Chapter 39
Kieran
I wake to a purple haze stretching across the windows and Orion’s arm across my chest like a fallen tree.
“Get off of me.” I grab his wrist and attempt to lift it.
The bastard grabs my side and curls me toward him. Trapping me. His leg hooks over mine like I’m a body pillow he’s claimed for the night.
I’m no small Fae. Three centuries of combat training. Unseelie prince. Shadow magic that could flay the skin from bone.
But Orion has a foot on me in height. At least fifty pounds. And by the gods, he’s like sleeping next to a forge.
He mumbles something against my hair. Something about warming me up. Then, and I will take this to my grave, he snuggles.
I count to ten in Old Fae. Then in Common. Then in the human tongue Ash sometimes curses in when she’s particularly annoyed.
I make it to seven before he nuzzles my neck.
“Orion. Move.”
Nothing.
“Orion.”
A sleepy grunt. His arm tightens.
“If you don’t remove yourself from my person in the next three seconds, I will freeze something you’re rather attached to.”
That gets his attention. One amber eye cracks open. Takes in our position. The way his body is wrapped around mine like I’m a teddy bear he found in the dark.
His grin is insufferable.
“Aw, Kieran. I didn’t know you—”
The bond flares.
Not the warm pulse of Ash dreaming, or the distant hum of her sleeping nearby. This is pain. Terror. The kind that slices through magical connections like a blade through silk.
Orion is off me and on his feet before I finish processing the sensation. I’m half a second behind him, both of us grabbing pants, not bothering with shirts, moving on instinct burned into us through centuries of battle.
“Never speak of this,” I snap as I reach the door.
“What, me cuddling you?” He’s trying for humor but his voice shakes. “Because I gotta say, you’re a very adequate little spoon—”
“Orion.”
We thunder down the stairs. I take them three at a time and nearly break my ankle on the landing. Don’t care.
The tavern’s main room is lit by candles that shouldn’t be burning and magic that makes my shadows recoil. Salt lines the floor in a perfect circle. Rosemary scattered at the edges. And inside—
Ash.
On her knees. Blood streaming from her nose, her ears. Her very naked skin flickers between human and something else. Sage green bleeding through, pink and silver hair, ears sharpening and then rounding again. Like her body can’t decide what it wants to be.
The three goddesses stand at points around the circle. Morrigan in front. Badb and Macha flanking. Their eyes are wrong, Morrigan’s gone storm-grey, her sisters’ pure black.
And they’re hurting her.
“What,” I say, and my voice has dropped into the register that makes courtiers flinch, “are you doing to her?”
I don’t remember deciding to threaten three war goddesses. My shadows are already moving, pooling at my feet, reaching toward the circle like they want to strangle someone.
Let them try.
Orion doesn’t wait for an answer. He’s already at the barrier, palms flat against the invisible wall, fire erupting from his skin. The flames hit ancient magic and bounce. He snarls, tries again. The salt doesn’t even flicker.
“Stripping the glamour,” Morrigan says, but there’s confusion on her face. Uncertainty. The Morrigan doesn’t do uncertainty. “Or attempting to. It’s not...responding as expected.”
“Responding as—” Orion slams both fists against the barrier. “She’s bleeding. From her face. Does that seem like a successful glamour removal to you?”
His palms are smoking where they touch the salt-magic. Burning himself. He doesn’t seem to notice.
Or doesn’t care.
Inside the circle, Ash coughs. Spits blood onto the salt. Her hands are trembling as she pushes herself upright, and her spine straightens one vertebra at a time.
She is stunning. Absolutely breathless in a way she never should have had to be.
When she lifts her head, her eyes are full green. No whites. No pupils. Just endless forest staring out of a face caught between two forms.
“Well,” she rasps, “that was fucking unpleasant.”
So this is what a heart attack feels like? I have to bend over to catch my breath.
“Ash.” Orion’s voice cracks on her name. “Ash, we’re going to get you out of there, just hold on—”
“Don’t bother.” She wipes blood from her upper lip with the back of her hand. “The barrier’s solid. I already tried punching through it.” She pauses, wrinkling up her nose. “Didn’t work.”
“The glamour must be removed,” Morrigan says. Her voice has lost some of its ancient certainty. She sounds almost...defensive. “You cannot face what’s coming while still wearing—”
“You put this on me,” Ash tosses at her. “Twenty-eight years ago. You wove it into my essence without my consent, and now you’re upset that it won’t come off when you snap your fingers?”
“The magic should respond to its creator—”
“Well it doesn’t.” Ash’s thorns flare beneath her skin.
Sage green light spirals up her arms, and for a moment she looks fully Fae—tall, sharp, crowned in power that makes the candles gutter.
Then it flickers and fades. Her human features reasserting themselves like a mask being pulled back into place.
“Because it’s not yours anymore,” I say.
