Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
AGNES
The Beithir dropped me onto the rocks like a cat depositing a half-dead mouse.
I hit the ground hard, the impact driving the air from my lungs, and dots danced across my vision. For a moment I couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t do anything but lie there gasping while my body cried out in protest.
“Agnes!” A distant shout from the shore had me scrambling to my feet, arms raised, ignoring the pain shooting through my ribs.
Graham stood, his face stark and tragic on the shoreline, and my breath caught as a wall of water crashed over him. In seconds, he disappeared beneath the surface of the loch, and my heart broke in pieces.
“Graham!”
The word tore from my throat, raw and desperate. I ran toward the water’s edge, but there was nothing I could do. Nothing but watch the spot where he’d been standing, now empty, the water churning and dark.
“No. No, no, no—”
The Beithir rose from the loch between me and the shore, cutting off my view.
Water cascaded from its massive body, its scales gleaming in the moonlight like wet armor.
It was even larger up close. Its head alone was larger than my car, its eyes burning with an ancient fire that made my knees want to buckle.
“You called for me, didn’t you, Bookkeeper?” Its voice rolled across the island like thunder, vibrating in my bones, rattling the stones beneath my feet. No more was his voice just in my head, as my friends shrieked in response across the loch. “So? Speak.”
“Graham—” I couldn’t tear my eyes from the water. “What did you do to him? Where is he?”
“The curse takes what it is owed.” The Beithir’s tail swept through the loch, sending waves crashing against the island’s rocky shore.
Shouts erupted from the other side. “Your bloodline owes an enormous debt. One of yours took my father, as I’m sure you well know. It’s my duty to take what is yours.”
“No. You were lied to. The curse isn’t even yours, it’s the Cailleach’s! She’s responsible for your father’s death.”
The creature went still.
Its eyes narrowed, the fire in them flickering with what might have been surprise or might have been rage.
“What did you say?” The words came out as a hiss and I shrunk slightly.
“The Cailleach. The dark one. The hungry winter.” I was shaking—from cold and fear and the desperate need to find Graham—but I forced myself to keep talking. “She cursed my family. Not your father. She did it to punish Isobel for ruining her plan.”
“You lie.”
“I have proof,” I said, racing through my words, my teeth chattering. “I have Isobel’s own words. She wrote down everything that happened. The truth about your father, about why she killed him, about all of it. It broke her heart. She’d loved your father and respected him.”
The Beithir’s massive head lowered, and he brought those burning eyes closer. Close enough that I could see the rings of age in them, the depth of centuries of solitude and grief.
“A Wright woman murdered my father. A king taken down by a lowly Bookkeeper. That is the only truth that matters.”
“The Cailleach corrupted your father. He was her puppet, her weapon. She spent years twisting his mind, filling him with her whispers, until he wasn’t himself anymore.
He was going to slaughter all of us. The Order.
The keepers. Everyone. He was no longer in service to the Clach na Fìrinn.
Isobel killed him to save them and to save the Stone. ”
“Lies!”
The roar sent me stumbling backward, my feet slipping on wet stone. The Beithir reared up, lightning crackling along its spine, its mouth opening to reveal those endless rows of needle teeth.
“I should destroy you now, for speaking lies about my father—”
“I’m standing on the Stone of Truth!” The words burst out of me before I could think better of them. “This whole island … it’s built on the Clach na Fìrinn. The Stone that can tell truth from falsehood. If I were lying, wouldn’t you know it?”
The Beithir hesitated.
Its jaws were still open, lightning still flickering between its teeth, but it didn’t strike. Its eyes moved from me to the ground beneath my feet, to the ancient rocks that formed the foundation of this tiny island.
“It can’t be …”
I sensed a shift in him and inched closer, using the only tool I’d ever had in my artillery.
My words. The truth.
“You must listen. Please, I’m begging you.” I was sobbing now, tears hot against my icy cheeks. “I know your father was the guardian of this Stone before the Cailleach corrupted him. And I know that Isobel loved him. She didn’t want to kill him. She did it because there was no other way.”
Something shifted in the Beithir’s expression. The rage was still there, but beneath it, I caught a glimpse of … uncertainty. The first crack in centuries of absolute conviction.
“You cannot know these things.”
