Chapter 5
Orion
“Look at us. Just the guys.” Whispen sighs, resting his head on the top of his hand. “The gang back together.”
I glare at the pest. “I don’t know what you’re doing, but stop.”
“By the gods.” Kieran pinches the bridge of his nose. “Is he always like this?”
I lean across the table. Poor Kieran got stuck sitting beside Whispen, now in the form of a thirty-something Fae, that suspiciously looks like someone I once knew named Bloom.
“I have threatened to kill him,” I whisper.
“Yet he remains.”
“Because I cannot die.” Whispen leans over his pint of beer and inhales slowly before closing his eyes and sighing. “Did that once. Don’t recommend. Also, flame lord learned I cannot die when he tried to behead me.”
“Orion,” Finnian scolds, setting our next pints on the table.
“That’s not what happened.” I point at the damn ghost because now I’m convinced that is what a whisp is. “Tell the truth.”
He lazily looks at Finnian who takes his spot across the table from him. “That’s what happened.”
Finnian grabs his pint. “No more.”
“It’s my first,” he pouts.
Finnian points to the bartender. “Take it up with him.”
“Challenge accepted.” Whispen darts across the bar, shifting into a young boy again and sitting on the bar top only to glare at the bartender.
I watch for a moment as Donn leans against the bar, arms crossed and blinks slowly at Whispen. “He’s entertaining him.” I turn back to the group.
“Ash is going to kill us when he talks to her.” Kieran rubs his temples, snowflakes falling to the table.
Just her name and my chest tightens. A month without her voice and I still hear it in my sleep. Still wake up reaching for warmth that isn’t there.
I grab my pint and take a long, delicious pull, while pretending that didn’t just gut me.
“You think he will tell her everything?” Finnian questions, looking back at the bar.
Kieran laughs. “You truly believe he won’t?”
“Good point.” Finnian pauses. “At least he no longer speaks in riddles.”
Kieran, who is still massaging his temples, mumbles, “We should all feel so blessed.” Where he rubs his temples, snowflakes fall from his fingertips.
It used to be frost. Not snow. It would spread across the spaces like a fracturing window.
“Kieran,” I reach across the table, swiping up snowflakes that fell from his fingertips. “You’ve gone soft.”
He pauses, that icy stare turning glacial as he drops his hands to the table. “What did you say?”
My lips twitch.
Do I dare repeat that?
Finnian presses me back into my seat with a palm to my chest. “Perhaps we should focus on Ash? Yes.”
“Of course.” Now I’m smiling. Fully, wholeheartedly.
Maybe I shouldn’t. Oh, I know I shouldn’t.
But he’s snowing again. From his fucking chin.
Soft, I mouth.
“By the gods, Orion.” Finnian just barely gets out of the way when Kieran launches himself at me.
He hits me square in the chest, knocking us both over. My head hits the stone floor and my teeth smack together.
But just as soon as it begins, it ends.
It’s jarring. One moment I’m on my ass and the next my ear stings like hell. And just when I was looking forward to a good fight. I’ve been itching for a good fight. The borderland creatures barely know how to throw a punch.
“Ouch.” I swat at the hand gripping my ear.
“I do so suggest you try to take a swing at me again.”
I do not swing again as I blink at The Morrigan. Uh oh.
“Oh, hello there.” I glance at Kieran who is also being held by the points of his ears by another… “Morrigan.”
“No, not The Morrigan.” Finnian steps into the fray, a minute too late if you ask me. “Macha. Her sister.”
“Mock-ah?” I repeat.
The Morrigan lookalike drops Kieran’s ear and nods at me. It’s uncanny. She looks exactly like the Morrigan. Both tall, ink-black hair. Both wearing crow feathers. Though where Morrigan’s eyes are silver, Macha’s are black. From the sclera to the iris. Black.
The Morrigan? I’d joke with, and maybe that’s a mistake I often make. But this goddess? Never.
The Morrigan often wears battle leathers. This woman wears a dress that drapes over her body like a living cobweb. And she’s slowly walking closer and closer to me.
She stands before me but a head shorter. And those pitch black eyes hold mine. They flicker only to Morrigan for a moment then back at me.
I swallow hard. This woman is wild in a way that darkness fears.
