Chapter 25 #3
The smile slipped a little on Cernunnos’ face.
In the forest, the lights screamed a warning or a protest, Cillian couldn’t tell which.
But there was ice everywhere, their area in the world covered by his magic, winter a living thing he commanded.
It burned through him, a wealth of power he’d never known existed before—in this life, at least.
If he thought about it too long, it might start to feel familiar, and he didn’t know if he wanted that.
Cillian stepped around Seamus, who didn’t try to hold him back, merely slotted into a spot on his left, guarding his back.
Cernunnos stood his ground, summer fighting against winter, clawing out a patch of clear ground against the ice covering everything.
It wasn’t much, and that realization settled Cillian somehow.
Like maybe, despite Cernunnos’ power and intent, Cillian’s determination could outlast the Fae lord’s.
“You think because you know the truth now that you can best me?” Cernunnos asked silkily, hand raised, magic pooling in his palm. He was haloed with it, the glass sphere hanging from his neck pulsating softly.
“I think you’re in my world, and you don’t belong here.”
It was, perhaps, the cruelest thing he could say to a Fae—that their historical homeland was no longer theirs and never would be. Pelham might not be any town in Ireland, but the land was the same, cleaved apart geological ages ago, a long-lost memory of what the Fae would never live upon again.
And maybe Cernunnos wanted Aisling to take the Dagda’s crown, but maybe—just maybe—he wanted it for the world here. Because the Fae lord hadn’t said where he wanted to rule, just that he’d have no king. And the Fae couldn’t lie but that didn’t mean their words were ever true.
“This isn’t your home anymore. It never will be again,” Cillian said, utterly truthful, utterly cruel. “It’s forgotten you and your kind, but I’ve walked this forest for years, and it knows me.”
Cillian called to Nature, and it answered, ice breaking through Cernunnos’ defenses there on the road with savage intensity.
Moonlight reflected off the white landscape spreading all around them and the piles of ice that were all that remained of the lights from the initial attack.
Pelham was always beautiful in winter, even when facing off against a nightmare.
Summer heat burned where his magic and Cernunnos’ met, the air shimmering with it.
Ice melted, then reformed in a vicious unending cycle, powered by Cillian’s will and intent.
Cillian let his magic wash through him, let it buoy him as he dragged himself forward against air that was suddenly so heavy, the ground shaking once more beneath his feet.
Ice cracked around them, loud like a crescendo, and the lights in the forest screamed in an unholy way, their monstrous forms outlined between the trees.
Cernunnos tossed his head back, one arm thrust forward, fingers more like claws in that moment and glowing with magic.
His beautiful face twisted with rage, with disdain, but he hadn’t yet learned to fear Cillian.
Roots broke through the asphalt, and somewhere in the forest, another tree fell.
Behind Cillian, Bran started speaking in a language that might have been Irish once upon a time—so, so similar to the Fae language—but the words were full of magic that cut through the roots that would have strangled them on Cernunnos’ command.
The bit of earth around Cernunnos shrank, winter clawing ever closer.
Cillian forced the ice to bend to his will, lashing at Cernunnos with blue-white shards that could have pierced skin if they’d found their target.
The wind picked up suddenly, howling over the forest like a mad thing, bringing with it enough snow to blanket every leaf in the surrounding trees, pulled from the very air itself.
Through the twisting flurries, he could see the lights growing brighter, coming closer, fighting back against Bran’s magic.
Cernunnos snarled, lips peeled back, teeth bared in a way that made him look like an animal now. But he wasn’t the predator here, only the prey, and Cillian didn’t let himself think about what he was doing, to second-guess himself, as he lunged forward into the circle of summer.
Heat crashed into him, a shock to his system, but he didn’t let it distract him from his goal.
Cillian reached through the ice shards keeping summer at bay to wrap his blue-tipped fingers around that tiny, delicate sphere hanging from Cernunnos’ neck right as an explosion of magic sent him flying backward.
He didn’t care how much it hurt.
He got what he wanted.
Cillian slammed into a body instead of the ground, Seamus breaking his fall with a loud grunt.
They slid over ice, and it only took a thought from Cillian for it to rise up like a wall, stopping their motion.
Niamh slid in front of them, sword raised and lightning crackling in her other fist to guard them.
Cernunnos threw back his head and roared, his body twisting, bulging, expanding outward. His clothes and boots melted away from his body, as if they hadn’t been real. His skin split, the bones in his face breaking into something new.
What rose out of the human form was something taller than the two-story Shoppe, a macabre deer-shaped head in place of Cernunnos’ other visage.
His antlers had grown, protruding high over the three glowing eyes lined up across his face.
Leaves grew from the antlers, blue flowers tangled in them, as the green of his magic dripped down his furred skin, burning in the air.
The Fae lord stepped forward, his legs ending in cloven hooves now, and the ice beneath them shattered, the sound like bullets releasing from a gun.
Scáthach planted herself by Niamh, glaive pointed at Cernunnos’ hulking form. “Leave this place. The forest does not want you.”
Cernunnos laughed, a raspy thing that sounded like an animal. “I will take what is owed to me and leave you all to rot.”
Cillian rolled off Seamus, and they both scrambled to their feet. He looked back at Bran and Aisling on the Shoppe’s porch, both of them staring at him with equal parts fear and horror on their faces, the geas for silence a toxic shadow on Aisling’s throat.
