Irian growled, low in his throat, even as Wayland slung an arm over his foster brother’s shoulders and dragged him in for a half-willing hug. His other arm, he looped around an equally enthusedLaoise. But then Laoise was throttling her brother, who slung a familiar arm around Sinéad’s back. Sinéad reached for Chandi, pulling her tentative figure firmly into the tightening circle. Irian’s gloved hand rested at my waist. We bent our heads, reveling in this last quiet moment of camaraderie.
“Thank you,” I said softly. “I never had a family before. But I think I finally understand what all the fuss is about.”
“Wait until we all get back here at dawn, bloodied and starving, and start fighting over the last piece of Idris’s cloudberry pie,” Wayland quipped. “Then you’llreallyget it.”
Irian punched him on the arm, hard, and we all broke apart, laughing and brushing away surreptitious tears as we reached for weapons and helms.
At the bottom of the tree city, near the Underbrush, Balor waited—a huge, terrifying outline against the blood-streaked sky. Beside him were Linn and Abyss, their noses close together. Beyond, the sweeping golden plains churned with the waiting host—all gleaming armor and deadly weapons and keen, hungry gazes.
All the bardaí save Siobhán and Seaghán watched as I briefly conferred with Balor, then mounted Linn.
“Do you have the keys?” Dualtach asked, his voice like the shriek of an eagle upon a cliff. “We will not march without them.”
Silently, I handed out the Gate Keys Wayland had crafted, glittering with strange symbols and shimmering with the heirs’ entwined blood. Each bardaí grabbed one, gazing at them as if they finally had the human realms within reach.
Everything worth having came at a cost. I hoped they were ready to pay the price.
“Shall we?” asked another barda, nastily. “The moon will soon rise.”
I held up a hand. Drums thundered, rolling like a tide. A carnyx sounded, the wailing ululation raising the hair along my nape and twisting my stomach beneath my armor. The Folk host marched toward the Willow Gate, silver-shod hooves pounding the earthbeneath them. The tiny bells braided into the horses’ manes and tails warbled like captive nightingales, the merry tune dancing amid the grim cacophony of scraping armor and clanging shields, marching boots and shivering spears.
We passed beneath silver beeches, thick branches pulsing with veins of moonlit metal. Bone foxes already paced us in the undergrowth—their slim-sharp forms eager for carnage. Rooks flapped amid the boughs, keen cries echoing between glass-bright leaves.
Beyond, the forest. Trees forged like spears and hammered into swords. Trees with masts like a great armada, sailing toward a sky etched with a million imperious stars. Trees like soldiers—each one brave as a lion and fearful as a lamb, their faces caught between life and near-certain death. Reaching beneath them, the bones of the earth: roots that would go on living even if this whole forest was burned to ash and ruin.
And us. The procession of grim, uncanny Folk was as strange to me as the first time I glimpsed such a parade, so many moons ago. Only now, I marched with them. Our songs of war sounded like howling wind over a cliff; our drums sounded like hollow bones; our horns sounded like the bugling of the Wild Hunt. We shone of metal and menace; we glimmered bold as bloodstains in the falling dark.
The Willow Gate’s glade was a marvel of springtime—waterfalls of flowers, blossoms of white splashing the trees like spilled starlight. My wall of thorns stood, glinting in the dim like a mouth full of fangs. A balmy breeze caressed my skin, but it was scented with death. I did not need eyes to knowtheywere still there. Impatient. Waiting.
I waited until the moon knitted silver between the leaves and the glen churned with restless fénnidi in all their regalia. Then I placed my antlered helm upon my brow, wheeled Linn in a tight circle, and cried to the host, “When the barrier falls, you must push through no matter what approaches us! Dualtach: You will lead with your key—the rest will follow in formation!” I raised an arm. “One… two…three!”
I shattered my barrier of thorns and branches and flowers, disintegrating it into sawdust and flower pollen. Dualtach galloped forward, and a cry went up as the host surged after him, slamming toward the Gate. The outlines of mangled bodies rippled its silvery surface, held back by the barest thread of magic. The moment Dualtach breached the Gate, they fell toward us. Bodies—ghouls and revenants—gushed through the opening, all dangling limbs and staring, empty faces. They met the Folk with a clash, the bright weapons of the host colliding with the thick thud of decaying meat. One of the draiglings—Blodwen, I thought—arced overhead, disgorging flames to harrow the dead.
Linn sallied, half rearing as warriors streamed around her and fire caught in the undergrowth. I looked around for Balor’s huge shadow, then nudged her forward. But a large strong hand wrapped around my vambrace. From Abyss’s back Irian stared down at me, his grip tight and his eyes hard as metal.
“I will find you, mo chroí.” He leaned down. Hesitated for barely a second. Then slid his gloved hand beneath my chin, lifted my shining face toward his, and captured my burning lips with his mouth. He kissed me slowly, though his flesh blanched; ferociously, although it must have been agony. He tasted like whetted metal and dark water, dawn after an endless night. His hand on my jaw trembled as the host streamed screaming around us. When at last he drew back, he was burned—his lips cracked and blackened where he’d kissed me. He let me go, his hand slipping away from my vambrace to settle on the hilt of the Sky-Sword. “Live, Fia.Live.”
Irian’s arms flexed as he drew his claíomh, tattoos lengthening and sharpening beneath the cut of his armor. Thunder grumbled above the canopy of the trees, and tendrils of lightning crackled along the length of the blade. He kicked Abyss forward, and together they plunged into the fray.
Linn and I followed. Irian cut a path for us through the shambling horde, then flung himself down before the Gate and began to fight in earnest. I could not help but spare him one last glanceas I galloped past on Linn. As always, Irian fought like flame upon the end of a match, impossibly fast and exquisitely graceful, every leap and lunge like the steps to a dance only he knew. I wheeled Linn, jerking her to a halt at the top of the cobbled bridge and staring back, desperate for one last glance of the man who’d forever changed my life. His gaze whipped to mine, as if knowing exactly where I’d be—his eyes shifting from the feral menace of a man who had nothing left to lose to the heartbroken anguish of a man who feared he might have already lost everything.
Oh,Irian.
A Gentry soldier slammed into Linn’s haunches, making her stumble across the bridge. We passed through the Gate—I crumpled inward, even as I expanded.
When I looked back, Irian was gone.
Roslea was in chaos. The forest churned with the dead—more plentiful than the trees standing black as sentinels in the moonlight. The Folk host fought toward Dún Darragh, but it was like running through mud. There were too many of them. Too many.
“Forward!” Balor shouted, stomping from the Gate with so much force that I half feared he’d shatter the bridge. He grinned at me, the moonlight making his plentiful teeth fearsome. “Ever forward, lady! Is that not the plan?”
He grabbed a handful of revenants—three or four at least—and bashed them skulls-first into a tree. His massive ponderous steps bowled over ten more ghouls like toy soldiers. Linn and I followed, as close on his heels as we dared.
But even Balor could not protect us from all of them. So many. They swerved at us and surged underfoot and climbed the trees to fall upon us from above. Linn veered—I flung one of Wayland’s draig-flame devices, which slammed into a revenant before blooming on the ground around him, licking at the roots of the nearby trees. Sudden horror unfurled inside me—Roslea would be destroyed. But it was too late—all around me, the vanguard were also deploying Wayland’s forgings, clearing paths through theforest toward Dún Darragh. Behind, closer to the Gate, another of the draiglings made broad golden sweeps over the forest canopy.
I swallowed my dismay. This was war. War claimed casualties.
Still, my heart bled for the innocent forest.
