“He did.” Irian’s voice held more certainty. “He only had to find it within himself. As we all must do.”
I gazed up at him—his night-dark hair and sky-bright eyes. How I suddenly longed to tell him—to let his strong, capable shoulders bear the weight of Cathair’s dire prophecy so mine didn’t have to. But resentment and denial squandered my bravery. I bent my head and walked forward. “So we must.”
Chapter Forty-Two
Fia
Why can’t we fly to thisFeral Moor, again?” I asked, for the third time in as many days.
Taking turns between our Gentry forms and our anam clónna, Irian and I traveled across Ildathach, a dazzling, undulating plain of flowers that shifted colors with each passing breeze—violet, sapphire, and golden hues all shimmering together in waves of soft light. Blossoms with petals tipped in pollen opened and closed rhythmically, as if breathing. Delicate birds with iridescent wings flitted through the blooms, their songs pealing like crystal bells upon the rising wind. We’d made decent time, but as the sun descended on the third day of travel, I grew fretful.
We sought a person who might not exist. Or worse, whodidexist but had no idea how to solve the problems burying me in worry with each passing breath.
How could I kill my sister without warping the magic she now wielded? How could I unforge not one or two, butfivepowerful Treasures? And how could I do it all without sacrificing my own heart for balance?
“We cannot fly, mo chroí,” Irian patiently explained, also for the third time, “because I cannot go where I have never been before. Lest you wish to materialize a thousand feet above a flaming volcano or entombed inside an inconvenient tree.”
“I see your point.” I shuddered, memories from the Deep-Dream ghosting over my flesh. If I could not find a way to unforge the Treasures before I died, I would someday end up in that grove—thatmausoleum. Part of me was already there—the piece hewn from my soul as the price of my tithe beneath the Ember Moon. I forced lightness into my tone. “But if you cannot shorten our journey, then I am not sure why I have let you accompany me.”
“Indeed, colleen.” He favored me with a glance ridged in mirth. “I am good for little, in the grand scheme of things. That is why the gods made me so tall. And so very, very handsome.”
I laughed a little. “You sound like Wayland.”
“Please.” Irian’s smile dazzled me with its easy perfection. “Anything but that.”
I watched him stride beside me, his back straight and his hair flying like black feathers in the stiff wind. He was but an arm’s length away from me, yet a chasm yawned between us, chiseled by our physical distance and shadowed by the secret I kept from him. I longed to touch him—to twine my hand in his or graze the angle of his jaw or thread my fingers in the hairs at the nape of his neck. But touch was not the only bond we shared. A strange impulse needled me—sharp as a thorn and soft as a rose petal.
“Tell me a story, tánaiste,” I asked. Or, perhaps, commanded, as one of Irian’s stark brows lifted in humorous affront at my tone. “Please?”
“For you, my heart, I would tell a thousand.” His eyes softened on my face. “Only, what sort of story might you like to hear? I have told you much of my past. Our present is yet to be fully written. And—”
“Our future,” I suggested. “Tell me a story of our future. A story not of what is or has been, but what could be.”
“What… could be.” Irian’s ease fell away, and he mouthed the words as if they were pieces of glass upon his tongue that might shatter if he spoke them too quickly. He and I had rarely spoken about our future—it always seemed less a blank slate than a half-written parchment riddled with holes. “Very well. Once—”
“Once?” I laughed, to hide a sudden sharp spasm of grief. What if there really were no more stories to tell? Only stories already told? “Surely it cannot beonceif it has not happened yet.”
“Someday, in a time of hard-earned peace and well-deserved quiet—”
“Peace and quiet?” I interrupted, again. “Is that all we have to look forward to?”
“Would you prefer war and chaos?” Irian made a face. “On second thought, do not answer that.”
I stuck my tongue out. “How about… passionate equilibrium? Comfortable thrill?”
“Do you plan to heckle me at every turn, colleen?” He frowned at me theatrically. “Or shall I be allowed to tell the storyyourequested?”
I mimed locking my lips and throwing away the key.
“Someday, in a time of playful tension and… magnetic balance?” His lips quirked and he raised a questioning eyebrow for my approval. But although his mouth teased over words, they died upon his lips before he gave them breath. The restless breeze sighed over the plains of Ildathach, feathering petals and winnowing his sleek black hair. “When I was a boy, I thought the isolated life I shared with my mother was the most tedious existence a child could be cursed with. Repetitive, lonely, and wearisome beyond belief. I yearned for adventures like the ones in Deirdre’s stories. Exciting exploits. Fearsome foes. Brave battles. I longed to live at the center of a grand story and shape it with my valiant actions. To become either a great, virtuous hero or a wild, wicked villain—at the age of seven, either seemed appealing.”
I listened without interrupting, even as a bleakness rose insideme, fleeting and gray as mist over a blasted moor. The black-haired boy who climbed cliffs and snuck into Deirdre’s garden had once known such innocence, only to have it stripped away, replaced with swords and sorrow, curses and contempt.
“But as I have grown older, I find myself dreaming of those routine, mundane, straightforward days.” His thumb ghosted over the Sky-Sword’s hilt. “Dreams are dangerous, potent things, colleen. They give us hope in dark times. But so, too, do they whisper of what could be, instead of acknowledging what is. Some stories are just as bad. They live quietly in the heart, disguised as harmless diversion, but their pull can be as fierce as any tempest. Longing for what can never be has the power to unravel even the strongest resolve.”
We crested a small rise overlooking a wood of strange, slender trees topped with triangular canopies. Late afternoon sun turned them to torches, casting long shadows over the rippling fields. Irian turned to face me, keeping an arm’s-length gap between us. I fought the grief tangling in my chest like briars.
“Someday, when days are easy and nights are long and time seems plentiful, a gray-eyed man and a changeling woman build a life as they choose.” His eyes were not gray—in the shards of light cresting along his jaw, they were the lacquered blue of broken pottery. The tenuous gold of hoarded treasure. Again, sorrow pierced me, but now its blade was coated with the breathtaking poison of hope. “There is a house, neither too big nor too small. Its walls are not crumbling, and its halls are not haunted, and it stays warm in the winter when a fire is lit. There are meals at a sturdy table decorated by a vase stuffed with wildflowers. Sometimes there is wine, and they stay awake too late, curled beside that fire as they speak of things past and things yet to come. There are chores—floors to sweep and errands to run and animals to feed. There is a garden—too large and poorly tended, with weeds and slugs and vermin, but they do not mind, because it is impossibly plentiful and they never want for vegetables or flowers.”
