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Just Triona. My wee sister who lived to beat me to the top of the brae, who came in with her hems muddy and her stockings ripped, who laughed too loud at the supper table and used to clamber onto my shoulders to nick apples from the highest branches.

The recollection came warm and sharp.

Her darting through the house when she was a wee pup, bare-arsed and shrieking with laughter. Our brother Casey and I howling like banshees at the sight until Ma swatted us both with a linen and declared the lot of us feral.

For a heartbeat, all of it fell away. We were only Callan and Triona again, bairns in Keiss, with the world still far from our door.

Then, everything came rushing back. The fire, the bloodshed, the secrets, the gods, the prophecy, and the stone that glowed with a cold green light.

“I wish I could hear more about them,” she whispered. “Our parents. What they were like… what they went through before us. I wish I could talk to them one last time.”

The words cut through me—quiet, but sharp all the same. There was so much she didn’t remember, and even more I’d kept from her, thinking I was sparing her pain. But the truth had a way of finding its voice, even after years of silence.

I pushed myself up and crossed to the hearth, feeding another log into the fire. Sparks leapt, then vanished into the black above us.

“Ye might no’ like the answers,” I said softly.

Her gaze didn’t waver. “Since when has liking or disliking the truth ever mattered to us?”

Her reply landed like a challenge and a plea all at once. I was about to respond when the faint shuffle of footsteps broke through the stillness. A familiar rhythm, deliberate but unhurried.

Mannie stepped out from the shadows, and the firelight caught on the silver strands in his hair. He carried that same eerie stillness as always, whole histories folded into the quiet lines of his face—and too many of them weren’t his to carry.

After everything he’d kept from us—the truth about Triona, about Finn, about who he really was—I couldn’t look at him without feeling something sharp twist behind my ribs.

Manannán mac Lir. God of the sea, older than kingdoms, standing in the middle of a run-down cabin as though he belonged there as easily as any other man. I wondered if he remembered what it was like to be mortal—what it was like to carry grief in a body too small for it, with no choice but to keep breathing through it.

“Forgive my intrusion,” he said, his voice warm but measured. It always sounded like that—gentle, but with an undertow that would drag you under if you weren’t careful. “But I heard what you asked, Triona.”

At that, she turned his way. The faintest flicker of irritation crossed her face before she masked it. She’d forgiven him enough for secrets kept, but not enough to trust entirely.

She straightened slightly and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “And?”

He stepped closer to the fire, and the light caught in his eyes like reflections on deep water. “And perhaps it’s time someone gave you more answers than questions.”

I watched him carefully, every muscle in my shoulders wound tight. Triona might’ve accepted that we were stuck with him and the others for now, but I hadn’t.

“Then tell us plainly,” I said flatly. “All of it. No more riddles. No more half-told pieces meant to spare us.”

Mannie simply nodded. No retort. No evasion.

He crouched by the fire, and when he spoke again, every word fell with quiet care.

“It is time.” His eyes moved between us, gentler now, though no less grave. “Too much of who your parents were, and what they did, has been buried beneath grief, silence, and all that came after. They earned better than to be remembered only in sorrow.”

He reached inside his coat and drew out an old leather-bound journal. The cover was worn smooth with age, the edges darkened, the spine softened by long use. Across the front, in faded lettering still clear enough to read, were the words: The Darling of Erin.

He didn’t open it. He only laid it carefully beside him.

“Long before either of you drew breath, three men stood unbowed at the edge of a dying rebellion. One was a dreamer. One was a fighter. One was the keeper of a secret he could barely understand.”

His voice deepened. “This is where your story truly begins: in the bond forged between Robert Emmet, James Sinclair, and Alex Mumford.”

The fire flared, as if awakened by his words. Shadows danced across the walls, and in their movement, I swear I could see the shape of my Da there with them—standing tall, bound by something that would outlast time.

Triona’s eyes shimmered in the firelight, wide and full of something I hadn’t seen in days: hope.

The sight of it hit me clean. Something small kindled low in my chest, in the place that’d been cold and hollow for so long. I leaned back against the hearthstone, letting the warmth sink into my bones, and the ember inside me stirred to meet hers.