Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Hoping to lighten the mood, I get Leo talking about Rime’s streaming habits while we finish our lunch.
“He’s discovered reality shows,” Leo tells me. “Police procedurals.”
“Oh? Well, that makes sense, right? With him being in the militia and all?” I can only imagine what Rime thinks of our law enforcement and our levels of crime.
Leo gives me half a grin. “He’s curious in his own way.”
I grin back. “That’s one way to put it.”
“He’s also been watching The Office.”
“Oh god.” My laugh comes out as a groan. “He’s not going to start quoting Dwight Schrute, is he?” I drop my face in my hands. “Lord, help us all.”
Leo’s deep chuckles have me peeking back up. He’s smiling—broadly—eyes twinkling and shoulders relaxed. I haven’t seen him looking so happy since, well, we were standing in that kitchen, half-dressed, sharing those pretzels.
“Rime told me your name for the weapon,” he says, eyes still dancing. “The macguffin?”
“Oh yeah, that.” Why am I blushing?
“Brilliant.” He tips his root beer glass to me. “Except now I can’t get him off TV Tropes.”
I burst into yet another laugh. “Sorry-not-sorry.”
And for a beat, one little beat, Leo’s eyes flash with mischief and heat. Like he’s about to spring from his seat and grab me, hug me, tickle me.
But in a blink, it’s over. He slides aside his empty plate and rests his elbows on the table, expression serious. “I need to tell you more about Ember.”
“Okay.” I set the last bite of my sandwich down, mouth suddenly too dry to eat. “How come?”
“Well, like I said, her energy is in that ring, and that could be dangerous for you.”
“More dangerous than the ring itself?”
His tone is careful, “There’s a good chance, yes.”
I bite my lip. “What have you learned about her?”
“Not as much as we would’ve liked.” He scrapes a hand through his hair and glares at the mounds of ‘research’ beside us.
“We had to collect random clues—a few from one source, a couple more from another—but we managed to piece together something of a narrative.” He lifts the corners of books and papers, searching for I-can’t-even-imagine-what.
“We know she wove with nightshade at fifteen, but soon after that, she started manifesting Calleeyah powers.”
Before I have the chance to ask what the hell that Gaelic-sounding word is, he unearths a pen and scribbles it on a post-it: Cailleach. “It’s what we call our priestesses.”
“Oh!” I say. “I’ve seen that word before. How do you say it again?”
“Call-ee-ock,” he repeats, but the ock is no more than a breath.
I bite back an embarrassed smile and snag a pretzel from the bag lying between us. I always thought Cailleach was pronounced Cay-leech.
“Humans know the Cailleach as a winter goddess, the Crone archetype. But the word is actually derived from caillech, which just means ‘veiled one.’” He rewrites the word, minus the A. “That’s how we spell it in Nàdar.”
“And they have different powers than the rest of you?”
“Yeah, their magic is elemental. They can’t conjure or control their element, but they can sense and use its energy. That’s why they can feel and work with the snáithe.”
Because the snáithe is all the elements combined. “Earth, air, fire, water,” I recite.
Leo nods. “Gnomes, sylphs, salamanders, and undines.”
“Which was Ember?”
“Salamander.”
Fire magic. Of course. All the best villains have fire magic.
I ask, “Do the caillecha weave with their element?”
“No, it’s inborn. They don’t weave with anything.”
“But Ember did?”
“Yes, and thus why the caillecha wouldn’t let her join them.
” He fills his palm with pretzels. “Since she was born with her elemental magic, she shouldn’t have been able to weave with belladonna.
That’s already considered an abomination.
But the fact that she still wanted to be a Caillech, and wanted to use both types of power, well, in most eyes, that’s downright heretical. ”
I almost feel sorry for her. “That seems a bit harsh.”
“It’s not, really, when you think about it. We’re forbidden to weave with more than one species because it violates the bond.”
“Because you can only be fully loyal to one species,” I reason aloud. “Double weaving would be like… like adultery.”
“Exactly. And nearly impossible to do, even if it weren’t forbidden. In recorded history, there have only been four fae who have tried to weave with more than one species. Two of them were banished for it, one died during the second weaving rite, and the fourth is Brier.”
“Holy shit. Seriously?” No wonder Brier has a superiority complex; he’s achieved the unthinkable. “Is it common knowledge that he’s done this?”
Leo nods, frowning in disgust. “He flaunts it.”
