Chapter 22 #2
He still didn’t know all that she had gone through since being kidnapped from the Shoppe.
She’d been too tired yesterday to write much after her bath, and Bran had wanted her to get some rest. He’d stayed with her until she fell asleep and had meant to go back to her room after speaking with Cillian, but, well. He’d been distracted.
He still was, if he was being honest. The faint ache in his ass was a reminder of last night he couldn’t ignore, and Bran shifted discreetly on the cushioned chair.
Aisling reached for the serving utensil and started poking around the plates and platters in the middle of the table.
It was definitely a hearty spread, with pan-fried sausages, small pastries that could have been filled with savory or sweet fillings, fried potatoes and onions, a tureen of porridge, and fresh sliced fruit.
Tiny rolled omelets were piled on a plate, and Bran went for those first. Cillian passed him a teapot, and Bran poured out a nice-smelling amber-colored tea for himself and Aisling.
It tasted like toasted nuts and honey when he sipped it.
The Fae were nice enough to wait until the three of them had served themselves and eaten a little of the food before initiating conversation.
Verlin took the lead, clearly the one in charge of their group.
He was dressed just as elegantly as Cillian, in a shade of darker blue that complemented Cillian’s outfit.
Some of his locs had been tied back with glittering strands of thin silver chains.
“I researched the geas last night,” Verlin said as he cut apart a sausage. “It is an older one and rarely used.”
Bran looked up from his plate and stared at the Fae lord. “Can it be reversed?”
Verlin’s eyes flicked to Cillian before he answered, and Bran tamped down his annoyance. He had a feeling the Fae were including him at the table only because of Cillian’s wishes. “The only way to reverse it is to return her voice, which means we must locate it first.”
“We believe her voice is in Cernunnos’ possession,” Niamh said.
Bran abruptly lost his appetite. He set his fork down and rested his elbows against the edge of the table, dragging a hand through his hair. “If he has her voice, he won’t stop looking for her.”
“Will he come here?” Cillian asked.
Verlin tipped his head in Cillian’s direction. “He might try, but Cernunnos is of the Summer Court. He would need to find a reason to visit the Winter Court, and Medb has always been wary of his aspirations.”
“What if he travels through the shadow paths in the wyrding? Wouldn’t the wyrding hide his comings and goings? He was keeping Aisling prisoner there,” Bran said.
“There is a chance he will be on the lookout for you in the wyrding. I think it highly more likely he will return to where your coven is, still following the gist of the Dagda’s order to exterminate you.”
Bran’s stomach sank somewhere to his feet. “He’s going to Pelham?”
Verlin arched a dark eyebrow. “You are going there, so Cernunnos will likely follow if he is not already in the mortal world.”
Bran closed his eyes at the thought of Pelham being ravaged by lights in his absence.
If he was here, that meant no witches were left to defend the town, and that failure would surely make it back to the Council of Witches if the Fae managed to gain a foothold in the mortal world. “We have to go back.”
“That was the plan,” Cillian reminded him.
“No, I mean, we need to go back today. Remember how time flows different here than it does back home? It’s slower, but weeks would have passed back in the mortal world while we were here in the Otherworld.” Bran shoved his chair back and stood, looking at Verlin. “How do we get back?”
Verlin’s lip curled faintly, unable to hide his distaste at being ordered around by a witch.
Whatever he would have said died on his lips as a commotion at the entrance to the dining room had Verlin rising to his feet.
Bran turned and watched as an almost too-thin Fae lady stepped into the room, servants hovering behind her worriedly, though they didn’t try to stop her.
She was tall like every other Fae Bran had crossed paths with.
Her deep purple gown hung loosely on her, the belt around her waist doing more to highlight the starved look of her body than anything else.
Her hair was a mass of black curls cascading over her shoulders, streaks of white cutting through the dark ringlets.
The shade of her skin was as dark as Verlin’s, and the resemblance was impossible to miss.
Verlin greeted her in the Fae language before hurrying around the table to her. He offered her his arm, which she gamely took with a shaking, bejeweled hand. Her dark-eyed gaze darted around the room, and she said something that Bran couldn’t understand.
Cillian stood, discreetly tugging the end of the leash out of Bran’s pocket to hold it.
The tension didn’t leave Bran’s body as the lady zeroed in on Cillian, paling a little.