She needed her voice.
He was going to give it to her.
Cillian dropped the glass sphere to the ground and slammed his foot over it, shattering the glass.
Light flashed, golden and bright, before streaking away from the broken prison through the air and back to Aisling.
She swallowed her voice with a loud, indrawn breath, the geas disintegrating in her throat.
Then she doubled over, nearly falling, and would have if Bran hadn’t caught her as her skin split with magic, peeling back in the same way it had for Cillian to reveal the Fae beneath the human veneer.
Aisling opened her mouth and screamed.
Cillian slapped his hands over his ears as the high-pitched, furiously haunting sound reverberated through the night air, drowning out the world.
It tore through everyone and everything, magic in its own right, clawing at his skin.
A bean sí’s scream was meant to herald the dead and dying, but in this instance, it killed as well.
All the lights in the forest flickered before going out, leaving only shadows behind.
The scream faded, tapering off, until only silence reigned. Cillian’s ears rang with it, and while it was difficult to hear anything over the pulse of his own heartbeat, he heard Cernunnos easily enough.
“I will kill you, son of winter,” Cernunnos said in that terrible, monstrous voice of his.
“He is a son of war,” another voice replied, making Cillian freeze. “And you will not touch him.”
Cillian lurched around, staring wide-eyed at where his mother stood on the iced-over road, Jupiter perched proudly on her shoulder.
She was in sneakers and scrubs, as if she’d left the emergency room in Amherst in a rush and hadn’t bothered to find time to change.
Her long black hair fell loose down her back, drifting a bit in the now sluggish wind, her entire being haloed in soft, bone-white light.
“Mom?” Cillian croaked.
His mother took a step forward, and Cernunnos—Cernunnos took a step back, that spot of summer drawing in tight around him. He raised himself to his full height, but Cillian’s mother didn’t seem cowed in the least.
“Mórrígan,” Cernunnos said after a moment of tense silence. “Is this where you have hidden yourself all these years? Amongst the iron and the enemy?”
“You seem to have forgotten your place, Cernunnos. It is not here,” his mother said in a cold, cold voice that echoed oddly between them.
Cillian thought, for a moment, that Cernunnos would try to strike his mother down. The Fae lord seemed to want to. Instead, he bowed his head, antlers dipping, the leaves and flowers there swaying with the motion. “My queen.”
Then he straightened and walked into the forest without looking back, letting the trees and the darkness swallow him up.
Cillian didn’t move—couldn’t move—just kept staring at his mother. Scáthach spun her glaive around, digging the metal-shod butt into the ice, her voice breaking the eerie silence. “It’s about time you showed up.”
Niamh made a strangled sort of sound that eventually became words. “We thought you lost to the wyrding years ago, Mórrígan.”
“One cannot be lost if you willingly leave,” his mother said.
Jupiter cawed and launched herself into the air, flying toward the Shoppe.
His mother came to him then, striding across the ice with an otherworldly ease, never sliding once.
When she reached him, her dark gray eyes searched his for a second before she drew him into a tight hug. “I have missed seeing you like this.”
Cillian squeezed his eyes shut, questions tumbling through his mind, but they would have to wait. He let out a ragged breath, sinking into the comfort she’d always given him as a child and as a man. “How did you know we were back?”
“I came into town after my shift ended early to speak with Mac. I was at his home when he called me after he dropped you off here. I came as fast as I could.” She pulled back, cupping his face. “You are all right?”
He let out a tired sort of laugh. “I don’t know.”
“Hm.” She looked over his shoulder before letting him go. “Hello, Bran.”
“Hello,” Bran said, sounding wary.
Cillian turned toward him, drawn like a magnet to the other man.
Bran’s grimoire was closed and tucked under one arm, Aisling held close with the other.
Her face had a more delicate look to it now, sharply pointed ears poking up through her white-blonde hair.
She was clearly Fae, had probably always been so, wrapped up in a glamour the same way he’d been. And like him, she was loved by a witch.
Bran didn’t pull away when Cillian stepped close to kiss him, and Cillian didn’t want to ever let him go. “You’re okay?”
“I have a raging headache, but yeah, I’m okay. I’m more worried about Aisling,” Bran said.
“My throat hurts,” Aisling piped up, wrinkling her nose at him. “I want ice cream.”
Her voice startled Cillian, but then he smiled at her. “You can talk again.”
“Yeah, it worked. I don’t need to write everything down anymore.”
“That’s great.”
Bran rubbed at her upper arm. “What now?”
Cillian took in the ice and snow that covered the land all around and the Shoppe with its boarded-up windows. The light from magic still spilling out of it was a warm and welcoming glow. “Let’s get inside. I think we all need to talk.”
He looked over at his mother when he spoke, and she didn’t seem surprised or unhappy about his request. She merely nodded, a faint, sad smile curving across her mouth. “Yes, I think it’s about time we did that.”
She strode toward the Shoppe, the other Fae following her. A knot of complicated emotion settled in Cillian’s chest as he watched her go, but the one thread cutting through it all that made sense and always would was his love for Bran. “You’re staying?”
A soft look came to Bran’s eyes, the gold flecks from his magic gone. “It’s my Shoppe. Of course I’m staying. I’m not going anywhere. Not without you.”
After everything they’d gone through over the last week or so in the Otherworld and the two whole months that had seemingly passed here at home, that was all the promise Cillian needed.
That Bran would stay.