“Suppose Irian is manipulating me.” I forced my voice to stay even. “Tell me why.”
“The same reason he manipulated us. The same reason he stole us, bound us, cursed us.” She reached out and tapped my breastbone. “He desires this.”
I suddenly remembered the ancient warrior’s journals and the translation I had given Eala.After the Treasures of the Folk, a heart is the most powerful magic in Tír na nÓg.
Irian wanted myheart?
“If he is so vicious and treacherous, why doesn’t he simply take it?” My pulse throbbed green and black. “He should have no compunctions killing a nameless changeling.”
“He doesn’t want just your heart. He wants yourwillingheart.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Did you not read the journal you gave me?” Her eyes were bright, and she spoke with the rhythm of recitation. “A heart can open a locked gate, break stone, or heal a festered wound.”
Although it had struck me as an abstraction when I read it, I recalled the passage. I finished it now. “And a heart given willingly in love can destroy that same gate. Move a mountain. Or save a doomed life.”
Eala looked sorry for what she was about to say. “And whose doomed life mightyourwilling heart buy?”
Realization struck me like a blow to the chest.
The tithing of the Sky-Sword. Eala was suggesting that Irian wanted my heart—given willingly in love—to keep the magic from destroying him.
He wanted to trade my life for his own.
Briars burst around my wrists, biting me with thorns. I hid my hands behind my back and blinked against burning eyes. Mortification and denial sent alternating waves of heat and cold crashing over me.
“No.” The word came out hoarse. “He wouldn’t.”
Eala sighed. She lowered her eyes, then reached out to grip Chandi’s palm. For a moment, the other girl’s arm was boneless in hers. Then Chandi squeezed back.
“I was the latest. The last.” Chandi’s voice was hollow. Wooden. When she lifted her eyes to mine, they burned like coals. “You know I’m the youngest of us. So young, I don’t remember a time before I came here. The others had parents, childhoods,memories. I was barely four—maybe younger. I had nothing. Nothing but them, andhim. And yet he would manipulate me, seduce me, try and steal—”
She broke off, then buried her head against Eala’s slender shoulder. Eala slid her arms around the taller girl and murmured something softly into Chandi’s ear. When Eala turned to me, her gaze was fierce.
“We do not tell you this to hurt you. As you see, it hurts us more than it does you. We are only trying to help.”
Her words crept through me like black rot.
Morrigan, but I’d been so stupid. Mother and Cathair had taught me the Folk were treacherous—unfeeling predators hiding behind exquisite masks. Everyone had warned me of Irian’s heartlessness. I myself had witnessed the depths of his callousness at the Folk wedding. And still, I had fallen for the trap. For the brutal and bewitching beauty of someone—something—that did not love me.Could notlove me. And I’d almost given myself to him. Not just in body. But inheart.
When you give me your heart, colleen, I want all of it. I want all of you.
I closed my eyes against the drowning, deceitful memories. Then I lifted my gaze to Eala. “What should I do?”
“With the translations you gave me, I believe I can break the geas binding me—us—to Irian.” Her renewed smile was hard for me to read. “If the Sky-Sword truly cannot be wielded by human hands, then it is no use to us. Take it from the tánaiste, Sister. Hide it, damage it, destroy it—I care not. Only make it so it cannot be tithed anew. Then the last of the wild magic will be released, and the Gates will crack open. And we will be free. We willallbe free. To pass between realms. To heal Fódla. To conquer the bardaí, and all Tír na nÓg, should we so choose.”
Images from the Feis of the Wild Hunt flooded my head, raising doubt in their wake. Fell, feral voices baying at the night. Wind-whipped moors. Gruesome revels. Bloody armies.
“If wild magic goes free as in ancient times,” I said slowly, “won’t we be consigning not one, buttwoworlds to violence and chaos?”
“No, Sister.” Eala’s tone was clipped. “We will be returning what was stolen from us long ago. Magic. Humans will once more be able to wield the power that has so long been denied us by the Folk. And we will finally stand as their equals.” She glanced up at the pinking sky, bruised with distant thunderheads. “Think on it, Sister.”
Eala took Chandi’s hand. But in the moment before the pair disappeared into the forest, Chandi paused. She glanced over her shoulder and met my eyes.
Before I could decode her expression, both girls were gone. A few minutes later, Rogan came crashing through the trees, his expression as tempestuous as the storm massing on the horizon.
We didn’t talk. Halfway to the dún, a cool downdraft cut through the forest. The underbrush whispered. The trees turned the silver undersides of their leaves skyward. Lightning split the clouds. Fat raindrops splatted down, gathering intensity until the whole world became water.
