A Debt of Shattered Hope

33. Chapter 33

Chapter 33

A sledgehammer was pounding on my legs. When it got tired of my legs, it would slap me across the face, then beat my chin with a fluffy mallet. I hadn’t passed out. I was far too familiar with passing out, with the way my head pounded afterwards. No, I was gone. I was still settling back into my body. It felt like a stretched-out glove too foreign and, altogether, uncomfortable.

Cricket was wrapped around my leg. That’s what had called me back. The all-too-familiar sensation of her strong muscles flexing against me, and the soft slick feeling of her scales had drawn me across an abyss of emptiness.

“Crick, you bitch,” I croaked out.

My voice felt unnatural. It didn’t feel like it knew how to move any more. My spirit was still unfamiliar with telling it what to do.

It took more effort than I wanted it to for me to open my eyes.

Cricket was not wrapped around me. A black pulsing ink stain was, velvety fur pulsing against the deep wounds in my legs, suction pulling it tighter and then leaking blood out of an unseen hole behind it.

Ah, yes, a vampiric ink stain.

This made sense.

I laid my head back down and resigned myself to being a snack for whatever creature had found me in the deep dark and taken it upon itself to put my seemingly abandoned carcass to good use.

A growl rumbled around my leg, and I lifted and stared down as the smoke shifted and contorted into the wolfhound-like head I had grown to know and thought I’d never see again.

“Goose?”

The ghost lights streamed up from the chasm and circled us.

Goose. It was Goose. Goose was alive. I was alive.

Laughter gripped me. I couldn’t help it. It just swept in, filling the hollow pit within me, and I shuddered with it as it ripped around me and through me.

I was alive!

Goose was alive!

I was still lost in the dark, probably couldn’t move and had a spider leg through my shoulder, but I was alive.

Venom. Out. An echo of an echo whispered in the silence left by the death of my laughter.

I snapped my attention to the blob that was Goose, and it was easing off me. The blood of my wound leaked, slow and steady, down my shin. It was the deepest of the cuts, but it no longer felt like ice pumping into my veins.

Brood mother. Venom. Out. Goose tilted his head and watched me with those strange camera flare eyes.

“Goose,” I said with cautious sternness. “I’m pretty sure we discussed you not being able to talk. I was pretty clear. No talking for you.”

Goose, to his credit, if it was him, did not speak again. My tenuous grip on my sanity thanked him silently for that.

The ghost lights danced above me in a pattern that reminded me of a time, long ago, when I had sat peacefully next to a lake and watched a murmuration of starlings dance over the placid lap of the water. It was beautiful, hypnotizing. They darted in and out, and I hummed softly to them a song that had haunted my mind for as long as I could remember. I didn’t know the words. I didn’t know who had even first sung the song to me, but it had made its way into my mind and rooted itself there .

They flickered, dancing and diving with delight, then darted away to float near the remnants of an old archway covered with a moldering sheet of tapestry.

“Looks like the ghost lights want us to go that way, Goosey. Pretty sure this is going to suck, but it’s either die down here or die in the tunnels.” I cast an eye down to him. He had solidified into his wolfdog shape and was lying flat against the cold rock. Smoke trickled through what looked like battle wounds, like he was bleeding. Neither of us were walking away from this fight unscathed. “They aren’t known to be assholes, are they?”

Goose blew out an exhausted huff of air and disturbed the ink like smoke that served as his beard.

“I’ll take that as a no.”

It took me an untold eternity of agony to push up from the stone floor and another untold eternity to catch both my breath and the room around me as it spun. Fire and torment greeted me at every twitch of movement. I didn’t care how far the surface was or was not. It was going to be hell to get there, but Rule #21 was pounding in my mind as a hidden mantra that kept me shuffling forward.

The tapestry crumbled in my hands when I got to it, revealing a long, expertly worked stonework hallway. At the far end of the hallway . . . was warm torchlight dancing on the opposite wall.

I stared at the dancing of the warm orange-and-yellow light on the wall of the far end of the hallway like it was a mirage, assuming it would disappear at any moment. Assuming, once again, I’d be back in the nightmare that was this expedition.

I didn’t regret it, though. I probably should. Had I stayed in The Raven’s room, I wouldn’t have nearly died. I wouldn’t have had a slowly rotting spider leg impaling my slumping shoulder. I wouldn’t have been dragging my wounded leg behind me as I chased down that mirage. I wouldn’t have been moaning behind my own teeth that chattered with the inner chill that didn’t reach my feverish skin.

