We would never have let you die, child.Their seriousness was infinite.You are too precious.
“If that was true,” I blurted out helplessly, “then why would my mother—why would Deirdre—have abandoned me withyou?”
For long moments, they were still and silent. Their antlers seemed to pierce the dark canopy above us. Again, they said,That is not our story to tell.
I swiped more angry tears from my eyes. “Of course not. You’re more in the business of meaningless riddles and muddled memories. Tell me something straightforward, for once. Donn damn you, stop telling me stories and tell me somethingtrue.”
The night stretched thin as silk.
Truth is an untrustworthy sovereign, child. For what is a story but a lie? And what is a story but the utmost truth?The Bright One’s head swiveled on their neck.But I will tell you this much. Your seed was planted by a human man and incubated by a Gentry woman. But you grew into childhood primarily nourished by magic. Our magic.Wildmagic.
I stilled. Talah’s words from the night I’d discovered her in thecaverns below Aduantas thrilled through me, as unnerving and stirring as the night she’d spoken them:I do not know you. And yet you are known. You are star touched.
“What does that mean?”
It means you are more than human. More than Folk. You are both. And you are neither. You are more.
The words thrilled through me, tempting and terrifying. I thought of the night of the Ember Moon, when I died, yet was reborn. I thought of the Longest Night, when I semiwillingly opened myself, body and soul, to an entity so far beyond my meager mortality that I could hardly believe she had not yet mastered me. I thought ofnow, traveling through my incorporeal landscapes as if they were physical, unraveling the skeins of my memories.
I was the daughter of a human king who had abandoned his duties. The daughter of a Gentry heir who had unchained herself from her fated path at a terrible cost. Yet also—mythically, symbolically, and practically—I was the daughter of the forest itself. It may not have birthed me, but it had raised me. It may not have nursed me, but it had kept me fed. It may not have understood me, but in its own hallowed way, it hadlovedme. Distantly, calmly, and without judgment—as nature loved all things.
I was made of branches and blossoms and burned-out stars. I had lived my life thinking I was made for only one thing—to be a weapon, honed and used by others. But perhaps I had been made for more. Forged between two worlds and nurtured by a third, perhaps I had been made for so muchmore.
“I am the only one of my kind.” Loneliness was a sword in my chest. For as long as I could remember, all I had wanted was a place to belong. A home to return to. A love I did not have to earn. But the truth was, there was no belonging save for what I carved for myself. No home save for one I built. No love save for what I demanded. From myself. And those I chose.
“I am the only one of my kind.” This time, instead of a blade, the words were armor.
Yes.
I faced the Bright One. “I am star touched. Because of you—because of how I was raised. Is that the reason Talah chose me?”
Yes.Their antlers chimed.It is also the reason she has not yet overcome your defenses.
My unique parentage and upbringing had made me strong enough to sustain her… and strong enough to withstand her. “But not forever.”
Their voice rang with untenable sorrow.Nothing is forever.
Renewed fear and frustration made a thicket around my heart. “Surely there is something I can do. Some way out.”
The only way to escape your body is death, child.
“Some way out forher. Some new binding, or—” A thought exploded into my mind with surprising force—a thought echoing from moments ago. All my life I had yearned for belonging. For home. Forlove. What if… what if Talah wanted the same thing? She had been kept trapped in the dark for a thousand years by a devious, selfish king. I had set her free. But truly, my frail body could be nothing but another cage for a being of unknowable power and vast magic. I turned abruptly to Ínne. “Before you were bound to the Treasures, where was your home?”
The Bright One cocked its head with depthless puzzlement.Home?
“For the Solasóirí, where is home?” I prompted. “The stars?”
Their laughter—if that was even what it was—was the sound of mountains lofting over millennia; stones eroding beneath the gurgle of fast water.We have spent eons in these lands. They have shaped us as we shaped them. We are not the same as when we arrived so long ago. We cannot return to the stars.
“Then where?” Frustration made my tone crisp. “Where is home?”
The Bright One’s claw tapped my breastbone, then drew a ragged circle above my heart. Green blood welled, though I felt no pain.
Circles, child, they intoned.We are all the same. We are all different. Yet by the circles we are all bound.
Circles. Did they mean…
“Nemeta?” I remembered meeting Laoise on the cliffs and her explanation of the sacred groves. She had said they once punctuated the land, holy places of great magic where miracles could be performed. Talah herself had appeared bound in the dark by the Grove of Gold’s deep-reaching roots. But… what if the grove had not been caging her? Gavida had done that with his terrible collars.
