“Oh, what I would do for some cake.” He grinned.
She couldn’t help but laugh. “When we reach Snowport, you can gorge yourself on mountains of cake. I will make certain of it.”
He arched a brow. “Snowport it is, then? Not straight home to Falias to see your father?”
“There is something in Snowport that I cannot get in Falias,” she admitted, bracing herself for his reply. Vreis would not like what she would say next, and she expected that he would try and stop her. But Eislyn knew what she had to do with a kind of certainty that she had not once felt in all of her life, at least the part of her life that she could remember.
“And what’s that, Eislyn?”
“A ship to the Empire of Fomor.”
40
Reyna
The river path was one of a great many sights and sounds. As they trekked through the humming rainforest, they spotted a crumbling castle in the distance, set upon a distant hill. It was made from a shimmering stone that reflected the island’s many gleaming shades of green, and the twisting towers had once been topped with spires spun from emerald gems. Now, it was nothing more than a ruin with two of its many towers appearing to have been blasted out from within.
Tarrah did not have the answers to any of the questions Reyna lobbed at her. Who had built the tower? Who had lived there? Had there once been kings and queens on Inishfall? Had it been home to hidden kingdoms? But the shadow fae had no more answers than she did, nor did she know why the birds sang songs from Reyna’s home, melodies she had heard a hundred times in ice fae taverns or in the hall during feasts.
After two more days spent roaming the riverbank, they came upon the end of the ever-narrowing river. It was now nothing more than the trickle of a stream no wider than the length of a finger, pouring the last remnants of its water into a deep, dark pool.
Their party stood around it in a circle, gazing into the murky depths. They could not see the very bottom, but Reyna did not doubt it went deep into the ground beneath their feet. Power hummed, a strange melodic tone that tugged at her ears, whispering, pushing, tempting. It wanted her to jump inside the pool and swim.
“I don’t like it,” Nollaig said, clucking her tongue. “It does not feel right.”
“It holds two incredible powers,” Tarrah said, her hollow eyes wider than Reyna had ever seen them. She looked as though she might fall face-first into the pool, giving herself up to the power that sought to claim them all.
“Yes, I can feel that,” Nollaig said. “But who owns these powers, Tarrah? Your gods? Or mine?”
Reyna glanced up. “What gods are yours?”
“Notwhat is down there, I am certain of it.”
“Well, there’s nothing to it, I suppose.” Reyna unbuckled her belt and dropped it onto the forest floor. “I came here to find this power, and I am going to take it.”
A strong, steady hand touched her elbow. Reyna twisted up to meet Lorcan’s eyes. Concern flickered in his deep irises. “Are you certain you want to do this?”
“I am,” she said firmly.
With a nod, he stepped back and watched her remove her boots and her light leather armor, dropping it all into a scattered pile a few meters away from the edge of the pool. Lorcan handed her a rope when she was down to her tunic and trousers. She wrapped it around her waist and cinched it tight.
“Nollaig,” Reyna said, twisting to the hooded fae. “Wingallock can swim, but not too low beneath the surface. This pool looks deeper than any I’ve ever seen before. Can you..?”
“Look after him? Of course, Shieldmaiden. It would be my honor.”
Reyna reached up and gave her familiar a scratch beneath his chin, and then her owl took off to settle onto Nollaig’s shoulder. She hadn’t brought her own familiar along. Reyna had noticed that Holas never joined her on quests, even ones that led far from the castle. How she could do that, Reyna did not know. It was another question about the strange fae that had no answer.
Lorcan gave Reyna a grim smile. “If you get into any trouble—”
“Tug six times,” she said, heart tumbling. “I know.”
With a grunt, he wrenched her against his chest and kissed her as fiercely as he had ever kissed her before. When he pulled back, she was left breathless and all too aware of the audience to their right.
Nollaig cleared her throat. “Be careful down there, Shieldmaiden. If anything looks off, at least try to let go of your stubborn nature long enough to swim away from it.”
Tarrah strode over to her and clasped her arms. “You will be fine. All you have to do is listen to what the power says. It will give you a choice. Choose the right thing, and it will fill your bones with light.”
“Light…and not darkness?” Reyna could not help but ask. Despite her determination to go through with her plan, she could feel the strangeness of the power, the danger in the hum beneath her feet.
