I got it now.
Liam told me that Muiredach had destroyed the original royal line of this realm, but that wasn’t exactly right.
Someone had survived.
Two someones actually.
The eldritch who served as the meadow’s custodian—and Arlan. The eldritch’s offspring.
Did Muiredach know? Did anyone?
Not that it mattered. Arlan was planning to end me so my power wouldn’t fall into Muiredach’s hands. I could read his intention as clear as the branches above me.
He’d probably die soon afterward. Likely in an excruciatingly painful way. But at least Muiredach wouldn’t claim my magic for his own.
I had a feeling the power inside me was what Muiredach had been searching for so unsuccessfully all these years. With it, he could fix what his greed had destroyed.
That couldn’t be allowed to happen. Even if it meant I no longer existed.
“I’m sorry. I had hoped it wouldn’t come to this,” he told me with such obvious regret that I believed him. Whatever he’d been scheming in that barrow of his, I didn’t think he’d expected it to lead here.
I should have felt something at the prospect of my end. Fear. Regret.
Death was a permanent state of being that couldn’t be changed once one had crossed that threshold.
At least not if you didn’t want to become a zombie, revenant, or one of a dozen other nasty creatures who had no mind or will of their own. Only endless hunger.
There was a curious sense of detachment as I watched Arlan reach for me.
Maybe it was because I was already dying. He was just hastening the process.
Not wanting Arlan’s face to be the last thing I saw, I looked past him to the canopy of the oak. Ahrun perched in its branches, his features alive with interest as he watched the show.
Catching my gaze on him, he smiled and mouthed, “What are you going to do now?”
People kept telling me to act. Yet not a one had given me a hint as towhatI should do.
Aren’t you forgetting?Ahrun tapped his chest.You have one trick left to try. Embrace your darkness, child.Becomewhat you’re meant to be.
Arlan’s hand touched the spot over my heart, his power pouring into me in a blaze of fire. A muffled scream rose to my throat as my back bowed.
Deep inside, chains that I’d never fully been aware of shattered one by one.
For once, I let them.
Power—cool and dark—rushed to meet Arlan’s sunlight. The two powers crashed together with a fury that drew a grunt from the Fae.
His amber eyes flashed to mine. “You—”
I didn’t hear the rest of what he said, my ears ringing from the darkness freezing me.
I felt myself changing, things shifting inside and out as I became.
A spiderweb of paths spread out before me. Dozens of potential futures.
In some, I was a dark queen. Solitary as I walked the realms, subjugating all before me. In others, I was a true monster. Feared and hunted, spending my days in shadow and night.
None of those futures were what I wanted.
