“The circle.” Morrigan, but my throat was dry—speaking felt like dragging fingernails through sand. How long since I’d had something to drink? Heat and sulfur rose with my fear, threatening to overwhelm me. I heard Talah’s voice inside me like a silent scream. Whatever strength I’d found in the Deep-Dream was keeping her at bay—for now. I doubted I had much time. “Take me to the circle.Now.”
Laoise’s eyes widened with a potent mixture of shock andconfusion. I shook her a little—although perhaps I was shaking myself as I fought through the same blend of emotions. I had no idea where I was. No clue how long I’d been trapped inside my own mind. I knew only that everything I’d learned in the Deep-Dream pointed to one thing.
“The…nemeton.” I dredged the word from somewhere deep inside me. “It’s here, isn’t it? Tell me it’s here.”
My mention of the nemeton—or perhaps the urgency grating harshly in my voice—jolted Laoise from her befuddlement.
“It is. But not close. A half hour’s walk, through the caverns.”
Caverns? I didn’t have time to question it. Talah undulated inside me with slow but unstoppable force, her molten might scraping the inside of my skin with terrible promise.
“Then we must run.” My breath tasted of brimstone and ozone. “Show me the way.”
Still Laoise hesitated. I didn’t understand why until I glanced past her shoulder at Sinéad lurking a few paces away. Her azure eyes blazed with unalloyed fear. Two gleaming daggers were braced in her hands. Pointing toward me.
It hit me like a punch to the gut—they were afraid of me. Or rather, they were afraid Iwasn’tme. They were afraid I was Talah.
Not yet. Not fucking yet.
“We run.” I stared into Laoise’s flaming eyes and prayed for understanding. “We run like the last time we found ourselves in caverns. We run like we’ve got Gáe Bulga lighting our way. We run like we’ve got a fucking dobhar-chú snapping at our heels. But it has to benow.”
My words eased something in Laoise. She heaved me up off the mattress in one smooth motion.
I’d forgotten what it was to have a real body. In the Deep-Dream, I’d been a creature of pure thought, a denizen of memory. Sundry concerns like hunger, thirst, and exhaustion had been immaterial to my cosmic struggle with Talah. Now I felt how weak I’d become—my knees practically buckling beneath my own weight, my stomach cramping with hunger, my throat parched with thirst.
How long had my Treasure been forced to keep me alive without any other sustenance?
I girded my limbs with the strength of my certainty; the power of my will; the magic that had birthed me, raised me, saved me.
In the moment before I followed Laoise from the room, I reflexively pawed at my hips for absent skeans.
“Here.” Sinéad was by my side in an instant. Although her eyes were wide and wary, she flipped her grip on her knives and handed the hilts to me. “Take mine.”
They were not my skeans. They were longer and the balance was different. But I smiled at Sinéad, gripped the blades, and followed Laoise.
These caverns were vastly different than the caves below Aduantas. Instead of pale stone, there was black rock inlaid with glittering veins of gemstones and metals. Rather than dripping with moisture, the stalactites were formed into chandeliers and lanterns blooming with candlelight. Delicate archways thronged with shadows; narrow staircases flickered with firelight.
I forced my eyes to Laoise’s retreating back. Talah’s presence rammed inside me like a reminder: I would have time to sightsee later.
The Gentry maiden set a brisk pace, her booted feet pounding an easy rhythm on the stone floor. I was regrettably barefoot—my feet slapped noisily on the slick rock. I cursed as my blood slowly awoke in my veins—a battlefield of sluggish green and furious silver, fighting for dominance.
I held Talah at bay by will alone. And she was putting up a fight.
“Faster,” I panted at Laoise. “Faster!”
She glanced over her shoulder at me as if to say,You’re barely keeping up. But she took me at my word. And began to sprint.
She wasfast. I nearly lost her as she accelerated into the dim. Skidding through an intersection, I almost missed when she turned left. My feet slipped on the slick stone; I scrabbled for purchase on the wall and flung myself after her. I shoved all my flagging willinto my pumping lungs. Pushed all my fear and loathing for Talah into the quivering muscles of my thighs. Forced the slow throb of the Heart of the Forest to pound faster, keeping time with the rabbit patter of my mortal pulse.
Donn be damned, I wanted tolive.
I caught Laoise, drawing abreast of her as we half slid down a steep descent. She shot me a glance, flashed me a suggestion of a dimpled smile. And ran even faster.
The caverns streaked by, gems and metals gleaming like fallen stars in a black night. I stopped thinking—I knew only the screaming burn of muscles that had been dormant for too long, the scraping hiss of breath in my atrophied lungs, the terrible battle of green and molten silver throbbing below my skin. Heat suffused me, and I felt suddenly too small to contain all the magic living inside me. I whimpered a little and ran even faster, as if I could outrun Talah’s inexorable advance.
“Almost there!” Laoise shouted toward me.
Faster.
