“I made a deal, Finnian. I’ll stand by it.” She nods at the dark. “Now let’s go get this cunt.”
“Language.”
“I said what I said.” She laughs, and for a second she sounds like herself again. “Let’s go.”
59
Ash
Time remains suspendeduntil I enter the Sidhe mounds beside Orion.
I braced for annihilation. For the forgetting. For whatever unmade gods, swallowed names, and let the most powerful go on like this, beings in existence staring at their own reflections like strangers.
Peace settles over me instead.
Which is worse, honestly. I know what to do with a fight. I have no training for surrender that doesn’t hurt.
When I traveled the world with my team, that was one of my favorite memories. Ending up in places I never would have thought to travel to. And some of them held this peace to them. Like coming home after a long vacation. Or visiting a loved one after years away.
There was just this sense of home that bled into the way the trees shifted and the way the wind blew.
That’s what it feels like right now.
Orion grunts beside me. “Peaceful.”
“For now.” I step onto a valley between the mounds and walk toward the one I fell through in the dream.
“Wait a gods darn minute.” Orion grabs my shoulders, spinning me around. His jaw falls open. He blinks rapidly. Moving and twitching as he takes me in. “What happened between the moment we walked through that door and just now?” He pokes a thorn on my crown.
“Aengus.” I laugh, shaking my head. “Come on, we have a job to do, and I’ll explain as we go.”
“I sure hope you do.” He huffs. “My queen.” His feet pause and I look back. It’s just hit him. That I’m now officially the Wild Queen.
“Don’t make it a thing.” I turn back around.
“Are you out of your mind?” He tosses his hands in the air.
“Queen! Queen. Queen! I felt it happen. It happened, it’s happening!” Whispen zips through the space, coming at me so fast he zips through Orion and then me.
Orion and I turn around. “Whispen, you silly creature, where?—”
“Oh.” Orion gasps.
“Whispen?” I don’t know what to do. Where to look. What to say.
It’s Whispen. In his child form, but not quite as young, maybe thirteen. But he isn’t blue anymore.
He’s corporeal.
He’s kneeling, facing away from us. He’s staring at his hands. Turning them over and over like he’s never seen anything so strange and wonderful and terrifying in his entire existence. Like hands are the most remarkable thing that’s ever happened to him. Maybe they are.
He’s wearing linen-colored trousers and a cream shirt. His hair, his hair makes me pause.
“Whispen.” I breathe his name as the earth under me shakes.
“Ash.” He turns around, and for the first time I’m seeing Whispen.
Not the will-o’-wisp.
