I gazed at my sister, nailing my vengeance like a door so my sympathy could not break free. I forced myself to replay all the chilling violence she had carefully machinated. Her hands, slippery with blood, on the hilt of her dagger as she tore the hearts from her sisters’ breasts. Her voice, cunning and cold as she demanded Gavida forge her a Treasure. Her mouth, smiling palely as she drove a sword into her own mother’s gut. Her eyes, diamond bright as she drove Rogan to destroy himself on his own blade.
Irian’s Treasure stormed down on her, bending the giant oaks until their branches fanned and swept the flagstones. My hair whipped around my face, stinging, but I forced myself to watch as Eala bowed even lower, lightning crackling over her spine. Feathers burst from her skin, unfurling along her arms until white wings spread sharp pinions into the storm, half lifting her off her feet.
“How does it feel now?” I cried above the sound of the wind howling through the nemeton. “Five Treasures—more power than anyone has ever wielded, or will ever wield again! You wished to be a queen, Eala? I have made you a goddess. All the elements of nature at your command.How does it feel?”
Eala screamed, the agonized reverberation like the screech of falling timber, the crash of waves upon cliffs, the roar of a devouring wildfire, the hollow wail of a distant storm.
“It…hurts! Make it stop. Please, Fia—please make it stop!”
I made myself approach her where she lay writhing and screaming and tormented upon the cold stone floor. Around us Dún Darragh phased in and out, as if existing and not existing at the same time. Carvings on the walls… faces in the dark. Pillars made of stone… vast trunks in the forest. I crouched, taking in every unnatural contortion of Eala’s limbs, every bulge and creak of her livid, living skin, every flash of color pooling over her.
Green grass. Blue water. Red fire. Silver wind. White death.
I could only imagine what she was feeling. I had played host to two Solasóirí, and it had nearly destroyed me. And I was different than Eala—human, Folk, and something else. Something more. Something other.
Eala was, in the end, just a girl.
“Thirteen years,” I whispered. “That is how long you will live with this power. For the Treasures will not let you die—did you know that? Not of natural causes. This pain will not kill you, Eala—it will only continue. Even as your bones rot, they will grow anew. Even as your lungs drown, they will breathe in more water. Even as your skin burns, it will heal. Even as the zephyrs drive you mad, they will comfort you. For thirteen. More. Years.”
“No.” Horror contorted her already warped, broken face. “You cannot… leave me like this.”
“Leave you? No.” I barked a laugh. “I intend to watch. I will watch as the magic consumes everything that made you you, piece by rotten piece. I will devour each one of your screams like candy,each whimper more delicious than the last. I will wait until you beg me for mercy. And youwillbeg for mercy. For this is the price of power, my dear sister—pain.”
She whimpered as another cataclysm rocked her—a terrible earthquake tearing her body apart even as it put her back together. I heard her bones crack, then knit—like roots healing from a stray axe. Her blood surged and gushed, too much volume for her human veins, spewing liquid into her hollow spaces before sucking it up again. Flames crackled along her tongue and blackened what was left of her teeth. White feathers grew and then molted, fluttering from her bleeding, distended shoulders to lay limp on the ground, slick with water and fell with moss and licking with flames.
She was human. Her body was not made to withstand this much power. She was not strong enough.
No one was.
“Please,” she begged, lifting her arms in supplication. “I cannot bear it another moment. It is… too much. Take it away. I want to…die.”
“Die?” I smiled, a little sadly. “No, Eala. This sacrifice must be larger than life. It demands far more than death.”
“What, then?” She choked on bloody water, pushed burnt, sizzling hair off her face. “What must… I do?”
I reached for her, grasped her hands. My starshine instantly burned her, blackening her palms. But so, too, did it suffuse her—light flared up her hands to her wrists, illuminating the bones beneath her fragile skin, the veins choked with too much magic.
“Our lives have always lain side by side—separate, but aligned. Now they are one and the same.” The knowledge I’d grappled with since Marban’s cottage wreathed through me, filling the empty spaces my Treasure had left. Casting light into my darkest corners even as it shadowed my brightness. “You were right, on the Longest Night. We were always meant to stand here, together. You are my sister. My other half. We are light and dark aligned. The whiteswan, the black swan. One breath, one body. One heart. We were created from imbalance and born to restore it. Wearebalance.”
Eala gritted her teeth, thrashing and jerking as renewed pain throttled her. My starshine climbed higher, illuminating the five colors of her layered tattoos like sunlight through stained glass.
“Tell me… what… I must do.”
“Say the words,” I told her. “Then pay the price.”
“By fire and by sky,” she screamed. “By fast water and by ancient tree. I promise my willing heart to thee—O Fia.”
Magic jerked me—a bone-deep tether hooked beneath my heart. My starshine burned farther up Eala’s arms, smoothing over the white feathers prickling from her shoulders. Our palms were fused together, and I couldhearthem—all five of them, a boundless, soundless cacophony beating about my ears and throbbing along my bones and juddering through my veins.
The cost will be high. The cost will be high. The cost will be high.
The dissonance of all five eternal voices was unbearable. Their demands echoed through us both, caustic and discordant.
Love. Pain. Loss. Hatred. Mercy.
They layered, then merged, finding a common note between them. The word slid like a blade between us, as inevitable as our births. And our deaths.
Everything. Everything. Everything.
