“Yes, the hulking boy.” She gave her head an expressive wiggle. “Tell him to stop being so moody.”
“Pardon?”
“He’s ruining the fun with his sad skulking.” Her nose scrunched. “Eala doesn’t like it. Full moons are for dancing, drinking, and kissing things with pretty lips. Tell him to stop brooding.”
I had no intention of telling him any such thing. Imbolc leapt to the front of my mind. Rogan’s head pillowed on my lap. His arms around my waist. The look in his river-stone eyes when he said,She is making it very hard on me, changeling.
I opened my mouth to suggest Chandi instead tell Eala to stop toying with Rogan, but a cluster of sounds at the edge of the lough stole my attention.
A rattling sigh like something heavy being dragged over stone. A sick thud like flesh being struck. A high-pitched keening like a wail of pain.
And the skittering clang of metal.
Battle.
I took off in one elastic motion, years of training taking over my body before my mind had time to catch up. My first thought was for Rogan—out here in this bewitched fog, an encounter with armed, vicious Folk could be deadly. But a moment later, all thoughts—including ones of Rogan—flew out of my mind.
In the past few years, I’d encountered more than a few Folk monsters. Most of them, I’d slain. With blades or arrows or even—once or twice—my bare hands. I’d grappled with pincers and talons. My skin had been scored by fangs and horns. I had stared into slitted pupils and bulging ommatidia and flanged antennae.
I had never encountered anything likethis. The stench reached me first—carrion and filth wafting strong enough to make my eyes water. And then I saw…it. An ollphéist—a Folk wyrm. But it wasmassive—so huge I couldn’t see all of it at once. It wove in and out of the fog, flashing features that didn’t belong together. A long, muscular tail, coiling like a serpent. A heavy-jawed maw snapping with oversized fangs. Slashing paws ringed with talons. Staring eyes glowing yellow as lamps. And oil-slick scales—overlapping like head-to-tail chain mail.
I reeled back from the nightmare of scales and flesh and slavering fangs. Even in Tír na nÓg, the thing was unnatural.Wrong.
And around the ollphéist’s lunging form darted a figure. I caught only glimpses—a whirling dark cloak, an impression of height and grace. And an ink-black sword slicing through the mist and dripping with ichor.
Irian.
And that high keening sound, like bells ringing? It was theswordthat was singing.
A gasp of fear startled me out of my stupor. Chandi had caught up with me and stood gaping at my shoulder, pale with terror.
I rounded on her. “Go get help!”
She nodded, wide-eyed. Then disappeared without a word into the swirling murk.
Morrigan damn this uncanny fog.
I crept closer to the fray. Miraculously, Irian was holding his own against the monstrous ollphéist. I’d assumed he was combat trained, but seeing him in motion was…magnificent. He moved with the grace of a dancer and the precision of a predator. There was no separation between his body and his blade, as if he, too, were hammered from hard metal. But as the monster lunged at him, again and again, spiraling around him in ever-tightening loops of serpentine flesh, even he began to flag.
My warrior’s heart screamed at me to join him, to lend my blades to his battle. But my strategist’s mind urged me to wait. After all, my purpose here in Tír na nÓg was totakeIrian’s Treasure—for Mother, for Eala—then destroy its heir. I could risk life and limb to save him, only to later outwit and assassinate him. Or… I could pry the Sky-Sword out of his already cold, dead hands once this ravening monster inevitably killed him.
But then I’d never know what he’d meant that night on the beach. What he’d seen in my face that had driven him to upend the lough, nearly uproot the forest.
It’s you.
The ollphéist pounced on Irian. Its claws met his blade with a wailing clang that juddered in my ears. Irian tried to disengage, but the monster clamped down, wedging the blade between its talons. Its tail whipped around. The armored flesh connected with Irian’s leg, hard. The tánaiste made no sound as his leg gave way, but he dropped to his knees on the pebbled beach. The wyrm wrested the sword out of his hands, discarded it like trash. Pouncedon Irian. He ducked, rolled to one side. But the monster had size, strength, and brutal stamina on its side. Its claws were lightning as it slashed out.
A wound opened Irian’s back, scoring his flesh from shoulder to hip and shredding his armor. This time, he roared in pain. Beneath his mantle, blood gushed out, silver in the fog. He lunged forward, reaching for his ichor-striped sword, but the ollphéist flicked it out of his reach with one deft claw.
Resolve hardened my limbs. This was a massacre. If—when—I killed Irian, it would be swift and justified. Revenge for the pain he’d caused and the lives he’d destroyed. His execution was meant to be my triumph.
But standing idly by as he was torn limb from limb by a monster ten times his size? That didn’t feel like victory.
I unsheathed my knives and launched myself at the wyrm.
I struck the ollphéist’s thick, writhing tail and had to scrabble for purchase. I’d expected the wyrm’s scales to be slimy, but they were slick—the overlapping scutes smooth as glass. I gripped with my knees and sliced with my blades, but the scales were better than armor—my skeans glanced right off. The wyrm’s stench of rot and death slapped me in the face, and I gagged.
Cursing, I pushed myself to stand on the monster’s tail, which was thick as a felled tree. Fighting for balance, I took three dancing steps, then flung myself upward onto its heaving back, aiming my blades directly down. The impact was bone jarring. Like before, one of my skeans simply skittered off, wrenching my wrist as I clung to it. But the other stuck, lodging deep in the wyrm’s flesh. I swung sideways, the full weight of my body hanging from my grip on the narrow dagger.