I didn’t blink for a single moment, convinced that if I did, the doorway and its precious light I was shambling toward would disappear. I followed it, leaning against the wall, Goose limping next to me and the ghost lights dancing in and out of my haggard hair. I didn’t blink until I was a single step from the doorway. Only then did my lids slip closed as I hoped and prayed that when I reopened them that light and warmth would still be there.

It was.

I turned into the room and stopped.

It was massive, easily three times the size of the throne room. The ceiling was so high I could not even see it, as it disappeared into the darkness out of the reach of the hundreds of candles that happily burned around the room. There were only two walls, though, the one that my tiny doorway pierced and one to the right that must have shared the wall with the spider’s hallway. At the back of the room was an open drop into the same chasm Goose had fallen into, pouring bitter cold into the room the candles battled against.

All along the floor of the platform were letters of some sort, black and glinting metallic in the flickering light. The piece of iron in my hand clattered to the ground as my eyes fixed on the long sweep of dark-golden-blonde hair of a woman watching me from inside of the circle of iron words.

Her skin was the dark burnish of ancient gold. Her eyes a piercing turquoise. She was wrapped in a long satin robe that pooled like broken sunlight at her feet. Her pointed ears were naked, bearing no adornment nor makeup, and I found it strange to find a Fae down here without the glittering jewels and finery I had become so accustomed to seeing them in. And yet she was no less beautiful, radiating a warmth that called to a hidden part of me and summoned me forward.

“Do come in.” Her voice was a song that danced through the air and curled a loving hand around me, guiding me forward. “Careful of the runes. Though I doubt they can bite you, can they?”

I was shuffling toward her without realizing it but stopped at the runes she spoke of, letting my gaze dance from them to her.

“Iron, of course.” She tossed over her shoulder as she took up a thick tea towel and pulled a clay tea pot from the low flames of an open hearth .

I looked to Goose, who stopped at the runes as well and growled at them, chuffing his indignation. The woman’s gaze fell to him, and she smiled like a mother watching her favorite child. It shouldn’t have, but it twisted my guts and made me jealous of the great smoky beast.

“You’ve been a good lad. You found her and brought her to me. You can rest for now, wee éachtach. She will come to no harm with me.”

Goose chuffed, turned to limp back to the doorway where he lay down, and guarded the entrance.

I watched him go and then turned to the woman. “He doesn’t listen to anyone but me.”

I narrowed my eyes on her, suspicion rising.

“And me,” she called over her shoulder in a sing-song voice that curled around her lilting accent.

“And how is it that you can command my failinis? Miss . . .”

I trailed off, hoping she would fill in the blanks.

“Airgetlám. Lady Airgetlám, if you please—for now, at least.” She poured two steaming cups of tea and sat at an ancient-looking table that was starting to crack from the dryness of the wood. “And I did not command him, to be exact. I merely spoke to him as the intelligent beast he is. He chose whether to grant my request, as he always will with someone other than yourself.”

Airgetlám. Where had I heard that name before? It was a soft bell ringing in the back of my head, not a warning bell but a twinkling of one nonetheless.

I stepped over the iron runes and took a seat at the table. If Goose saw there was no harm in this woman, then I would trust his judgment. I had no other choice, not that he had proved to be especially reliable in that specific arena. All the fight had drained out of me anyway, and if she was going to turn on me and hurl me over the side of the cliff, then there was nothing for it. At least I could have something warm in my belly when the cold tore me to shreds.

“Seems you’re the first to be able to get him to listen,” I said, easing down onto the stool opposite her, wincing.

“I’m probably the first that he sees as not being a threat to you, then.” She sipped her tea with a mischievous smile. “A failinis who has been named and taken by a Fae is loyal unto the death lest that Fae betray it or harm it in some manner. It will fight any foe set before it and protect them until it is returned to magic. There is no more loyal a creature ever spawned from the Well as a failinis.”

“I’m not a Fae, though.”

The cup radiated warmth into my blood-crusted hands and seeped into my bones. It felt good, and I let my eyes slip closed to savor the sensation before taking a hesitant sip. Earthy, leafy woodlands bloomed on my taste buds and curled into my chest.

“But you are, though,” she said, and I opened my eyes to see her turquoise gaze piercing me as she tilted her head. “Have you truly not accepted that, young one?”

