Another. A song in a language I don’t know, but my soul remembers the melody. Something about roots and wings and growing toward the sun.
“It means something,” I manage through the tears. “Even if I don’t completely remember. I want to.”
“The tears will help you remember.” She clears her throat. “But the glamour must go, Ashlynne Moonshadow.”
I nod. “I know.”
“Already you’re appearing human again. And I worry you are somehow controlling it now.”
“That’s the plan, then? Hang out here and strip the glamour?” I joke, but I’m only partially serious.
“Yes.” She says it simply. “I must strip you of everything I wove, even if it’s no longer there. The scar is. And the scar must go as well.”
“How does one heal from a scar?”
She thinks about it for a long moment. Her silver eyes search my face.
“You should worry more about where your other two mates are.”
That’s not an answer. But the way she says it, urgent, almost afraid, makes me turn toward the door instead of pressing.
The firepit outside is visible through the window.
Empty.
No Kieran. No Orion. No shadows pooling at anyone’s feet. No flames flickering in anyone’s hair.
Just empty chairs and dying embers.
“Where—”
“That,” the Morrigan says, “is an excellent question.”
35
Ash
There isa long pause as a pain buried so fucking deep inside me detonates through me. Not cleanly either. Like shrapnel. Invading my veins with iron.
All I can do is stare at the fire pit. The cooling coals. The empty chairs where two men should be sitting.
The fear of not being enough for someone to stay bubbles up and up and up to the surface.
They left.
They left and you weren’t worth staying for.
I know it’s not rational. I know there’s probably an explanation. But the part of me that learned abandonment before I learned to walk doesn’t care about rational. That part only knows the hollow ache of an empty space where someone should be.
“Ah.” Orion grunts from somewhere in the darkness.
A loud crash clatters to the ground, firewood from the sound of it, and my heart stops. Just stops. Waiting to see if the sound is him or something wearing his voice.
Then he steps into the firelight, dirt on his cheek, leaves in his hair, grinning like he didn’t just take ten years off my life.
He’s here. He’s real. He didn’t leave.
The relief hits so hard my knees almost buckle.
