I had found the stallion a few days after Eala’s defeat, grazing happily in a farmer’s paddock near Finn Coradh. The man had not appreciated giving him up, but when he’d glimpsed the strange, bloodied host trailing behind me—battle-worn humansand strange-helmed Folk alike—he’d relinquished the stallion without another word.
The bag of silver I’d sent him a few weeks later hopefully salved the pain of losing such a fine animal.
Now I led Finan to Dún Darragh’s stable block, untacking him before checking he had enough hay. Outside, dusk lowered like an onyx blade above the toothy silhouette of Roslea. To the east, a full moon was rising, cool and white as a sail in the night. In the middle of the courtyard, the massive oak loomed, its leaves golden as summer despite autumn pressing close on cold feet. I pressed a palm to its pale, strong bark before heaving the fort’s doors open. Inside, all was quiet. Puffs of dust rose around my boots.
“Corra?” I heard nothing save a distant, half-imagined cackling. “I know what you did, fiend. I wanted to make sure to tell you in person:Thank youfor giving me back my ending.”
Corra burst into the guise of a damp muskrat, smoothing its whiskers. “We gave you naught that you lacked before. The time was right—no less, no more.”
“I appreciate it all the same.” I smiled a little. “I may be back here, from time to time, if it pleases you. Perhaps I’ll look after the garden. And I hear there is a greenhouse that needs rebuilding.”
“Pfaugh!” snorted Corra. “You do little that pleases us, that much is true. We asked for a posy—and still, none from you!”
I frowned in mock outrage, even as Corra rocketed from their host in a flurry of motion toward the ceiling, noisily singing, “Chiardhubh is back, Chiardhubh is back!”
The truth was, there was much that needed rebuilding, and not just at Dún Darragh. Eala had left behind an entire kingdom in shambles—severely underpopulated, starving, and now frightened and bewildered by a sudden influx of Gentry refugees from Tír na nÓg. Although Breas had recognized me as the high queen’s foster daughter, he had not appreciated when I had announced myself as Rían Ó Mainnín’s bastard heir and summarily installed myself on the high throne of Rath na Mara. I supposed he had wanted theseat himself—I hadn’t bothered to ask. Instead, I had kept myself busy with rebuilding all the infrastructure Eala had destroyed: sending a sad treasury’s worth of aid to the villages and farms she’d ransacked, dispersing the fianna of both humans and Gentry all across Fódla, and managing the argumentative, violent under-kings without starting any new wars.
Acting as high queen was, so far, a thankless task. As I’d known it would be. I had never been so grateful to have a mountainous Fomorian as my general and guardian. Balor took to his new role like a fish to water—second to gleefully bashing in revenants’ heads on the Bealtaine moon, I had never seen him so fully in his element.
But after six months of commanding and arguing and delegating and worrying and secretly grieving, I was ready for a night off. I pushed back out into the chilly evening, drew my mantle more tightly around me, and shifted into my anam cló.
My doe’s senses carried me through the autumn forest. The air was sharp with cold earth and dying foliage and the distant scent of woodsmoke. Moonlight cast strange skeletons upon the forest floor. The only sound was the brittle crackle of my hooves on fallen leaves, the forest hushed with its midnight secrets.
When stone monsters loomed around me in the dim, I returned to myself. Although summer had smoothed many of the scars left by the Bealtaine War, I could still see where the battle had raged. Char blackened one side of the willow; copper stains darkened the stones of the bridge; the undergrowth grew hectically over the lumped forms of revenants in their final repose. A graveyard of a different sort—a mausoleum of my own memories.
I sighed, carefully drew a looking glass from my pack, and turned my thoughts toward hope.
Encased in a frame of twisted silver vines, the mirror gleamed with ethereal light, its surface neither glass nor metal but something in between. Tiny jeweled flowers bloomed along its beveled edges, nearly hiding the plain dark pebble set into the handle. Iflipped it over—its reverse was nearly identical, except the stone set into the base glowed a pearly white in the moonlight.
It was Wayland’s creation, inspired by a forging his father had designed. He had frowned when I first asked him, the repercussions of my request swiftly rippling through his mind.
“You believe the Gates will close,” he guessed, “when the Treasures are unforged.”
“They will either close completely or blow open,” I confirmed. “I believe the former is more likely. And I fear I will not be able to make it back to Tír na nÓg in time. If I am even alive to try.”
Wayland had frowned harder but had not attempted to dissuade me. I loved him for that, although part of me had longed for someone to argue with the terrible destiny awaiting me in the human realms. Instead, Wayland had used a prototype based on his father’s design, supplemented by my own supplies. A moonshadow, caught between panes of hammered quartz. Dream steel, flexible metal said to catch nightmares. And two pebbles—one from Fódla, and one from Tír na nÓg—to hold the geasa in place.
Luckily, a dull black stone from Dún Darragh had lodged in the sole of my boot during my mad escape from Eala’s ravening hordes. The other pebble, I found on a quiet, secretive foray to the Willow Gate, while the bugles of war sounded in the distance as the Gentry fianna marched and trained.
Wayland had finally finished it the night before the Bealtaine moon, teaching me the incantation as he demonstrated how to use it. Now I repeated his motions as I carefully recited the verse. My face stared at me as I slowly passed the mirror behind my head until it returned to the front. Then I flipped the looking glass, the pearly white stone winking.
The world slid sideways, slipping free of its moorings before snapping back into place.
I stood in the forest beyond the Willow Gate. The trees seemed to grow down instead of up. The willow was in the wrong place beside the bridge. Everything was backward, like I’d stepped right through the mirror into Tír na nÓg.
Sudden nerves pummeled me, flashing heat through my veins and cold along my spine. Thorns nettled the inside of my skin, though less sharp than they’d once felt. Unforging my Treasure had not stolen away my Greenmark. That inborn magic belonged to me—not even the stars could steal it away.
I tucked the mirror into my pack and started forward as the moon netted between painted autumn branches. A lone bone-fox paced me in the undergrowth; a few sheeries startled at my passing, arcing above the canopy like falling stars. When I reached the shore of the lough, I felt him—less a thunderclap than a heavy footstep in the brush. I turned.
The arrow trained on my heart gleamed bright from twenty paces. The man holding the bow made no effort to hide himself, and the moonlight seemed to love him—cascading over his night-black hair… his angular cheekbones… a jaw like metal.
Only his eyes were shadowed—dark as a dream I longed to share. His was the beauty of the night—full moons and fuller hearts. His was the beauty of the forest—growing thorns and blooming flowers. His was the beauty of black ice—deep and endless and perfect.
Hewas perfect.
I stepped closer. Recognition blew his pupils wide—deep black amid moon-chased gray.
In his grip, the arrow faltered.
