3. Chapter Three
Chapter Three
Ireached mine and Saorla’s hut without remembering the last turn.
The door slammed shut, final as a verdict.
I let my robe fall, braced both hands on the table, and waited until the trembling in my fingers eased.
My dark braid tugged heavy down my back, my plain gray smock stark against the gown beneath. I never dressed for beauty.
I’d lost my composure tonight. In front of Brannach. In front of the High Priestess. And worst of all—in front of him. That massive, infuriating god who stood in the Elders hut like my fury was a private performance.
I almost wished I had walked into my execution, at least then I would have been saved from this wretched duty and could take solace in the afterlife.
But then my thoughts drifted to the creatures I’d seen tonight—the Chthonic bond that tied them to the Underworld. What in all the realms did the Ash King need with creatures like that? There had been peace throughout the realms for the last millennia.
I ripped the bloody smock off and stood only in my white undergarments. Straightening, I rubbed a hand down the back of my neck and another thought struck me.
I’d been so wrapped in fury—at the Elder’s, at the fucking spectacle—that I hadn’t asked the one question burning hotter than the rest.
Why hadn’t I seen it?
With my Sight, divinity should have been a lantern in the dark, impossible to miss. The runes flaring on Tairngire’s skin had been proof enough, blazing like coals. But until then, he’d been…muted. Dull. Not the blaze of a god.
He’d hidden it. Why?
Divines didn’t dim themselves in the presence of mortals—not here, not anywhere. If anything, they flared brighter, as if to remind humans of their place.
But he’d been content to stand in the shadows, his light shuttered until provoked.
It didn’t make any sense.
Two knocks rattled the door. A pause…then one more. The rhythm pulled a smile to my lips before I could stop it.
Branwyn.
Daughter of the Goddess of Crow and Craft—the Morrígan. Branwyn was the Crone of Caer Anam, the High Priestess’s bane, and the closest thing I had to a friend. Even though friends weren’t technically permitted to someone of my station.
I’d first seen her when I was a child, leaning against the market’s well, green skirts hitched, tossing charms to the other children like candy.
Trouble, bronzed skin and curls the color of honey in sunlight, and eyes far too quick to be innocent.
She had divine blood in her veins so she aged slowly.
She didn’t look a day over twenty-five. My age, but that was deceiving.
I asked her how old she really was once, only for her to gasp and say it was rude to ask a lady her true age. I never dared to ask again.
When I opened the door, she was already grinning—one hand on her hip, the other tugging her cloak tighter against the bite of night. The hood couldn’t hide the green dress beneath, deep as moss after rain, nor the faint trace of myrrh clinging to her like a second skin.
“What do you want, Crone?” I asked, leaning up against the doorframe with a scowl on my face.
“To save you from dying of boredom,” she said, dripping sarcasm as she slipped past me without waiting for an invitation.
She’d done this before. Once, she disguised us as acolytes from a far village, new arrivals meant to study under the High Priestess.
We’d spent that night drinking spiced wine in the back room of a tavern, shepherds hanging on every word she whispered just loud enough to scandalize.
Their faces had been worth it—shocked, horrified, delighted.
They’d never tell what they heard, not if they valued their skins.
“I can veil us from the whole damned village, Aurenya,” Branwyn said, glancing back at me. “Elder Brannach, the High Priestess—none of them would ever know. Come now,” she snapped her fingers. “Glamour’s ready.”
“I can’t,” I muttered, though the words lacked conviction.
She tilted her head, curls sliding over her shoulder. “You’ve got that look again. The one you wear when duty’s choking you.”
Her illusions were flawless. She could wrap us in a disguise so complete even the gods wouldn’t see through it. And when Branwyn decided something was happening, it happened. I hated that she could read me like a book, goddess-damned witch sense of hers.
“Fine,” I hissed. “Get in. Quietly. If Saorla wakes, she’ll hex you bald.”
“I’d like to see the old bat try.” She rolled her eyes with a sly smile.
She moved with the ease of a well-practiced sorceress, cloak dropping over a chair, fingers already pulling charms from her pouch. “Hold still,” she murmured.
Her lips moved in a low hum as the air shimmered faintly.
Mint and iron filled the space as they always did when she called upon her mother's earth magic. I wasn’t sure how it worked, and every time I asked Branwyn only said: it’s very complicated stuff, Aurenya.
