“And where is Eala tonight?” It was the last excuse I could muster. “That I may go to the feis in her place?”
Again, the maidens glanced at each other.
“She’s with him. Your prince.” A meaningful smile wreathed Chandi’s face. “Alone.”
A fleeting prick of envy faded swiftly before an unfamiliar blossom of… peace. I glanced behind me, as if Rogan’s presence lingered at my shoulder. But of course he wasn’t there, and I was glad for it.
I was glad forhim. Brighid knew he deserved a happy ending as much as anyone.
“Let’s go,” I said.
I’d only glimpsed Murias—the abandoned Folk city—from afar. But it wasn’t hard to recognize. Glittering white walls reared up, crowned in delicate parapets. Elegant buildings etched fantastical shapes against the night sky. Streets like necklaces of gold draped between airy, flowering trees. But up close, a taint crept on vile feet through the once-glorious city.
The flowers on the trees were veined with shadow. Festering vines cracked stone and crumbled mortar. Skeleton birds flitted above the broken roofs of towering monuments. And beneath it all was an awfulsound, juddering along my bones and rooting behind my teeth.
Twenty paces ahead, the swan maidens paused to see why I’d stopped in the middle of the street.
“Come on!” Chandi called.
Sick hesitation rooted me to the spot.
“Can’t you—” They were all staring at me. “Can’t you hear that?”
“The music?” The red-haired maiden in the black dress laughed. “Brace yourself—it’ll be even louder once we get there.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but the girls practically carried me forward into the revel.
Colored lights blossomed behind shattered walls. Music pounded strangely as we entered a huge, dark space that must once have been a great hall. But instead of pillars, four contorted oak trees lofted toward the sky, glowing lanterns tangling in their unseasonably bare branches. Folk thronged the space, gyrating to the throbbing music, which was almost loud enough to cover the incessant hum of the distorted wild magic.
And across the marble and granite walls, painted in moving color, illusions of monsters and marvels danced as well.
“The Feis of the Wild Hunt.” Chandi had to shout in my ear to be heard. “A long time ago, the Wild Hunt blazed across the sky on the night of the summer solstice, hunting giants, beasts, monsters, and humans who had displeased them. But when the Treasures were forged, the Wild Hunt’s power was stolen. So now the Hunt lives only in the memories and dreams of the Folk.”
All around me, visions of violence seethed.
Hawks with human eyes and men with wolfish teeth and frightened deer bleeding red upon the grass.
Hounds with white pelts and flaming eyes, pursuing brittle-legged creatures of bone. I could almost hear their unearthly baying: it was a bronze-edged bell of primordial fear, and it raised the hairs at the nape of my neck.
“This?” I gasped. “This was what the world was like before the Treasures were forged?”
“So they say.”
The base of my skull throbbed in time to the music. My throat was dry. I tried to look somewhere other than the shifting, echoing images, but they were everywhere.
Sympathy softened Chandi’s eyes. She waved the other swan maidens away, and they happily submitted to the churn of strange bodies surrounding us.
“This wasn’t what I wanted to show you. Come.”
It was a relief to leave the noise and chaotic visions behind. Chandi led me around the side of the building. What once had been a small park or garden had been utterly reclaimed by nature. But—like everything else in this accursed city—it had grownwrong. The leaves on the trees were more shadow than shape. A small stream was clogged with blooms of fluorescent algae. A gust of wind blew the scent of decay down from the hills, and the distortion billowed closer. My blood thrummed with its sick vibration.
I stopped. “I don’t want to go any closer.”
“To what?”
“The… corruption?” I didn’t have another name for it. “Morrigan, can’t you feel it?”
Chandi frowned, but not at me. She hesitated for a split second, then schooled her features. “Only a little farther.”
