What if the grove had been not a prison… but a home?
Somewhere distant, the air shifted. The faint tang of molten metal teased my nostrils. A distant, horrible voice wafted toward my ears.
You cannot hide here. Let me in.
“Can I give her another home?” The words came out rushed, nearly garbled. “Surely I am not the right home for her—this vessel was never designed to withstand two sources. If I give her somewhere else to go, will she leave me in peace?”
Perhaps. Let us venture deeper, child.
Chapter Eleven
Laoise
Gathering and eating with the half dozen strangers she’d brought into her home brought Laoise curious comfort.
Idris was a good cook. He’d had to learn, one of those first long winters at the Cnoc, when Blodwen was a rambunctious juvenile and Barfog an incessantly noisy hatchling. The supplies Laoise had brought from Dún Scaith and scavenged from Findias had long since been used; she could hunt in the form of her anam cló, but the Barrens were not plentiful with game. When her lanky teenaged brother—as relentlessly hungry as the newborn draigling licking sweat from her neck—complained about the lack of food, Laoise had snapped at him, perhaps unkindly.
Lick the walls like Blodwen, Brother, she’d shouted.If you wish for something with more sustenance, then shift yourself to find it or make it for once in your bloody life!
Idris had gone terribly quiet for two days, then seemingly taken her words as a challenge. A week later, he’d served a truly horrendous dish of clumsily filleted blind salamanders burned to an utter crisp. Probably by Blodwen. Laoise had choked down theblackened hunks of tough lizard, devouring her own guilt with it. Was this not exactly what she had demanded? The least she could do was accept the effort at face value and pray Idris took the failure as a sign his talents lay elsewhere.
He did not. That, too, he took as a challenge.
The caverns were not rife with life, but nor were they absent of it. Florid yellow lichen climbed the damp walls beside the underground rivers; green geckos and scarlet salamanders and speckled venomous frogs gamboled in the shallows. Tenacious birds with gemstone wings nested high on the walls of the sinkholes; furry burrowing creatures whose calls sounded like wind chimes dotted its floor.
If it could be foraged, Idris learned to forage it. If it could be snared, Idris learned to snare it. If it could be cooked, Idris learned to cook it.
Now—many years after those initial growing pains, which had included a number of accidental poisonings—Idris’s culinary talents bordered on the rapturous. Despite Laoise giving him zero warning about the crowd she was bringing to the Cnoc, he’d conjured a veritable feast.
Braised lichen tossed with moonworm honey. Crystal-cap mushrooms steaming on toasted rounds of root bread. Salamander and wild garlic tart. Wine made from twilight berries and deepwood sap.
Each dish was delicious and everyone ate like they were starving. Which perhaps they were. Balor chuckled at the spread before excusing himself, claiming he’d seen a delectable vein of obsidian quartz he’d prefer to sample. Sinéad ate heartily for the first time in nearly a month, and Laoise was pleased to see pink bloom on her wan cheeks. Wayland gamely sampled everything before returning for his favorites. Irian—Fia lying supine beside him, with her head resting in his lap—ate with tense, precise bites. His strict inscrutability refused to hint at whether he was enjoying himself.
Laoise sometimes wished she could tell Irian to take entertainment where he could find it. But she supposed one did not demand the sun shine at night, nor the cliffs bow to the sea.
Before long, the food had been demolished and the conversation began to ebb. The draiglings were all lazily curled between the Folk—or, in Hog’s case, stretched languorously over Wayland’s lap. Balor had stomped cheerfully back into the cavern and settled himself against a smooth wall, his enormous teeth looking particularly sharp and gleaming. Even the aughiskies seemed sated, having been shown the most plentiful underground rivers by the draiglings.
Laoise cleared her throat, planting her elbows on the stone table before her.
“The magic of the Barrens—and this nemeton at its heart—kept Eala from following us.” Laoise jumped straight to the heart of the matter—no point in wasting everyone’s time with unnecessary dithering. “But I have received word from my network of… informants. Her withdrawal does not appear to have been a retreat. Quite the opposite—although it has been but a few days since Mag Tuired, she has marched through several Folk settlements, chaos and death upon her heels. The rumors spreading in her wake are concerning. Some call her the Rotten Princess. Others say she has dubbed herself Grave Mother.”
“How do you know this?” Irian’s hand twitched toward his belt, but he must have left the Sky-Sword in his chambers. He rested his palm on Fia’s dark head instead. “Who are theseinformants?”
Laoise did not particularly care to explain her past to the Gentry heir—the long years training in swords and shadow magic at Dún Scaith, the friendships she’d forged and the enemies she’d earned. Nor did she wish to reveal how she and her Twilight Sisters—scattered now across Tír na nÓg, Annwyn, and beyond—stayed in near-constant contact, their messages appearing neatly folded in shadows only Laoise knew how to unfold, sharing joy or warning of danger.
“We call ourselves Twilight Sisters. Women who, like me, trained with Lady Scáthach. Women I trust with my life,” Laoise said tightly. “The intelligence is good. Even now Eala approachesthe outskirts of the Summerlands—she will likely reach their main city in one, maybe two weeks.”
“Perhaps she has given up on us,” Wayland said, his tone too light. “On Fia. Perhaps we need worry about her no longer.”
Irian barked a harsh laugh. “Eala is mad with power and obsessed with the notion of Fia as her other half. The person who will make her whole, who will somehow cement her position as rightful ruler of both realms. She will stop at nothing until she has her sister by her side, no matter the cost.”
Wayland’s smile slipped, his broad shoulders tensing. Idris reached out to lay a gentling palm on Wayland’s forearm, even as he murmured something below his breath.
Laoise’s curious gaze lingered on the men before she addressed the group once more.
“We cannot expect Eala to act logically. In becoming a Treasure, she has undergone a transformation even Folk Gentry struggle with; as a human woman she has been indelibly changed. She no longer is who she once was.”
“Or perhaps she is,” Sinéad added, in a vicious undertone. “Which makes her all the more terrifying.”
