Chapter 25 #2
Bran’s jaw was clenched, muscles in his neck tight with the strain. “Hopefully long enough for Scáthach to get Aisling’s voice back. But we have a bigger problem. Cernunnos is ripping up the forest from its roots.”
Cillian thought about the roots Damarus had summoned to wrap around their throats back in the Otherworld. If Cernunnos did the same here, he knew the Fae lord wouldn’t hesitate to break their necks.
The monster in front of them screamed its fury before it staggered away from the golden barrier.
Behind it, Seamus rose into view, sword dripping with black blood, his armor spattered with it.
His eyes snapped with fury when they met Cillian’s for an instant before the knight turned to attack the monster again.
Seamus drove it back, clearing the area around the front of the Shoppe.
The ground rumbled, moving in a way it never had before. For a split second, Cillian thought it was an earthquake. Then Bran swore, and when Cillian looked back, the grimoire’s pages were flipping over on their own, his fingers drawing another witchmark in the air over it.
“Can you keep the forest at bay?” Cillian asked.
“I’ll try.”
Cillian jerked back around, staring at the fight.
Niamh was easy to make out now, the lightning crackling around her arms illuminating her like a target.
Her magic was a threat that had fried one of the monsters, its smoking, burned corpse lying on the road.
She’d done it to watch Scáthach’s back as the other warrior fought in lockstep with Cernunnos, the both of them limned with magic.
Cillian’s eyes caught on the glowing sphere hanging from Cernunnos’ neck. Scáthach had been right. Cernunnos had brought Aisling’s voice with him, covetous like how Ainmire had been, always wanting to hold on to what they thought belonged to them.
The lights regrouped, and Seamus shouted at Niamh, who let loose another bolt of lightning at a monster with skin hanging off its ribs like tassels. The lightning only made it stagger but didn’t kill it, and the snarl it let out made the hair on the back of Cillian’s neck stand on end.
The monster lunged for Niamh, and she dodged, scrambling out of range, nearly into the jaws of another creature.
She ducked and rolled, her sword flashing with the motion, and barely missed the swipe of a claw.
Seamus was just as hemmed in, while Scáthach was still locked in her fight with Cernunnos.
Beyond them, in the trees, dozens of lights drifted their way, growing brighter.
Cillian wanted his rifle or sidearm but had neither.
He couldn’t join the Fae in their fight against the lights with a sword even if he had one, having no memory of ever holding one.
Bran was caught up in his magic to keep Cernunnos from using the forest itself against them.
Cillian had nothing other than the magic he had no idea how to consciously use and control in a fight.
Building an ice bridge was different than fighting against a Fae lord who had millennia of skill behind him while Cillian had nothing.
But Bran had said it was about intent, about bending Nature to his will, when Cillian had always believed something like that was impossible. The natural world wasn’t meant to be tamed, no matter how hard humanity tried. Eventually, the elements came calling.
And winter, it seemed, would always answer to him.
Cillian looked down at his hands, thinking of the ice that had appeared in moments of high emotion in his cell, on the Bone Breaker, and in that castle by the lake.
It was proof he couldn’t deny of his origins, even with a lie wrapped around his skin, so he let it go.
The tightness eased over his bones, and he drew in a breath, ribs not feeling so constricted anymore.
“Cillian?” Bran rasped behind him.
He flexed his hands, not needing a mirror this time to know he didn’t look human anymore. “They need help. Let me past the barrier.”
Fingers grabbed the back of his court coat, twisting the fabric. “No. Don’t go. You don’t know how to fight.”
He turned around, forcing Bran to let go. He met those gold-flecked hazel eyes and didn’t look away, didn’t try to hide. “You said it’s about intent, and I intend to get Aisling’s voice back.”
“Cillian—”
“Bran. Trust me.”
Bran worked his jaw, the hand gripping his grimoire white-knuckled. “The lights will try to kill you.”
“So don’t let them.”
Bran swallowed loudly. “Okay. I’ll open the circle.”
Aisling still clung to her brother, fear in her eyes, lips trembling with it. The geas on her throat had come to the surface, a hideous, malevolent black thing that didn’t belong on her skin.
Cillian turned his back on them and strode toward the edge of the circle. Bran’s magic was a warm presence in the air that cleaved a narrow way open for him. Cillian steeled himself and stepped out of the safety of the circle, keeping his eyes open even as he turned his focus inward.
