Maybe these aren’t thoughts to have in the middle of a crisis. But they come anyway. Because I’ve never had partners like Orion. Or Kieran. Or Finn. Ones who learn me. Understand me.Not because they want to use what they find or keep me under control.
Because they care.
It’s two sides of the same damn coin. One face is toxic manipulation. The other is love. And I spent twenty-five years staring at the wrong side, thinking that was all there was.
“You ready?” Orion looks over at me, that rogue smirk still in place.
“Nope.” I crack my neck as we start walking.
The farther we get from Pepper and Sabina, the quieter it gets. Gradually, like someone is turning down a dial. The crash and bang of flying furniture fades. Then our footsteps lose their echo. Then the corridor itself swallows sound the way deep water swallows.
The corridor narrows. The green-gold sconces burn lower. Nothing is dying, it’s just going into a deep slumber.
I rub my arms to warm them. Even my blooms surface, vines curling down my forearms, thorns pricking through skin. It’s a cute attempt to warm me up but it’s not working at all.
“You feel that?” Orion’s hand moves to his sternum, rubbing his chest.
“Yeah.”
“Something’s pulling.” The fire in his hair stutters and comes back wrong, too bright then too dim, in a rhythm that has nothing to do with breathing. “Forward.”
Helpful.
The walls change. Older stone and rougher. Maybe made by hand, long before man knew of fire. Whatever this is, it was here first, and it has the indifference of something that’s outlasted every opinion anyone ever had about it.
The floor feels cold under my bare feet. It reminds me of that time I thought I was stronger than the cold and ran tothe mailbox in bare feet. In February. In Pennsylvania. It was unforgiving. Just like this.
We round a bend.
And there he is.
Blue hair. Lazy posture. Leaning against the wall next to a stone door carved with symbols I don’t recognize. But my blood does, because the thorns under my skin flare the second they hit my line of sight.
He’s got one knee bent, boot flat against the wall behind him, arms crossed, with the settled stillness of a man who arrived early, finished waiting approximately three centuries ago, and has since moved on to a state of being that doesn’t require waiting at all.
“Veil,” I whisper.
“Aengus. Og. Dagda’s son.” Orion chuckles. “Don’t tell me. That’s the door we need to walk through.”
“Orion.” Aengus grins and it terrifies me. It’s more a pleased grin and then he caught himself ginning and tried to stop it. “Still carrying my father’s luggage, I see.”
“It’s in my chest.”
“Semantics.” He pushes off the wall. Stretches like a cat. Blue hair falls across his face and he doesn’t bother pushing it back. “You know what that thing does, right? The Cauldron?”
“Heals. Restores. Brings things back.” Orion rattles it off like a field manual entry.
“Sure. That’s the brochure version.” Aengus tilts his head. He’s studying him. Looking for, something only Veil has the answer to. “It also made every god in the Sidhe forget what they were. Poured one sip down their throats and they went to sleep believing they were mortal. Believing they werenothing.” He taps his own temple. “The Cauldron doesn’t just give life, flame boy. It decides what kind of life you get to have.”
Orion’s hand returns to his sternum. The humor drains from his face alongside all the blood.
“And you’re about to carry it back to the place where it did that.” Aengus looks at the door. “Through there. Ground zero. Where the forgetting happened.”
“What happens when he walks through?” I ask, because someone has to and Orion is processing. Slowly.
“Honestly?” Aengus shrugs. Which is so like him. On my tour of this very academy he spoke of how magnificent it is alongside how it can easily kill you. “No idea. Hasn’t been done before. The Cauldron hasn’t been back to the mounds since the day it put the gods to sleep. Could be fine. Could be very much not fine.”
“Inspiring.”