Everyone turns to look at me.
I step closer to the barrier. Study Ash through the shimmer of ancient magic. The way her appearance keeps shifting. Fae bleeding through, human pulling back. It’s almost pulsing, breathing.
“The glamour responds to threat,” I continue, the pieces clicking together. “That’s what you designed it to do. Hide her when danger approached. Protect her from discovery.” I meet Morrigan’s storm-grey eyes. “You built it to keep her safe. And right now, you’re the threat.”
Morrigan’s jaw juts out just so, grinding slightly.
“She’s fighting us,” Badb says slowly. “Not the magic. Us.”
“Because you attacked her.” Orion hasn’t stopped pressing against the barrier. “You dragged her out of bed, naked, trapped her in a circle, and tried to rip off pieces of her identity. How exactly did you expect her to react?”
“The glamour is survival magic,” I press. “It won’t release while she feels threatened. While she’s being forced. You can’t strip it away. She has to choose to let it go.”
Silence.
Morrigan stares at me like I’ve said something she should have realized centuries ago. The mother who pushed too hard and broke something she was trying to fix.
“Then how?” Macha asks. “If we cannot remove it, and she cannot release it while threatened—”
“She needs to feel safe.” The words taste strange in my mouth. Safety isn’t something I trade in. Shadows don’t offer comfort. I was raised to be a weapon, not a shelter.
But looking at her—bleeding, shaking, fighting her own skin—I want to be one anyway.
“Truly safe,” I continue. “Not protected, that’s different. Safe. The kind of safe where you can stop surviving and start living.”
Inside the circle, Ash makes a sound. Half laugh, half sob.
“Great,” she says. “Wonderful. Just have to feel safe. In a Faerie realm where everyone wants me dead. While trapped in a salt circle by war goddesses. With my glamour actively fighting my own body.” She spreads her arms. “Anyone else want to add impossible tasks to the list? Maybe I should also achieve world peace and learn to juggle.”
“Ash—” Orion starts.
“No.” She holds up a hand. “You don’t get to Ash me right now.
None of you do. You—” she points at Morrigan, “—decided to perform magical surgery without asking. You—” she points at Badb and Macha, “—helped. And you two—” she looks at me and Orion, “—are standing out there arguing about me like I’m not right here. ”
“We’re trying to help,” Orion says.
“Then stop.” She takes a breath. Another. She forces her shoulders down, her hands to unclench. “Everyone just...stop. And some one get me a fucking robe.”
“The circle should remain intact,” Morrigan says quietly. “Until we know what emerges when the glamour finally falls.”
“So naked it is?” Ash’s laugh is sharp. “And until what emerges? I’m not a butterfly, Morrigan. I’m not going to sprout wings and fly away. I’m just going to be...me. Whatever that looks like without the mask.”
“Twenty-eight years of compressed power,” Morrigan counters. “Twenty-eight years of denied heritage, suppressed magic, forgotten memories. When that dam breaks, and it will break, we don’t know what comes through.”
Ash opens her mouth. Closes it.
“She’s not wrong,” I say, and hate myself for it. “The transformation at the trial nearly killed you. And that was with the glamour still partially intact.”
“So what, I stay in the circle forever?”
“Until you’re ready to let go,” Morrigan says. “Until you choose to release what I wove. Not because we’re forcing you. Because you’re ready.”
“And if I’m never ready?”
The question hangs in the air.
“Then we wait,” I say simply. “However long it takes.”
Ash’s expression shifts. The anger doesn’t disappear, but it...softens. Just slightly. Just enough for me to see the fear underneath.
She’s not afraid of the glamour falling.
She’s afraid of who she’ll be when it does. Afraid that under all that human armor, there’s something monstrous. Something unlovable.
I know that fear. I’ve lived with it for three centuries.
“Fine.” She drops onto the tavern floor, cross-legged, glaring at all of us with equal venom.
“Fine. I’ll stay in the damn salt circle.
But someone better bring me breakfast. And coffee.
Lots of coffee for when we are done.” She points at me specifically.
“And if any of you try to help me again without asking first, I will find a way through this barrier and I will make you regret it.”
“Noted,” I say.
“Thoroughly noted,” Orion adds.
“Good.” She closes her eyes and takes a deep breath, which I’m pretty sure is to calm her anger.
The goddesses exchange glances. Badb and Macha step back, their magic withdrawing. Only Morrigan remains at the barrier’s edge, watching Ash with an expression I can’t quite read.
“I will make coffee,” Morrigan says quietly, and turns toward the kitchen.
It’s the most human thing I’ve ever seen a war goddess do. The mundane offering when magic has failed.
I don’t move. Neither does Orion.
I’ve never been good at waiting. Patience, yes. The cold, calculated kind that lets you outmaneuver an enemy over decades.
But this kind of waiting? The kind where you can’t scheme or plan or fight?
This is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.