45. Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Three
Mist curled over the cobbled streets as we mounted our horses. My thighs still ached from yesterday’s journey, but Tairngire said nothing, only lifted me onto my horse without my permission. I was still far too tired to argue with him, though. Then we were off.
Ailbhe’s glare was a blade against my back. She rode like she had never experienced exhaustion a day in her life. If looks could kill, I’d be buried under Cindraloch soil a dozen times. Beside her, Saoirse mirrored that quiet steel, her beauty softening nothing, until she smiled.
Scáthae trailed them with the grace of a predator, her piercing gaze flicking between her children and Goibniu’s brood repeatedly. She didn’t watch like a mother, but as a commander weighing whether her soldiers would snap or shine.
Goibniu smirked too easily, as if he alone knew something the rest of us didn’t. And I thought Tairngire was insufferable. The Forge God was so much worse.
Up ahead, Ciaran and Aidan laughed loud enough to echo off the stone.
Their camaraderie was easy and unshaken.
Caedmon rode up beside them, jovial as ever, cuffing both on the head.
His laughter followed theirs, warm and full of joy.
He was still the king and still carried the spark that bound their line.
Mairenn rode nearby, smiling at the scene like she wasn’t a consort but kin. For a moment, they looked like a family—strange and battle-worn, bound by fire and loyalty deeper than their chains.
Domhnall’s men brought none of that warmth. Bram’s scarred face dared anyone to meet his eye too long. Maddox, horns barred, rode heavier still, menace dripping from every orriface. Domhnall carried himself with stoic silence, staring straight ahead.
Tairngire rode up beside me, leaning in to whisper in my ear. “You should have been sleeping last night,” he murmured. “Not listening to Branwyn and Mairenn spin stories until the moon dipped.”
So he had heard.
I whipped my head enough to catch his smirk. “You don’t get to spy on me just because you can,” I hissed. “Especially when I can’t do it back. How would you like me slipping into your head while you parade through pubs with kings at your side?”
He chuckled, low and wicked. “There it is again. Do you know how exquisite you are when you burn like this?”
I fought the urge to attempt to shove him off his horse. But a warm feeling also settled in my chest at his words. “Since you insist on spying, at least tell me what you learned last night.”
His chest shook with a quiet laugh I could tell he was trying to hold back. “Ah, Little Seer. Always so demanding.”
“That’s rich,” I snapped.
He sighed, and to no one's surprise, didn’t even acknowledge my question. “I cannot hear your thoughts, Aurenya. But I can feel what you feel, even from afar. Certain emotions burn brighter through the bond. Rage. Fear…longing. You could do the same if you tried, you know.”
The word “longing” brushed my skin like a feather light touch. I bit down hard, but he was right, I could feel him sometimes, not clearly, but faint impressions: a shadow in my chest when he was near, an ache when he wasn’t. Anxiety. Hunger. Heat. Things I couldn’t always put names to.
And now, riding beside me, his voice curling into my ear, the red thread between us sang—alive. I tilted my head, eyes narrowing. “Then tell me…what exactly did you feel last night?”
He chuckled, low and knowing. “I wondered how long it would be before you stopped fighting yourself and asked.”
Heat crawled up my neck, but I held his gaze. “Don’t dance around it. Answer.”
He paused. “First, mortification. Mairenn and her…consortship, I presume?” He cast me a sidelong glance that implied he knew he’d been right.
“Then confusion. When they spoke of bloodlines, of Cain, of the first gods your temple never told you about.”
My cheeks burned. How unfair it was that he could read me like one of the books I spent my life devoted to.
“And then,” he drew it out, savoring, “frustration. When you realized how much your realm kept from you—of half-born, of demigods alike.”
I bit my cheek, hating that he was right about everything when he claimed he hadn’t been able to hear my thoughts.
“Finally…exhaustion. So heavy I almost stepped in myself and made them let you sleep.”
I glared over my shoulder. “Careful,” I muttered. “You sounding dangerously close to romantic when you say things like that.”
“Romantic? No. Practical. Your safety matters to the realms. I can’t have you unraveling Fate because you don’t sleep.”
I rolled my eyes. “Nonchalance doesn’t suit you.”
He said nothing, but I felt Scáthae’s assessing gaze trained on us. I turned enough to glimpse her, gaze narrowed. I swallowed thickly.