One of the lights caught sight of him, twisting away from where Seamus was cutting through one of its brethren. Its head was that of a bull, bleeding out of its eye sockets as it lumbered toward him, mouth splitting open to let out a pair of curved fangs as thick as his forearm.
“Cillian!” Seamus yelled. “Get back!”
Cillian reached for that river of power inside him, drawing it forth. And maybe he couldn’t remember being the Winter Prince the Fae all thought he was, but he couldn’t deny how right it felt to let Nature in all its fury burst out of him.
Ice exploded away from his feet, covering the ground in seconds.
Chunks of it rose up to encase the monster, halting its forward charge mere feet from Cillian.
It hacked at the ice with clawed hands that couldn’t dislodge any of it.
Blue-white ice covered its body before finally wrapping around its head, freezing the monster in its place, turning it into an ice statue like those Fae soldiers in the wyrding, the light that limned it dying out.
The air lost its sluggish heat, temperature dropping.
Cillian’s breath puffed out in soft clouds as he reached for one of the monster’s iced-over arms. He wrapped his hand around the limb and used his newfound strength to break it off at the elbow, finding the ice had gone all the way through, leaving no rotten flesh behind.
He couldn’t think about how he’d killed it, how he’d intended to stop it and his magic had interpreted that into a permanent end.
All Cillian could do was direct his magic to the next monster lunging at him, winter pouring out of him with a ferocity he couldn’t deny.
Blue-white lines of magic opened up on his hands, cutting up his arms all the way to his shoulders.
It didn’t hurt, even though he thought it should, fingertips darkening to blue.
The ground jerked again beneath his feet, and Bran shouted a warning Cillian barely heard.
He kept his balance on the ice instinctively, magic humming through him, cold power at his fingertips.
Some of the trees across the road upended and crashed to the ground, roots rising.
Whether called by Cernunnos or Bran, Cillian couldn’t focus on them.
The only thing that mattered was getting Aisling’s voice back.
Scáthach wrenched herself back from Cernunnos’ reach, the sound of their glaives separating ringing in the air. She settled into a defensive crouch, not taking her eyes off Cernunnos, but her words were for Cillian. “You foolish child. This is not your fight.”
“Cernunnos came to my town, to my forest. He killed people I knew and stole Aisling’s voice,” Cillian growled. “How could it not be my fight?”
He flung his arms outward to the side, magic rushing away from him in a wave of winter cold and ice that bent to his will.
It coated the ground and the road around them, lashing at the lights until all the monsters became ice.
The ones in the forest were still a problem, but for now, Bran could focus on those while Cillian dealt with the Fae lord.
Cernunnos straightened to his full height, the reach of his antlers making him taller than Cillian. Magic danced in the air around the Fae lord, his glaive glowing with it. “You are not the prince you once were.”
“I don’t remember who I was, but I’m still me.”
“You are far too human now to survive.”
Cernunnos wrenched the earth apart beneath their feet, ice cracking as a fissure opened up.
Cillian lurched backward, somehow keeping his balance even as the heat of summer warred with winter all around them.
He willed the cold to stay, for the ice to not melt, the air around him crackling with magic that made him glow.
The glaive arcing through the air toward him was smacked away by Seamus’ sword as the knight threw himself between them.
“Don’t you dare,” Seamus snarled.
Ozone burned in the air as lightning streaked through every single ice statue left of the lights around them, shattering them all.
Niamh lowered her arm, hand clenched in a tight fist around flickering lightning.
Scáthach had put herself between Cernunnos and the forest, glaive held at the ready.
Cillian glanced over his shoulder, seeing Bran standing on the Shoppe’s porch, aglow with golden magic, the ground unmoving beneath their feet, the lights in the forest held at bay.
Cernunnos didn’t seem worried, merely amused. “You think you can win? Against me? The forest obeys me, not your witch. I will kill him the same way I killed his mother and take the bean sí for my own use.”
Cillian’s rage was fierce and cold, rising like snow drifts in a blizzard. The air went frigid, but he wasn’t affected by the cold. “You won’t touch Bran.”
Because Bran was his—had always been his—and Cillian knew in that moment he would kill anyone who tried to take Bran away from him.