Chapter Wayland
Wayland
Wayland should have worn a shirt. It hadn’t occurred to him ahead of time, but the ravening hordes of the recently dead all had incredibly sharp fingernails. Scratches scored his chest from throat to stomach, rather ruining the illusion of demigod spawned from the sea he’d been aiming for.
Still, he managed to fight his way—covered in gore and striped with sweat—to the Heartwood.
He had not been here in years—he had forgotten how colossal the sacred tree was.
Festooned in brilliant bouquets of wisteria and eglantine, it struck him dumb.
Fáilsceim fell to his side, forgotten. He felt it then—a sensation not unlike hunger.
A gnawing pull beneath his belly button.
A thread of magic, woven across space, connecting him to something else. Someone else.
Somewhere else.
He stared at the sky. The moon stared back. Panic jerked his head on his neck in an eager circle. Where were they? Where were Laoise and Irian?
Something was happening. A sundering—a crucial point wrenched from the circuit they’d all renewed. A living vine hacked from its roots, grasping with creepers for purchase as it was flung into the abyss.
Wayland drove the tines of his trident into the earth, using it to prop his suddenly weak limbs.
It was time—he knew it was time. And although he thought he had prepared for this…
it suddenly seemed too difficult. Why must he sacrifice all he had gained in the bargain he’d made with Muir—all this mastery and ease and comfort—in return for the man he’d been before?
Even more excruciating, he knew he must pay dearly for the pleasure of it.
A sacrifice larger than life, Fia had told him, during one of their muttered, secret conferences in his workshop. To destroy Eala—and unforge their Treasures—all four heirs would have to make a sacrifice. One that demanded far more than death—a sacrifice that demanded love.
What love did Wayland have to barter? He had earned so little. Deserved even less. It seemed a cruel and petty thing to bargain with such a meager thing as his heart.
It was as it had always been. He shook his head, levered himself to his feet. He had made a promise—one he intended to keep. Even if it killed him.
He had a feeling this was going to be worse.
“By fire and by sky,” he spat, the words bitter as poison on his tongue. He fought the urge to choke them back, dreading the burden of giving them voice. “By fast water and by ancient tree. By the power of my willing heart, I tithe my Treasure to thee… O Eala.”
He closed his eyes. Muir rose from the depths of him, as vast and vengeful as they had been on the ocean floor. Their massive tentacles reached for him, curling and sucking—somewhere between a caress and a strangulation. Wayland was not afraid.
He was terrified.
The cost will be high.
“I know.” He forced his jaw to loosen, forced his hands to unclench. “Only, I beg of you—let me choose.”
You cannot trick us. If this price is not enough, balance will demand a reckoning.
“A sacrifice larger than life!” His power sloshed and surged inside him, hungry and eager. “Is that not the price?”
It is. What do you offer?
“The only love I’ve ever earned. The last love I ever wanted. The love that made me whole. But let me take the pain—let no one else bear the cost.”
The love we give is equal to the love we take. The leviathan smiled as it furled tighter around him. Devouring.
Idris.