I sat back, adjusting my seating so the leg sticking out of my shoulder stopped obscenely tapping on the table with every thud of my heart. “Lady Airgetlám, I hate to tell you this, but I’m just a human that a Darrig spent a lot of time and effort to look like a Fae. But under all the glint and polish is just a normal, mundane human.”

“Oh, sweet girl. Would that that were true. Your path in life would have been much easier.” Her hand reached out and touched the back of mine, gently rolling it over to reveal the caked, cracked blood covering my wounds. She took the tea towel and began gently brushing the blood away. “Since you have come to Magh Meall, have you not found that you hunger less, you drink less water, your wounds heal a little faster and do not ache so deep, that your emotions are deeper and more insistent? That your passions burn hotter and are near irresistible?”

She tilted her head, watching me as she revealed what were once deep gouges in my skin that bubbled with blood at the slightest movement were now small cuts that only bled as she pressed on it. “Have you not noticed that your tongue has changed and what was once your favorite foods has become less and less of interest? Perhaps you have even found yourself drawn to creatures and things of magic?”

Her gaze darted to the ghost lights that were resting on Goose’s smoky fur .

I cast a look toward them and then back to her. I didn’t want to answer any of these inconvenient questions, questions whose answers were sitting between us, staring at me in judgment for having not noticed the small changes in my internal norm. “Who are you?”

“I’ve already told you my name. My true name, even.” She turned over the other hand and began cleaning it.

“How do you know me?”

“There she is. Clever as I knew you would be.” She purred and looked up to me. “I am Lady Airgetlám, wife of Lord Túathal. Patron goddess of árus Contráth, mistress of luck and wealth and a few other things. And I have known you since you were but a spark in the Well of Magic. I have known you since you drew your first breath . . . here in Magh Meall.”

Blood began to pump in my ears. It shouldn’t have. It should have stayed perfectly silent and merely snickered at the ludicrousness of what she had said. And yet . . .

“What.”

“What did she name you?”

“Who?”

“Cleena, my sister. What did she name you?”

“My name is Cricket.”

“No, dear heart, that is not your name. That is the name you chose for yourself when you came to Magh Meall. What did Cleena name you?”

“I’m not giving you my true name.”

“You wouldn’t need to give me your true name, young girl. I’ve known your true name since it was given to you . . . by me. Cleena would not have taken it with you to Human. I feel it here still, unused, unuttered for all these years, flying free on the wings of magic waiting for you to reclaim it where I left it. The name you grew from a weanling to a woman on has no more power over you.”

I narrowed my eyes on her. Was this a trick? “How did you know Cricket was what I picked for myself, and it wasn’t given to me?”

She tapped on her chin and looked up into the air. Her eyes twitched back and forth like she was searching for something in the nothingness above her before her hand shot out lightning fast, caught an unseen thing, and drew it down. Her fist unfolded, and a gold coin shimmered in her palm. Her thumb rubbed it, and as the coin glinted in the soft light the distorted image of my apartment, where my landlord was moving things around before picking up Cricket’s empty tank, wavered in its mirror surface.

“I have watched when I could. Sometimes, the right coin can be found, and sometimes, it cannot. It depends entirely on the ebb and flow of magic around this place. Your snake is fine, by the by. She crawled out of her tank only a few hours after you left her. She is nesting in the wall next to the furnace. She will live a long life and have at least one clutch that will carry your name on their forked tongues.”

“Sóna Mac Raith,” I whispered to the coin.

The ethereal beauty of the woman snickered into the teacup she had picked up. “Of course. Oh, dear sweet sister mine, may your light and magic flow through the realms always . . . and hopefully pick up a little creativity along the way before you rejoin us.”

I tilted my head, watching her speak to thin air. Unease slithered up and down my spine. Fae were all liars. This one was an exceptionally beautiful liar, though, and I didn’t like it. Between the discomfort and the throbbing in my shoulder, I could do nothing but watch her and await her next move as we enjoyed our twisted little tea party.

Her attention, deep cerulean waves that lapped at her inner sea, turned back to me, and she smiled a dazzling smile that crept into my very soul and wrapped it in a warm blanket. “Sóna is not so old a name, older than I am surely but not so old that it has fallen out of favor, I would think. It means many things, something precious and valued. Like gold or luck and prosperity. Your surname, Mac Raith. A young clan that I have blessed many times, one of the few clans of Human who knew how to properly welcome a Lady of the Fae let alone an Ascended Fae. The name they chose for themselves reflects that. A blessing. Cleena knew that if her magic worked too well, I would know you by the name she had given you. Clever, though not entirely creative. ”

I frowned deep into my teacup and winced as a drip of black sludge fell from the spider leg and splashed into my cup of tea. Distaste screwed up my face, and I set it down. “This has been nice and all, my lady, but as you can see, I have a bit of a spider problem, and I had hoped that this would be a way out. As I’m not overly skilled at flying, I need to look for a way out.”