I blow out a breath as I lean back in my chair. “The ultimate marketing angle.”
“He says it’s proof the gods have chosen him to rule.”
Thwonk. The apartment door bangs open, and in marches Rime, Topaz strutting in behind him.
“Ah! There’s my little psychic.” Rime steps up behind me and wraps his arms around my shoulders like a husband greeting his wife at the end of the workday. “A ghrá.”
“That was quite the dramatic entrance,” I say with a laugh.
Leo rolls his eyes.
“No sign of them,” Topaz announces as she tosses her jacket on the couch. “Oh, are we not doing glamours anymore? Thank the gods.” She removes hers before she disappears into the kitchen.
Rime’s too busy squeezing me and Leo’s too busy glowering at him to acknowledge her.
“Leo’s telling me about Ember,” I say to Rime. “And about weaving with more than one species.”
“It’s reprehensible.” He releases me to clutch the edge of the table. “Did he tell you Brier did it too?”
“Yeah.” I ask him and Leo both, “Is that why he was an exile?”
Leo shakes his head. “No, he was a deoraí because he used his weaving gift for stealing.”
“Rough childhood, unwanted orphan,” Rime explains, his attitude unnaturally blasé. “You know how these things go.”
I know I feel the resentment and bitterness burning in Rime’s chest. What’s the story there?
“He wove with a lynx first,” Leo is saying, still on the subject of Brier. “That’s how he got the gift of stealth.”
“Convenient gift for a thief,” I remark.
Rime snorts.
Leo adds, “And it was while he was still a deoraí that he wove with monkshood.”
“Monkshood?” I’ve heard the name, but I have no idea what it is.
“It’s aconitum, a poisonous plant, also known as the queen of poisons, or wolfsbane.”
“The queen of poisons?” My back goes rigid. “Does that mean he could kill someone by poisoning them?”
Who’s in charge of this weaving business? Shouldn’t there be some sort of checkpoint so bad faeries don’t get dangerous gifts?
“Yes, and so can hundreds of other faeries,” Rime points out. “But they wouldn’t. It’s not our way.”
But it’s Brier’s.
“How do they poison you?” I ask. “By biting you?”
“If they’ve woven with a venomous animal, yes,” Leo answers. “But not fae who’ve woven with poisonous plants. The toxin is in their blood and would have to get into your bloodstream somehow.”
Like a deadly infection or a zombie virus.
I wonder aloud, “Okay, but if double weaving is forbidden and Brier was an outlaw, how did he get the caillecha to do the rite?”
Rime snorts again as he heads for the kitchen. “By smashing half of them.”
“Smashing?” I gasp and look at Leo, mouthing the words, “Does he mean—?”
Leo actually snickers. “Yes.”
I sip my root beer, needing a moment to compose myself. More hysterical giggles threaten to squeak out of me as I sit here, suspended halfway between amused and horrified.
When I’m finally able to speak without choking, I ask, “The macguffin is probably a weaving ring, right? So, just like Brier, wouldn’t Ember have needed the caillecha to weave or tie it or whatever?” I doubt she was smashing any of them if they wouldn’t let her join their circle.
“Yeah, she definitely would’ve needed them,” Leo agrees. “And it doesn’t look like her methods of persuasion were quite as, um, pleasant as Brier’s.”
Pleasant, yes, that’s what we’ll call it.
“Here, I’ll show you what we figured out.” He rises and comes to sit beside me, bringing with him his laptop and his autumn scent.
I resist the urge to squirm. Or run. Or sit on his lap.
In the kitchen, Rime and Topaz squabble like siblings over the mustard and the hummus.
Leo opens a document entitled “Ember’s Reign” and scrolls down to a bulleted list. “I managed to get access to the caillech archives—”
“How?” Surely they’re sacred and guarded by demon crows or griffins or something.
“I used to… I mean, one of the caillecha is a… a good friend.”
By friend he means lover. It’s obvious from the way he’s rubbing his chin and staring at the computer keyboard. These so-called priestesses? So not celibate. And me? So not sitting here stewing in jealousy. “What’s her name?”
“Huh?” A flush highlights his cheekbones.
“Your caillech friend. What’s her name?”
“Oh, um, Onyx.”
Seriously? I picture a young woman as beautiful as her name, all bronze skin and jewel-black eyes. Next to her, I’d look like a glob of yogurt. “Pretty.”
He clears his throat and points to his laptop screen. “So, I copied the information from their records, then organized it here.”
