Chapter Thirty-Six Laoise
Chapter Thirty-Six
Laoise
Laoise heaved a sigh as she watched her brother leave the valley in the company of the least serious and most dissolute man she had ever met.
Although Idris was more than capable of making his own decisions, Laoise couldn’t help but feel a fierce, protective warmth toward him—a need to shield him from every hurt the world might throw in his direction.
She had never seen much of herself in his wide, wondering eyes; his trusting nature infuriated her, even as it filled her with pride and tenderness.
Although he could drive her to the edge of her patience, all she truly wanted was to see Idris safe, happy, and unburdened.
She did not wish to see him ravished, then discarded by the hedonist prionsa of the Silver Isle.
“He’ll be all right,” Sinéad said, over her shoulder.
Laoise sighed again. “I’m not so sure about that.”
“Wayland’s not so bad,” she added, clearly intuiting Laoise’s reservations about the libertine heir. “Once you get to know him.”
“I’m also not so sure about that,” Laoise said dryly. “And the getting to know him is exactly what I’m worried about.”
She slid her eyes over the valley she had destroyed, then helped renew.
There was no reason to stay, now everyone else was gone.
But something made her want to linger—a quiet, stubborn reluctance rooting her to the spot.
She was not a fearful woman—she had faced greater dangers.
Yet the hollow ache of possibility filled her chest, tearing her between the safety of the familiar and the uneasy thrill of stepping toward a future that would change her indelibly.
It did not feel like destiny. It felt like erasure.
So she told Sinéad, “Let’s rest one more night. I want the draiglings at their full strength. We fly to Findias in the morning.”
Laoise knew the route to Findias well—she had flown back several times since rescuing Idris from its smoldering ruins.
The sight of the city she had once called home never failed to elicit a complicated mix of feelings: a bittersweet, burning ache—old painful memories coddled like burning embers in her heart—and the sharp pang of remembering all she had outgrown.
Findias was a city burdened by ghosts—of people, of violence.
Yet it was haunted mostly by Laoise herself—her past cobbled into the streets and mortared into the walls and thatched upon the roofs.
Nestled deep within a jagged mountain crevasse, Findias caught the late afternoon sunlight, glowing like a living coal in shades of orange and crimson.
Sinuous towers of blackened obsidian had once been crowned with ever-burning flames that crackled and danced in the mountain winds.
Aqueducts carved from volcanic glass arched over the streets—long ago, rivers of magma had spat and sparked as they were carried toward the city’s great forges, wreathed in swarms of tiny red emberfolk.
In the heart of the city, a vast plaza sat, dominated by a fountain that had once spilled liquid flames but now only spurted ugly, warped shadows.
The corrupted wild magic gathered at the back of the city like a crouching beast ready to pounce.
Above it, the volcano hunched, its crater like two hands cupped around a bowl of fire.
It gave a speculative growl as Laoise flew closer, spitting an arc of magma through the darkening sky.
Laoise suppressed a shudder of nerves. Before the purge, the volcano had been considered holy—the Sept of Scales had called it Cuas na Gréine.
The Hollow of the Sun. Elen used to recite a nursery rhyme to frighten Laoise before bed: In the Hollow of the Sun, where old fire flares bright, the flames cast no warmth, only shadows and fright.
Laoise alighted on a plateau halfway up the rise—she did not wish to get too close to the flaming crater with Sinéad and the draiglings, but neither did she want to leave Sinéad in the abandoned city.
“It’s cold.” Sinéad hunched deeper into her mantle as a high wind whipped through the gorge, whistling between the high stone needles and making Laoise’s scales quiver. “Is there nowhere else to camp? Surely somewhere in the city—”
“We’re not camping.” A sliver of guilt pierced Laoise’s heart.
She should not have let Sinéad come with her—she should have sent her with Balor, where she would have been far safer and likely more comfortable.
Selfishly, she had wanted a friend for this journey.
And now that friend was suffering. “More dangerous things than ghosts roam Findias after dark. It is a lawless, fell place.”
Sinéad frowned. “Then what are we doing here?”
“I know where my Bright One’s nemeton is,” Laoise said, matter-of-factly.
Neither Irian, Wayland, nor Fia had had the upbringing of a tánaiste, which was for the best—they had all survived the purge, while few others had.
