“What is this place?” I stepped closer to him.
“The city is called Murias, and it has been abandoned for over twelve years.”
“Why?”
“Once—in the time of gods and legends—Amergin and his kin wrested Fódla from the Fair Folk.” This close, I smelled Irian’s scent of cool wind and black metal—a stark contrast to the carrion wafting from the distant city. Yet his shadows wreathed wild around him, the same shape and color as the ugly, warping darkness far below.
“Fódla was rich in many things. Good soil, plentiful game, generous weather. But most of all, it was wealthy with wild magic. The seas seethed with it; the trees breathed it; the birds sang with it; the hearths crackled with it. Amergin’s people sought to claim that power out of greed, for their gain. Fearful of the mortals’ intemperance, the Folk searched for a way to protect the magic. The first chieftains wrought potent geasa, binding that wild, unfettered magic to powerful Treasures forged by the legendary smith-king Gavida. They built themselves a home—a place they called Tír na nÓg, Land of Eternal Youth, guarded by twelve indomitable Gates held fast by the magic of the mighty Treasures.”
Cathair had told me the same story. Only, in his version it had been the Fair Folk greedily stealing magic from noble Amergin. “And then?”
His mouth curled. “If I told you they all lived happily ever after, would you believe me?”
“No.”
His silver eyes caught on mine, searing me. “For some years, the Folk did live in peace, sequestered away from the violence of humans. The Treasures were tithed from tánaiste to tánaiste, and the Gates stood strong. The Septs’ sovereignty over wild magic was not always tolerated, but even the discontented Gentry thought the Septs’ hegemony unassailable. Until Deirdre of the Sept of Antlers died of a broken heart, and her Treasure was lost to the forest.”
My breath hitched.
“The balance of magic irrevocably shifted. Without its Treasure, the Sept of Antlers fell into disarray. The human queen attacked soon after. The Folk armies struggled to hold the Gates, until the bravest and shrewdest among the Gentry dared to draw upon the raw wild magic loosed from Deirdre’s Treasure. And it was unlike any power they’d wielded before. It was pure and potent—unfettered by rules or strictures. With it, they could rout armies and boil oceans, crack the skies and rain fire on their enemies. The tide turned in the human queen’s war.
“But there was a reason the first chieftains had forged the Treasures. Not even the Gentry were meant to channel wild magic in the way they now channeled it. All magic demands balance. And the cost of this magic was high. It warped and devoured, consuming minds and tainting even the purest intentions. It transformed all those who used it—slowly but irrevocably.”
Irian’s forearms flexed, and the black feathers inked along his skin lengthened. A wrongness I barely had a name for slithered through me.
“All those who tasted such power yearned for more. And Deirdre’s death had shown the dissident Gentry something they had not known before—Treasures could be destroyed, their heirs killed. If all four Treasures were destroyed, they reasoned, then all that wild, elemental magic would be set free, and with it, they could doanything. The Gates would be broken. They could retaliate against the human queen. They could rule over both realms as gods.”
“So they rose up.” I knew this part. “Why didn’t the Septs strike back, if the Treasures were still the most powerful magic in Tír na nÓg?”
“The Treasures are always weakest just before they are tithed to new heirs. That was when the dissidents struck.” With moonlight in his hair and shadows flaring out behind him like great wings, Irian was remote and uncanny. “And they did not justrise up, colleen. The wild magic had warped them beyond mercy—theybutcheredus. They slaughtered the living tánaistí and destroyed two more Treasures, but they didn’t stop there. They massacred whole lineages—wedded couples taken by surprise in their marriage beds, children torn screaming from the arms of their dead and bloodied mothers.”
Pity and disgust brought bile to my mouth. Eala had made it sound as if the Septs deserved their fate. But this—this sounded like carnage.
“Only Nuada’s heir escaped,” Irian continued after a beat. “She flew from Gorias—stronghold of the Sept of Feathers—with the Sky-Sword. And on the Ember Moon, she tithed the last remaining Treasure to the last remaining tánaiste, even though he had not yet come of age.”
“You.”
“Yes.” Shadows dimmed the silver of his eyes, and I recognized something in his expression that I’d seen a thousand times in the mirror: self-loathing. “I was raised in seclusion. I knew little of my inheritance. I was not prepared for the power of the Sky-Sword. Nor was I prepared for the tide of wild magic hammering against the last Treasure—the magic unleashed when the others were destroyed. And I was not prepared for the dissident Gentry themselves, hunting me along the cliffs of Tír fo Thuinn. Through the flowering fields of Ildathach.”
Unexpected sympathy pierced me. I understood what it felt liketo be forced onto a path you hadn’t chosen. To be forged into a weapon sharper than you wanted to be. To feel your destiny like a weight pushing you toward doom. And if this all happened over twelve years ago, he would have been only—what? Thirteen? But guessing his age was like trying to guess the age of a diamond or a moonbeam. He existed beyond sundry things like months or years.
“That’s why you wanted to take the Gates. To deter the Gentry from killing you and destroying the sword?”
His sculpted jaw hardened. “Pardon?”
“Isn’t that why you stole Eala and the other human daughters? To sacrifice them for mastery over the Gates?”
“Someone has been telling you stories, colleen.” His voice rang with barely tempered violence. “I stole the twelve maidens, yes. But not from the human realms. I stole them from the power-hungry Gentry themselves.”
The earth shuddered beneath my feet. “What?”
“They—the self-proclaimed bardaí of the Gates—would have slaughtered them, as they slaughtered my family.” He exhaled roughly. “With the Sky-Sword still intact, the bardaí could not open the Gates. Only the Treasures have such power. So they sent lower Folk spies through the old folkways—fairy rings and quicken trees—to kidnap human children. One for each Gate. Girls whose hearts they could bleed for magic.”
I considered this. “So you stole Eala and the others from the bardaí toprotectthem?”
“Is that so hard to believe? They were just children, and I was barely older.” His jaw set. “Exhausted and tormented, I made an impetuous, reckless decision. I used the power of the Sky-Sword to build a haven and a secret Gate—one I controlled. I spirited the twelve maidens away from the bardaí. And I bound them to my Sept. Or so I intended. I always meant to set them free when the time was right. To send them home through the Willow Gate once the danger was past.” For a moment, he was silent. “But I overreached. I did not know where the power of my Treasure endedand the seething mass of wild magic began. I paid a price for my inexperience, and so too did the maidens.”
“The geas was wrought with the corrupted wild magic.” The puzzle pieces slotted together. “That’s why they’re cursed as swans—the magic took the link to your Sept too far.”
