Chapter Forty-Nine Fia #3
“Once upon a time,” I began, as if I had not heard her, “a dark, strange little changeling arrived in a castle in the place of a princess. A princess so fair and kindhearted and graceful that her light hardly cast a shadow. Except there, inside that small sliver of shadow, was where the changeling lived. She looked like the princess, you see—as much a blessing as it was a curse. She longed for the gods to change her enough to pass for that shining paragon. Please, she prayed. Make my hair a little lighter. My smile a little brighter. My eyes a little kinder. But they were not listening. At least, not in the way she wished. For appearances can be deceiving. And few can forget their true nature. Even those that might wish to.” I paused, and Eala almost looked at me, her profile silver against the moonlight.
“You see, in the stories, sisters are always two sides of the same coin. One fair as snow and the other red as a rose. One who speaks with jewels and the other who spits toads and snakes. One with a heart pure and true and the other with a soul like tar.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, Sister,” Eala said, unkindly, “this is not a story.”
“Indeed. Why were we forced into storybook roles when we ought to have been simply sisters?” I raised my hands toward her as if in supplication.
“Can you imagine? The two of us, so close in age and appearance, running riot through Rath na Mara. Charming and defiant in equal, even measures. Wild and willful and wonderful. Step in step, arm in arm. How might we both have lived? How different might we both have become?”
“What do you wish me to say?” At last, Eala looked down at me, letting the moonlight spill over her features.
Her face was hollowed in, her skin so cracked and fissured with rot that her features were nearly unrecognizable.
Her diamond-blue eyes blazed like beacons.
“That I would have let you play with my dolls? Lent you my gowns? Shared your secrets? Your little dream is just that—imaginary. Even if we were raised together, you would have never truly stood beside me. I would have still been a princess. And you would have been nothing more than the bastard get of a Folk harlot who couldn’t keep her legs closed. ”
“I wished you to say that you might have loved me. As I surely would have loved you.” I glanced at the sky—white light bleached the landscape to bone.
It was nearly midnight. “If you had ever truly been my sister, I would have loved you. But thank you for reminding me that you never would have returned the favor. You do not believe I complete you, Eala. You simply want to use me—as you have used everyone you have ever known.”
“If you will not give me your heart,” she snarled, with a wave of her gloved hand, “then I suppose I must take your head. Rogan!”
With a stiff but practiced swing of his legs, Rogan dismounted. The steel of his blade gleamed silver in the moonlight as he bent his knees, whipped his cloak to one side… and charged at me.
I fought the paralysis of fear and sorrow, caught in a sudden whirlwind of long-lost memories.
My senses dulled as Rogan thundered toward me across the courtyard, my attention narrowing to the drum of his boots and the hammer of my own heart.
I wanted, suddenly, to run. To put this confrontation and this battle and this war behind me, and flee back to Tír na nóg. Back to Irian. Back home.
I wouldn’t have a home if I didn’t fight. None of us would.
So I crouched. Pointed my blades toward my childhood friend. And prepared to battle the man I’d once loved for a future I wasn’t sure I had.
Rogan thrust himself toward me. Our blades kissed, then parted with a scream of steel.
I spun away as his sword sliced the air where I’d stood, then ducked back in to parry the blow.
But when my skeans shrieked against his claíomh, I felt a strange resistance—as if Rogan had not used all his strength to strike me.
As if he fought his own violence.
“Rogan,” I panted, too quiet for Eala to hear. “For the last time, you must fight. You are strong enough to resist her.”
His sword came low this time, aiming for my ribs.
I whirled away, the wind of his blade brushing my skin.
I slammed one of my daggers into its sheath, then drove my shoulder into his chest. He stumbled but didn’t fall.
I hooked my free hand beneath his wrist and yanked, using his momentum against him.
We collided as I trapped his sword arm between us.
I twisted. Rogan’s grip slid away like butter.
His sword came free in my hand.
“Yield,” I cried, as I lifted the cold steel between us.
Rogan surged forward.
I fell back a step. Angled his claíomh higher. “Yield!”
Rogan twitched. Swiveled. And plowed chest-first onto his own sword.
The metal drove between the plates of his armor into his sternum. I jerked back instinctively, but Rogan’s hands wrapped around mine, driving the blade deeper into his own torso. Blood gushed over the gilded hilt, slicking my hands. I screamed, the sound scouring my throat like shattered glass.
“No!”
Thorns splintered from the earth, dislodging cobblestones to rattle and rumble.
Briars spiraled up into a tight, vengeful barrier encircling me and the prince.
Eala was also screaming—her revenants lunged forward, breaking the bubble of stillness surrounding her.
But I was faster—vast rosebushes surged toward the sky, thorns thick as forearms piercing between fluttering blood-red petals.
Rogan collapsed, his knees striking stone before he keeled sideways like a tree falling over.
I flung myself next to him and gently—oh so gently—rolled him onto his side.
I set my hands around the hilt of the claíomh jutting from Rogan’s ribs.
I wanted nothing more than to pull the blade from his chest—but for now, it was the only thing keeping him from bleeding out.
Again, I heard Eala scream in rage and frustration. The revenants groaned as they flung themselves onto my briars.
“The joy is in the thrill of the fight, changeling.” Inexplicable amusement varnished Rogan’s rasping, ragged tenor. “Not the promise of a kill.”
A deadly arrow of anguish winged toward my heart.
My eyes fluttered to his face—the face I’d known for as long as I could remember.
Hard jaw, soft lips, bold brows. Eyes the same shade as the ocean below the hill at Bré, although they were shadowed now with agony.
I wound my fist in his mantle, as though if I just held on to him hard enough, I might be able to keep him here.
