“And?”
“AND? Where was I for three years?”
“With me.” Like it’s obvious. Like it answers everything. “Working on the glamour.”
I’m going to assault a war goddess.
“Three years?” I sink onto the damn stool because my legs won’t hold me anymore.
“It didn’t happen on the run, child.” The Morrigan glances at the others. “A moment?”
I watch Badb and Macha leave with the Dagda, heading upstairs. I’m not going to question what ancient war goddesses and the father god of the Tuatha Dé Danann get up to in their spare time.
Some things are better left unknown.
“You remember nothing of your early years?” The Morrigan stands before me now. Not as I’ve seen her in battle: armored, terrifying, wreathed in crow feathers and old blood.
She’s wearing a simple black dress. Spaghetti straps. Basic cloth in the darkest black I’ve ever seen. Her arms are crisscrossed with tattoos that tell stories of battles and blood and names I’ll never know. Her ink-dark hair sits in a topknot on her head.
It’s the most un-goddess-like I’ve ever seen her.
And her face is beautiful. Hard and soft at once. Sharp jaw softened by full lips. High cheekbones softened by the warmth in her silver eyes.
A walking contradiction.
I probably shouldn’t find a war goddess comforting. But here we are.
“No.” I frown, looking past her, trying to find something in the blank space where three years should be. “But I want to.”
I look at her. Really look. This woman, this goddess, who cared for me when my parents couldn’t.
“You’re my true mother in ways I can’t yet name.”
The words fall out before I can stop them. But I don’t take them back.
Something flickers across her face. Pain, maybe. Or hope.
“Is Finnian okay?” I need to know that first. Before anything else.
She gives me a soft smile. “Fighting his own demons. Ones you cannot fight for him.”
I get that. So I close my eyes and reach for whatever memories might be hiding in the dark.
A small faeling. Running through a forest. Chasing?—
My eyes flip open. “I remember something.”
“Do share.” There’s an excitement in her gaze. One that says she’s far more invested in my memories than those two words suggest.
“I remember laughing as I ran through the forest. Chasing a—” I smack her arm. “Whispen.”
“You loved to play hide and seek with him.” Her smile goes soft. Nostalgic. “He really was the best babysitter.”
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.” I snort. “Whispen is many things, but a babysitter is not one of them.”
“He kept you alive those years,” she says quietly. “That counts. He still talks about it, you know. The years before. He misses who you were.”
Grief twists in my chest. Whispen misses a version of me I don’t remember being.
