“I know.” Laoise wept as she brought the fragment of draig egg to her chest, great gulping sobs warping her usually pristine features. “I can see them. I can feel them. I did not know they were so… sobroken.”
Wayland was not crying, but his motionlessness was somehow even worse—beyond anguish, toward numbness.
“So can I,” Wayland said, almost swallowing his words. “I can feel their pain. Yet also their hunger. For more. More power, more decay, more deterioration. Like a rabid animal chewing on its own limbs, they are ravenous for that which destroys them.”
“Wild magic.” Irian’s tone was taut with old shame. “It is a hunger that feeds as it devours. Darkness disguised as pleasure. Depravity and delight.”
I shivered, remembering the shadows that had once wreathed my husband like great black wings; the corruption above Murias, slicking danger along my bones even as it beckoned me close. I looked at my glowing hands and thought of what I’d guessed about the nature of my starshine. Could it truly somehow be the counterpoint to the warped wild magic?
“Depravity and delight?” Wayland said, with a ghost of his usual insouciance. “Just an average weekday for me.”
Idris made a sound in his throat, but I laughed. “If anyone can overcome this trial armed with nothing but wit, I have no doubt it will be you, Wayland.”
“High praise, Thorn Girl.” Wayland smiled but quickly sobered. “But you’re the only one who has actually reforged a Treasure. How did you do it? If we are to succeed, we need to know what you know.”
Laoise had stopped crying, but her eyes glowed like lit coals in the darkness.
“The nemeta are key. The blight is tied to where the Treasures were destroyed, but the Solasóirí are tied to their nemeta. The groves are like homes to them.” I glided a thumb over the Heart of the Forest, thinking of all I’d learned from Ínne. “And there will be a… sacrifice demanded.”
“Surely you mean a death?” Laoise asked harshly. “We have heard the stories, Fia.”
I flinched, glancing at my palms: the tracery of green veins embossed over faintly glowing skin. I thought of that shard of my own soul entombed within a tree within a glade within a dream. I thought of all that my friends had already lost, all they would yet be forced to sacrifice. And I thought I finally understood why Irian had wanted so badly to unforge the Treasures on Emain Ablach—to divest ourselves of this destiny before the great burden of it destroyed us.
I met my husband’s silver eyes in the dark. It had been months since the Ember Moon, but tatters of Irian’s grief still clung to him like cobwebs. Yet his fingers twitched closer to mine on the soft green moss, and I saw my own determination reflected in his gaze.
Together.
“Imayhave been, ah, overzealous.”
Sinéad gave an indelicate snort. “You? Shocking.”
“Death is not the key. Life is,” I clarified. “Although you will be promising both. The next thirteen years of your life. And the tithe of your death at the end. In truth, it is a balance paid twice.”
Everyone was grimly silent.
“If we have our way, you will not be bound long. Nor will you need to tithe the Treasure in thirteen years.” I clenched my glowing palms and hoped that was true. “We will find a way to unforge the Treasures, set the magic of our Bright Ones free… and set ourselves free in the doing.”
Irian’s hand ghosted over the Sky-Sword, laid across his lap. “I hope it will be that simple.”
Blindingly, I remembered his blackened palms, his face contorted by pain, his roar of agony.
So did I. So did I.
“Murias lies to the west. Findias to the south,” Laoise pointed out.
“You and Wayland should separate,” I agreed. “The sooner the Treasures are reforged, the better.”
“Who goes with whom?” Sinéad asked.
Some harrowing emotion passed swiftly over Wayland’s face before smoothing away.
“We’ll decide in the morning,” Irian said, with paternal certainty. “It has been a long few days. We should try to sleep.”
As life slowly crept back into the valley, we tried. Water trickled down the rise; mushrooms fruited in the dense moss between theroots of the trees. A warm breeze rustled the green leaves, and the fire sputtered back to life. But the memory of the warped wild magic lingered like a bad smell.
Balor finally began to snore, laid out on his back with his limbs lofted like mountains. Sinéad nodded off in the shadow of his knee; Hog nested in the warmth of her cloaked body. Idris rested his head in his sister’s lap. The aughiskies stood guard atop the distant line of rocky hills, their belling cries restive and eerie in the gray of false dawn.
I did not sleep, restless for dawn’s rosy fingers reaching westward across the lightening sky. Time felt fleeting, slipping like words over hasty lips, unmeasured and misspent and impossible to recover.