But the omens of Laoise’s birth had been clear, and she had been raised on the sacred lore of her Sept—all the knowledge and training of the Treasure she was sure to inherit.
Her education had not been finished—she had been sent away to Dún Scaith before she came of age.
But she had learned enough. “It is inside the volcano.”
Sinéad blanched, her wind-whipped complexion going gray in the fading light. “Inside it?”
“Blodwen—if anything happens to me, you’re in charge. Keep Sinéad and the smaller draigs safe. Travel south until you reach the coast, then to the Summerlands as swiftly as you can.”
Blodwen bobbed her red head. Sinéad went even paler. “That doesn’t sound promising.”
“Come now.” Laoise forced herself to grin despite the trepidation beginning to clang and clatter inside her. “Do not let fear of what has not yet passed steal your enjoyment of the present moment.”
“Enjoyment?” Sinéad’s eyebrows drifted up. “What enjoyment?”
Laoise gestured broadly at the sheer, stark mountains painted bloody by the dying sun. “Is this not an utterly stunning view?”
Sinéad scoffed, punched Laoise gently on the shoulder, then dragged her in for a brief, bullying hug.
“Be careful,” she commanded, gruffly, before planting her back against a large rock and drawing her daggers. “And quick. I’m already freezing. Don’t think I’m leaving here without you.”
Laoise watched until all six draiglings arranged themselves close around Sinéad—the older three buffering the wind with their wings, Gwyr and Anwyll snuggling on either side of her, and Enfys climbing into her lap—before shifting back into her anam cló and winging toward the crater.
The gateway to the Hollow of the Sun was well hidden and barred with metal.
Laoise had always found this humorous—after all, who would willingly break into a volcano?
That would be like gift wrapping your own doom with a bow on top.
The key guarded by the Sunkeepers was long lost, so she blew white-hot flames over the bars of the gate until they melted into rivulets of gleaming metal, then returned to her Gentry form to sidle through the gap.
She descended the winding steps carved into the throat of the volcano, each one slick with ancient ash.
They were warm beneath her feet, moving gently as if the dark stone breathed as it slumbered.
Shadows and glow flickered along the walls, cast from below by restless light.
The hot air was oppressive, heavy with the scent of sulfur as it beaded sweat along Laoise’s skin and crisped her hair.
The molten heartbeat of the crater throbbed louder, echoing through the depths.
The staircase bottomed out in the heart of the crater.
Spires of glossy black obsidian, able to withstand incredible temperatures, branched up through the bubbling pit of molten lava, towering nearly a hundred feet to the ceiling of the crater.
They formed a circle, at the center of which sat a block. A dais, an altar.
This was the Hollow of the Sun, where Laoise had made yearly pilgrimage when she was a child.
The Sunkeepers’ song trembled up the throat of the volcano as the potential heirs trailed them in their golden robes.
The reigning tánaiste, Dímma, had conducted the ritual beneath the nemeton.
Upon his broad arm lay the Flaming Shield, intricately carved in obsidian atop a circle of sacred wood, wreathed in glowing flame like a small sun.
Laoise had always known, in her heart of hearts, that her destiny would carry her here. The circumstances were just a bit different than she had imagined.
She tried to remember the Sunkeepers’ song as she approached the altar, avoiding deep pockets of magma simmering upon the rock.
The lava couldn’t hurt her, but she liked these boots.
She hummed a snatch of a melody, brokenly, but could remember only a few of the lines.
O radiant flame, heart of all light! The sun is arisen, with dawn from night.
A figure materialized in the spitting, seething glow at the heart of the nemeton.
Laoise could not quell the burst of fear sharpening its teeth upon her ribs and slashing its tail along the contours of her stomach.
But the figure was only a child—perhaps eleven or twelve.
Laoise briefly thought it must be herself—before Scáthach had made her cut her hair, she had worn it in long, loose curls like that.
Her silken gown was the warm copper and sharp red worn by the high houses of the Sept of Scales.
But a narrow scar bridged the girl’s nose from a childhood accident, and the color of her eyes was not molten ember like Laoise’s and their mother’s, but dark and opaque as their father’s and brother’s.
Laoise’s stomach twisted with a new fear—a chill clawing her spine and freezing her breath in her lungs. Horror rocked her, even as terrible hope scattered her thoughts.
“Elen?” she whispered.