“Orion,” she says through pouty lips. “I owe you a life debt.”
A burning spears through my gut like a giant fish hook, yanking through me and back toward this goddess.
Who apparently owes me a life debt. “What?” I question, even though I can feel the burning strike at my wrist.
Her lips twitch. “Do you not remember saving me?”
“I…” Frowning, I roll back through my memories. “The settlements.” My eyes widen.
“You saved me from a great death.”
“I had no idea who I saved,” I muse aloud.
“You wouldn’t,” she says and her voice sounds like an echo of multiple voices. Goddesses are terrifying. “I had to heal. To wake. Then to take back my power long held dormant.”
What the fuck am I supposed to say to that?
“Come.” Morrigan breaks the strange trance her sister holds over me.
“Why are you two here?” Kieran questions while also taking a full step back when Macha looks at him.
I do not blame him.
“Because. We must get Ash.” The Morrigan says it so simply.
As though we haven’t tried. As though we haven’t spent every single day of the last month trying to do just that. And if it weren’t for the terrifying goddess staring at us I might just say all that.
But she freaks me out so I push past all of them before she smites me with her demon eyes, and plop down at the bar beside Whispen. At least he knows what we’ve been through.
“There, there, big guy.” The little blue hellion pats my head. “She doesn’t know you failed so many spectacular times.”
Now I know how Kieran feels.
“Pint.” I ignore the demon and speak to Donn. “Put me out of my misery.”
He just grunts and pours the beer.
“You should hear what she has to say.” Finnian slides onto the stool beside me, forcibly spinning me around which is a great task.
Kieran stands across the room, his head tilted and his forehead wrinkled.
Morrigan and Macha are moving toward us.
Together they make the ground feel like it’s trembling. It isn’t. They’re just that powerful.
“Okay.” I run my tongue along my teeth as I reach back for my pint and take a long sip.
“Ash is not bound to the Unseelie Court,” The Morrigan begins.
“Yes, she threw out a suggestion to the debt and the magic laughed merrily and said yes.” I swallow the dregs of my pint, my head finally swimming enough to steal the ache that hasn’t left my heart in a month.
The ache of her voice I can’t hear. Her laugh I can’t earn.
The weight of her beside me that I reach for every morning and find nothing but cold air.
I finally look at my wrist where Ash’s green bond wristlet glows. Then to the guardian tattoos that writhe beneath my skin.
Calm. Unworried. If it weren’t for that I’d have lost my mind by now.
“Her life debt is owed to me.” Kieran joins us. “Father exiled me.”
“And you believe that enough to keep you away,” Morrigan taunts.
“We spent days,” I seethe. A little drunkenly, I admit. “Days trying to get into the Unseelie Court. Moros has us all but blocked. We cannot get through the warding.” Defeated. I feel utterly defeated.
Macha turns to Kieran. “Your queen owes you a life debt and yet you do not burn courts to save her.”
Kieran’s jaw drops. “That isn’t…”
She moves onto me. “You call yourself Wild Fae and yet you wear chains of your own creation. Willingly.” She shakes her head disappointedly at me.
I want to argue. Tell her she doesn’t know what we’ve tried. What I’ve sacrificed.
But the words rot in my throat.
Because she’s not wrong.
Finnian’s jaw is tight. He won’t even look at Kieran.
And I remember the fight three weeks ago. The one where Finnian said if Kieran had just told us about his father’s plan sooner, we could have stopped this. The one where Kieran said nothing back, which was worse than any argument. We should have told her who actually holds the Treasures.
We haven’t talked about it since.
Some wounds you just let fester.
I’ve known it for weeks. I’ve been waiting for permission to burn it all down when I should have already been striking the match.
And that burns worse than anything she could have done to me.
She turns to Finnian. “No laws exist that you can exploit. Gods are the law. When did you forget that?”
Morrigan lets out a slight laugh before she catches herself. “Macha.” She dares to reach for her evil twin. “They are but babes.”
“Now come on.”
“Excuse me.”
“I’ll have you know…”
“That does explain much.” Macha sighs, eying the three of us up. “I am unsure you are up to saving my niece.”
“Niece?” Finnian is the first to pick up on that key word.
