Keith shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it at Wade. “Put that on.”
Wade scrambled to tie it around his waist, looking a little red in the face. Patrick wasn’t sure if that was left over from him shifting mass or out of embarrassment.
The Cailleach Bheur pointed her staff at the icy path through the earth that would lead them through the veil. “Shall we?”
Patrick caught Gerard’s eye and nodded. “Let’s go.”
Gerard held Órlaith’s hand and didn’t let her go as he led the way back to Tír na nÓg.
21
Jono slidoff ice and stumbled into a barren garden shrouded in mist at the edge of a cliff. What trees he could see around them were dead and covered in snow. Black stone walls surrounded the garden in a half circle, offering no way out except through three sets of double doors built with bones. The dull roar that filled the air wasn’t his ears ringing from crossing the veil, but the pond that emptied itself over the side of the cliff in a small waterfall edged in ice.
Jono shook his wolf head hard, the faint disorientation from crossing the veil lasting only a second or two before it faded away. He sniffed at the air as he took in their surroundings. His enhanced sense of smell hit his brain with information that took a few seconds to sort out. Tír na nÓg smelled subtly different than every place he’d ever been on Earth, even here in the dead of winter where nothing seemed alive.
“Oh, hey,” Wade said, pointing at a tower that rose high above them. “I think that was our prison cell.”
Somehow, the Cailleach Bheur had brought them to the palace that sat on a mesa, in the middle of a canyon, in this world the stories told in the mortal realm had never remembered.
Birds shrieked overhead, and Jono’s head snapped up to track their flight across the dark sky. A line of light edged the horizon in the far distance, the first hint of dawn barely arrived. His ears pricked forward at the skittering, clacking sound ofsomethingcrawling over stone.
Patrick conjured up a mageglobe, the pale blue sphere casting shadows on his face. “Are those—”
He never finished the sentence.
The trees that seemed dead came alive. Spriggans peeled themselves off the trees to grab anyone in the group that they could. Jono lunged at the one going after Patrick, sinking his teeth into the branch that passed as an arm. With a sharp jerk of his head, he broke the limb in two. The spriggan howled, sap flowing thick and sticky from the stump left behind. Jono spat out the branch clamped between his teeth, bracing himself for another attack.
Violet light snaked between him and the two spriggans looking to help their wounded friend. Nadine’s magic smelled like she did—clean, with hints of citrus and lilies. The underlying bitterness in Patrick’s wasn’t present in the shields that were raised between their side and the fae who guarded the palace that was home to the Unseelie Court.
“That isquiteenough,” the Cailleach Bheur called out.
Jono didn’t hear her staff touch the ground, but he smelled the ice it called forth before he saw it. The snow beneath his paws was covered in a sheet of frozen ice that was so cold it burned. He watched as the ice slammed into the spriggans who realized too late what was coming their way. Every last one of the fae were frozen by winter where they stood, becoming ice statues that would break with the slightest touch.
Beyond the crackling sound of settling ice came the warning shouts of fae from inside the palace. The doors that three pathways led to were thrown open and out poured a contingent of guards who wore the same armor as those who had been in the throne room the last time Jono came here. Spider fae scuttled through the doors, crawling up the palace walls that surrounded the garden everywhere but the cliff side with its icy waterfall.
“Anyone know what day it is?” Patrick asked, his dagger in one hand and a mageglobe in the other.
“Winter solstice,” Gerard replied.
“Fuck.”
Jono’s keen eyesight made it possible for him to see the figure who stepped through the doorway directly ahead. The fae in question was memorable only because he held some semblance of rank and power in the finicky ways the fae counted such things.
“Cairbre,” Órlaith spat out with enough venom in her voice that several Hellraisers looked impressed. The scowl on her beautiful face promised a violence Jono was more than willing to help her indulge in.
“I see you found the Summer Lady, Cú Chulainn,” Cairbre said, his words coming out clipped as he approached.
“I made a promise. I kept it,” Gerard replied, glaring at the other fae through Nadine’s faintly shimmering shield.
“You are late. The winter solstice is already upon us.”
“We are here, on the shortest day of the year, as Ipromised.”
“My queen said by winter solstice, which has already started.”
“The sun has not risen, nor has it set. It is winter solstice whenIsay it is, Cairbre Nia Fer,” the Cailleach Bheur said in a firm voice.
Cairbre rocked to a halt at the use of his entire name, a hint of unease crossing his too-beautiful face as he stared at the immortal. “Cailleach Bheur.”
