Balor pointed down the hall toward the bedchambers, and Laoise left him to his thunderous game. She’d nearly reached Irian and Fia’s bedroom when Sinéad came hurtling out, her hair half-braided and her knives unsheathed. They nearly collided; Laoise put gentling hands on the human girl to keep her from stumbling over her own feet.
She took in Sinéad’s twitching mouth, her wild eyes. “What’s the matter?”
She was answered by a coughing moan emanating from the open door behind Sinéad. Laoise pushed by the other girl to stare inside. Fia, as usual, was laid out on the bed like a corpse, with her singed hair fanned out around her and her arms crossed over her chest.
The sound came again, half a gasp, half a sob. Laoise stared over at Sinéad. Sinéad said, strangled, “That’swhat’s the matter.”
Without warning, Fia’s body began to jerk violently atop the sheets, the stillness of her daytime slumber shattered in an instant. Her chest heaved, ragged breaths tearing through her as her limbs convulsed, twitching with a wildness that made Laoise’s stomach twist.
As one, both women wordlessly lunged for the bed. Laoise grabbed Fia’s shoulders, bracing her against the mattress. Beside her, Sinéad sheathed her daggers and steadied Fia’s shuddering legs, even as she glanced instinctively at the ceiling.
“It’s not yet noon,” Laoise confirmed, her voice tight. “She does not usually transform until nightfall.”
“We should fetch Irian.” Sinéad’s eyes were wild with panic.
Laoise shook her head. “He’s at the nemeton. It’s too far.”
On the bed, Fia’s fingers clawed at the sheets, opening and closing as if for purchase. Another low, guttural sound escaped her lips. Beneath her eyelids, her eyes darted back and forth. Laoise held on to her, although she did not know what was happening—every time she had witnessed Fia transform, there had been warnings beforehand. Feathers rippling over her arms. Claws bursting from her fingertips. Horns nubbing her forehead.
“Go,” Laoise said. “Bar the door behind you. I’m stronger than you, and heal faster. I’ll do what I can to keep her safe.”
Sinéad did not move a muscle except to slowly unsheathe her daggers again.
Fia’s eyes flew wide, locking onto Laoise’s with terrifying intensity. Filaments of silver shattered through her green eye; veins of gold glittered from the brown. Before Laoise could react, Fia’s hands shot out and seized her wrists with an iron grip, her fingertips scalding on Laoise’s skin. Fia’s body convulsed again, but her gaze never wavered, as if she were dragging herself upward from some abyss and using Laoise as her anchor. For a brief, terrifying moment, Laoise couldn’t tell whether Fia was fighting her way out of a nightmare… or pulling Laoise in with her.
Then she opened chapped lips and croaked, “The circle. Take me to the circle.Now.”
Part Two
The Ninth Wave
Not of mother, nor of father was my creation.
I was made from the ninefold elements:
From fruit-trees, from paradisal fruit;
From primroses and hill flowers,
From blossom of the trees and bushes;
From the roots of the earth I was made;
From the bloom of the nettle;
From water of the ninth wave.
—“Battle of the Trees,” attributed to Taliesin
Chapter Twenty
Fia
Iawoke to a confusion of glimmering black. For a bleak, blistering moment I thought I had failed—thought Talah had swallowed me in fire and fury.
Then I saw a face swimming before my unfocused eyes. Brown skin, curling auburn hair, ember eyes. I stared past the filaments of metal fracturing my vision, blocked out the strangeness of whatever dark glow surrounded us. I grabbed Laoise’s wrists as tightly as I could. Partly to make sure she was real—not another figment of my dreamscape—and partly to anchor myself here.
Whereverherewas.