Her lashes lowered demurely, coyly, hiding a sly smirk. “You do not believe me.”

It was not a question but a simple statement of fact. As such, I did not deem it worthy of responding to as I pushed up from the stool with one arm and started making my slow shuffled way back to the archway.

“Her name was Maeveen, by the by, and she was there to protect you from the others.”

I spun on my heel, dizziness spinning my head four turns more than I had meant it to. “Who?”

“I believe she said you called her The Woman Who Walked The Paths?” She tilted her head, watching as that small bit of information slammed into me harder than the spider had.

I rocked back on my feet with its impact. I had told two other people in my entire life about what I had witnessed at that house. One of them was a stuffed rabbit named Clio that had gotten lost shortly after I first saw that shade. The other was Anne Harrison, and the last I had the heart to look her up, she had died four years after I had left her care, mauled by a bear. The needling suspicion and childhood fear of The Woman Who Walked The Paths had said that it was not a bear or a mountain lion that had killed her.

“Something else in those woods was stalking children and taking them. You, left as you had been due to circumstances here in Magh Meall, had no protection from them and were a bright beacon in the magical world. So, I sent her to watch over you when the coins whispered of the threat that lurked in those woods. She gave her life for you. She knew you were terrified of her. It was her job as a bean sidhe to be terrifying, after all. But she was there when that beast found you. She wounded it deep enough to send it back into hibernation, but she died here in that very stool you sat on, telling me of her bravery in battle. And when she returned to magic, it was with a kiss of gratitude.”

“Lady, you’re fucking nuts,” I whispered with no barb to it.

Her eyes skirted over to a small and simple rope bed that had a lump in the center of it. “She brought me Clio.”

Shock pulsed through me, and my fingers went numb as I stared into the warm light. I recognized the dirty green gingham I had torn from my own dress when Clio was kidnapped by an especially voracious squirrel hell-bent on eviscerating her for his bedding.

“H—Wh—Ho—”

My legs crumpled under me and folded into a crisscross. Tears pricked at my eyes, burning at the edges of my lashes and begging to be let free.

Airgetlám rose from her seat and drifted across the room to pluck the rabbit from the bed. I watched her, recognizing every smudge and bald spot on the old hare. She folded gracefully down next to me and pulled me into her lap, tucking Clio into mine. “It’s okay, Sóna. You’re going to be okay. I’m going to slowly pull this rothchreatlachros leg from you. It will fester.”

Her voice was the soft sunset out on the great lakes as it slipped into the water and devolved into gentle shhh-ing sounds as I shivered in her lap. I barely felt her hand wrap around the tough exoskeleton of a leg. Barely even felt the tug or slide of the leg being yanked free nor the tea towel that was stuffed into the wound. I kept staring at the toy I had lost so many years ago.

Clio had been the first of many abandonments that cut the deepest. I was sure I had been a bad girl, and that was why Clio ran away. I had wailed and bemoaned my wickedness for chasing away my only friend. The wound of this simple stuffed rabbit leaving me had remained open and festering all my life, unable to heal from the constant lacerations I visited upon myself. If I was extremely honest, many of those wounds had been pried open by force by my own hand. The pain of it was far more familiar and reliable than the comfort of its healing .

“There you go, mo stor.” Her arms wrapped tight around me and cradled me like a babe to her soft rocking as she rested her cheek on the top of my head. “I am so sorry I could not be there for you, mo mhuirnín. I wished every time I heard you cry, I could flee this place and come to you. Every day. Every single tear. I would have kissed them all from you. I would have battled the world and every creature large and small to keep you from sadness. I would have done anything to protect you from every ill that has come to you in Human if I could have.”

I turned drowning eyes up to her. “You’re . . . my mother?”

A soft hand pushed the dingy strands of my hair from my forehead, and she smiled down at me. “I am unfortunate to have that ignoble and unearned title. Yes, my darling girl. I am your mother.”

“And my . . . my father?”

My voice sounded so small, the hope and wonder blooming fragile as new crocus buds.

