“Chandi?” Her name punched out of me, tight with lingering betrayal. “What in Donn’s black hell are you doing here?”
She wrapped her long fingers around the bars and pressed her face close. The moonlight fractured her expression and turned the tears welling in her eyes to cold silver.
Alarm mixed with my resentment. “What’s wrong? Are you hurt? Are you—”
Chandi cried harder, her spine bowing as a gasping sob racked her. “Oh, Fia. You don’t know how horrible it’s been.” I could hardly understand her words, garbled as they were by tears. “I thought we would die that night—that silver metal was everywhere! But Eala—she—the barge she made saved us, but it was so awful—so unbelievably awful—”
“Chandi.” Impulses warred inside me, those of hurt and care. Chandi’s betrayal had deeply wounded me—I’d thought we were friends, allies. I’d thought I had earned her loyalty. But to see her like this also hurt me. Despite all she’d done, I still cared about her. “Chandi, slow down. Take a deep breath.”
Chandi obeyed, inhaling shakily. Her words, when they finally came, were cramped and crowded, worn thin by sustained horror.
“We escaped that night on a barge of the living dead. Eala wove them together like reeds—legs and arms twisted in an impenetrable mass. We almost didn’t make it—the city nearly sucked us down with it. But we did—me, Eala, and Rogan. We struggled toward land—the legs of the dead churning beneath us like paddles, the wind howling over their open mouths like pipes.” Chandi bowed her head, as if the memory of that night was too heavy a burden to bear. “There were wild horses upon the cliffs, but Eala was never a great rider, so Rogan, he—”
Again, she broke off, pressing a trembling hand to her mouth. “They were easier to control once she resurrected them, Eala said. She said she could feel you—both of you. But you had a head start. For weeks we rode after you, but when we reached the mountains, the magic there shielded you, hid you. Protected you.”
I shared a loaded glance with Irian. He had told me how they’d battled the dead at Mag Tuired—but he had not known how close Eala had come in her pursuit of me. I reminded myself to thank Laoise again for the protection of her sanctuary—and to apologize again for destroying it.
“We returned to the lands of the bardaí, seeking the aid and support of those who had become loyal to Eala beneath the Ember Moon. But they recoiled from what the princess had become—yes, even those who had meddled with warped wild magic were disgusted by her. They shunned her in much the same way as you shunned her tonight, shaming and berating her for her misuse of power. And she—Rogan—” Again, Chandi choked, as if the words she wished to speak were barbed and bloodied. “Laoise and Sinéad saw the swath of destruction she left in her wake. But once we passed through the Gate… the destruction only intensified.”
She leaned her head on the cool, damp stone, anguish plain on her features. She had calmed, but her demeanor now was one of utter despair. “And now you are here. You, who she has soughtbitterly. You, who she desires almost above all else. Fia, you should not have come.”
That ship had sailed. “Tell me. How did M—how did the high queen, Eithne Uí Mainnín, come to bend the knee to her wayward daughter?”
“Perhaps I can shed light on that.” Cathair stepped from the shadows and joined Chandi at the bars to our cell. My old teacher looked mostly the same, save for his hair, which had gone fully gray, and the weight of exhaustion that clung to him like a dead hand. I still had not forgiven the man who’d raised me for all his torment and humiliation. Yet I was inexplicably glad to see him.
“The guard detail on this dungeon leaves something to be desired.”
“I think you’ll find it is exactly what I desire,” said Cathair. “The dead make for terrible guards. They barely seem to notice birds; much less are they able to identify starlings. And there are many in this keep who are still loyal to your mother.”
I fought the urge to snap,She’s not my mother. Instead, I focused on what Cathair was hinting at. He had been Eithne’s spymaster for as long as I’d been at Rath na Mara—his network of informants more extensive than I was ever allowed to know. His witch-birds—speckle-winged starlings—carried information through Fódla and beyond.
“Then Eithne’s abdication was an act to save her own hide,” I guessed. “And you and the queen have been plotting against Eala from the shadows.”
“My clever little witch.” Cathair’s words prompted a menacing noise of displeasure from Irian’s throat. The older man looked up at his superior height, apparently unfazed by the glowering Gentry warrior. “And her Gentry consort.” He clucked his tongue on his teeth. “I suppose war makes strange bedfellows of us all.”
“Well, go on, then,” I demanded. “What is your plan?”
“I forgot what an impatient little thing you are.” This earned another growl from Irian. Cathair fished in his pocket until heretrieved a rough-hewn key. “I must speak with you in my workshop. Alone.”
“If you think—” Irian began, chillingly.
“It’s all right. He won’t harm me,” I said. “Though I don’t know how you plan to keep the guards, however negligent, from noticing I am gone.”
“Chandi will act as decoy,” Cathair said. “We will return long before dawn.”
I hesitated, glancing between Irian and Chandi.
“He won’t harm me,” Chandi said, echoing my words with a ghost of a smile. “Will you?”
Irian returned to his vigil in the corner. “You know I will not.”
I had not forgotten the druid’s sprawling, low-ceilinged chambers, where I’d wasted so many sunlit days of my youth. I wrinkled my nose against the stench of black walnut tincture and cheap mead and starling droppings. Manuscripts and grisly souvenirs stolen from Tír na nÓg during the Gate War stared at me from the cluttered shelves, unpleasantly familiar now: broken ollphéist fangs, a draig’s red-gold scute, a shard said to be chipped from a fallen star. My gaze lingered on this last object, a small hunk of shiny jet-black stone striated with pale veins.
“Did this truly fall from the stars?” I heard myself ask.
Cathair glanced over from lighting tapers upon a workbench. “So they say.”
I dragged my eyes from it. “Dawn cannot be far off. Speak.”
