Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
The village Fae seemed happy enough to see the crew.
Niamh took charge, making sure Cillian and Bran were pushed to the back of the group, attention on the crew and not them.
Bran didn’t understand anything being said, wishing he had his coven’s grimoire at hand.
He knew translation spells were somewhere in the history of it, and that would have come in handy the entire time they’d been in the Otherworld.
The village leader was a Fae who clearly didn’t come from wealth, but his tunic and pants appeared decently made. Bran and Cillian made sure to stay at the back of their group as Niamh’s crew set up their wares in the village square at permanent stalls, the wood weathered from past storms.
Cillian never let go of the leash, and Bran was hyperaware of the thin metal chain that linked them together.
The collar was a weight he had to fight from touching.
Ainmire’s collar had only brought pain when he touched it.
Even though this one was nominally Cillian’s, Bran knew Fae would expect it to hurt him if he tried to touch it.
“Are you all right?” Cillian asked in a low voice.
“I have to be, don’t I?” Bran muttered back.
“Just hold on a little longer.”
He reminded himself he was doing this for Aisling. Bran could bow his head and not look any Fae in the eye, could follow behind Cillian like an obedient, mindless puppet if it meant he could find his little sister.
Bran would have liked to see what it was the crew planned to sell, but Niamh nodded at the village leader, accepted a sip of some drink from a wooden cup he offered her, and then retreated to their group.
She made a discreet gesture in their direction, which prompted Cillian and Bran to follow after her, along with a few other crew members.
A different villager led them to a one-room stone building down a dirt road on the outskirts of the village.
Their guide cast Bran a wary look but didn’t even glance at Cillian before leaving.
The two crew members with them posted themselves outside by the door while Niamh entered.
Bran dug in his heels at the tug on the bond, looking up at the sky.
A black dot far above resolved itself into Jupiter seconds later.
He raised his arm, allowing his familiar to land.
She made no sound as she did so, well aware of the need for quiet and secrecy.
“Ready?” Cillian asked.
Bran nodded and followed him inside a space empty of any furniture, the air so hot it made him sweat. The building had no windows, but it had four lanterns hanging from the wall, all of which flickered to life with the same sort of light that had illuminated Ainmire’s home.
“What’s in them?” Bran asked, staring at one of the lanterns. “Ainmire had a witch tending to his.”
“Fire elementals,” Niamh said, glancing at him. “They are drawn to Nature.”
“You Fae can’t light your own fires?”
She shot him a withering look.
“Let’s look at the map,” Cillian hastily said, handing Bran the leash now that they were out of sight of prying eyes.
Bran shoved the end into his trouser pocket and hefted Jupiter up to his shoulder. “Where’s the map?”
Niamh pointed at the floor. “We are standing on it.”
He’d been expecting the grand reproduction like he’d seen in the library in Ainmire’s town. What he had to work with was faded paint that offered little depth, but the map was still the same outline he remembered from the library. “This is it?”
“You say you can find your sister? Then find her.”
Bran tried not to take the faint derision in her voice personally, but it was hard to ignore. Niamh’s attitude when she addressed Cillian was kinder, more deferential. Bran knew he’d never earn that from any Fae, but the hostility was stress-inducing.
He rolled up his sleeves and held his hand over the bracelet tied around his left wrist. Taking a deep breath, he sketched a witchmark in the air, the golden lines bright, his intent to locate drawing out the spell in one of the beads.
The shape of his mother’s magic made him blink back a sudden wetness in his eyes.
The witchmark that represented Aisling expanded outward, floating in the air to dance around his own.
He flexed his hands before making a sharp swiping motion from elbow to wrist. Brilliant golden sparks twisted around his forearm and into the palm of his hand. He tipped it, magic falling to the floor like a firefall, golden and bright.
The intent of the spell flowed down the connection tying it to the witchmark anchored on the bead of the bracelet his sister wore.
Bran’s stomach twisted, lurched, as his awareness was stretched thin, his ability to orient himself difficult in the Otherworld.
Jupiter steadied him, anchoring him in that maelstrom as Nature washed through him.
His magic poured out of him and flooded the floor, following the lines of the map.
It snaked to a spot on the eastern side of the painted island, pooling in a gray area.