The wound was still as fresh as the day he had died, barely concealed. I knew he was dead, but the Bandrui had said that so was she and hope had fluttered in my chest for half a moment. “I am sorry, beloved. He has passed into the Well of Magic and awaits us there. I could not save him.”

I processed the death of a man I hadn’t even known with burning tears, a man I had lamented the loss of all my life, with a newfound misery. It was a dirge familiar to orphans of all walks, the grief of what could have been. The poetic plaint of what would never be. For some, the elegy of the arms that would never again hold them. For me? It was a requiem for what I had never known and the hope that I had held protected in a hidden part of my soul.

We sat in silence, the pair of us joined by an umbilical of grief, a twisted braid making up the rope that bound us.

“What . . . how? I don’t have any magic. I don’t look like a Fae. Well, now I do, but I didn’t when I came here. And I don’t look like you at all.”

Her face twisted with pain again, and she sighed, replacing her cheek on my head as the vise of her arms closed tighter as if to protect us both from the truth. “I sent you away to Human to be safe. You were born at the end of the War of Thorns, my dear girl. Your father was gone. The House of Magic under attack. Our forces and allies routed and destroyed. And then there was you. You represented so much hope for those who rallied their banners to our cause. I knew the moment that you were born that you would be taken by that beast at the gates. You were too powerful a symbol for our forces. So, I begged my sister to take you into Human, to bind your magic and remake you into the image of one of their own children and leave you where you would be cared for. In a place where the old magic was not so strong and would not make it so easy to find you. To give you a name that I could easily find you with and to keep that secret for all of time. And so she did, and that was the last time, until today, that I held you in my arms.”

I was shaking. Cold did not touch me, but every muscle in my body was on edge and clenching violently as if to try and force this information out. I fought it, trying to shove it into the light as a lie. I wanted it to be a lie. I needed it to be a lie. If it were true, if any of it were true, it meant that my whole life had been one fucked-up product of this fucked-up world. I didn’t have the ability to carry the weight of that hate in my heart. I was not strong enough.

She mistook my silence for license to carry on. “I did what I could for you, mo chroí. I cannot leave this place and few of my allies remained alive. Even fewer can come to this place and survive the ring of iron runes. Know that I did what I could, though. Always, even with what I thought was my dying breath, I did what I could.”

“Why can’t you leave? You’re a goddess.”

Through the fog of anguish, I struggled to put the pieces together. There were so many things that didn’t make sense. It felt like I was trying to read braille, with no one having taken the time to tell me what each of the raised dots and positions meant. It wasn’t hard, wasn’t strange or foreign, but indecipherable nonetheless.

“A goddess shackled by the words of her own oath to magic, my darling girl. Even if you were to strike those iron runes from the floor, I could no more step out of this prison as I could strike down the one that put me here. It was the terms of my oath.”

“What was your oath?”

My words were hollow, devoid of emotion, as all of it drained from the river of tears that poured from my eyes into Clio’s fur. She had been too familiar with the taste of my weeping for it to bother her much, though her last feast was salty clear, and these dusted her in a thin milky sheen.

“Have you learned nothing of oaths yet, dear one?” Her cheek moved from my head, and her gaze darted back and forth as she examined mine. “I see at least one oath behind your eyes. Did you enter a pact with a Fae unknowingly?”

“No. I knew it was an oath. I still don’t know what the price is, or when she will pay me what she owes me,” I hissed, the tiny match flame of anger sparking in my blood.

“And the others? There is another thread. It is weak and unattended to, but it is there.”

The prolonged eye contact would normally make me squirm, but her gaze made me feel more embraced than her arms did.

“I’ve sworn an oath to the Bandrui.” A wry but innocuous smile was given to this and I pushed on. “Aside from that, there is nothing. Nothing but the tongue lock the Ard Rí has on my true name.”

She frowned. A finger wormed its way past my lips and wrapped around my tongue. My eyes rounded at the unexpected invasion as she gripped me. She hissed low words that I did not understand and pulled. Something wriggled along the base of my tongue, joined by another that whipped about next to it. It caught on my front teeth and slid up the back of my throat, where I gagged on it as she tugged and spoke.

Finally, the tension broke, and she hissed and flicked something wet and sloppy onto the stones behind her. The sound of two wet, fleshy unseen things hitting the stones and splattering across it made my stomach lurch.

