last night." Then his attention focused itself on Rory again. "My thanks for aiding Keely—leijhana tu'sai, in the old Tongue—but I will make the payment in coin."
How can you be sick of a subject that you mentioned once, Keely?
Also, it occurs to me that since you didn't really bother to mention that there were TWO sets of bandits, Brennan may well have believed that these guys attacked you to begin with.
Hart though is less emotionally invested.
Hart, oddly, was watching me instead of his brother. "Let him go, rujho."
Brennan shot him an unappreciative scowl. "Who— the colt or the thief?"
Hart's gaze was unwavering. "Both, I think."
I was hot, suddenly, and strangely unsettled. Light-hearted, good-natured Hart was more perceptive than I appreciated.
Brennan glanced at me briefly, sensing something in Hart's studied lightness, but apparently learned nothing from my red-faced expression. He shook his head, swung a leg across his saddle and jumped down. "No. I came to fetch home my colt, and so I shall."
So this is an interesting use of Keely's unreliable narration. And I have to admit, if nothing else, I appreciate this book for giving me a better appreciation of Hart. It's a shame we didn't get more sibling dynamics in Pride of Princes before they split up because I like THIS Hart a lot.
Keely thinks about Sean, possibly dead of a broken skull. She thinks about Rory possibly getting a shredded throat. She steps between them.
The resulting argument is described, sadly, rather than in dialogue.
In the Old Tongue, Brennan told me to get out of his way. He also called me a fool and a dithering female, which I did not particularly care for, and suggested I might do better to differentiate between my possessions and his, before I was so generous with their disposition.
Equally glib, I called him a pompous, humorless ku'reshtin and suggested he give his cheysula a large portion of the respect and affection he reserved for his precious horses . . . which was not fair and did little to soothe his temper, but made me feel better nonetheless, if only briefly. Then I felt guilty.
Brennan is a fair man, and even-tempered most of the time, and does not react rashly to the provocations others, and I, give him. Usually. But he is Cheysuli, and none of us are made of stone; he had, upon occasion, lost his temper entirely, and people suffered for it.
Certainly Rory might.
It might help reinforce the idea of Brennan being sexist if we actually got to hear him say something sexist. On the other hand, I've been getting pretty sick of seeing Keely use Aileen to hurt her brother. Which she does again here.
Hey, here's a thought, Keely. Why don't you mention that this dude is Aileen's brother?
Because if he's Sean's half-brother, Liam's son with some other woman, then he's AILEEN's half-brother too. And maybe, just maybe, she might have an emotion or two about this.
Instead she decides to hand Rory her knife, a gesture that does not surprise Hart, but does surprise Brennan. I'm wondering exactly how that's supposed to help. But okay.
And wait. This just went a little sideways. In a way that I don't remotely understand.
This one is going to be long.
He looked at Rory, who cradled the long-knife in his hands. He looked at the knife itself, as if he needed to assure himself it was what he thought it was. And then, white-faced, he looked at foe.
I said nothing at all, knowing there was no need. Not for Brennan's benefit; who was Cheysuli, and knew.
He swallowed tightly, reining in the shock, the dull anger, the sudden hostility. The latter puzzled me until he spoke. "Keep your mouth from Maeve."
I was, suddenly, hot, so hot I was wet with it. I wanted to tell him he was wrong, wrong, but to do so revoked the gesture, diluting its purpose entirely. Destroying the meaning altogether, and therefore the protection.
Maeve, who was his favorite of the Mujhar's daughters. Whom I baited to her face and ridiculed behind her back, even before the brother who most loved her of us all.
"Aye," I agreed hoarsely.
Brennan turned back to Bane, his fidgety black stallion. He swung up, gathered reins, stared hard at me down the blade of his aristocratic nose. "Sean," he said tightly, "may be a bit discommoded."
Hart let Brennan go, holding his own bay gelding back. He looked at Rory, looked at me. "Or not," he said clearly, and swung the bay to follow his brother.
OK. OKAY.
I get it. I GET IT.
When Roberson is good, she's very good. I was confused because this is the first time we've had a culturally Cheysuli female protagonist. (Alix is more Cheysuli than Keely is, in blood, but raised utterly Homanan.)
By giving Rory her knife, she just, basically, said that he was her romantic partner. That's why Hart isn't surprised, because he'd picked up the vibes first. It's why Keely is embarrassed. And it might even by why he brings up Maeve, which threw me. But Keely's been giving Maeve a very hard time for her relationship with Teirnan.
That said, this may be the very first time where I actually agree with Roberson about the Cheysuli being, maybe, a little less sexist than Homanan society. Because Brennan clearly believes his betrothed sister is having an affair with this man, and his reaction is pretty restrained for it.
I mean, it'd be hypocritical for him to get too judgmental. But when does hypocrisy matter in this setting?
Now, Hart's reaction is interesting too. But we'll put a pin on that.
So Keely's been left with Rory, who gives her her knife back. He notes that she smells and her hair is a mess. He invites her to the fire for a mug of Erinnish liquor.
She begs off, but he says it's the only thing that will help with her hangover symptoms.
