Eithne crumpled like a house made of parchment. Her hands scrabbled at the steel blade splitting her in two. Eala twisted the sword, almost lovingly, then yanked it out. Blood spurted, red as ruin. Someone had begun to scream—I thought perhaps it was me. Eithne’s mount sallied, ears swiveling. Slowly—impossibly slowly—the rightful high queen of Fódla slid from her saddle. Struck the ground. And lay deathly still.
“That’s better,” Eala said. “They’re always so much more cooperative this way. Now, Mother—rise.” The queen’s body twitched, rolled, then levered itself to its feet. It had blood dark as wine on its face. Eala placed the sword she had used to kill her mother in thequeen’s own hands. “I said,go make my sister kneel. Or kill her where she stands.”
The dead queen charged at me. I felt nothing and everything at once, my body frozen while my mind churned with disjointed memories and fear thick as treacle. The world around me blurred. Sounds muffled, yet every beat of my heart felt like a hammer striking stone. I couldn’t breathe.
Eithne’s steps accelerated, devouring the cobbles between us like cakes laid out at a feast. The sword lowered, slick and steaming with still-warm blood. I erected a barrier of thorns, but I was weak after the day; she cut through them easily. My feet wavered—left, then right. I became a statue, carved from stories untold, lives unlived.
The blade arrowed toward my heart.
Muscle and memory overtook doubt, a lifetime of training drilled into my very bones. I sidestepped the strike, angling my body as I wrapped one fist around the hand holding the sword and lifted the other to splay over the queen’s face. My starshine spiked with the adrenaline turning my limbs to knotty wood.
White fire ignited deep inside her skull, spreading in searing tendrils that snaked along the contours of her cheeks and the angle of her jaw. Light leaked from her staring eyes, coursed from her open mouth. Then flashed eager over her frame, unraveling her from the inside out. Her skin crisped and peeled like burning paper; her bones glowed molten before disintegrating into flaking cinders. I swore she opened her mouth in the last moment before she collapsed in on herself, the words on her lips like a final, broken plea:
A stór.
The woman who’d raised me sifted away in a scattering of ash and bad memories. My fingers tightened around the hilt of Eala’s ceremonial blade. And though it seemed to be heavier than a mountain in my grip, I forced myself to coil back. I twisted, then flung the sword as hard as I could at Eala, mounted upon her pretty pony.
She did not flinch. I did not miss. The blade sailed a half inch from her face, slicing her cheek, nicking her ear, and shearing a few long, floating locks of hair.
The blood that dripped down her face and stained her pale raiment was black as midnight.
“I’ll see you on the battlefield, you bitch!” I screamed, as her ghouls broke their stillness and began to claw for me.
“Get her!”
I dived bodily into the waiting horde, fighting toward the corner where the path to the grotto—and Roslea beyond—meandered. The dead swarmed me like ants, burnt faces and rotting mouths and flesh-draped bones. I waded through them, even as they dragged me, caught me, pulled me. I touched a few errant limbs and leering faces, setting off glittering chain reactions among the affected revenants. But there were so many of them. My free hand fought toward my bodice, delving between the last voluminous folds of the dress Eala had put me in.
My knees hit dirt. My fingers touched glass. The dead converged on me as I lifted Cathair’s small vial, yanked the cork out with my teeth, and lofted the bottle with what felt like the last of my strength.
I did not see where the Eternal Fire landed. Green light flashed. Thunder cracked. The explosion rocked the courtyard, flattening me to the cobbles and throwing Eala’s ghouls off me like flotsam on the sea. I did not wait for the dead to recover or for the flames flickering green in my periphery to spread—I shifted into my anam cló, legs lengthening, pelt rippling, and tail flicking.
And ran.
Part Three
The Heart of the Forest
White shields they carry in their hands,
With emblems of pale silver;
With glittering blue swords,
With mighty stout horns.
In well-devised battle array,
Ahead of their fair chieftain
They march amid blue spears,
Pale-visaged, curly-headed bands.
They scatter the battalions of the foe,
They ravage every land they attack,
Splendidly they march to combat,
