King's Warrior (Renegade Lords)

s.”

Tadhg shrugged. “Och, he’s too stubborn to die just because someone shoved a sword in his belly.”

Rowan dropped onto a blanket, holding his mug high to keep the liquid from splashing out. “True enough. I tried shoving his head into a wall once and it didn’t change his mind on a single thing.”

“It changed my mind about how hard you can shove,” Máel retorted, coming in and taking a mug from Fáelán as he passed.

Rowan grinned. “Give me a pretty face and I’ll show you how hard I can shove.” He hooked Máel’s ankle as he strode by and yanked, toppling the older boy onto the sand beside him. Máel fell with a mild curse, punched Rowan in the stomach, then lifted his dripping mug into the air in Tadhg’s direction.

“You did good, tighearna bó. My thanks.”

Gratitude did not come easy to dark-eyed, dark-hearted Máel, and Tadhg should be happy, but the nickname stung, as it always did: Cow Lord.

That was his only title.

Bonded by their shared outrage, they had formed a pact the night they’d washed up on the shores of Renegades Cover, a brotherhood, these exiled lords and Tadhg. “To something else,” Fáelán had vowed.

Tadhg had heard ‘to something greater.’

But this, this was not great.

Now the renegade princelings and one bastard were all on a level: common criminals. Outlaws. Renegades.

Fáe sat beside the pile of golden booty, a boot up on it, the firelight reflecting ribbons of red and gold in his hard, laughing face as he polished and repolished the gleaming sword laying in his lap.

How had it come to this?

“And tomorrow’s take will be even larger,” Rowan predicted. “There’s the tourney, and Earl de le Mare, who needs to be reminded of his debts. Be lots of coin. And women.”

“And fighting,” said Máel.

Fáelán just smiled faintly and kept cleaning his blade.

“Not for me,” Tadhg said, the words were thick in his mouth but he said them nonetheless.

Rowan and Máel did not hear, but Fáelán turned to him, his smile fading. “What did you say, little brother?”

It was their affection, their insult, their pleasure to call him that. But he was fifteen now. He was no longer little, and he was no longer theirs.

“I’m leaving.”

The other voices fell away as Máel and Rowan turned to him.

“I am leaving,” he said again in the sudden silence.

Tawny-haired Rowan, sprawled on an elbow a blanket on the sand, grinned up at him. “Leaving what?”

“Leaving this” he said, slow and distinct. He dropped the pouch of his portion of the night’s bounty the sand, where it squatted like a turd.

Máel took another swig of his drink, then threw it down on the floor of the cave. It hit with a wooden clatter.

“I cannot do this anymore,” Tadhg said to their disbelieving silence.

“What are you going to do instead?” Rowan asked, still grinning.

He knew his answer would condemn him to Rowan, who knew nothing outside of this outlaw brotherhood.

He gave it anyway. “Something…better.”