“So naked it is?” Ash’s laugh is sharp. “And until what emerges? I’m not a butterfly, Morrigan. I’m not going to sprout wings and fly away. I’m just going to be...me. Whatever that looks like without the mask.”
“Twenty-eight years of compressed power,” Morrigan counters. “Twenty-eight years of denied heritage, suppressed magic, forgotten memories. When that dam breaks, and it will break, we don’t know what comes through.”
Ash opens her mouth. Closes it.
“She’s not wrong,” I say, and hate myself for it. “The transformation at the trial nearly killed you. And that was with the glamour still partially intact.”
“So what, I stay in the circle forever?”
“Until you’re ready to let go,” Morrigan says. “Until you choose to release what I wove. Not because we’re forcing you. Because you’re ready.”
“And if I’m never ready?”
The question hangs in the air.
“Then we wait,” I say simply. “However long it takes.”
Ash’s expression shifts. The anger doesn’t disappear, but it...softens. Just slightly. Just enough for me to see the fear underneath.
She’s not afraid of the glamour falling.
She’s afraid of who she’ll be when it does. Afraid that under all that human armor, there’s something monstrous. Something unlovable.
I know that fear. I’ve lived with it for three centuries.
“Fine.” She drops onto the tavern floor, cross-legged, glaring at all of us with equal venom. “Fine. I’ll stay in the damn salt circle. But someone better bring me breakfast. And coffee. Lots of coffee for when we are done.” She points at me specifically. “And if any of you try tohelpme again without asking first, I will find a way through this barrier and I will make you regret it.”
“Noted,” I say.
“Thoroughly noted,” Orion adds.
“Good.” She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, which I’m pretty sure is to calm her anger.
The goddesses exchange glances. Badb and Macha step back, their magic withdrawing. Only Morrigan remains at the barrier’s edge, watching Ash with an expression I can’t quite read.
“I will make coffee,” Morrigan says quietly, and turns toward the kitchen.
It’s the most human thing I’ve ever seen a war goddess do. The mundane offering when magic has failed.
I don’t move. Neither does Orion.
I’ve never been good at waiting. Patience, yes. The cold, calculated kind that lets you outmaneuver an enemy over decades.
But this kind of waiting? The kind where you can’t scheme or plan or fight?
This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
40
Ash
Kneelingon a dirty tavern floor in a salt circle is not how I thought I’d spend my morning.
And yet here the fuck I am.
Irritation tries to claw its way inside me but I swat it away. My jaw unclenches. My shoulders drop. I need to focus but everything is suddenly pissing me off.
Glamour. Fucking glamour.