Verlin had to brace her before Seamus reached them, helping to guide the lady to an empty chair at the other end of the table.
Verlin spoke low and quick in their language before finally switching over to English.
Bran knew it wasn’t for his benefit but for Cillian’s.
“He does not remember, Mother,” Verlin said, looking down the table at them.
The lady drew in a breath, one thin hand clutching at the collar of her gown. “He looks exactly the same.”
Her words were spoken in heavily accented English, that same, almost Irish lilt to her words. Bran wondered how it was the Fae could speak the language so well, thinking it had to be magic of some sort. Maybe a translation spell or something similar.
“My mother, Lady Fiadh,” Verlin said by way of introduction, speaking mostly to Cillian.
“A pleasure to meet you?” Cillian said, sounding unsure. Bran kept quiet, resting one hand on Aisling’s shoulder in a comforting way as she leaned toward him.
“Welcome back, my prince,” Lady Fiadh said, ignoring Bran. “Our home is yours, as is our House.”
“Thank you.” Cillian cleared his throat. “But we were just leaving.”
She blinked at him, as if his words didn’t make any sense. “Why?”
“Because the Otherworld isn’t our home.”
“Our,” she echoed, finally dragging her gaze away from Cillian to meet Bran’s. “You include a pet in your words?”
Bran raised an arm and held Cillian back when the other man would have headed toward the other end of the table out of anger. “I’m not a pet.”
“You are collared and leashed like one.”
The temperature in the room plummeted when Cillian growled, “Don’t speak to him like that.”
Verlin eyed the windows, which Bran assumed were covered in frost again. He didn’t look to check. “Like we told your son, Cillian grew up with me in Pelham. We met as children. He doesn’t remember who he was before that.”
“Then we can help him regain his memories,” Lady Fiadh said shakily, raising a hand toward Cillian in entreaty. “My mate may not have been so lucky, but you are here. We can help you.”
“I don’t want to recover them,” Cillian said flatly. “I don’t know who I would be if I did, and I like who I am now.”
Cillian stepped closer to Bran, making his side known. Lady Fiadh leaned forward to brace herself against the table. “You cannot mean that. You cannot give your allegiance to a witch. You are the Winter Prince.”
“I’m a ranger back home, and I’d rather be that than someone cruel.”
“You think us Fae cruel when you stand beside a witch? Their cruelty is what banished us to the Otherworld in the first place.”
“Mother,” Verlin said in a tight voice. “Please stop.”
“Banished?” Bran echoed. “We never banished you. You Fae have been murdering witches for centuries while trying to take over our world. We’ve been trying to stop you.”
“Your history is ill-informed,” Lady Fiadh said coldly. “But I expect such revisionist thinking from traitors.”
“We can’t be traitors if we were never on the same side.”
“Ignorance keeps you blind, I see. Our prince would not stand by you if he remembered the truth of his past and the war your side started.”
“I won’t fight Bran,” Cillian said in a low voice. “And I won’t stand for anyone else harming him either.”
“He is the enemy,” Verlin said, glaring at Bran. “His kind always has been. They slaughter us—”
“And the Fae slaughter witches right back. I saw what the lights do to them. I saw his stepfather’s body in the woods. The wrong done to you doesn’t absolve you of the terror you inflict on others, whether they are witches or innocent bystanders.”
Aisling whimpered, turning to burrow her face against Bran’s shoulder. He curled his arm around her, holding her close. He might not have liked Ray, but Ray had loved Aisling in his own way, and she didn’t need to be reminded of his murder by someone who clearly didn’t care.
“So you think we should let the wyrding spread like the blight it is, let it poison the land left to us?”
“That’s not what I said.”
“That is exactly what you said.” Verlin straightened up and raised his chin.
“Do you know why witches have magic? Because long ago, they were Fae who betrayed their brethren by allying with mortals to banish us from éire. They called themselves Fomorians, and the battles waged lasted decades. It was the Fomorians who called upon Chaos to exile us to the Otherworld and raise the wyrding between us, denying us our homeland and poisoning the one we were left with.”
“You’re lying,” Bran blurted out, sick to his stomach at the accusation that some distant ancestor might be Fae.