If the Morrígan went around spilling her secrets to everyone, nobody would have to be themselves, and that would be very, very bad.
When I looked in the mirror, my reflection was no longer mine. I was wearing weathered leather and travel-worn straps. A scar cut across my usually unblemished jaw. My boots were scuffed as though they’d crossed battlefields.
Branwyn stepped back, satisfied. “Tonight, we’re chosen mortals. Secret mission. Blessed by Scáthae herself.” She leaned in, voice dropping to a dramatic whisper.
I snorted. “Oh no. The Goddess of War would smite us both out of the Seventh Realm if she knew we were using her name for a bloody tavern crawl.”
Branwyn tilted her head, giving me a sideways look full of wicked amusement. Her own glamour sparked—long raven hair, nose slightly broken. “Oh, have you met her? Because if you had, you’d know she’d think it hilarious.”
I tried not to smile, but failed.
The veil held as we slipped through the temple district into the village. The streets slick with moonlight. Incense from the rites still lingered. To passersby, we were no more than two road-worn mercenaries seeking warmth and mead. No Crone. No Seer.
The pub’s door groaned under Branwyn’s hand. Heat, noise, and scent crashed over us.
Inside, the air was thick with sour-sweet sweat and pipe smoke. Shadows flickered across the timbered ceiling, cast by a hearth large enough to roast an ox.
Behind the bar stood a broad-hipped woman, her bodice straining with charms more brazen than decent. Her chestnut hair, pinned loose in a coil, clung damp against flushed cheeks as she slammed tankards with the ease of long habit.
Men and women shouted over dice, fists pounding tables in victory or despair. Coins clinked. Winners raked them in, losers grabbed for mugs. In the shadows, women were perched on men’s laps, their skirts rucked high, lips brushing ears as laughter tangled with music.
A fiddler played fast and wicked, coaxing reckless steps.
Boots stomped in time, smoke thick in the air, a bawdy chorus swelling louder with every round of drink.
Oddly, it felt right—that duty could wait, that I could just…
feel it: the energy, the raw bliss. The only time I truly felt alive was when Branwyn dragged me out in disguise.
At least that had been true up until tonight, when I felt the spray of fresh blood rain down on my face.
I shuddered from excitement or fear, I didn’t know, and that was precisely my problem.
Perhaps I was becoming a lunatic trapped within this gods-forsaken role of Seer.
I shook my head and brushed the thought aside, continuing to follow Branwyn’s lead.
She cut through the chaos like she was born to it, weaving between tables with a sway that kept eyes on her but hands out of reach. I followed.
She chose a table against the far wall, where we could see the room without being boxed in. I sat with my back to the timber so I had a good vantage point.
A serving girl arrived before I could settle. Her hips swayed scandalously, her hair loose, tankards in each hand. She set them down with a wink at Branwyn. I couldn't help but notice the smudge of red wine drying at the corner of her mouth.
I raised a brow at the frothing drink. “What is this?”
Branwyn grinned. “Freedom. Drink it.”
I didn’t. My gaze drifted instead toward the crowd.
The two men in the corner argued over bones, voices rising like a storm about to break.
A woman in a scarlet shawl whispered into her companion’s ear, her hand sliding beneath the table.
The barkeep thew her head back at something a tough-looking woman said, her bodice leaving little to the imagination.
“You always bring me to the finest establishments,” I said dryly.
“That’s because the truly fine are boring,” Branwyn replied, rolling her eyes as she scanned the room for something—or someone—more interesting.
The table she fixed on was already loud with laughter and the clatter of dice. Two men sat tossing coins into a growing pile. Both wore remnants of soldiers garb—faded red sashes, leather pauldrons polished to a dull sheen. Warriors.
They carried themselves like they’d stepped straight out of Cindraloch, a realm where kings still ruled from black stone castles and armies marched under command. A land of banners and battlefields, a playground of chaos.
I didn’t even have to use my Sight to know what they were. They flaunted their divinity, although it was dimmed from that of a full-blooded divine.
Half-born. The blood of gods and goddesses thinned by mortal lineage—stronger than men, but lesser than the divines who’d made them.
The Divines were led by the Old Gods, otherwise known as the Tuatha Dé Denann, and they were all direct descendants of the Dagda’s holy spark—the Father of the First Forest.