Eager to redirect my attention, I take a look. Whatever it is he’s transcribed makes Shakespeare’s English read like fan fiction. The only recognizable word is Ember. “Where did you faeries learn how to spell?”
He smiles. “Trust me, it’s pretty ambiguous, even if you could read it.
But the most important clue is here.” He highlights “712” in blue.
“That’s the same year that reports of her corrupt magic start popping up.
See?” He points haphazardly at the screen as he reads.
“‘Commanded wolves to attack villages. Sent aphids to destroy crops—’”
“But she wove with a plant.”
“Exactly. Whatever this weapon was, she could use it to command any species she wanted—command them, regardless of their nature.”
Oh god, if Brier gets his hands on this thing— “That’s not weaving, that’s playing god.”
Leo nods sadly. “It is. And there’s more.”
More? I don’t want more. I’ve had plenty, thank you very much.
“Something else noteworthy happened earlier that year.” He scrolls up and points to the screen yet again.
“Four new caillecha were confirmed, all in the same month, which is suspicious enough considering the fact that it takes at least five years for a caillech to become fully initiated. But the total number caillecha also went down instead of up, from eleven to nine.”
I wrangle the numbers in my head. “Then the new ones weren’t additions,” I realize, my blankly staring eyes growing bigger and bigger. “They were replacements.”
I shift my gaze to Leo. He’s watching me, waiting patiently for me to connect the same dots he did.
“Six unaccounted for,” I mumble. “Just suddenly gone from—oh my god, she killed them.”
Leo’s nod is grim. “We think the five who remained were either sympathizers or at least willing to do her bidding. The other six she murdered and replaced with four initiates who were her followers too.”
“And they made her super-ring.”
“Nowhere is any of this written,” he admits. “But all the clues are there, and corroborated by the legends the caillecha have passed down for centuries.”
“So if they were sympathizers, did they finally let her become one of them?”
“There’s no record of her ever becoming a caillech. I suspect once she declared herself queen, she had all the power she wanted.”
“And you don’t know what’s in the ring?” I ask, foolishly hoping this time for a different answer. “What they wove her with or how they made it?”
“No. If that information is in one of the caillecha grimoires, no one knows where. I’m sure over the centuries more than one person has tried to find it.”
No doubt Brier has tried to find it. Let’s hope once Ember was executed, the rebellion enacted a scorched-earth campaign on all the evil she left behind. At least they had the sense to bury her psycho ring in a whole other realm.
I chew on my lip Leo-style as I process all this information. “Wait a minute, what’s the plan? Because Rime said the macguffin couldn’t be destroyed.”
“It can’t be. Not if it’s a weaving ring.” Leo slides his ring off his finger again and holds between his thumb and forefinger. “Even if I melted this down, the bond would still exist. Energy can’t be created or destroyed.”
“So trying to destroy the macguffin would more or less unleash it?”
“More, not less. But theoretically speaking, the weaving ritual could be reversed, like any other spellwork. Reversing wouldn’t destroy the bond’s energy, but it could render it unusable.”
“Theoretically.”
He shrugs. “As far as we know, the caillecha have never tried to reverse a weaving spell.”
“Because it’s theoretically impossible?” That may’ve come out a little snarky.
“No, because it’s unnecessary,” Leo quips back, a hint of a smile on his lips. “We preserve the bond and maintain the balance of nature by burying the weaving ring with its owner when they die. There’s never been a need to reverse one.”
I snatch his ring and hold it up. “Could Rime use this? Or Topaz?”
“Absolutely not.” His eyes darken with indignation. “Only the fae bonded in a ring’s ritual can use it.”
“Then why worry about Ember’s ring? She’s dead.” I set Leo’s band on the table with a smug flourish. “Why would Brier even want it if he can’t use it?”
“Because Ember’s ring obviously doesn’t follow the rules,” he counters. “It shouldn’t have allowed her to control any species she wanted, either.”
I give in with a sigh. “Touché.” If anyone is convinced he can break the rules without suffering the consequences, it’s Brier—double-weaver, caillech-seducer, deoraí-turned-dictator.
Leo carefully closes the lid of his laptop and drums his fingers on the lid. “Our plan is simple: find the ring, take it back to Nàdar, and have the caillecha who’ve joined the resistance try to reverse it.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
Rime emerges from the kitchen, carrying a sandwich on a plate and a bag of Tostitos. “Then we go on the lam.”