“We also know,” Irian said slowly, thinking through what Fia had told him of her resurrection beneath the Heartwood, “that the sources—theseBright Ones—may be bargained with. The cycle of magic regenerated. The Treasures restored.”
“The balancing is eternal,” Wayland began.
“But not immutable,” Irian finished, biting the words to pieces. How many times had Gavida said that phrase? For perhaps the first time, Irian wished he had paid more attention to his foster father’s booming prattle about bindings and forgings and the patterns of destiny etched in the stars. But he and Wayland had been boys—they could not have foreseen how complex their own destinies might one day become. “Then there is no rhyme. No reason. Nothing is written.”
“Yet all may be possible.” A note of excitement thrummed along the contours of Laoise’s accented voice. “Think, tánaiste. Perhaps the Bright One who inhabited this grove created their own kind of binding—their own form of balance. They passed their vast elemental magic onward and set themselves free of the cycle in the doing.”
“The eggs,” Idris clarified, further unraveling the thread Laoise had picked out. “The draigs. They are vessels for the magic of the Red Dragan, in the same way the heirs of the Treasures are vessels.”
“Yet surely they are not bound by the same rules of balance as the heirs,” Wayland said, sorrow wringing his voice. “Surely they were not born only to die.”
“No. It is the nemeton that is dying.” Laoise’s ember eyes flared with some realization or idea, and she spun suddenly toward the nearest tree in the flaming grove. “Hog, come here.”
Hog, who had been sleeping around Idris’s neck, abruptly sat up. She gave an aggrieved mewl and flapped her stubby wings.
“Please,” Laoise amended.
Hog launched into the air—glazed sharp and gold by the lofting sun—and wobbled precipitously before landing with a thump on the roots at Laoise’s feet. She looked at her mother with adoring curiosity.
Laoise bent to the draigling’s level and held out her hand. Hog cooed and lifted her taloned paw to gently place it in the maiden’s outstretched hand. Laoise folded her other palm over Hog’s paw and, without warning, dragged the draig’s claw across her skin. The razored point drew scarlet blood, welling luminous as smoldering coals. Hog squeaked in dismay. Laoise gently stroked her snout before stepping toward the closest tree and laying her bloodied palm upon the translucent bark.
Veins of flaming red and smoldering orange and shadowy black seemed to coalesce. The sun crested its zenith, pouring through the aperture in a wave of blinding, molten gold. Simultaneously, the nemetonflared, firelight dazzling from every trunk and branch and twig and leaf. Irian instinctively shielded his eyes with a raised arm. Everyone else mirrored the gesture.
Somewhere high above, all the draigs cried out in unison—an ecstatic cacophony of sound that jarred Irian’s bones and rattled the Sky-Sword in its scabbard.
When Irian at last lowered his hand, the grove had returned to its prior state—blazing but blighted. The draigs whirled high above, save for Hog, who appeared to have grown six inches in an instant, shedding some of her baby fat as her nose and tail lengthened. And Laoise—Laoise was uncharacteristically weeping as she held her injured hand to her chest.
“Oh,” she breathed, almost inaudibly. “Oh.”
No one dared speak until Hog chirruped plaintively, breaking the spell. Wayland knelt, scooping the still-small draig into his arms with the faintestoofof effort. Hog curled herself around his neck and buried her face in his long, rumpled hair.
“I don’t understand,” Wayland admitted. Laoise was staring at the tree she’d touched with wonder and horror wreathing her expression. “What does it mean?”
Irian’s heart rattled with foreboding. Then hardened like a diamond compressed by lingering fear, cut by cold realization, and polished by burgeoning dread.
“It is as it has always been.” Irian forced his tone to stay perfectly even. “The first language of the Solasóirí and their sacred groves… is sacrifice.”
Laoise lifted her eyes from the fading glow of the trees. “And blood is not enough.”
Chapter Ten
Within
The moonlight draped over the clearing was sharp as a blade yet soft as silk. The bare trees glowed with it—trunks bleached to bone on one side, darkened to soot on the other. Frost spangled the undergrowth with tiny winking diamonds; my breath plumed like smoke in the night.
Ínne did not appear to breathe.
“Where are we?” I whispered, afraid to shatter the wintry hush. “What is this place?”
Your true inheritance, they said in my mind.The memories you thought were lost. But were only hidden away until you needed them.
The Bright One slowly stepped out into the cold, staring moonlight. I almost followed, but something unknowable bade me to remain in the shadows. I wrapped my arms around myself, trying not to shiver. For a memory, it was brutally and authentically cold.
It’s not real, whispered my own voice in my head.
It’s real enough to make my tits pinch, I almost replied, before realizing talking to myself wasn’t helping my case.
The moonlight chased Ínne’s russet fur with silver and incised the powerful muscles ridging their torso. Their face, inchoate as ever, lifted toward the sky, shifting with shapes of things I had no names for—multicolored whorls and spinning wheels and webs so vast they encompassed eternity. Their silver antlers stretched, rearranging stars into symbols I knew I might be able to read if only—
