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Something threads into view—lines, faint as moonlight on water, glowing softly where they touch flesh.
I suck in a breath.
No, they aren’t lines, but visible tethers. Thin, luminous strands binding us together. Strongest are the ones connecting me to Alex and Robert. But there are unmistakable traces connecting the three of us to Róisín and Ellen as well.
They thrum with a steady insistence. Some stretch outward, disappearing beyond the walls, beyond the limits of the room—vanishing into places unseen.
“Do you see them?” Mannie says quietly.
No one answers because I don’t think we can. I do see them, and the simple fact of it steals the words right out of my mouth.
“They’re soul-tethers,” he says. “Ceangail—bindings. Your own stories circle the idea with geasa, vows that hold a hero to a path. This is older than vows, and quieter.” His eyes sharpen slightly. “These don’t bind you to a deed. They bind you to one another.”
Robert’s voice comes carefully. “Why do some of them fade off, out of sight?”
“Those,” Mannie says, “aren’t fading. They’re simply too long to see the end of.” His fingers flex once against the tabletop. “We call them chosen threads—ties forged by choice rather than blood. Loyalty. Found family. Oaths freely given. Sometimes…” A pause, thoughtful. “Sometimes love.”
And there it is—an unmistakable tether running from Robert, brighter than the rest, slipping through the room and vanishing beyond the walls like it has somewhere specific to be.
My gaze snaps to Ellen, half hoping to see something blazing.
It’s not as thick as the ones between me and the men beside me, not yet. Still gathering, still strengthening, like a rope being twisted from finer strands. But the placement is unmistakable: it anchors to her the same way it anchors to me, clean and sure.
And because I’m close, I catch something else.
Three lines, faint as hair in firelight, peel away from that forming tether. Little offshoots, almost missable, detaching from what must be the main thread before they stretch outward and vanish beyond the room. I don’t think I’d have seen their shape at all if I were seated farther away.
The tethers fade as gently as they came. The room returns to normal.
Mannie lowers his hands.
“Those ties,” he says, his voice more measured than it has been all morning, “I sensed them the moment I neared Connemara.”
A knowing settles over me like a cloak.
As though the next words spoken in this room will divide my life cleanly into a before and after.
“For the first time in over four thousand years,” Mannie says slowly, “I have started to feel something shift that I cannot yet name. A great cosmic pressure.”
He folds his hands loosely before him.
“There are only a handful of forces capable of pressing upon the world in that way. Fewer still who have slept long enough for men to forget they were ever real. When such a force begins to gather, the creatures that reside in these liminal edges feel the awakenings. They are threshold sentinels. Beings that once answered to the great Tuatha Dé Danann warriors.”
Robert’s voice comes out rough. “So, Cú Sídhe.” He glances around the table, then adds for the benefit of those who don’t have the language, “A hound of the fairy mounds. These are sentinels?”
Mannie shakes his head with a hint of awe in his eyes. “Precisely, one of many. Without Tuatha warriors in the realm, they sometimes have a tendency to… wander, following old commands that are no longer valid.”
Mannie’s gaze lingers on Robert longer than it should.
“As I said before, a Cú Sídhe doesn’t hunt for hunger, nor for sport,” he says evenly.
Robert shifts in his seat. “So, it arrived as you did?”
“Not exactly.” His tone appears calm, but there’s something careful beneath it.
“It may have sensed the strain I placed on the veil,” he continues, “but I was not yet on Sinclair land when it crossed. I was on the coast of Iberia, handling… other matters.”
Robert frowns, growing frustrated. “I’m not following.”