My mate. A goddess. Divine blood running through her veins this whole time.
Awe shifts in my chest. Or terror. Hard to tell with goddesses.
But underneath both?
Of course.
Of course she’s divine. I’ve known it since the first time she looked at me and something old and wild in my blood said her. The Wild Court doesn’t bow to anyone.
We bowed to her.
Never mind this goddess just said I’m not up to the task of finding my mate.
I am not letting it slide. I’m putting a pin in it.
Until someone else brings it up.
Seriously she scares me.
“She is a goddess.” Kieran fills in the gaps.
“Everything Tadhg said was true.” I’m glad I’m sitting because I would have fallen back on my ass.
“How do we get to the court? How do we get to her?” Kieran questions. “You must have a plan if you’re gaining enjoyment out of torturing us.”
“A back door,” Morrigan states evenly.
“There are no such doors.” Kieran laughs.
“Are you so blind as to overlook the Dark Forest?” Macha smirks.
“You cannot be serious.” I laugh, this time her plan searing away my buzz from its absolute absurdity. “Do you not know what dwells in the borderlands? Especially the Dark Forest?”
“Of course I know.” Macha tilts her head. “I was there when Badb breathed life unto them.”
Finnian whistles low. I was not prepared for that answer. “That confirms it.” I slap my hand on the bar top. “You are terrifying.”
“I know.”
“You want to simply walk through the borderlands and into the Dark Forest and toward the castle.” Kieran begins to pace. “Even if we get through the forest and toward the castle it’s open land, they will see us.”
Morrigan and Macha look at each other, before looking back at Kieran who didn’t notice. But I did. I saw.
“We have a plan,” Morrigan evades.
“When was the last you entered the Dark Forest?” Finnian asks.
“What does it matter?” Macha questions.
But it is Morrigan I want and she looks thoughtful. “The forest isn’t what it was,” I say as I cross my arms. “Even a couple hundred years ago it was far more hospitable.”
“It was never designed to be hospitable,” Macha counters. “But go on.”
“Now the puddles swallow you whole. The trees move and block the paths. Don’t even let me get on about the rodents.” I shudder. “But it is the Dark Forest dwellers that have gotten,” this time I share a look with Whispen. “Brave.”
“Explain,” she demands.
“They attack. And they attack at the slightest provocation,” Whispen supplies. “Very terrifying. White creatures with beady eyes and gaping mouths. And arms that drag behind them.”
Macha smiles. “Go on.”
“And then there’s the ones who live in the trees.” Whispen does indeed go on. “But that’s not all. The exiles now live in peace with the dwellers.”
Macha frowns. “Noted.”
“So there may be a few bumps on the path.” Morrigan shrugs. “It could be worse.”
Finnian laughs at that, though it sounds more of a scoff. “All right, tell me more of this insane plan of yours.”
“Soon,” Morrigan hedges.
“When do you plan to go?” Finnian asks.
“You three leave in a few days, maybe more,” Morrigan answers. “I have but one more errand we must run first.”
They do it again. They look at each other. I point to them both. “You two are up to something.” I squint at them. “I don’t like it. What are these errands?”
“We need another.”
“Another what?” Kieran presses.
“You want to wake another god.” Finnian, again, figures it out. This is why he is the smart one.
“Next round,” Donn interrupts, slamming pints on the table. “On me.”
I spin around first to grab one. “He speaks!”
Donn leans over the bar, his eyes brown and warm and familiar somehow, though I only see him on the rare occasions I’m out this far. But there is something else there.
For a moment I swear I see Tadhg imposed over his features. As though Donn was the glamour all along.
Then it’s gone.
I set my pint down and rub my eyes, laughing because Donn is still staring at me.
“Orion,” Donn says, leaning forward a little more. “We are going to need to get something from you.”
“Whatever it is you need, I am at your service.” My words feel slurred more than they should. I glare at the glass.
Did he… No, he wouldn’t drug me.
“I was hoping you’d say that.” Donn smirks and again he flashes between Tadhg and himself. “This is going to hurt.”
“What?”
That’s when he slams his hand inside my chest.
Fire. Ice. Both at once.
My vision goes white and I can’t breathe, can’t think, can’t—