Is he facing the end of our affair with the same persistent dread as I am?
He never specified what his next chapter would be, after the Wild Hunt when he leaves Desmond’s service. I suspect, but he’s never confirmed, that he’ll return to Campan’s Vale. Help Garred run the Eyrie.
Find himself a wife.
Something roars in the hidden spaces of my heart, those shadowed corners I don’t dare peek into.
I nuzzle into him. He’s still mine for a little while.
As a precaution, he’s kept up his glamour. Fortunately it’s done nothing to mask his scent—clean skin and woodsmoke and wild magic. God, I could eat him alive right this second. I am regretting not doing so last night.
Grey light creeps through the forest, illuminating bark patterns and the shapes of leaves.
“We’re not far now.” His voice rumbles down my limbs.
“How do you know what we’re looking for?”
Yet again, he doesn’t answer. He’s so quiet this morning, tense and withdrawn. Not the normal flavor of his confident silence.
We crest a small rise, and then—there. At the other side of the shallow valley is a large, flat rock above a hole so deep and dark it looks as if a primordial god stabbed a finger through the world.
And framing the black is a border of fluttering sage green.
Hundreds, even thousands of vanguard moths surround the cave entrance.
“What on earth?” I say, marveling as the ring warms on my finger.
“They’re waiting for the door to open.”
He settles me on my feet and I dart down to the rock, peering into the darkness. “What door?”
He pulls down a wisp of fading moonlight, but the resulting spark in his palm is much fainter on this side. He takes my hand in the other and guides me into the cave. “You’ll see.”
His answer ricochets off the damp walls, and it’s much warmer in here than it is outside. As if there’s a heat source up ahead. It’s unnerving; like we’re sliding down the gullet of the earth itself.
Vanguard moths dance in and out of his light, and time both slows and speeds, a different beat with each step. It’s certainly not following any kind of natural flow, so it’s hard to tell how long we walk. I measure our journey by steady footsteps and eerie plops of water. Fifty. One-hundred. Two-hundred.
Lachlan’s moonspark glows brighter and?—
That’s not the moonspark.
My smile widens, and Lachlan flicks his chin toward the light, urging me to run ahead and explore. He’s good at that. Encouraging my excitement, no matter where it leads. And I’m not afraid to do it as long as he’s at my back.
The tunnel spills into a vast cavern, so high it fades up into blackness.
The floor is a jumble of large, round stones cut through with winding paths of dense grass, every inch of flora coated with luminescent gold. More vanguard moths slice dizzying lines through the humid air, and in the very center is an impossibly large oak. A colossus. The largest living thing I have ever seen. Its gnarled branches twist up into the dark, and its roots form a tangled tapestry that radiates out toward the edges of the cavern. Vanguard moths blanket the broad trunk like living bark.
“What is this place?” I ask, awe softening my voice.
“This is a beacon oak,” Lachlan answers, reverently. “One of the first beings born in your world. Grown from an acorn planted by Danu herself. They allow any creature of the Otherworld to return, should they find themselves trappedin the human realm. If we get stuck here long enough, we’re overcome by the time compression and we begin aging unnaturally fast.” I shoot him a panicked look, but he just chuckles. “Three days isn’t long enough to kill me, little queen. Don’t worry. Three weeks might do the trick, though.”
“Do Aowen and Sabre know about it? Why didn’t we use this pathway into the human world? Why did we wait until the equinox to open that door?”
Lachlan glances up at the tree. “Only Otherworld creatures can enter from this side and only humans can enter from the other.” He taps the silver band on my finger. “Because of the ring, the tree recognizes you as an Otherworld creature. You wouldn’t have been let through on that side.” He opens a palm into the air and a vanguard moth lands, tiptoeing across his fingers. “These are the only beings who can enter through both sides; they’ve adapted over centuries to the time differential.”
I cock an eyebrow. “How do you know so much about them? And how did you know where to find this place?”
He shrugs, inscrutable once more, and something shifts beneath us, a great rumbling groan. The ground trembles and the large stones clack together.
