“You will travel to the Summerlands as swiftly as you are able,” Irian commanded. “You will declare yourself to the Summer Twins, Siobhán and Seaghán. If they still stand against Eala, you will tell them all we seek to accomplish. You will tell them we shall all join them there in one month hence, should the living gods allow it. And you will demand their hospitality in my name.”
“Verily, lord,” said Balor, in agreement. “I have but one question: Whatisyour name, scary husband?”
We all laughed, Balor’s easy humor popping the formidable bubble of Irian’s words.
“Well then.” I smiled to mask the cold, creeping dread strangling my spine. “Let us all embark upon our springtime vacations.”
“Let’s,” Wayland agreed sardonically. “Nothing says a quick getaway like charging headlong into danger. Really clears the mind.”
Chapter Thirty
Fia
It was decided that Linn and Abyss would travel with Irian and me to a Gate before awaiting our return with Balor in the Summerlands.
“The Willow Gate may not be the closest Gate, but it is the only one I know that is not buried or guarded in the human realms,” I told Irian.
He inclined his head. “Once we pass beyond the Barrens, it should be but a few days of riding to reach my domain. I know many folkways to shorten the distance.”
Last spring, Chandi had shown me some of these folkways—mystical gateways throughout Tír na nÓg and beyond that bent the fabric of distance and blurred the lines between spaces. They appeared without warning in natural places—between two ancient trees, in a circle of mushrooms, or in the fog of a moonlit meadow.
Linn chattered her teeth and sent me a friendly vision of one of these gateways closing as I strode through it, slicing me neatly down the middle.
I sighed and quelled a shudder. “Shall we?”
We rode. Jeweled canyons slowly transformed into a broad, flat plain Irian named Mag Tuired. He told me of Eala’s ambush; I stared at the blackened craters and scorched weapons scattered among contorted remains of long-dead warriors, hardly believing I had been senseless to all that chaos and violence.
Linn sent us a gleeful recounting of Abyss being dragged down by a skeletal hand, only for Irian and me to go somersaulting through the air a ludicrous number of times before flopping comically onto the ground. Irian colored and almost pouted.
I nudged Linn with my heels. “He rarely appreciates being teased.”
We camped that night in a dense glade of towering fungi, caps dripping bioluminescent ooze. For supper, the aughiskies caught soft, succulent fish from the glass-bright ponds dotted throughout the grove. Their glittering bones hummed with unearthly melodies that made my teeth ache.
We traveled the next two days through dank marshlands that had Irian buzzing with silent apprehension, then beneath shimmering waterfalls misting the air with giddy rainbows. An hour after sunset on the third day, when exhaustion began to weigh on me, a river cut a broad swath through a forest just coming alive with spring, its banks dotted with tender green shoots and quivering aspens. Irian instantly relaxed, swinging down from Abyss’s broad back.
“This is the boundary of my domain,” he said. “Abyss, Linn—this channel cuts straight through the Summerlands to the ocean. Follow it, and you will find Balor.”
Linn tossed her head as I, too, dismounted. Then the water horses were gone, sifting their finned fetlocks over the spray of the water until the night swallowed them.
“The Willow Gate is not far,” Irian said, with the strange hesitation that had dogged our interactions since I’d awoken from Talah’s curse. As if every sentence he spoke was underlaid by an unspoken, more anguished phrase. “We can cross into the human realms tonight. Or I can fly us to the fort if you would rather.”
That idea made me queasy. So, too, did hiking all night to reachRath na Mara. I walked a little ways between the trees, considering. Branches of oaks and rowans sifted the silver light of a newly risen moon between unfurling leaves. Beneath them, carpets of bluebells and wood anemones trembled in the cool evening air. The scent of fresh growth and loamy soil mingled with the sharp sweetness of new blossoms, and I felt suddenly at home.
“The night is balmy.” I brushed my fingers over the earth. Moss deepened, rounding soft and thick over the roots of trees. Vining clematis and wallflower whispered down in a fragrant screen. “Come. Let us rest here tonight. The Gate will wait until dawn.”
The smallest smile tugged at Irian’s mouth. “As you wish, my sylvan queen.”
Night exhaled a last gray breath before dawn, and I awoke to find Irian watching over me.
He sat as close to me as possible without touching me. His crossed knees nearly brushed my shoulders; his broad leather-clad fists rested close to my head. I did not need to sit up to see him, only tilt my chin upward and open my eyes.
“Sky-Sword,” I murmured, my voice pliant with sleep. “What do you think you’re doing?”
Irian barely moved at the sound of my voice, his eyes jerking down to meet mine. In the faint mist sifting ghostly between the trees, they shone unearthly as the moon netting low between new leaves. After a moment, they flicked back up to continue their alert perusal of the silent forest.
“Keeping watch.” Irian’s low burr rasped pleasantly in my ears, raising a shiver along my nape. “As you see.”
But the silence in the wake of his words felt frayed, like a tapestry with threads pulled. As if there was something he wished to say but couldn’t find the shape of. Ever since I had woken from Talah’s curse, it had been like this. Irian, ever stoic—yet now without theprivate smiles and searing glances meant only for me. I longed to speak to him, to weave new threads where the old had unraveled. But all my words seemed either too much or not enough.
