“My sister. Glencora,” she said. “Reyna doesn’t like fire very much.”
“No, I can imagine her very stubbornly resisting it, even if it was needed.”
Eislyn laughed. “That is Reyna, through and through.”
He answered her laugh with one of his own but then choked, coughing. Eislyn’s heart sank. “Have you slept at all?”
“Pitifully,” he said with a strange smile. “In five-minute bursts here and there. I couldn’t find peace long enough to relax. My thoughts were plagued by your face.”
“Oh.” She frowned. “I didn’t realize my face was so terrifying.”
He smiled and took her hand. “Quite the opposite in fact. I was afraid that as I slept, you were somewhere hurt and scared. It seems I didn’t need to fear at all.”
He fell silent and stretched across the smooth ground. A moment later, his eyes dropped shut. Eislyn sat on her hands, watching the rising and falling of Vreis’s chest as his breathing steadied. Now that they were safely tucked away in a cave, the full truth of their situation bore down on her head. They were fine—for now. But what of tomorrow? What then? They could not return to Margaidh, and it was a long, long while until they reached the next town. There would be villages on the way, but would they be full of friendly faces? They were part of Lord Killian’s province, and they would be loyal to him. He could have already sent word to each and every one, instructing them to take her by force if she appeared.
“Vreis?” she asked in scarcely above a whisper.
He cracked open one eye. “Yes?”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“What we do is the same as what we’d always planned. We get you to Falias. It just seems the road is a tad rockier than we first thought.”
She frowned. He made it sound so easy, but it would be anything but. “We can’t stop in the villages, at least not in this province.”
“Hmm.” He sighed and closed his eye. “You truly believe so many ice fae would be willing to commit treason by capturing the High King’s youngest daughter?”
“You’re the one who said the grudge ran deep. I don’t doubt the loyalty of the fae in my father’s province or even Lord Morcant’s from Snowport. He’s a distant cousin of ours, and he supported the alliance.”
“And how far is Snowport from here?”
“Far,” she admitted. “No closer than Falias.”
“Well then, Eislyn. I will leave the decision in your hands. You know these lands far better than I do.”
As Vreis slept, Eislyn dug out the tome she’d found in the eastern market. That was what had started all this, though she was glad for it. If she had first visited the castle and Lord Killian, she would be stuck there, trapped. The market had actually turned out to be her only chance at an escape.
With a sigh, she pressed open the pages. They crinkled beneath her fingers, old and rough and dry. Whoever had owned this book before the merchant had not taken very good care of it. Albin, her librarian friend back in Falias, had taught her how to care for books to prevent them from turning out like this. At the thought of her dear old friend, her heart ached. He had always known exactly what to say to Eislyn, and when not to say a thing, when her nerves were raw and her mind was filled by terrible, cruel images.
Albin was another one of her shields, she realized. How many did she have?
She flipped another page, but the words blurred before her as the exhaustion of the past few days finally took its toll. Sighing, her eyes slipped shut, and the book tumbled into her lap. Moments or hours later, she awoke sharply, startled. It was dark, save the orange glow on slick silver walls. Owls hooted in the distance, and the soft sound of falling snow was a storm in her ears.
For a moment, Eislyn felt a keen sense of disorientation, forgetting where she was and how she’d ended up there. And then it all came flooding back, an overwhelming tide of memories.
“Oof,” she whispered as she recalled Lord Killian’s betrayal. She remembered visiting him with her father only a few years past, and how he’d smiled when she told him she wished to visit the markets. He’d even gone with her, showing her the stalls that sold books. That was how he’d known where she’d be once the ship docked, she realized. He’d used her quest for knowledge against her.
The book was still open in her lap. Eislyn lifted it up before her, angling the crisp page toward the still-glowing fire. As soon as she read the first sentence, her heart sank. She’d hoped against all hopes that fate had been kind to her, and that they’d somehow grabbed the only book in the market that provided a detailed cure to the Ruin. But of course fate did not work that way, not in Tir Na Nog.
Still, she read the passage. Her quest for knowledge was far too great to shut the book, even if it would prove to be useless.
The ancient Fomorians once roamed the lands of all the great kingdoms on wings that flew faster than even the most powerful of ships. They sought the Dionadair, the hero that would save them all from the Unseelie’s destruction. A destruction that would transform their world into ash.
Eislyn sat up a little straighter and turned the page. One word had caught her attention.The ash. The fae of Tir Na Nog called it the Ruin, but perhaps it had once been called by a different name. Perhaps it was this ash. If that were the case, then it had been around far longer than anyone thought. That would make it centuries and centuries old. Ancient.
Eislyn’s stomach twisted. It was a terrifying thought. The Ruin seemed indestructible as it was, but if it were an ancient thing, heralding to a time before the six kingdoms of Tir Na Nog had even existed…then how in the world would she—little Eislyn Darragh—find a way to stop it?
If theFomorianscouldn’t even stop it…
