For a few long, painful moments, the underground chamber rang with silence. Then Wayland burst out laughing, his incredulous mirth too loud and too raucous in the heavy hush.
He couldn’t help it. He had been there that night in Gavida’s throne room when Irian had petitioned the smith-king tounforgehis and Fia’s Treasures, and had witnessed Fia’s face transform with shock and fury before hardening toward determination.
He jests, Majesty, the strident slip of a woman had pronounced, standing proud and persistent before one of the most fickle and powerful rulers in Tír na nÓg.Such a natural comedian. Or perhaps madness has struck him.
In truth, Wayland had thought them both mad. He had never envied his foster brother’s fate—life, difficult as it sometimes was, was far better lived than lost. And the Treasures, no matter how powerful, all came with an expiration date. Wayland blamed his father for many things. Shielding his only son from such a fate was not one of them. It had earned Wayland a hazy kind of reprieve he wasn’t always sure how to fathom.
But Irian, of all men, ought to have learned not to rail against a destiny carved from the motion of the stars, the movement of the winds, the tilting of the earth.
Fia, of all women, ought to know that powerful magic always came with a cost.
Wayland had seen how the disagreement had nearly torn their marriage asunder. Had watched their quarrel with growing interest from an uneasy distance.
Fia and Irian had mended the jagged rift at the heart of their relationship. Wayland could only begin to guess how they had salved the wound—based on his limited experience of healthy adult relationships, he imagined it had something to do with wholesome communication and robust compromise. Possibly a great deal of makeup sex. But he’d doubted either person’s essential position regarding the Treasures had changed.
So for Irian to be standing in front of him, announcing that Wayland must reforge the destroyed Treasuresandsacrifice his own near-immortal life to inherit one, was… hilarious.
Irian of the Sept of Feathers did not change his mind. Ever.
Except, Wayland supposed, where the love of his life was concerned.
“What,” Irian now said, his unforgiving tone slicing through Wayland’s continued gales of laughter, “is so fucking funny?”
Wayland forced away his mirth, wiped at his eyes. The rest of the group—sans Laoise and Sinéad—were staring at him with mystification. Balor was chuckling along in a companionable way; Hog was rolling on the floor, giving tiny draigling yips; Idris was watching him closely beneath the fall of his hair.
That, more than anything, pulled Wayland from his hysterics.
“You’re joking,” he managed at last. “Tell me you’re joking.”
“Eala wields a Treasure now, her magic vast and frankly terrifying.” Irian’s head tilted to one side, the glint in his eyes a challenge. It sobered Wayland—he wasn’t sure he had ever heard Irian openly admit to being afraid. “With Fia in her current state, I stand the only power to equal hers. We must find a way to even those odds. Or better yet, stack them in our favor. Among us we have two potential heirs. Out there are two warped Treasures that could be resurrected in the same way Fia resurrected the Heart.”
“How?”The muscles in Wayland’s arms bunched; Hog let out a faint whine of distress. Idris once more shifted beside him, his presence silent but supportive.
“You are the smith-king’s son, are you not?” It sounded like an accusation. “Heir to his powers? You removed Fia’s collar on the beach.”
“I inherited my father’s affinity for forging magical objects, yes,” Wayland replied, a strain in his voice. “But I was collared for over a decade. My father had no interest in schooling me in his ways—the opposite, in fact. He was intensely secretive about his work. Even if hehadleft me instructions, there is no guarantee I could forge new Treasures. Their like has never been created, not before and certainly not since.”
“But surely you could figure out how,” Irian said intently. “If you had to.”
The phrasing sent a shock of familiarity pulsing through Wayland’sveins, dragging him abruptly back to the night he and Fia had discovered the Year, in her mountain tomb. The two of them had sat together on the rocky beach after Fia nearly drowned in the underwater caverns—she shivering from shock and cold, he trying not to relish in the physical closeness her mortal danger had afforded him.
Could it be done again?She had asked him the same thing, in almost the same way, there in the darkness.Couldyoudo it? If you had to?
“Could I teach myself how to forge resonant objects capable of carrying within them the vast elemental magic of bound deities?” Wayland said, a little helplessly. “Perhaps, with enough time and research and experimentation. But what of the corrupted wild magic? What of the heirs—what of Laoise and me? How are we to renew magic that has been warped? To inherit objects that have been destroyed?”
“Fia did it,” Irian said, blunt.
“And I’ve never met anyone else like Fia.” Instantly, he regretted the phrasing—Irian’s eyes scathed his own, raw and resentful, and Wayland felt suddenly claustrophobic in his own facile manner. He had woven his philandering reputation so seamlessly that it now clung to him like a second skin. Did he ask too much for his oldest friend—hisfoster brother—to see more to him than that? Could Irian truly not understand that Wayland was drawn to Fia not just by attraction, but by genuine care? That he was capable of an emotion more complex than lust? “I only mean that she is… extraordinary. She is not fully Folk; she is far more than human. In the caverns below Aduantas, Talah called herstar touched. I don’t know exactly what she meant by that, but it aligned with all my father feared about Fia. That her presence changed the patterns of the stars, that she carried within her the capacity to bend destiny to her will.”
“How do you knowyouare not star touched?” Idris softly asked from beside him.
Wayland laughed. “I’ve been touched plenty, Red, and enjoyedevery moment of it. But I think I’d remember if a star had done any of the touching.”
Idris hid behind his veil of hair.
“So you will not do it?” Irian asked, with an air of menace that made Wayland think if he said no, he might soon be experiencing the edge of the Sky-Sword at his throat.
“I did not say that.” Wayland lifted his palms. “I am willing. I may even be able. But if this is our chosen way forward—forging new Treasures and binding the wild magic let loose over Murias and Findias—I fear I simply do not know where to begin.”
