For a few moments, the only sounds were the crackling of the hearth and the faint anguished growl of the large Fia-wolf Balor was rocking in his arms like a baby.
“Time, research, and experimentation,” Idris said slowly. They were Wayland’s own words from moments ago, repeated back at him. “You have time—at least until Laoise scouts your princess and ascertains her movements. Perhaps not months, but weeks at least. As for research, we have a fairly impressive library, full of the materials Laoise and I have collected over the past thirteen years. We sought information only about the nemeta, but the books and scrolls are rife with uncanny spells and fell magic. Perhaps there is something of forging in them.”
Wayland lifted an eyebrow. “Please tell me you’re also open to experimentation.”
Idris smiled, a broad, fetchingly dimpled confection. “Well… we do have draigs.”
“For?”
“Your new forge, of course.”
Chapter Thirteen
Within
The forest grew deeper, dusky with the colossal shadows of ancient trees. The silence was profound, heavy with millennia of unsung songs and carefully kept secrets. My breath fogged as I exhaled, although the air kissing my arms no longer felt cold.
“What is this place?” My words jangled through the air, a profanity in this undeniably sacred space. The wood stilled even further, rebuking me with faint attention.
Do you not remember?Ínne seemed so perfectly at ease here, I half expected them to have grown roots.
“I’ve never been here before.” I would have remembered this wonder and awe leafing through my chest. I would have remembered these widely spaced trunks, this canopy dense as a night sky. If this was a memory, it wasn’t mine. “Perhaps, for once, we could do away with the riddles.”
As you wish.Ínne stepped through the gloaming toward the nearest vast tree.What do you see?
The gnarled trunk and lofting branches spoke to the tree’s age; its serrated leaves and draped yellow catkins told me it was someform of hazel. My eyes followed the undulations of growth, the whorls and burls and faces—
Shock pumped ice water through my veins. Itwasa face—a woman’s, Folk Gentry, embedded in the trunk a few inches above my eye level. No, not embedded—for she wasmadeof wood, though I could not guess whether the tree had grown around her or she had somehowbecomethe tree. I stepped closer as my fear subsided, and saw the subtle outline of the rest of her form, merged effortlessly with the tree’s bark.
She was… arresting. Her figure seemed poised in motion—one pointed foot stepping off the ground while her other knee bent. Her torso twisted as she reached, reached, a subtle flow of fabric falling over her generous breasts. And herface. She gazed outward as if bewitched by some sight or sound I could neither see nor hear. A glimmer of emerald flashed from the center of her breastbone.
“Who is she?” I could not take my eyes away from her exquisite face.
Her name was Eibhlín, said the figure, with tenderness.She was the first.
I searched for meaning in the Bright One’s shrouded expression. “The firstwhat?”
The first heir to the Treasure of the Sept of Antlers.They lifted a hand, clawed and furred, and gestured expansively toward the forest spilling out around us.This is your birthright, child. Your legacy. And your last resting place.
A chill ghosted over my skin, raising a shiver in its wake. I glanced again at the frozen maiden, then peered deeper between the trees. Now that I knew what to look for, my eyes snagged on the suggestions of more figures entombed in the trees. An outstretched arm. A reaching hand. An upturned face. My unease intensified, pebbling my arms with gooseflesh as I began to understand.
This was no mere forest. It was a mausoleum. A necropolis of trees.
Every trunk a gravestone, every sighing breeze an epitaph.
Although they had to die for the magic of our Treasure to be renewed, their memories live on.Emotion, deep and heart-wrenching, threaded Ínne’s voice.Here. Forever.
“But… wherearewe?” I had forgotten Talah for long moments, but now the thought of her encroached. I imagined her molten metal and scarlet flames wreaking havoc upon the sacred stillness of this grove. The thought turned my stomach. “Is this inside my memories? Or yours? Or—”
You. And they. And it—the Bright One reached out and tapped the Heart of the Forest; the stone flashed emerald in the dim, belling a note like homecoming—are we. Something borrowed. Something shared. Something taken. Something taught.
I frowned—the words echoed through me with a formless familiarity I could not name. I struggled to make sense of them.
“You’re saying this place exists both inside and outside of me?” I wrapped my palm around the Heart, as much for comfort as for understanding. “But only because I inherited this Treasure?”
I took the neutral weight of their silence as assent.
“Show me, then.” If Talah had not found me here yet, then I did not mind lingering. I was curious about all these fallen heirs—had been curious about them from the moment I had learned of the Treasures. From the moment I had learned who I truly was. “If the memories of these past heirs are a part of me—if they live on inside me—then I want to know their stories. I want to know them. I want to knowyou.”
