She bent beside the polluted stream. In the darkness, I hadn’t seen the swath of flowers cutting across the path. But now rotted fluorescence sheened their petals, and I saw they were the same shape as the starflowers the maidens plucked each full moon. But these weren’t white. They were black.
“Remember what I told you on the Nameless Day?” Even Chandi’s eyes glowed wrong this close to the distortion—filaments of green and black discoloring her amber irises. “Like nature, Tír na nÓg demands balance. Everything here has its duality. When we came here, the white flowers began to grow. They protect, create, imagine. These black flowers—they are the balance. They cut, destroy, remember.”
I shook my head. “Why are you showing me this?”
“When we were young, we discovered something about the white flowers. When we swallowed them, we were able to see into the future. A glorious, extraordinary, wonderful future. But we soon realized it was no more than an illusion. Beautiful but false.” She considered her words. “We… learned that the dark flowers have an equal but opposite effect. When ingested, they too elicit visions.”
Something cold wormed down my neck. “True visions?”
“Forgotten memories. Unknown futures.” She rubbed a palm down the front of her dress. “If Irian is truly determined to die at Samhain, then we are all running out of time. The geas must be broken, lest we all die with him. Eala believes—weallbelieve—these flowers might hold the answer.”
I stared at the uncanny blossoms, struggling to think clearly over the slick throb of the wild magic. “Then why haven’t you used them?”
“These flowers… are not for us.” Her expression shifted. “But you are not like us. Our fate is in your hands, Fia.”
I hesitated. The night was warm—cloyingly so—but my arms prickled with gooseflesh. I knew I should not flirt with magic beyond my ken. There was no way of knowing what I might be risking—what price I might be required to pay, what terrible consequence I might risk.
But what might I also gain? Further insight into the swans’ geas would solve at least once piece of my puzzle. Eala, home to Mother. Rogan, out of Tír na nÓg. Irian, freed from at least one of his burdens.
I plucked one of the midnight flowers. And before I could change my mind, I bit down on the blossom, crushing it between my teeth.
Its petals cut my tongue—blood burst metallic in my mouth. A hiss of pain escaped me, even as Corra’s irreverent voice tiptoed through my mind.
The magic of nature—you reap what you sow.
A moment later, I tasted the flower—a flavor sweet as kissed lips and dark as heartache. I tried to swallow it, but my throat convulsed. I gagged and spat the mangled blossom onto the ground.
I glanced at Chandi, but she was gone. Nonplussed, I stood, looking around the small park for her tall frame. She wasn’t the only thing that was gone—the distortion no longer blotted out the sky. Stars glittered in a velvet sky. The leaves on the trees were green as emeralds. Colorful birds sang a kaleidoscope of midnight songs.
Behind me, Murias glowed like mother-of-pearl in the moonlight. Delicate towers laddered toward the stars. Greenery clung to walls and archways, flourishing in the breeze. The air was filled with the scents of flowers and fresh water.
Movement at the edge of the park caught my attention. A tall figure loped toward me. His golden hair spilled over his shoulders. What was he doing here? I thought—
“Rogan!” I called. He didn’t hear me. I lifted my skirts and ran after him. I reached for his shoulder.
It wasn’t Rogan. This man was of slighter build. His hair was a few shades too blond. And his face—his face was handsome but haunted. His mouth was taut with pain and indecision. His eyes—warm brown, like fresh-turned earth—looked exhausted. I didn’t know him. And yet the golden torc around his neck sent a spark of familiarity pulsing through me.
“Who are you?” I asked.
Fresh anguish skated across his face. “You don’t know me?”
He turned away from me in distress, back the way he’d come.
“Wait!” I lunged after him, but he moved between the suddenly lofting trees more quickly than I could follow. When he reappeared, he was not who I thought he was.
The figure was towering. Their naked thighs were corded with muscle. Burnished fur cascaded along the tops of their shoulders and dug grooves between the golden muscles of their torso. Around them, the forest stretched and grew. Human alarm raised the hairs along my arms, but the green-glowing heart of me was soothed by the dimming closeness of the wood. I lifted my gaze to the figure’s face but saw only the dappled shadows of a forest path. Above them, antlers reached pointed tips toward a sky embossed with silver.
They beckoned claw-tipped fingers toward me. Behind them, I glimpsed a clearing glazed with starlight. A chime of clear music called to me—a lullaby from an unremembered infancy.
I knew—suddenly, perfectly—that if I followed them into the keening night, they would lead me home.
I followed.
Notes rang out beneath my feet as I ran. The ancient trees twisted arms to guide me—branches wrought in silver, with arteries of gold. The figure’s antlers struck the boughs when they passed, the sound like the distant baying of hounds or the throb of a lover’s heart or the lament of a dying man. The leaves falling in their wake were glass, shattering where they fell. Shards of pain prickled my calves. I dashed onward, though my steps were now marked in blood.
“Colleen!”
The sound jangled in my ears. That was not my name.