Tairngire leaned closer, his steed brushing up against mine, words brushing fire over my ear. “Tell me, Aurenya, do you even know what romance looks like when it isn’t scrawled in one of your books?”
Heat flushed through me, anger, and something else entwined. “I know enough,” I snapped.
A dark chuckle. “Romance,” he said, the word bitter. “Isn’t vows and sweet poems. It’s blood on your hands when you can’t protect them. Fire eating through kingdoms when gods mistake desire for devotion. Mortals tearing themselves apart because love blinds them to reason.”
His tone shifted—less taunt, more danger. “You think you want it, Little Seer, but you don’t know the cost.”
My pulse raced, but I forced the words out despite it. “Maybe I do. Maybe I want to know.”
I felt his smirk, though I didn’t dare turn to see it. “Then you’re a fool.”
Before I could dwell on his words, Scáthae’s voice cut in like smoke and steel as she rode up to my other side. “There is danger when a spark mistakes itself for a star. It thinks it can burn forever in solidarity, and forgets the wind that will inevitably carry it to destruction.”
She wasn’t looking at me, not exactly, but her coded words pressed against my skin like armor that didn’t fit.
I could sense Tairngire stiffen on his horse. “Since you’re speaking as if a spark has awareness, perhaps the wind is sentient and guides the spark elsewhere before any damage can be done.” I caught the roll of his eyes from my peripheral vision.
Scáthae tilted her head toward him, letting out a cold laugh. “Flames devour as easily as they warm, and the wind has no master. Even the boldest fire leaves only ash in its wake. You know this well, Awakener. Or need I remind you?”
Tairngire’s jaw ticked but he didn’t respond. No one moved. Every half-born in the brigade went still in their saddles, listening like their lives depended on the Goddess of War and her riddle-laced words.
My hands tightened on the reins. What was she referring to? I knew that Tairngire had secrets—ones he kept locked deep within, but this felt personal. I knew better than to ask, though. I wouldn’t get an answer, and my frustration would blind me. I couldn’t afford that, not now.
The land unrolled in endless green, stones jutting like bones of giants. Wildflowers bled color into the air, but beneath it, I felt the echo of what this place had been—a training ground for the Old Gods, soaked in fire and blood.
I let my Sight stretch, brushing against the Weave. It whispered at the edge of everything. In the grass, in the stone, in the rhythm of hooves.
“You’re reaching again.” His voice slid into my ear, effortlessly even over the sound of thundering hooves.
My back straightened. He could sense it. How? My Sight was a gift from the divine, my only anchor to the liminal spaces. I reached for it out of instinct, and only two others could. Tairngire wasn’t one of them. Was it the bond that allowed him to feel when my mind reached it?
I sighed, letting different words out to cut the silence. “Lately, I’ve felt it. The Weave fraying. And it’s not Eisarnach, nor his brother. I know what their signatures look like. This…this is different. Those creatures who made their way into Anamcroí? I felt them before they manifested.”
For once, he didn’t smirk or interrupt with some snide comment. It was the first time I'd acknowledged what I'd done in the sacred realm. The god at my side went utterly still. And then, softer than before, he said, “What do you feel, Aurenya? Tell me…show me.”
The Weave was everywhere. When I reached for it, it wasn’t like walking through a door or pulling on a string.
It was more like…slipping, like letting my body stay tethered to the realm while the rest of me went somewhere else, weightless and endless, where thousands of strands vibrated all around me.
Each thread was color and sound, but not in a way I could easily describe. Some hummed low, steady like earth itself. Others flickered like fire. Some were frayed, rough to the touch, and those were the ones I always avoided. Too sharp, leading somewhere dangerous.
“It’s easy for me,” I admitted, surprising myself. “Too easy. Like breathing, or blinking. I don’t have to think about it. The threads are always just…there. I learned to call the Sight as a child.”
I felt him watching me even without turning. His voice came in quiet. “And your visions? You’ve stopped them from taking you. How?”
I shifted uneasily. “I push them down. Close the door before it opens.”
“Why?”
I snapped my gaze over my shoulder, shame pooling in my chest. “Because they are a burden I cannot control. Because of one wrong moment, and I’m swept into something I can’t escape, while people stare like I’m cursed.” My voice cracked.
His body shifted, as if he wasn’t sure he wanted to speak his next words. “I want to know why you would waste a gift. You see pieces of Fate. That could be useful.”
