Chapter 8
Kieran
The world erupts into chaos as Donn reaches inside of Orion. His hand spears through flesh as though it’s made of nothing more than suggestion.
Shadows explode from my feet before snowflakes drift from my clenched fists, soft, delicate, utterly humiliating.
Macha’s palm lands on my chest. Not a push. A wall.
Those black eyes see through every mask I’ve ever worn. Probably noticed the snow, too.
Wonderful.
“Move.” The word comes out colder than I intend. Which is saying something, given that I’m apparently a walking weather event now.
“No.”
“He is torturing him!” I bellow, ready to move her out of the way.
It is then I’m reminded of why the ancients are revered in their power.
The air leaves my lungs before I register movement. Stone. Cold against my spine. Stars behind my eyes as I stare at the ceiling.
Macha’s boot settles on my sternum with the casual weight of someone who has flattened kings.
I raise my hands. Not surrender. Retreat.
There’s a difference. Even if it doesn’t look like one.
“The Cauldron is required.” She says it like she’s explaining something to a particularly slow child.
“How?” I wheeze.
“You hold the Spear. The clever one holds the Crown.” She lowers herself before me, those void-black eyes inches from mine. “But the Cauldron. We require it.”
“You could have asked!” Orion screams from somewhere behind her.
I shove the goddess aside, she lets me, which is somehow more insulting, and reach Orion just as Finnian does. The Morrigan releases him with a look that says she was merely humoring his struggle.
“By the gods.” I vault the bar, grabbing towels. Donn stands there holding the damned Cauldron in bloody hands. If it weren’t the Cauldron of Life, I’d think it a heart.
The bond at my wrist pulses. Not Orion, Ash. Faint. Distant. Like she’s dreaming of us while we fall apart without her.
I shove the thought down and press towels against Orion’s burning flesh, sending cold through the rags to slow the bleeding. Focus on what’s in front of you.
“What were you thinking?” Finnian’s voice cracks. His hands hover over Orion’s chest like he’s forgotten how to help.
Donn doesn’t react. Just stands there, bloody hands cradling that damned Cauldron like a newborn.
“Explain.” I don’t ask. I don’t need to. “Now.”
Orion’s eyes find mine, his lip curled in a snarl. “He took the Cauldron.” He finally sits back on the stool. He’s a beast of a man and the stool nearly topples beneath him, though he doesn’t lose his balance. Just stares blankly at Donn with murder in his eyes.
“Orion.” I press the rags harder, causing him to hiss. “Focus.”
“Dagda,” he breathes. Not in reverence. No, he’s furious. “Tadhg. The bartender is the fucking Dagda.”
“What are you trying to say?” Finnian grabs more rags, though his hands shake.
“Why would you pull the Treasure from him knowing he cannot heal the wound?” The temperature drops. Frost crackles across the bar top before I can stop it. At least it’s not slushy snow. “We cannot heal this wound. Only the Cauldron can, and you’ve just ripped it from the man who carried it.”
Donn finally blinks out of whatever trance held him. He sets the bloody Cauldron down and reaches for more rags, tossing them across the counter along with a vial. “This will help.”
“Someone explain what the fuck just happened.” Finnian is pulling at his hair. I don’t blame him.
“You aren’t Donn. Never were.” Orion continues his stare down, speaking only to the man behind the counter. “Tadhg.” He mocks the name. “A bartender.” His laugh holds no humor. “The god who forged the Cauldron of Life, pouring pints in a borderland tavern.”
“You’re angry,” Donn replies, his eyes casually flicking to me then Orion.
“Damn fucking straight I’m angry.” Flames leap from the tips of Orion’s hair to the bar top. Donn extinguishes them with a lazy wave. “How many of you chose not to forget, huh? How many of you sat around and watched what was happening to our people? To her?”
“Let us explain.” The Morrigan reaches for the Cauldron and lifts it, uncaring of the blood.
“Someone needs to.”
“Long ago, the Tuatha lived in this realm peacefully.” Morrigan’s fingers trace the Cauldron’s rim. “Until we didn’t.”
“The end,” Whispen supplies from somewhere behind me.
I’d forgotten he existed. Small mercies are rare; I’ll take them.
“No, my silly wisp.” Morrigan’s voice softens. “The gods didn’t just lose empathy. They lost the ability to feel.”
Snowflakes drift from my fingertips onto the bar. I watch them melt against the wood.
I know something about losing the ability to feel. About choosing numbness over the alternative.
I also know it doesn’t work.
“We were all meant to sip from the Cauldron,” Macha says, joining her sister. “And yet, we did not.”
“Few of us remained awake. Sleeping in shifts to preserve what sanity we had left.”
“Why? Why sleep at all?” Finnian asks.
“Why should I choose the alternative?”
“Which is?”
“Death.” Morrigan states it simply. “We wake to live again. Experience life and love. To watch our descendants grow and thrive.”
“It is better they believed us as fables,” Macha supplies.
“As myths,” Dagda adds. “I remained at the Academy as Tadhg.”
“And I the wilds,” Morrigan says.
