There—a breath of sky-fresh wind. A shadow not soft with torchlight, but crisp and harsh with sunlight. A sound like bells chiming.
Or, perhaps, an enchanted sword singing.
We burst out into a blinding noon. My eyes narrowed to slits against the brightness, even as my too-fast steps skidded over uneven rocks and stunted scrub. I stumbled; pain streaked up my leg as my shin rasped over stone. I cried out but shoved myself back to standing. Laoise’s hands wedged beneath my arms. She pulled me upright, slung me forward. The impression of scalding red flames swam before me. A bonfire?
I blinked.
Trees.
Another figure stood nearby. Tall—devastatingly tall. Black hair swept over blue-gold eyes as he whipped his head around to look at me.
“… Fia?”Irian reached for me, trembling and desperate, myname like a prayer upon the wind. I longed for his touch—yearned for it as if it were the only thing that might anchor me to this world.
But it wasn’t. I sidestepped him neatly. Achingly.
Sorry, mo chroí.
The flaming trees reared before me, intricate and awesome. I had no time to be impressed by them—Talah was a curse inside me, buffeting the last of my will with her furious strength. My feet were going soft—slurping like molten lava against the rock. My limbs were beginning to burn, my veins no longer metal but slag. My hair singed, the acrid stench mixing in my nostrils with the tang of petrichor and bog tar.
I struck the closest tree with my palms. Its bark was smooth as blown glass, whorled with strange patterns. I nearly lost my grip as I skidded to my knees, rock and dirt and dingy plants scraping my limbs. I wrapped my arms around the trunk as far as they would go—the tree wasmassive. Energy scythed through me, dragging a gasp from my blistered throat. Flaming leaves in a hundred shades of red and gold scattered around me, kissing my skin with even more heat.
“Get out.” I was coming apart, fusing together. I couldn’t withstand her for even one more minute. “Get out!”
You have no idea what you are asking, star child.Talah’s voice was the roar of collapsing caverns; the thunderous birth of magic; the bending, twisted growth of a thousand-year-old tree.This is not my home.
“Neither am I,” I roared back. “You cannot have me!”
But you bound me, Talah argued. Reality itself bent to her words. My spine crumpled. My head bowed. Wayland’s ring flashed triumphantly around my finger, a circle of Talah’s metal binding me to her. And her to me.
Circles.My head snapped up. My fingers flexed against the smoldering bark of the flaming tree. Ínne’s voice once more echoed through me, throbbing in time to the Heart of the Forest.We are all the same. We are all different. By the circles we are all bound.
I had bound her to me. But she had been bound before. By Gavida. By the Oak and Holly Kings. By the Fomorians.
Again and again, Talah had been bound. I might not be able tounbindher from myself. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t bind her anew.
I drew one of Sinéad’s daggers in a rush. I jerked the collar of my tunic to one side, exposing my breastbone. Somewhere, distantly, I heard an agonized male roar reverberate through the canyon, answered by inexplicable chiming shrieks high above.
Irian had nothing to fear. I had no intention of sacrificing my life for Talah. The opposite, in fact.
I drew a clumsy, jagged circle over the place where my heart beat. Emerald blood welled, as it had in the Deep-Dream. But so too did pain, sharp and visceral. Talah felt it, and she paused.
That will never work, star child.
Maybe not. But I had to try.
I slapped my hand over the uneven circle of blood, transferring it onto my palm.
The cost will be high. A sacrifice will be due.A bare note of dread touched Talah’s resounding voice.
I smiled in triumph. She was afraid itwasgoing to work.
I slammed my hand, bloodied with a ragged circle of my heart’s blood, onto the tree.
For the briefest of moments, the only sensation was one of suspension, the opposite of Talah’s grinding, grueling domination. A shimmering spider’s thread, taut and delicate and poised to unravel.
The fire coursing below the translucent bark of the trees flickered. Flashed. The grove began to shudder like a beast in its death throes. The trunks swayed and lashed, shedding flaming leaves as they bent double. Rocks pelted and clattered from the high walls. The strange, chiming shrieks intensified, and I swore I heard the beating of leathery wings upon the wind. Impossible shadows sliced between shards of sunlight, but I dared not look up. Dared not do anything but hold my bloodied palm to the writhing tree andconcentrate.
“Every ending is its own beginning!” The words slammed out ofme. I could barely hear my own voice over the roaring in my ears, the pounding of the rocks rattling from the cliffs, the clamor of the bell-like calls. “I bound you to me. But your beginning demanded an ending I cannot abide. So our stories must diverge.”