Keely, meanwhile, seems to have realized that she's bitten off more than she can chew. But he urges her to stay and drink it all.
She thinks about the Rampant Lion and why she was drinking in the first place. She studies Rory:
Rory drank liquor straight out of the skin. His eyes were very calm, mostly shielded beneath lowered lashes. A strong, tough, proud man, made for better than outlawry. Made for a throne, I thought, as much as Brennan or Hart or Corin.
But, he is bastard-born. Even if Sean were dead—
The liquor stilled my belly. It also cleared my head and gave me an odd, bright courage. "Why not you?" I asked. "You said Liam had acknowledged you— that your paternity was no secret from anyone in Erinn ..." I drew in a deep breath. "Why not you?"
It's actually a fair question. If Sean IS dead, then Liam needs an heir. And Rory is his acknowledged son.
Keely notes that when kings have no heirs, they "make shift where they can". Rory turns it back on her, pointing out he'd said the same of Brennan and Aileen.
"Aye, and I told you what Brennan would—or would not—do." I paused, wishing I could be delicate; knowing it was not a particular gift of mine. "Do you mean Liam would turn from Ierne and wed another woman in hopes of getting a new son—an infant—rather than make legitimate a full-grown, proven man?"
I mean, Rory is, theoretically, the guy who MURDERED Sean. That would theoretically get in the way of Liam putting Rory on the throne.
This bit is weird though:
I looked at Rory again. He had less right, perhaps, than Teirnan to a throne, being born out of the line of succession, and yet I believed him far more worthy. And far more dangerous, if he set his mind to have it.
Um, Keely. How does he have less right than Teirnan?? Teirnan is ALSO born out of the line of succession. Isolde, his claim to the throne, was Donal's illegitimate child. Rory is the acknowledged son of the current king, not the nephew of the king's bastard sister.
But this is a moment for Keely and Rory. He asks if she thinks he's fit for it. When she says yes, he points out that she hardly knows him. Which is true. She's met him four times now, where he saved her life, stole her horse, told her he'd murdered his brother, and antagonized the heir to the throne of this realm in front of the heir to a different one.
Seems built for kingship to me! Sure!
Rory focuses on something else.
Rory's gaze was unwavering. "If I'm fit for a throne, lass, am I also fit for you?"
I nearly dropped the mug. "What?"
Deliberately, he said, "The heir to the House of Eagles is betrothed to Keely of Homana."
Something stirred sluggishly within me. Not anger. Not fear. Something like—anticipation.
I was curiously light-headed. "So he is," I said.
Rory's eyes changed. "No," he said abruptly, and I felt the tension snap.
Keely thinks this means Sean is dead. Rory...seems pretty certain that he's not. But the scene goes different:
"I'll take nothing not offered, lass ... neither a woman nor a throne."
A blurt of bittersweet laughter scraped my throat. "In Brennan's eyes, I am."
"What d'ye—?" And then, comprehending, "Oh, lass, no."
Keely explains what the gift of a knife from a man to a woman means in Cheysuli culture: it's similar to the hearth-friend thing, but means the woman IS sharing the host's bed.
Rory just repeats "only if invited". He thinks Hart knows better. But the problem for Keely is that Brennan thinks that he is. By offering the knife, she was extending protection to him. Offering "clan-rights".
Hm, does that mean she'd have to go to the clan elders to end the relationship like Maeve does? (I'm not really sure why Roberson didn't make Maeve and Teirnan married except that Keely would have less to look down on her about.)
Anyway, Rory ends up inviting her to a meal, some liquor and a bed (not in the sexual sense), and the chapter ends with a bit of banter.
no subject
Date: 2024-11-22 09:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-11-22 10:45 pm (UTC)I do get the sense we're supposed to be on KEELY's side more than I tend to be though.
As for what Roberson wants us to feel about Brennan, I don't honestly know, and that's a subject I'm going to definitely want to revisit in the series because there's a lot to poke at.
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Date: 2024-11-25 09:15 am (UTC)I wonder what we're supposed to think of Rory/Keely vs. Brennan/Aileen. I'm pretty sure Keely thinks that Rory's more respectful of her than Brennan is of his wife, but... yeah, don't see it at all. I doubt Brennan would steal something from Aileen and refuse to return it even if she asked and told him it was important to her family.
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Date: 2024-11-25 03:41 pm (UTC)It might have helped if Roberson told us a bit more about Sean and Rory's relationship. Like, if god forbid, something had happened to Niall under a younger Ian's watch, I could maybe see him fleeing to the countryside for a while, but we'd know it was because of grief/guilt, not because he was avoiding consequences.
It's kind of hard to compare Rory/Keely to Brennan/Aileen, because the characters are living two very different stories at the moment. The latter two are in an adult political drama, while Rory and Keely are in more romantic comedy territory for now. But from Keely's own perspective, it probably is simpler. Since her fears are all about Sean, and that's what she's been projecting onto them, then her time with Rory probably seems a lot freer and more romantic, even with the threat of potential consequence later.
To be fair to Rory, from what I remember, his actions will make a little more sense at the end of the book. But it's not something that can be easily explained at the moment.