“Filthy things. Filthy disgusting abuses of magic. Always have been and always will be. If you are Fae enough to take a daor, you are Fae enough to hear their ire. To rob someone of such a simple freedom is anathema to the true ways of the Fae.”

Revulsion was slithering through the pair of us as she pressed me deeper into her, a protective instinct to shield me from the already dismissed danger.

“I shouldn’t ask . . . but what was that?”

“The tongue locks. I took hold of the magic that bound them and ripped them out. I hate those things. They were vile magic, rotten and rancid when they were first imagined, and now they are even more fetid and loathsome. They will trouble you no longer but mind that only we will know they are gone. Do not tell whoever put them on you that you are free of their magic yoke. They would have naturally weakened and fallen away with your acceptance of Sóna not being your true name. I merely sped up the inevitable.”

“I . . . I don’t understand. If I’m Fae, I should be able to use magic, right?”

I didn’t want to think about the way the wet things had splattered against the stone. The sound alone haunted me. I didn’t want to acknowledge the faint slick sliding against the stones that I could make out over our voices as a pair of somethings slipped toward the edge of the platform.

“I’m sorry, beloved. What was taken cannot be returned. You will never wield magic like other Fae. You are as much Fae now as you ever were or will be. Would that I could have left you with some of my own magic. Just some luck would have been better than the tapestry that I feel woven within you.” She was unbraiding my hair, slowly working free the tight ribbon that held it back from my face.

I snorted a bitter laugh. “I always said I had no luck but bad luck.”

“Half right there, beloved. Even bad luck is a type of luck. Cleena left you a perfect void of it. Your presence in Human devoured the luck of those around you. It ate it and fueled your survival. She would have knit the threads of magic around you to draw in fate when magic called to you but tight enough that any who searched for the taste of our lineage on the winds would have caught no scent of us. She might not have been very creative in her naming, but Cleena was the most intricate magic weaver I had ever met in all my long years. Better than even your father. Only she could have accomplished such a feat. It was why I sent you away with her. I knew she would find a way to accomplish what I asked of her.”

“What happened to her?”

My eyes slid closed as her fingers began working knots from the ends of my hair.

“I don’t truly know, sweet one. She has not stepped foot back in Magh Meall since she left it. She could still be in Human somewhere. She could be dead, and I will have lost both years and years with my daughter and my beloved only sister, or she could be hiding waiting to return when it is safe. The coins have not shown me her face since the night she fled with you, still covered in my blood.”

“Thanks, Auntie Cleena. Rictus was a bit much.”

I felt the soft smile pull at her lips. “That is a name I have not heard in a long time. Rictus still lives?”

“Until I find him.”

“Ah, same Rictus, then. Be still with him, young one. He and his entire ship were the only fleet of Far Darrigs that came to our aid when we sounded the horns of war. He did not hesitate a single minute when he felt magic ripple with our need.”

“He finger-fucked me into . . . this . . . this thing.” I whipped my accusation at her and glared.

Her smile was soft and placating. “I’m sure he did.”

“And that’s okay with you?”

“No, dear one, not even a little. But I am old enough and wise enough to know that fate and magic are just the needle and the thread that stitches us all together. If Rictus appeared before me, I would punish him severely for daring to touch my daughter and for all the abuses he visited upon humans. But my treasure, his hand was guided by magic, too.”

“Magic is a fucking pervert.”

A laugh like the beating of dove wings rolled easy and free from her and washed me in a warmth that seeped deep into my skin, stitching together the deep gashes in my psyche .

“Yes. It absolutely is. Your father was a perfect example of that.”

“Gross. I know I just met you, but it’s still gross to think about my parents fucking.”

The moment I said it, my tongue slid on a razor, and I wished I could pull it back. It felt like a mistake to be so familiar, to let the thought and ownership of parents seep past my lips. It made it too real. If she pulled back, if she denied it, if it was all a trick, the wound would cleave me in two, and I would fall apart never to be put back together.

Airgetlám, my mother, simply laughed again and squeezed me tightly against her. “Oh, and we fucked a lot, dear one. On every surface. In every form. In every manner. We fucked on the grass as two foxes. We fucked in the air as two lightning bolts forking together to crack across the land. We fuck—”

“Gross!” I said, squirming and batting at her, catching myself with a wince.

“Fine, no more of that. Let me love on you, Sóna. Just for a little longer. I have missed so much. I will tell you all about your father. All about myself. And you will tell me all about you? Let me know my daughter a little?”