“Where would we go?” Hope made Idris’s voice eager. “At least this way, we will not be so very alone.”
Guilt flooded Laoise’s veins, sick and sour. Slowly, almost against her will, she nodded.
“But only one at a time,” she commanded, remembering with a shudder those long, noisy nights after Blodwen had hatched. “We will leave the eggs here until we decide we’re ready to hatch them. And this time, you will have to help.”
A few months later, Barfog hatched. A darker red than Blodwen, he devoured onyx and belched sulfur.
Dwyn arrived a year later, sweet and sly and copper as a coin.
Two years after that came Gwyr and Anwyll, surprise twins hatched from the same egg. The identical male draigs bore freckles of gold along their bellies and were utterly inseparable.
Three years after them Enfys hatched, her scales displaying the broadest range of colors—palest pink radiating toward crimson.
The last egg stayed in the sinkhole, glowing faintly, for nearly four more years. Every time Laoise checked on it, she experienced a burst of longing tempered by a surge of fear. A tinge of melancholy. She wanted one more draig. Feared she could not manage another. Knew that this one would be her last, whether she wished it or not.
“Is it time?” Idris stood abruptly when Laoise gently carried the last egg to the Cnoc, which had been their home for over a decade now. Her brother had long since reached his full height, towering above her. His sleek red hair fell angled over one side of his face, although he could never truly hide the marks of the tragedy that had scarred them. The tragedy that, somehow, had also saved them.
Laoise sighed. “It’s time.”
Nidhoggur hatched later that year.
When her ruby egg split open, showering splinters of red as she unfurled her delicate, membranous patagia, the flaming trees in the sinkhole began, leaf by leaf, to extinguish.
Chapter Six
Within
Ihad been here before.
Rath na Mara swallowed me whole, a patchwork of half-remembered hallways and half-imagined occupants. Depleted of happy memories, I had begun hiding from Talah in the places I thought she would not know to look. In the memories I despised; the remembrances I repressed. But forcing myself into my own bitter recollections was its own kind of torture. For I was helpless to change anything.
All I could do was observe as a quartet of trainees in Mother’s fiann tormented my adolescent self with garlands of rowanberries and chains made of iron.
“You’re just the disposable trash the Fair Folk left behind when they stole the princess,” one goaded.
A defiant tilt to my younger self’s delicate chin. “And you’re a motherless bastard with a slag heap for a face and a stinking privy for a brain.”
The trainee backhanded her—me—across the face.
When red-hot rock began to drip from the ceiling, I dragged myeyes from the tableau of four overgrown boys beating an underfed changeling bloody for the great crime of being different. The windows above my younger self cracked, then abruptly shattered. Steam unfurled like white wings, barely hiding a pair of livid metal eyes.
Let me in!
I took off at a dead sprint, leaving the memory behind.
I dashed past a fourteen-year-old Rogan, golden torc askew and face contorted with worry as he rushed to rescue me from my attackers. He had indeed chased them off, that day so long ago, but I had barely seen him—my eyes had been swollen shut for a week from the beating I’d endured.
I glimpsed Mother—the queen—half hidden behind doorframes and lurking around corners, but when I looked more closely, she was nothing more than faded tapestries or cobwebs. Her voice echoed through the castle:Only I know how to love something like you. And no one will ever love you more than I do.
Cathair, slyly watching as I dashed past. He toasted me over the rim of his wineglass, and his mocking laughter chased me.You must learn to be strong, little witch.
And always, Talah drifting closer, her regretful but rigid refrain snapping at my heels.You cannot hide from me here. Let me in!
Furious tears fell from my eyes, and where they landed, flowers sprouted—white as fallen stars, black as the night sky that birthed them.
I slammed full tilt into a hard frame. I cried out, nearly stumbled. Strong arms sinewed with lean muscle and fletched with severe tattoos caught me, curving possessively around my shoulders. I looked up into the face of the towering man who’d seized me.
Irian’s beauty was, as always, a knife to my heart. I inhaled his scent of dawn air and cold metal, fighting the urge to surrender to his embrace.
