“Not that. I—” His silver eyes were veined with gold as he cupped my chin and met my eyes. “I have kept one last secret from you, colleen. I—”
In a rush, we lost the night. The sun rose in rapture. Brightness curled greedy hands around Irian’s silhouette and dragged him back, although his hands still cupped my face and his lips hovered above mine. Tension shuddered through him, bunching the muscles of his shoulders and bucking his spine. Black vines sprouted beneath my fingers, bristling along his forearms and prickling my skin with vicious thorns. Not vines—they were the spines of black feathers, piercing like needles through flesh.
He jerked away from me. His eyes scalded my face, golden as new coins.
“Close your eyes, colleen.” He shielded his face from my gaze. His buckling hands were already furred with midnight quills. “Turn away.”
“Irian—”
“Please.”
The desperation in his voice compelled me to obey. I stared off into the dim fortress. His shattered screams of agony burrowed into the crevices of my heart. I trembled with the torment of his transformation, my heart pulsing in ragged syncopation to his pain.
Finally, it was over. I uncurled myself, forcing my clenched muscles to relax as I opened my eyes.
Irian was gone.
I touched my lips, remembering every stolen kiss I’d shared with him, even as I fought burgeoning betrayal. He’d kept this secret from me, for all these months—
Ah.
It had been a badly kept secret.
The Sept of Feathers.
Swan maidens, cursed and bound by a monstrous magic.
A yearling fawn, torn to shreds by the grasping claws of an enormous aerial predator.
I remembered Irian’s voice as he stood upon a high hill and told me about the wild magic that warped him, consumed him,transformedhim. I remembered lying in his arms while high on theblack flower’s potent visions and dreaming I was being choked by a monstrous black bird. The following morning, he’d flown me to the Gate only to disappear like shadows in the wind.
I closed my eyes, fighting the cowardly part of myself that wanted to flee. To run back to Dún Darragh and hide inside its high stone walls, its secret gardens. To hide inside myself—inside myhatred. My hatred not only for myself, but for all the ugly, imperfect, beautiful things that were also a part of me.
So—Irian was truly a monster. A warped black-winged swan cursed in counterpoise to the white swans whose transformation he mirrored. The geas he had wrought with corrupted wild magic had bound the maidens’ lives to his, and his to theirs. A curse for a curse. A price paid in constant balance.
But I had always known he was monstrous, from the first moment I saw his perfect face wreathed in creeping shadows. And I had fallen for him anyway. As he had for me. I met him beneath night’s moonlit glamour. And now I’d seen how he transformed by the light of day. In the end, it made little difference to me.
Here, we are all villains.
I dragged Irian’s cloak around my chilly shoulders and walked to the window. Tír na nÓg was aflame with new sunlight and autumn’s golden glories. The Sky-Sword lay forgotten on the floor where Irian had unbuckled it last night.
I picked the blade up, handling it gingerly. The symbol of the Treasure Irian embodied. The conduit for the magic Irian wanted me to inherit from him. The emblem of the transformation I myself would have to undergo if I wanted to protect the human realms from the unrelenting push of wild magic. From the bardaí, who wanted to break down the Gates and rain slaughter on the people I had once called my own.
In the daylight the uncanny metal shone like sunlight and blue skies. It sang like lightning against my palms, a feeling so different from my own cool, creeping magic. How could I be heir tothis—cloud and wind and endless skies—when all I had ever known was branches and thorns and the shaded path beneath the trees?
I inhaled crisp autumn air and rested the sword on the windowsill. I counted down the days until Samhain. Until the Ember Moon. Until I had to decide.
Suddenly, every moment—every breath—felt like the ephemeral kisses and scalding touches I’d shared with Irian last night. Fleeting and easily squandered. Only so much could be borrowed—stolen—before the balance of Tír na nÓg’s magic demanded payment.
And I found I begrudged the cost.
I didn’t stray from the fortress that first day. I wandered its halls and admired its intricate, serpentine details, so different and yet so similar to Dún Darragh. I ran my hand over a detailed carving of a creature I did not recognize, and softly called, “Corra?”
I got no answer. But I fancied the barest edge of supernatural attention, an awakening of the stones beneath my feet, a tremor of life along carven spines. A sound caught my ears, like the tolling of a distant bell, but when I turned toward it, it was gone. Nothing more than an echo of a strange, teasing voice.
I had to wonder.
As the days cooled and the trees flamed, I wandered deeper into Tír na nÓg. By daylight, the Folk realms were impossibly, exquisitely unreal. Plains of sunlight. Trees whose fruit tasted like old memories and spiced secrets. Flowers that sang like stars.
