Chapter 38
Ash
The thing about war goddesses?
They give zero fucks. Quite literally, about anything. Including the need for sleep.
One minute I’m wrapped between two furnace-hot bodies, dreaming of pretzels and Green Lane and my cousins walking toward me through summer haze. The next minute I’m sitting on the cold tavern floor, yanked out of sleep like a fish on a hook.
My brain takes a solid three seconds to catch up with my body. Warm bed. Cold floor. Mates. Gone.
Not great.
A salt circle surrounds me. Herbs scattered at the edges, rosemary, by the smell of it. And three goddesses standing at equidistant points like they’re about to summon something unpleasant.
Which, knowing my luck, they probably are.
Oh, and I’m still naked.
“I don’t like where this is going.” I lean back on my heels, glaring at the three of them. “Nope. I don’t like this at all.”
“No one likes the things they’re obligated to do,” Macha states. Her black eyes reflect nothing. Not the firelight, not the candles, not any sign that she gives a single solitary shit about my opinion.
Morrigan is in front of me. Badb to my right. Macha to my left. Aside from looking eerily alike, Morrigan is the only one whose eyes aren’t pure obsidian. Hers hold that silver-grey that makes her almost approachable.
Almost.
Then they begin to whisper.
The sound isn’t language. Not really. It’s older than language, syllables that scrape against my eardrums. Covering my ears does absolutely nothing.
“Let’s not.” I settle back, resigned to the fact that this is happening whether I want it to or not. “Morrigan.”
But she isn’t listening to me. None of them are. They’re focused inward, on whatever ancient bullshit they’re channeling, not giving a single fuck that they are actually freaking me out.
Never trust a goddess. Even one who claims to be your fairy godmother.
I stand slowly, examining the circle. Just salt. White and fine. I swipe my finger through the herbs scattered on the floor.
“Rosemary?” I frown. Memory and protection. Classic.
I test the barrier carefully. It pushes back. Just a fraction. Just a bit. Like pressing against a tube of water. Resistant but not solid.
I could walk through it. Probably.
But I’m not sure what it would cost me.
And their voices rise. Louder. Louder.
The whispers have become a chant. The chant has become something that vibrates in my chest cavity like a second heartbeat.
“Morrigan?” I try again.
No answer.
This is not looking good for me.
I’m not afraid. Not really. Morrigan will only do to me what she thinks is best.
Right?
There’s a strange part of me that doubts my faith in her. Sure, she raised me as a babe. Wove glamour so deep into my essence that I forgot I was ever anything but human.
But would she hurt me?
“Dagda needs to make BBQ sauce,” I announce to no one, glancing toward the dark kitchen. No large father god there. Just shadows and silence and the growing sense that I’m about to be very, very sorry I didn’t wake up screaming.
They’re still ignoring me.
That’s when I feel it.
A tingle that starts in my toes. Working up slowly. Calves, knees, thighs. And with it, a smoky haze that bubbles up inside the salt circle. Not coming from outside. Coming from me.
True panic tries to weasel its way inside. My heart rate spikes. My palms go slick.
I blow out a breath and swallow it down. Panic is a luxury. Panic gets you killed.
The goddesses are worthless right now. Can’t rely on them. So maybe magic. I reach for that wild thing inside me, the thorns, the power, the green-gold light that’s been growing stronger every day.
And find...nothing.
“What the fuck?” I snap my hands out, fully expecting thorns to spiral from my skin.
Nothing.
I try again. Reach for the wild thing inside me, the green-gold light, the power that’s been growing stronger every day.
Nothing. Like reaching for a limb that’s been amputated.
The salt circle. Oh, these bitches are going to pay for this.
“Morrigan!” I yell now, stepping toward her. “Morrigan!”
Her eyes are turning. Not black like her sisters. Something far creepier. Whitish-grey. Corpse white.
I punch the barrier.
It’s no longer fluid. It’s solid. Glass-hard and thrumming with power that tastes like ancient graves on my tongue.
They’ve trapped me in a Faerie ring without magic. These bitches.
“Let me out!” I bang against the barrier with both fists. “I swear to every god in every realm, I’m never trusting you again!”
No reaction.
Maybe I’m dreaming. I pinch myself hard enough to bruise.
Nope. Alive. Unfortunately.
