After the fateful Longest Night, their group had washed up past midnight on a black-sand beach beneath towering crimson cliffs. Irian had been consumed by Fia’s transformations—her form rapidly shifting between woman and wolf, girl and goshawk. She had scratched and clawed and beat at him. He had barely spared an ear for the hurried war council carried out by his half-drowned compatriots.
“There will be innocents caught in the destruction,” Wayland had ground out when Laoise first suggested retreating to the home she referred to only asthe Cnoc. “With my father dead, I am king of the Silver Isle. They will look to me—”
“You are king of nothing, Prionsa.” Wayland had flinched at the unvarnished truth of Laoise’s words. But they had all witnessed the Silver Isle shear away into the hungry waves, had all watched it devoured by silver flames and cold ocean. “There will be some who found currachs or barges or lengths of driftwood. But unless you can command the tide to carry them safely to shore, then I am not sure how you believe you can help.”
“If we cannot help them,” Sinéad had said, “then we must help those who may be yet caught in the war the bardaí will wage, with Eala dead.”
“She is not.” Those were the only words Irian had been able to manage as he had wrestled the transforming figure of his magic-warped wife upon the blackened beach.
They had all turned toward him, surprise mingling with denial. Only Wayland had dared approach, reaching to help Irian with Fia. Irian had batted him away, brusque. “Eala lives.”
“But I killed her,” Sinéad said, with little intonation.
Irian had indeed watched the human girl plunge her twin daggers into Eala’s chest a half dozen times before Laoise dragged Sinéad off her swan sister’s broken, bleeding body. But he knew too much of the terrible magic of the Treasures to believe it so easy to kill the human princess. Perhaps he might have convinced himself, as the others had done. But he hadseenher, in the moments before Emain Ablach disappeared beneath the sea. Her gilded head, crowned by a sparkling silver tiara. Her fluttering dress, white as the cliffs at her back. Her sharp smile, ready to carve up destiny and swallow it whole.
“She lives,” he had reiterated roughly. Even if he had not seen Eala, smiling like mayhem on that beach, he couldfeelher magic. Just as he couldfeelFia’s, the atonal thrum of it singing in counterpoint to his own. Just as he couldfeelthe two ugly points of corrupted wild magic threading darkly over the distant landscape.
The Treasures were all linked. It was as it had ever been. He would know if Eala were dead—if the wild magic of her Treasure had been released.
No—they were not yet finished with the swan princess.
In the end, Laoise’s plan had prevailed. The Gentry maiden had surprised them all with the truth of her anam cló. Irian had heard legends of the mythic dragain of the Sept of Scales—from his mother, from Deirdre, even from Wayland when they were boys. But those flying, flaming serpents had been butstories, as believable as the colossal eagles or the sea leviathans or the giant elks of the other Septs. To see Laoise transform into a scaled dragan glowing red-gold as she winged toward the clouds had been… impressive.
She was also the only one of them who had a home to retreat to.
Wayland’s home was flotsam on the fathomless sea. Irian’s a crumbling fort in the heart of bardaí territory. Sinéad had none; ifBalor had one, he seemed unattached to the idea of returning to it. Fia was not in a position to weigh in.
So it had been decided. A few of the aughiskies had abandoned them to dive into the frothing dark sea. Irian’s tall black steed, Abyss, had stayed on, if reticently; he thought the stallion’s willingness to help had more to do with Fia’s mare, Linn, relentlessly harrying him than any genuine desire to help. Sinéad’s white mare had also stayed, as had an energetic cobalt yearling whom Wayland had readily taken for a mount. Balor needed no steed; Laoise either flew high above them, scouting the terrain, or rode occasionally upon Linn, though neither Gentry maiden nor murderous horse enjoyed the other’s company.
Their strange entourage had trudged over frosted moors, traversed desolate plains where the wind screamed, climbed craggy tors burnished by fleeting sunlight.
And always the sickly thrum of Eala’s new-forged Treasure dogged Irian—taunting him, goading him. Surely they had left Fia’s sister far behind. But not far enough.
Never far enough.
For the first few days, Irian had barely rested. He did not need much sleep, and what little he had tried to snatch had been plagued by nightmares—so he had stopped trying. Even when they camped and one of the others kept watch, he held Fia. The times he had dared drift off, he awakened to a wolf howling, its fangs in his face; venomous vines climbing his throat; a serpent twining around him with muscular coils. He always managed to fight back his instincts, assiduously kept the Sky-Sword in its scabbard, though it hummed a complaint. Whatever she became, he held her—deer, swan, rock, tree.
Even in the hour before dawn, when Fia transformed into something worse, Irian held her.
This battle he could not fight with weapons; this war he could not win with wrath. He could only pray to gods he had reason to believe were not listening that Fia was stillin there. Fighting, as he fought. Raging, as he raged.
To think he had already lost her, without even knowing—that was a weight too heavy to hold.
So he heldher.
It had taken Abyss stumbling and nearly falling to his knees beneath Irian and Fia’s joint weight for anyone to challenge this arrangement.
Wayland had watched with worried eyes as Abyss shook his dark mane in frustration. “Any change?”
It had been the same question for three days. The words abraded Irian’s bones and made him clench his teeth, although surely his erstwhile foster brother meant nothing but care by them. “Change, I fear, is the only constant. She has not woken, if that is what you ask.”
“I think only of you. And of her.” Wayland’s indigo eyes had been dismayed. His mouth had worked in the moment before he said, “You have held her too long, Brother. Neither you—nor your mount—will survive to keep holding her, unless you rest. Perhaps you will allow me—”
“No.” The word had punched out of Irian. He had done many wrong things, had made many wrong choices. Since the Longest Night, he had felt as if he had but one purpose—one vow to uphold. He was not invincible. He was not even as strong as he wished. But he was strong enough to do this one thing. Even if it cost him the last of his strength. “I promised her.I cannot let her go.”
“Then she will die,” Balor had boomed at him from a great height. “And we with her.Lord.”
“Irian.” Wayland had kept his tone easy. “Whatever promise she asked of you, surely she did not mean it literally. Fia would never want this for you. In fact, I think she’d be the first to scold you for this madness.”