Verlin shot him a scathing look. “Fae do not lie. I speak the truth, one you witches used to know. The wyrding is your kind’s doing, and the only way to slow its encroachment in the Otherworld was to kill the Fomorians and the witches they eventually became.
Chaos is not Fae magic and never has been.
Nature dies in the wyrding, and we cannot live there either.
But we needed a way to stop you witches from constantly attacking us in the Otherworld, so we carved out paths back to the mortal world and attacked you. ”
“You enslave us when you don’t outright kill us.”
“Your magic helps keep the wyrding at bay. The witches Fae don’t kill as a sacrifice, we keep for experiments, for entertainment.
You pets have your uses until you don’t, and then we send you into the wyrding.
” Verlin smiled then, baring his teeth, the glitter in his amber eyes hot and furious and cruel.
“You witches have magic still, so there is some bit of Fae blood left in you. The Chaos in the wyrding changes you into monsters that know us, that obey us, because pets remember their masters and always will. And it is they who murder your kind on our say-so to keep our own people safe from your bloody incursions.”
What little breakfast Bran had eaten threatened to crawl up his throat. He swallowed hard, trying to keep from vomiting as saliva filled his mouth. “That’s not true.”
“Fae do not lie.” Verlin spat the words out before drawing in a steadying breath and closing his eyes, working to get himself under control. “If Cillian goes back with you, what do you think will happen when your masters find out he is Fae?”
“I don’t have any masters.”
Verlin opened his eyes, lips curling back over his teeth. “What do you call that Council of yours?”
Bran had no good response to that. “Cillian hid beneath a glamour until he came here. He can hide again.”
“He cannot control his magic like this, and you think he can hold up such a thing against any witch who comes around asking questions?”
“Do you have so little faith in your own magic?” Bran shot back.
Lady Fiadh raised her hand to press it over her son’s hand that rested on her shoulder. “So you would keep him as a pet?”
Bran reared back at that accusation, feeling the blood drain from his face. “I don’t own Cillian.”
“No. You would only have him deny everything about himself. You would have him bury who he was in favor of a human veneer that is a lie. How long do you think it will take until he resents you?”
“I could never resent Bran,” Cillian said fiercely.
Lady Fiadh stared at Cillian with unblinking eyes. “And when you outlive your pet? What then?”
“Stop,” Bran snapped raggedly. “Stop trying to guilt Cillian into staying. We came here for Aisling, and we found her, so we’re leaving. Just let us go.”
“We are Fae. We are his people. None of you can deny that.”
The truth rang between them, quiet and chilling, and Bran had no defense against it. He knew what Cillian was—what Aisling probably was—and what he wasn’t, no matter what Verlin had said. Witches weren’t Fae.
They couldn’t be.
Bran glared at Verlin, at Cillian’s supposed right hand, and refused to back down. “We’re going home. I won’t let Cernunnos raze our town, and I’m getting my sister’s voice back.”
“You call her sister, yet she is Fae,” Verlin said.
“I don’t care what she is, the same way I don’t care what Cillian is.”
He loved them both in different ways but no less deeply. He wouldn’t apologize for that, and he’d fight for them until his dying breath—against the Fae, against fellow witches. It didn’t matter who stood against them; Bran would not back down if it meant he could keep them safe.
Aisling pulled away, and he let her, staring down into her wide-eyed, upturned face. Then she grabbed her notebook and pen, writing quickly. What she showed him seconds later made Bran’s heart hurt.
Really? You love me?
“Hey,” Bran said, sinking back down into his seat so he could be at her level.
He reached for her hands, giving them a gentle squeeze.
“I mean it. You’re my little sister. I’m always going to love you.
I’m not letting you go into foster care or anything like that.
I was working with a lawyer to make myself your guardian before Cernunnos took you. ”
Aisling’s expression crumpled, and she lunged for him, crying almost silently as she hugged him. Bran hugged her back, wishing he could take her grief, ball it up, and set it aside so she wouldn’t have to feel it. “I know. I’m sorry. I wish Mom was still with us, too.”
Their mother would know what to do. She’d have answers. But she wasn’t here, and she never would be again, and Bran had to learn to be the leader of their coven and carry the mantle on his own now.
A warm hand settled on his shoulder, and Bran looked back at Cillian, who gave him a crooked little smile. “Let’s go home.”
Bran nodded, more than ready to leave the Otherworld behind.