Chapter 70 #2
The words caught.
For the first time, she let herself feel it. Not the fear that had driven her from the hall. Not the panic of knowing what war would mean. The words themselves. The hatred in them. The vitriol. Tears burned her eyes, and she blinked hard against them.
“He threatened mothers,” she said, voice rough.
“And their children. People who have never seen a Sídhe, never held iron against anyone, never even known what was being done in their name.” She drew a breath that shook despite every effort to control it.
“That is not right, Eamon. You have to know that.”
“And the human man?” Eamon asked, the words low and bitter. “The one you ran from Reynnar to warn?”
Elara’s fingers tightened around the dagger, but the rest of her seemed to lose strength all at once.
The heat rising from the stone pressed against her skin, thick and suffocating, and still she felt cold beneath it.
Her ribs drew too tight around every breath.
For one terrible second, the street tilted beneath her feet, lamplight smearing gold across the black stone.
Eamon watched her face as if the answer had already been written there.
“You love him.”
The words struck with such brutality that Elara could not find a lie quickly enough to save herself. Her throat worked. Her eyes burned. Against her heart, the Cara pulled, aching, as if Reynnar’s name had heard itself spoken inside her.
She could have lied.
She should have lied.
Instead, the truth tore out of her, small and devastating.
“I love them both.”
His mouth hardened. “Then you deserve neither.”
The spear moved before she could breathe.
Light erupted from the blade in a white-gold torrent, so bright the world vanished behind it. Elara’s body answered before her mind could catch up. She lifted the dagger with both hands, and the impact drove her boots back across the wet stone.
The light struck the blade and split.
It screamed past her in two burning streams, carving through the steam on either side of her and blasting chips from the walls behind.
Heat seared her knuckles and the dagger shook in her grip, its dark metal drinking in some of the force and throwing the rest away in jagged flashes that left spots dancing across her vision.
And in that terrible heartbeat, she saw it clearly.
This was not Kynra’s spear. This was the Spear of Lugh.
The realization struck harder than the blast, her stomach plummeting as cold swept through her body.
He had possessed it the entire time.
Then Eamon came at her.
Elara ducked beneath the first sweep of the spear, feeling the blade pass close enough to lift the hair from her neck.
She turned with the motion and cut toward his ribs, but he twisted aside with impossible grace, coat flaring behind him as the dagger found only air.
The butt of the spear cracked against her shoulder.
Pain burst down her arm. She stumbled, caught herself against the wall, and barely raised the dagger before another lance of gold slammed into it.
The force drove her to one knee.
Eamon did not look angry now. His face had settled into something calm and terrible, the shame gone from it, leaving only conviction. He looked like a man doing what he believed history would thank him for.
She shoved herself up before he could finish whatever mercy he meant to offer.
The street narrowed around them, hemmed in by black stone and carved horses with weathered wings.
Steam curled around their feet. Firelight shook in the rainwater gathered along the gutters.
Elara moved fast because she had to, because if she stopped for even one heartbeat, he would end this.
She cut low, then high, using every ugly lesson Reynnar had beaten into her bones: never reach where they expect, never retreat in a straight line, never believe power makes someone untouchable.
For one breath, it worked.
Her dagger slid past the spear’s shaft and opened the sleeve of his coat.
Eamon looked down at the torn fabric. Then his eyes lifted, and the air changed.
Power rolled from him in a wave, ancient and suffocating, and Elara’s knees struck the street before she understood she had fallen.
It was not earth. It was not force. It was command, pressing down through her spine until her palms scraped against the wet stone and every breath became something she had to earn.
She had felt this before from Reynnar, weeks ago in Talamh na Sí, when his rage had brought an entire group of Turlaith to their knees.
But this... this was worse.
Eamon was more powerful. The street groaned. The red veins in the stone flared, then dimmed. Elara tried to lift her head and managed only an inch before the weight bore down harder, grinding a sound from between her teeth.
Eamon walked toward her through the steam, his boots stopping before her hands.
The dagger was still clenched in her fist. She tightened her grip until pain sparked through her fingers, until the old wound across her palm threatened to split open again.
Osin had not been able to take it from her.
He had tried with all his stolen power, all his cruelty, and the dagger had stayed.
He crouched before her—his hand closing over hers, and the dagger burned cold between their fingers.
For one wild, impossible heartbeat, Elara thought it would resist him.
Thought it would remember her blood, her name, the river of stars, every choice that had dragged her to this street and every wound that had taught her how to survive it.
Then Eamon pulled, and the blade slid from her fingers.
Horror opened within her, wider than the pain. Elara’s breath caught as the empty place in her palm seemed to pulse, stunned by the loss. “Reynnar will never forgive you for this,” she gasped.
For the first time, Eamon looked away. The glow from the spear moved across his face, catching in the lines around his mouth and turning them crueler. “He will never know of it. He saw you run from him. Felt the trace of the rift you left behind. That will be enough.”
Elara shook her head, forcing herself to breathe through the weight still pressing her into the stone. “Let me speak to him. Let me explain.”
“I told you,” Eamon said, his voice roughening, “Reynnar is possessive of his problems. And his people. He would forgive you. Give you another chance to ruin us.”
“I mean to fight with you, Eamon,” Elara said, the words tearing out harder now. “I mean to fight for your people. Just not at the expense of an entire realm.”
Something flickered in his face, some brief fracture in the certainty he had wrapped around himself like armor. His fingers tightened around the dagger until the black metal caught the red light beneath the street.
“I cannot risk it.”
Eamon rose with the dagger in one hand and the Spear of Lugh in the other, pale hair stirring in the heated wind. For a moment, he looked down at the blade as if he had expected to hate it and found himself mourning instead.
Then he turned it through the air.
The motion was clumsy at first. Wrong. A poor imitation of what she had done a hundred times on instinct. But the dagger answered him all the same, its point catching on the seam between worlds and dragging light out of nothing.
A rift tore open beside him.
Blackness yawned beyond it, threaded with silver currents. Eamon glanced back at her, and the smile that crossed his face was rueful enough to hurt.
“Thank you for showing me how to do this, by the way.”
Elara fought the power pinning her to the street, fought until her arms trembled and her vision blurred, but she could not rise. Could not reach him. Could not reach the dagger.
Eamon caught her by the arm and hauled her up. The world lurched. Her feet skidded across wet stone. Somewhere far down the avenue, a bell began to ring, frantic and too late.