The bead on his bracelet with the witchmark of Aisling’s name pulsed brightly, and Jupiter cawed, the gold flecks in her eyes shining like stars.
Bran fell into it, fell into their bond, letting Nature drag his awareness over the face of a world he’d never walked until it slammed into a grayness he couldn’t see through—but he knew that beyond it was his sister.
Bran came back to himself with a wrench, staggering forward. An arm wrapped around his waist, drawing him up against a warm, firm body, and Bran couldn’t help but lean into the touch. Cillian’s voice was a low reverberation in his ear that made him shiver. “I got you.”
Bran swallowed audibly, trying to steady his breathing and ignore the hot spike of want that cut through him. “There. She’s there.”
Niamh walked over to where Bran’s magic glowed brightest, her steps slow, tracing a route inland from the coast. When she stopped, the toes of her boots almost brushed against Bran’s magic. “This is the wyrding.”
Bran’s stomach sank, fear latching onto him like a wild animal. They’d been in the Otherworld for what passed for a week or longer. “How do we get there?”
Niamh tilted her head. “The wyrding appears where it likes. The passages between the mounds that connect the Otherworld to yours are different than the shadow paths that link each spot of blight. For those, you enter the wyrding in one location and arrive somewhere else, but you have to follow the lights to find them.”
“Those monstrous creatures?” Cillian asked dubiously. “They tried to kill Bran.”
Niamh looked as if she was sad they hadn’t succeeded. “I know the shadow paths there. I’ve traveled them before on your behalf and Verlin’s. If the witch can use his magic to locate his sister, I can lead him and you to her.”
“Bran?”
He stared at the glow of his magic on that map whose paint had to be imbued with its own kind of power. So different yet so similar to that grand map in Ainmire’s library, all of it meant as a warning. “I’m not leaving Aisling behind.”
He was all she had, and she was all he had.
He refused to look at Cillian, forcing himself to pull away from the other man’s hold, even though it was the last thing he wanted to do right then.
He would save Aisling from whoever or whatever had her, even if it killed him, but he would not leave her in this place.
“That wasn’t in doubt,” Cillian said, as if agreeing to Bran’s crazy ideas was nothing new. And it wasn’t, if he let himself think of their past. “How do you get us to one of these shadow paths?”
Niamh sighed, stepping back from the dying embers of Bran’s magic as he drew it all back into himself. “We must head into the wyrding.”
“Is it close to here?”
Niamh smiled bitterly, taking measured steps to a spot on the map that looked like their position, scuffing the toe of her boot over a smear of black paint close to a village marker. “It is always close when witches are around.”
Bran bristled at that but held his tongue. She was his way to Aisling, and he’d take any insults she tossed at him if it meant she could get them to his little sister. “Then let’s go.”
“Hold his leash,” Niamh said to Cillian, the biting words a reminder and warning all in one.
Bran grimaced but pulled the leash out of his pocket and handed the end to Cillian. Their fingers brushed in the handover, and he suppressed a shiver at the way Cillian looked, holding his leash, in total control. Cillian eyed him carefully, gaze searching. “All right?”
“Just don’t let go,” Bran muttered as Niamh headed for the door, yanking it open.
“I won’t.” Sunlight spilled into the room, haloing Cillian in a way that made it impossible to look away from him. “They’ll have to fight me for you.”
It shouldn’t have made him ache, but it did, some part of him wanting Cillian to mean it in a way he had no right to want, not after how he’d left seven years ago.
Bran dropped his gaze, licking his lips, cognizant of the thin metal that connected them as Cillian led him out of the room, aware, too, of the collar around his throat with Cillian’s emblem on it.
A claim that somehow felt right despite his initial trepidation.
He blamed the sun for the heat in his cheeks as they left the stone building.
Jupiter flew out behind them and back into the sky.
Niamh took the lead when they reached the village square again, making nice with the Fae in charge.
It wasn’t long before she split her people up, leaving some behind to trade and the rest going with them.
They left the village, starting down the dirt road that curved between low hills, a forest dotting the horizon in the distance.
“What was the excuse you gave them?” Cillian asked once they were out of earshot.
“Hunting,” Niamh said. “I never said what.”
Fae and their word games. Bran hated both. “How appropriate.”