It’s instantaneous.
I gasp a breath because that’s all the time I have before I’m in the fucking Faerie mound.
Like walking into a womb. Not gonna lie. I hate it.
The sound is wrong first. Not silence. The opposite. Like every sound that ever existed is happening at once, very far away. Like pressing your ear to the earth and hearing the whole history of it.
Then I seethem.
All of them. Suspended, sleeping peacefully. There’s maybe a dozen or so in this one mound alone. And some are hurt, as though they saw a battlefield recently. Pink floats from sealing wounds. Some have heads floating above their torso. Some are still healing.
I spin in a circle, my hands hovering just close enough to touch them but never truly touching. I don’t want to disturb their slumber. Is this what Morrigan meant when she said she’s asleep? In a Sidhe mound. With others.
I step out of the mound and fall flat on my ass.
“Confirmed.” Kestra sounds pleased with herself.
The valley reassembles around me.
For a second the world is just breathing. Mine. Theirs. The hills.
Goo covers me, dripping off of me like slime. I wipe it from my eyes and crawl away from the mound, careful not to touch it again. Though I want to. It’s almost a feeling like their my babies. And I must be willing to do anything in my power to keep them safe.
“What did you see?” Tiana is standing on the mound.
“Get off of them!” I scream, panic and fear welling inside me.
Her eyes widen as she hops off, nearly stumbling. “Them?”
“A dozen in this one. All women. Looks like the same maternal line.” The words come rushing out as I turn to Kestra. “The Wild Court?”
“Not all.” She smiles. “See, the wildlings are different.” She looks from me to Tiana.
Tiana goes very still.
Her face loses any impression I can read, and her eyes move across the rolling hills, mound to mound to mound. I can’t tell If she knew or knows now.
“How many mounds?” Her voice is quiet.
“In this valley alone?” Kestra spreads her hands. “Hundreds.”
Tiana doesn’t answer. She nods before looking back at us.
“How?” I still don’t know how they are here. There is just so much of this world that I still have yet to uncover.
“Wild Court, if they die on soil, before the moment of death they can return,” Kestra whispers like she’s telling sacred secrets.
Because she is.
“This is what Mab taught you.” I turn to Tiana. “Tatiana taught you?”
“And your mother should have taught you.”
Chills dance across my body. “My parents?” I look out across the vast expanse of the rolling hill. Are they out there somewhere? Sleeping beneath a Sidhe mound?
But Kestra shakes her head, slow and sad, already reading my thoughts. Hopeless as they are.
There’s no box to put these emotions in.