“I read Isobel’s diary. Her own account of what happened that night.
” My voice was steadier now, the historian in me taking over, marshaling evidence like weapons.
“She wrote it in cipher, encoded so only the Wright family could read it. It’s been hidden, waiting for someone to find it.
Waiting for someone to finally keep the promise she made to your father as he died. ”
“He asked her to do something? His murderer?” the Beithir hissed and slapped his tail on the water, sending shockwaves across the surface of the loch. Across the way, my friends screamed to me, but there was nothing I could do other than focus on the Beithir in front of me.
“He asked her to tell the truth. That he, himself, had been betrayed by someone he once thought to be a friend. About how he fought the Cailleach’s influence until the very end.
” I tried to steady my breathing, but it was coming in painful gasps, making it increasingly hard to talk.
“He didn’t want to be remembered as a monster.
He wanted people to know that he was a victim, not a villain.
And Isobel promised she would tell them, but she died before she could keep that promise.
She died, and the truth died with her, and your father’s last wish has gone unfulfilled. ”
The Beithir fell silent.
The lightning had faded from its scales. I could only hope that was a good sign.
“My father,” it said. “You claim he asked for this?”
“With his dying breath. The corruption lifted at the end, and he was of clear mind. She said the enchantment had gone from him, and he was himself again, just for a moment. Just long enough to beg her to tell the truth about what the Cailleach had done to him.”
“And the curse?”
“It came from the Cailleach, not from your father. She was furious that Isobel had killed her weapon, ruined her plan to scatter the artifacts, so she cursed my bloodline. Every man a Wright woman truly loves, the water will claim. It’s not your curse to uphold.
Don’t you see? You’re a puppet.” My voice broke.
The Beithir hissed, not liking my words, but I didn’t care. None of this mattered anyway if I couldn’t save Graham.
“Please.” I turned away from him and looked back to where the Stone of Truth was buried. “I beg of you. I call upon the Stone to see the truth in this matter. We are but your humble servants. We’ve always protected you. Please. You must save us now.”
“If what you say is true ...” the Beithir hissed behind me and I whirled, facing it once more.
“It is true. I’m standing on the Stone of Truth. Do you think it would allow me to lie and live? Don’t you see? You can change all of this. Right now.”
A black shape dove from the sky.
Murdoch, Kaia’s familiar, hit the Beithir’s face like a feathered missile of fury, his talons raking across those ancient eyes, his beak stabbing at the soft flesh around them.
The creature reared back with a roar of surprise and pain, its massive head thrashing, and suddenly the night was full of wings.
Moe, Larry, and Curly, Sophie’s crows, came screaming down from the darkness, joining Murdoch in his assault.
Four crows against a creature the size of a building?
It should have been laughable, should have been suicide, but they were fast and the Beithir was confused and those sharp beaks kept finding their marks.
“No!” I scrambled backward as the Beithir’s tail swept across the island, missing me by inches. “Stop! I was getting through to him!”
The Beithir roared again, lightning crackling along its spine, and I saw Murdoch take a glancing blow that sent him tumbling through the air. He recovered, wings beating furiously, and dove right back in.
“No, Murdoch! You’ll be killed,” I screamed at them. “Stop it!”
The water exploded.
The Kelpies burst from the loch in a wave of shadow and fury in full attack mode.
They slammed into the Beithir from all sides, their teeth tearing at its scales, their hooves striking at its coils.
The creature bellowed in shock, twisting to face this new threat, and I saw something in its eyes I hadn’t seen before.
Confusion.
“What—” The Beithir’s voice cracked through the onslaught. “What is this? Your role is to serve me. Desist.”
But the Kelpies didn’t listen. They drove at the creature with a ferocity I’d never seen from them, pushing it back, away from me, away from the center of the island.
Away from the Stone.
I gasped for air as understanding hit me.
The Kelpies weren’t attacking the Beithir to protect me.
They were protecting the Stone of Truth.
The artifact that lay beneath this island, the sacred object that the Order had guarded for centuries.
The Beithir had brought violence to this place and the Kelpies—creatures of destruction, aye, but creatures of this loch—would not allow it.
They served the Clach na Fìrinn. They always had.
“You see?” I shouted over the melee. “They’re protecting the Stone! They’re not your servants. They never were!”