I had fallen asleep early, which meant the night was late but not too late. The door to Rogan’s tower room was ajar, spilling candlelight onto the landing. I slid inside to find him bent over a sheaf of parchment, his fingers black with charcoal as a drawing spilled out below him. He stood up from the table as I stepped in. Pushed the drawing beneath another page. The candlelight played over his features and muddled his expression.
“Changeling?” He sounded weary. I didn’t blame him—if his dreams were as unsettled as mine, then he probably wasn’t sleeping either.
“Can I have Finan?” The winding stairs had stolen my breath. “Nothavehim. Borrow him? For a day or two.”
Rogan’s eyes were shadowed. “What for?”
“I’m going—” I hesitated. “I need to go home. For a little while.”
Home.It had been a long time since I’d said that word. It grated against my tongue.
“Rath na Mara? Now?” He pushed golden hair off his face and frowned. “Why?”
“I’ll explain later,” I promised, as if I myself knew.
He still looked bewildered. “It’s a day’s ride across rough country. And the full moon is two nights away.”
“I know.”
“All right.” He still didn’t sound sure. “Finan won’t mind the exercise.”
“Thank you.”
I was nearly to the door when Rogan’s voice reached out to stop me. “Fia?”
He stepped toward me. The taper by the door lit his eyes as they searched my face. I wasn’t sure what he was looking for.
“Yes?”
“Don’t rein Finan too hard—his mouth is sensitive,” he told me after a beat. “And if he lathers, rest him. Otherwise you won’t have a mount for the ride home.”
“Understood.” I was restless with the urge to leave, but Rogan’s gaze was still heavy on my face. A lifetime of unspoken words swarmed the air between us, but I wasn’t sure which of them he was waiting for me to say. “If I don’t return by the full moon, go to Roslea without me. The Gates grow ever weaker—you may not need me to cross into Tír na nÓg.”
He looked at me for another moment.
“Ride safe,” he said.
I didn’t need to be told twice. I sped down the stairs, saddled a drowsy, bemused Finan in a hurry, then raced out into the starry night.
Chapter Forty-One
Finan and I moved like ghosts through a sleeping world. The waxing moon provided enough light to see by, but I kept the stallion to a careful pace. The rhythmic beat of his hooves lulled me into a stupor. Thoughts and memories eddied through me, hollowing me out and washing me clean.
From the moment I woke up thirteen years ago in an unfamiliar bed with no memory and no name, surrounded by screaming voices and hate-stained faces, I’d believed that it was my responsibility to earn the love of the people who had taken me in. Maybe if I worked hard enough, my perfection would outweigh my flaws; if I trained hard enough, my strength would outweigh my weakness; if I acted human enough, my conformity would outweigh my Folk deviance. And then—thenI could be loved.
But I should never have had to work so hard to be loved.
It seemed brutally unfair that love did not follow the same laws of balance that nature did. Love could be offered but spurned; longed for but unrequited. Love could simply end—in heartbreak or triumph or slow, dull fade.
Perhaps, in the end, that was the power of a heart. For lovecould not be bought or sold or stolen, only given—a magic more profound than any other.
The sun rose in a lavender sky, combing fingers of light over my face. Sweat darkened Finan’s chest. With Rogan’s warning in mind, I let him rest. I plucked starchy crab apples from overgrown trees and shared them with the stallion. I remounted. We cantered through pastures muddied from too much rain. Past fields where grain rotted on the stalk. Past abandoned farms where the thatch had been burned and the animals had been slaughtered. Grief and worry slinked through me, but remotely—my reactions filtered through a veil of distance I struggled to peer through.
When the sun slid past noon, Rath na Mara came into view, dominating the horizon from its position of power on the ridge above the sea.
I reined Finan to a halt, gazing at my erstwhile home. In the autumn sun, its stone walls and wooden palisade looked so solid, so sturdy, sohuman. I almost couldn’t bear it. I swallowed against the weight pressing down on my chest and spurred Finan forward.
The flat plain that had hosted the camps of the Áenach Tailteann now played host to a different kind of encampment. Hundreds of brown canvas tents hunched below the fort. Healers moved between them, unmistakable in their red-and-white vestments. But not nearly enough healers for the multitude of the sick. Plague victims spilled out of the tents onto blankets laid in the mud, skin pocked with lesions and gazes bright with fever and desperation. There was no cure for the wasting sickness. Those who survived, survived. And those who died, died.