“And the third?” Orion grabs the rags and tosses them in the corner of the bar. His skin is angry and torn, bone showing as it slowly tries to knit itself back together. “You said you sleep in shifts. So who’s the third?”
Finnian shoves the vial down his throat before he can argue.
“My son, Aengus,” Dagda says. “You may know him as Veil.”
“The nomad? With blue hair?” Of course. He wanders between the courts. Always somehow around. Always watching.
“And now we must wake the rest.” Morrigan sets the Cauldron down.
“It couldn’t wait until morning?” Orion is still vibrating with fury. I would be, too, if the god who created my artifact ripped it from my chest without so much as a warning.
“Don’t worry,” Dagda says. “It is still bound to you. But we must go.”
“Where?” Orion pushes the word through his teeth.
“To wake our sister,” Morrigan supplies.
That gets all of our attention.
“Badb,” I whisper. “You’re going to war.”
“No.” Morrigan grabs the Cauldron. “I’m going to end it. And you need her to survive the forest.”
We watch silently as she and Macha back away toward the door.
“Stay.” Dagda’s voice carries the weight of mountains. “Go nowhere until we return.”
“We aren’t children for you to scold.” The words come out wrapped in winter. Shadows curl at my feet. Snowflakes drift from my shoulders like I’m shedding skin.
Pathetic.
“If you weren’t children to be scolded, we wouldn’t be in the position we are.”
I hate that he’s right.
He walks out before I can respond. Probably wise. I’m not certain what I would have done if he’d stayed, though given my current magical state, I’d likely have buried him in a gentle flurry. Devastating really.
Morrigan follows without a backward glance.
But Macha pauses. Those void-black eyes find mine as she crosses back to me, pressing her palm to my chest exactly where the bond lives beneath my shirt.
“It would do well for you to remember.” Her voice carries harmonics that make my teeth ache. “Her debt is to you. No one else. Not your father. Not the courts. You.”
She drops her hand and walks out.
The bond pulses. Silver-blue and red, orbiting each other like binary stars.
Ash bound herself to me to protect me. Sacrificed her freedom so my father would never discover the Spear. And I’ve been sitting in a tavern while she rots in his court.
The shame of it settles in my chest like a stone I can’t cough up.
“I need rest.” I push away from the bar on legs that feel like they belong to someone else. “There’s a second floor with rooms. I suggest you each choose one.”
“That’s it? We just wait here for them?” Finnian asks.
“Yes.”
“Bollocks.” Orion slams a fist on the bar top.
“The three of them just demonstrated that we are vastly outpowered.” I stare at the entrance, still feeling the echo of divine magic pressing against my chest. “Whatever they have planned, we should shut up and listen.”
“Then we should rest.” Finnian’s tone is clipped. Professional. The voice he uses when he’s holding something back. “Go. I’ll lock the bar.”
He doesn’t look at me.
He hasn’t looked at me in three weeks. Not really. Not the way he used to, like I was someone worth seeing.
I could say something. Should say something.
Instead I push through the door to the second floor.
Some silences are easier to carry than the words that would break them.
My father taking Ash and exiling the three of us has left a bit of a stain on our relationship.
I look around at the tavern. The old frames of sketches on the stairs leading up. The worn wood. The smell of ale and something older, earthier.
It’s familiar in a way I can’t name. Perhaps because the borderlands have always existed between things. Between courts. Between worlds.
Between who I was and who she’s made me.
I push through the door to the second floor and sink onto a dusty bed then drop my head into my hands.
Everything has gone so absolutely, fundamentally wrong.
I should be there. In my father’s court, playing the role I’ve perfected for two centuries, the cold prince, the dutiful son, the monster they need me to be.
I should be teaching Ash to navigate the Trial of Survival I know they’ll force on her.
Should be standing between her and every blade my father will aim at her throat.
Instead I’m exiled. Useless. And the only one protecting her is Kestra.
My sister. Who walked back into the court that nearly destroyed her. For a woman she barely knows.
For me.
The bond pulses at my wrist. Faint. Steady. Ash is dreaming, I can feel it. The connection goes soft when she sleeps, like she’s finally stopped fighting long enough to let me in.
Snowflakes drift from my fingertips onto the dusty bedspread. I watch them melt.
Six months ago, this would have been frost. Sharp. Controlled. Lethal.
Now I’m snowing on furniture like a lovesick fool.
Orion would never let me live it down if he saw.
I press my thumb against the silver-blue mark and let myself remember.
The way she looked at me in my quarters. Not afraid. Never afraid. She’d laughed at something I said, I don’t even remember what, and then stopped mid-breath. Stared at me like she’d just noticed I was bleeding.
“What?” I’d asked.
“Nothing.” But she kept looking. “You just...you have a nice laugh. I didn’t know you could do that.”
No one had ever said that to me. In three centuries, no one had ever noticed.
The sound of my name in her mouth when she stopped pretending she didn’t want me. Kieran. Not my title. Not my lineage. Just the name my mother gave me before my father taught me it was a weakness.
The exact temperature of her skin when I finally let myself touch her. Warmer than I expected. Warmer than I deserved.
I don’t deserve her.
But I can hope like hell I dream of her anyway.