“Idiot princeling.” I tried to smile, but my lips wouldn’t obey. “I’m not trying to kill you. I gave that up a long time ago.”
“Good thing too. I have a feeling I’d already be dead.”
I tried to laugh, choked. More blood stained my hands—it was welling from the wound, staining his tunic, pooling beneath him. His golden hair was already kissed red with it. Tears veiled my vision. I dared not let go of him long enough to wipe them away.
“That was a stupid thing to do, Rogan.”
“The stupidest.” He lifted a palm to my face.
His hands were warm and rough with calluses—the same hands that had brushed wings of snow from my small shoulders, that had sketched a thousand charcoal drawings until his fingers were bruised black, that had caressed me in the dark.
“But it was the only thing I could do. The only thing, in the end, that would set me free. And I am so glad, Fia, that I get… to die a free man.”
Roses of bloodstained spittle bloomed on his lips. He coughed, wetly.
“You’re not going to die.” The words were a lie and we both knew it.
The blade had slipped between his ribs, damaging something vital.
It was not a question of if. It was a question of how long.
“We’ve gotten out of worse scrapes, you and I.
Come on—tell me you fancy fighting off an army of the dead with your own sword sticking from your chest.”
“I would, changeling. I really would. But I’m afraid I’ve… given up standing. I’d rather just lie here.” His face sobered, his crooked smile fading away. “Will you tell me something, Fia? Tell me… something true?”
The dead were flinging themselves bodily against my thorns, breaking their bones and leaving ribbons of their rotting flesh hanging from the flowers.
“Anything.”
“Do you think… if a great many things had been different, that you and I could have been happy?”
I hesitated. Rogan saw. Pressed a thumb to my lips, as if to cage the words he did not want to hear.
“No, no. Don’t answer that.” He smiled, sweet and slow.
A line of red dribbled from the corner of his mouth.
“Let me tell you something instead. You were… the best thing that ever happened to me. You stole my favorite weapons. You ate the best bits of food off my plate. I’m still convinced you trained that one hound to bite me whenever I passed by.
But you… were my best friend and I loved—I love—” Another sickening, slurping cough stole away his words.
This time his body racked with it, his spine curling as his head bowed.
The blade shuddered, slicing deeper into his flesh.
“I was so happy here—at Dún Darragh—although I did not know it at… the time. I had you all to myself, and I treasure those moments. Just us, and the greenhouse, and… the dirt on our hands.”
“Stop talking, princeling.” My tears were a deluge I could not stop. “You’re driving the blade deeper.”
“It’s all right,” he soothed, his thumb dragging salt along my cheek. “I don’t deserve your tears. I have… never deserved your tears. Just know… how glad I am. That once upon a time, for a very short time, you were mine. As I have been… ever yours.”
My voice was a caged and cowardly thing. Rogan coughed once more, and I knew he didn’t have long. His life thrummed restlessly beneath my palms like a caged bird that longed to fly free. I had but moments with him. Why didn’t I know what to say?
“Rogan—”
“You don’t have to… speak. There is nothing to say that has not already been said. I would ask… but one thing of you.” I nodded mutely. “Give me back to the forest, changeling.”
“No.” I was not sure what I was refusing—his request, or his death.
“Don’t you understand? If I die, I… belong to her.
And I do not wish her to take me. She has taken enough.
She has taken everything.” My tears were a waterfall I could not dam.
“Do you remember what you did to Eimar, our first night here? You told me once it was not death… just a different kind of life.” I gave my head another shake.
He clutched me in the moment before his weak hand fell from my cheek.
The blue faded from his eyes, like the sun setting over the sea.
“I’m sorry I didn’t… understand before. But I do now.
And I want it… more than anything in the world. Let me have that. Please.”
What else could I do? I nodded.
He smiled, peace drifting over his features as his eyes slid shut. “It has been a privilege… to die for you. Fia.”
His life left his body on an exhale. I caught it in my hands, then slammed them onto the ground with a cry that stole something vital from my soul.
The Heart of the Forest throbbed like a kick to the chest. Power flooded my veins and coursed along my bones, pouring into the earth below Rogan’s motionless form.
I thought of his powerful figure, so tall and proud.
Roots plunged between the cobblestones to the rock-splinted earth as a trunk coiled up, its bark the warm golden color of fair skin tanned by summer sun.
I thought of his eyes, the mercurial blue-green of sunlit river stones.
Moss jeweled the expanding spaces between his powerful roots.
I thought of the shooting stars we used to watch from the high slate roof of Rath na Mara.
Silver threads crept along his bark, poor adornment for his growing might.
I thought of his hair, waving long and free over his freckled shoulders.
The leaves bursting broad and true from his lofting branches were like hammered gold.
Ten feet. Twenty feet. Fifty feet rose the vast oak from the courtyard of Dún Darragh, until it towered nearly as high as the keep.
And when the power thrumming through me finally slowed, I climbed to my feet, pulled the claíomh from where the trunk had nearly swallowed it, and stared up into the darkness between Rogan’s branches.
“Rest well.” I swiped tears from my cheeks with bloodstained fingers. “It will be a privilege… to kill her for you. Rogan.”
I turned. Shifted my grip on my blades—one long, one short. And bade my wall of briars to wilt.
The barrier collapsed. Hordes of thorn-shredded revenants lurched and scrabbled toward me.
I dodged and feinted, slamming my dagger into soggy, rotting flesh as I struck out with Rogan’s sword.
I fought toward Eala. Between the surging hordes of the massed dead, I saw her gray palfrey retreat to the fort; a pale figure dismounted and pushed open the doors of Dún Darragh.
I smiled, grimly. Around the massive oak splitting the courtyard in two, I carved a path for myself with glowing fists and blades alike. Then Dún Darragh opened before me with a crash.