With distant, winged dread, Irian had silently conceded this point. He had not had time to ask his wife, in those last moments before Talah overtook her, whether her request had been literal. Still, he clung to it. For three days and nights, he had carried Fia without respite. Every transformation a new trial, each changing embrace a new way for him to prove how endlessly he loved her.
Was it truly madness, as Wayland said? Or was it valor?
His love might be endless. But he was not. Nor was his mount.
“But who?” His voice had sounded despicably forlorn. He had looked from Wayland to Sinéad to Balor. Up to Laoise’s form, streaking like a comet through the dim. “Who?”
“No one of us alone can keep the promise you have made her,” Wayland said. “But perhaps all of us together… can help.”
Still Irian had held her. The distant foothills had been darker than bruises upon the horizon.
“Let me.” Sinéad had spoken but a handful of words since she had plunged her ready daggers into Eala’s chest. Now she held out her arms. “Together Fia and I weigh less than you and she. My mount is strong. Ride Linn. Let your stallion rest.”
Irian had hesitated one last moment before bundling Fia in his cloak and nestling her in front of Sinéad. The other girl had sheathed her daggers, then wrapped her arms around Fia’s limp frame. Irian had tensed, every instinct he possessed screaming at him to haul his wife back into his grasp. His time on Emain Ablach had taught him that he could not control everything. Yet if he could not control this, whatcouldhe control? If he could not hold her, was he not letting her go? “If she transforms—”
“For days we have all watched you care for Fia alone.” Sinéad’s tone had held exhaustion and dogged determination. “We have all been kept awake by her screams; we have all wept when you wept. This pain does not belong solely to you. Trust us to bear some of it.Please.”
So he had, though he feared it had not lessened the pain to share it. His body had found much needed rest. Abyss had regained the strength of his long, elegant limbs. But every moment Fia did not rest in Irian’s arms was a moment fletched with fear and sharpened with regret. He might not be able to control the world around him. But nor could he bear to be away from Fia for long.
“Ho!” Now Wayland cantered up beside Irian, sympathy and regret passing over his features as he glanced down at Fia clutchedonce more in Irian’s arms. “Laoise wishes to camp here—where the ground is flat.”
Irian’s eyes sharpened toward their surroundings. Sunset teased a pale blue sky with bloody fingers; night was not far behind. The broad, flat plain before them stretched toward foothills purpling with dusk. Beyond, rocky ridges cast looming shadows. Nothing grew here but ragged brush and pitiful clumps of grass.
With a flare of fear, Irian recognized this place. A premonition of danger ghosted over his skin and whipped his head back the way they had come. His arms tightened around Fia’s motionless form, his fingertips pressing divots into her boiling skin.
Surely Eala could not have followed them all this way.
Then why could he stillfeelher? The same searing power that had blistered from Eala’s frame when Gavida’s cursed crown touched her golden head rippled toward him across the landscape, raising the hairs on the nape of his neck.
“Laoise.” His voice was harsher than he meant it to be. “Why have you brought us here?”
“What, tánaiste?” Laoise—riding now upon Linn—grinned, showing off her fetching dimples. “Do you not wish at last for a flat place to camp? We are only a day’s ride from Cnoc Féigleann. But we will not reach it tonight.”
“We must not stay here.” Irian wheeled Abyss, even as the Sky-Sword began to hum an eerie, atonal tune at his hip. His breath rose haphazardly in his lungs as danger winnowed through him. “Wayland… Laoise—be on your guard. Balor, make ready to run. Sinéad, make ready to ride. We must cross this plain as fast as we can.”
Balor seemed unflappable as ever, stomping indomitably forward. Sinéad looked up at her name, her expression hopeless and haggard. Only Laoise’s expression betrayed surprise.
“Why, Irian?”
“Because these are the old killing grounds of Mag Tuired,” Irian ground out, even as he kicked Abyss into a lurching canter. “This marks the edge of Tír na nÓg, before the Barrens begin. Here theTuatha Dé Danann defeated the Fomorians in the battle that would decide their sovereignty. And here every man, woman, and giant is buried where they fell. We have just walked onto an army for Eala to use.”
“Surely she could not have followed us this far?” Wayland’s question echoed Irian’s own concerns.
“We have no idea where she is, nor what she is capable of. Do you wish to risk it?”
Perhaps it was his words that spurred them on; perhaps it was night’s sinister promise scraping blood over the slate sky. The aughiskies stretched their sleek legs into a gallop. Balor broke into a thunderous run, his tree-trunk legs propelling him at a surprising clip.
Irian felt the buzzing thrum of magic upon his skin, tasted the sweet-sour sizzle of petrichor on his tongue, heard the mournful discordance of Eala’s Treasure entwine with his sword’s song.
How?
It did not matter. It only mattered that she was close. Too close.
The first bone-flanged hand burst from the cold, damp earth.
“Ride!” Irian roared. Grotesque shapes birthed themselves in the long, dark shadows cast by the mountains. “If you want to live,ride.”
They rode. Irian tallied the distance to the mountains. In the murky dusk, the plain could have stretched half a league. Or seven.