“You told me they couldn’t do this,” I remind her, slamming my palm against the invisible wall. “You said, back at the trial, you said forced removal of essence-deep concealment can destroy the bearer! You said they came within heartbeats of killing me!”
Morrigan blinks at me. For a moment, just a moment, I think she’s going to explain. Going to tell me what the hell is happening.
Then she smiles.
And doubles down.
The chanting intensifies. The smoky haze inside the circle thickens until I can barely see. And the tingling in my legs becomes burning.
“No.” I back toward the center of the circle. “No, no, no—”
It hits like lightning made of liquid fire.
The same sensation from the trial. The exact same. Seelie light tearing at my skin, Unseelie shadows clawing at my bones, Wild magic burrowing into my essence with the force of trees growing through stone.
Except this time it’s not three courts.
It’s three goddesses.
And it’s so much worse.
I scream.
Not a battle cry. Not a defiant roar. Just pain.
Pure, animal, ripped from somewhere deeper than my throat.
The sound tears out of me involuntarily as the magic tries to peel back layers of my identity.
Not just glamour. Me. They’re trying to separate who I am from who I was made to be, and the seams are fused.
There are no seams.
The glamour isn’t a mask I’m wearing. It’s my skin.
“Stop!” The word comes out broken, barely human. “It’s part of me now—”
The chanting falters.
Through the haze of agony, I see Morrigan’s expression shift. Confusion bleeding through the storm-grey of her eyes. Her sisters exchange a glance that speaks volumes.
They didn’t expect this.
“The weaving has...” Badb’s voice carries uncertainty for the first time. “It’s integrated. Completely.”
“That’s not possible.” Macha’s black eyes narrow. “She cast it. She should be able to—”
“I can’t.” Morrigan’s voice is barely a whisper. “It’s not mine anymore.”
The chanting stops.
But the damage is done.
I collapse to my knees as the magic releases me, gasping for air that tastes like copper and smoke. My skin is on fire. My bones feel like they’ve been rearranged and put back wrong. There’s blood in my mouth. I must have bitten my tongue. And my hands won’t stop shaking.
Morrigan kneels outside the circle. Her silver eyes hold something I’ve never seen before.
Fear.
That’s...not reassuring. When the goddess of death and battle looks scared, you know you’re properly fucked.
“Ash.” Her voice is gentle now. Maternal. The voice she probably used when I was three years old and crying in a hammock beneath stars she was naming just for me. “The glamour must come off. Do you understand? It must. If you face the courts with it still clinging to your essence—”
“Then take it off yourself.” I spit blood onto the salt. “Oh wait. You can’t. Because it’s mine now.”
“I wove it into you as an infant.” She presses her hand against the barrier, and I see her fingers tremble. The Morrigan. Trembling. “Twenty-eight years of survival magic, designed to make you forget what you are. I thought, I was certain I could unweave what I created.”
“You were wrong.”
“Yes.” The admission costs her something. “I was wrong.”
I laugh. It comes out cracked and wrong, more sob than sound, and it hurts my throat where the screaming scraped it raw. “So what now? You keep trying until you kill me? Because that worked out so well for the courts at my trial.”
“No.” She stands. Her expression hardens into something ancient and terrible. “We find another way.”
“Great. Fantastic. Love a good plan B.” I try to stand and my legs buckle.
The world spins. The smoky haze inside the circle is dissipating, but I can still feel it.
The wrongness, the fractures, the places where their magic tore at something that refused to be torn.
“Can I go back to bed now? Maybe cuddle with my mates who didn’t try to MAGICALLY LOBOTOMIZE ME? ”
Morrigan’s mouth twitches. Almost a smile. “The glamour is failing on its own. Each day more of your true form bleeds through. Perhaps...” She pauses, calculating. “Perhaps we simply need to accelerate that natural process.”
“And how do you propose—”
“Don’t you dare, Morrigan.”
Magic pulses around us again. I drop to my knees, coughing as it hits the center of my stomach.
The door to the rooms explodes inward.
Not opens. Explodes. Wood splinters flying, hinges screaming, cold air rushing in with the scent of blood and burning.
Kieran stands in the doorway, shadows writhing around him like living things, ice-blue eyes blazing with a fury that makes the temperature drop twenty degrees.
“What,” he says, each word a blade, “are you doing to her?”