I scoffed, bitter. “Of course, only a god would say that. You don’t have to live with it. To bleed with it. You don’t know what it’s like to feel your own body betray you, to drown in another mortal’s misery, with images of blood and ruin, then come back only to be told you can’t even speak of it.”
I expected him to argue, to jab back. But instead, he tilted his head. I turned enough to see his eyes burning through me like embers.
“And yet,” he said softly, “you still breathe. Still fight. Still reach for the Weave even as it burns you.” His hands tightened on his reins. “What is it, Aurenya? Are you afraid of what you’ll see? Or of what you’ll do with it once you stop fighting?”
I didn’t answer. Couldn’t. I let my Sight stretch out as far as the silence as we rode further into the heart of Cindraloch.
But eventually, he broke it, voice low, careful with his next words. “And besides, you don’t convulse when you get visions. You handle them better than those before you.”
I stared ahead, fingers, tightening on the reins. “Yes, well. It wasn’t always that way.”
The words were a blade I hadn’t meant to unsheathe, but they cut all the same.
My throat felt tight as I forced the rest out.
“When I was a child, I did. Every time the visions came, I collapsed. My body was never my own. The High Priestess used to take me down to the village, parade me in front of the market square. She’d force me to touch them, to let the Sight tear me open so she could have my revelations for the Oracle.
Every time, there was a spectacle, a circle forming, whispers spreading.
The Seer convulsing on the ground while people stared. ”
I let out a shaky breath, my voice dropping.
“That’s why I stopped touching anyone outside of the rites.
Why I stopped letting people close. I was tired of being their show.
Tired of giving them something to gawk at.
Tired of not being able to know when a vision would take me.
The horror I might see if it did. Nobody ever taught me how to control it, to shut the visions down.
Because of course, Fate doesn’t want me to shut them out. ”
The bond hummed between us, heavy with the weight of my shame. I didn’t have to turn to know he felt it—the hollow ache that had never really gone away. But I did turn, finally. And for once, he wasn’t looking at me with amusement.
When he finally spoke, his voice was stripped of the usual mockery, of the sharp edges he always hid behind.
“You were a mortal child,” he said, giving his head a firm shake, “in a realm full of things that they wouldn’t teach you about freely. They treated you like a relic, like something to be used. That isn’t a burden any mortal—anyone—should have to carry.”
I blinked at him, breath caught in my chest. It wasn’t an apology, wasn’t even comfort in the way mortals gave it. But from him, it was…more than I expected.
He shifted slightly in the saddle, the bond humming with something weighty, conflicted.
“I’ve seen what emotions do, Little Seer.
To mortals, to gods, to entire realms. They burn, they blind, they destroy.
I haven’t a talent for soft words. But—” His jaw tightened, like what he was about to say would cost him.
“What they did to you wasn’t sacred. It was cruel. ”
It was strange hearing those words fall from his lips. The forest rolled by, wild and endless, but all I could see was him. His godhood cloaked him in power and arrogance, yes, but just then, he simply looked like a weathered man who had seen too much.
I swallowed. I had so much I wanted to ask him. Why the Old Gods forced him to kneel. What they took from him. Why he used the name of a Fae king who sat on no throne. All questions I had asked, and all answers he always dodged.
It wasn't long before Tairngire couldn't resist getting under my skin with his damnable words again.
“Relax a bit, Aurenya.” he murmured, his voice low enough to curl along my skin. Hearing my name on his tongue was making my stomach do traitorous flips. I couldn’t not think about when he said it for the first time. “You can put your Sight away. You won’t need it yet.”
I shifted against my saddle, staring at the impossibly beautiful trees in the distance. “Where exactly are we going?”
“The Kathari camps.”
My breath caught. “The Morrígan,” I whispered. Branwyn’s stories swarmed back, half-warning, half-reverence. Her mother and her siblings—the war-sorcerers who commanded armies with magic instead of steel. The thought of standing before them sent a shiver down my spine.
Tairngire chuckled softly, amused at my silence. “Yes, Little Seer. The very one. In her fortress, we will be able to zero in on the location of the Iron Vein. That I know.”
I couldn’t shake the feeling of impending doom as we rode on, and like he could sense my fatigue settling into my bones again, he added. “Don’t fret. We’ll be arriving soon, and you’ll know when you see it.”