35. THIRTY FIVE #2
A cold understanding swept through me. Fear. That was the signal. The trigger for him. The very thing Vareth fed on.
And if fear was the spark, then my refusal to break was the only thing keeping him from becoming the monster he feared. I had to resist fear at all costs. It was my only chance with Fionn.
“At least be honest with me, Fionn.”
“I have always been honest, Tilly. We have no choice. Our people suffer the prophecy for a decade if we don’t offer the Marked as a sacrifice. Not even women and children escape Vareth's wrath in Elora. You have witnessed nothing compared to what happens when the prophecy takes effect.”
Was this Fionn showing real remorse, real feelings for his people? I was shocked. His eyes started to lighten as his emotions changed.
“The only way to stop it.” He stepped closer, his presence a shadow I could feel in my bones.
“If there is a true joining of blood, where blood and souls connect as one. That is the only promise written in old Varethym scriptures. But you, Tilly demonstrated that there was no connection there. This is why we had to use the seance of divination to find you and then sacrifice you quickly .
“You never gave me a chance,” I shot back.
But the words scraped out of me with more ache than fury. For a heartbeat, something inside me buckled — a quiet, splintering collapse I refused to let him see.
Was this about me, or was it about his people, the women, the children he kept mentioning?
My stomach knotted, an involuntary twist I didn’t understand, as if some part of me felt the sadness buried beneath his anger.
I hated that it pulled at me, that it made me wonder what he had seen, what he had lost, what horrors he carried alone because prophecy demanded it.
I didn’t want to feel anything for him, especially not sympathy or understanding, but something in me shifted anyway.
I held my breath, forcing my face to stay hard, but inside…
inside I wasn’t as untouched as I wanted to be.
“I didn’t fit your expectations. It’s sad, really. That this is all you exist for.”
His expression didn’t change, it was still.
“Careful, Tilly,” he murmured. “You’re mistaking purpose for choice.”
I stepped toward him, refusing to bend,
“You don’t scare me anymore, Fionn. Not when I finally see what you are.”
“Now you're starting to think rather than react,” Fionn said. “If you think I wanted this, you understand me even less than I feared.”
“You try to live in control. That’s the saddest part. You’ve lived so long under prophecy that you have no real control left.” My breath hitched, but I didn’t look away.
“That’s why you hate the Marked, why you hate me, isn’t it? Because we are the one thing you think you can control. It's easier to hate than love, because Vareth turns you into a monster and forces you to kill us. And who would want to live knowing they had killed someone they loved? ”
“Control has nothing to do with it. I end what must be ended.”
Suddenly I thought of the others.
“What of your brothers?” I asked, thinking of Cillian. “Are they safe? What happened?”
“I had to leave them to the Gatemen. The battle was far from over.”
I remembered the sight of Cillian surrounded by the Gatemen, fighting for his life.
“They could be dead. How could you do that to your brothers?”
He looked into my eyes, his cold blue gaze piercing.
“What type of man would I be if I let you die at the hands of the Gatemen?”
“The same kind that would let me burn alive.” I retorted.
“Don't torture yourself. My brothers are alive. We’ve all battled stronger enemies. If anything had happened, I would feel their pain. My branding on my wrist would turn black and I wouldn’t be standing here in the cold with you.”
“That’s unfortunate. He survived?” I said glancing at his wrist, to see that it still glowed with energy.
“Cillian sent me here. He instructed me not to come back without you.”
Fionn paused and gazed into my eyes, and right now I glimpsed a faint reflection of the man he may have once been. It vanished as quickly as it had appeared, but I still felt the lingering resonance of our brief connection.
“I couldn’t let you die at the hands of the Gatemen,” he said, glancing away.
“Everything would have been for nothing.”
** *
“Now move.” Fionn’s voice cut through the air. “We need to leave now.”
I didn’t know if it was adrenaline, but I felt myself beginning to tremble.
The smell in the air changed the way it always did near the vortex, but this time it was sharper, heavier.
I could taste the molten sting of sulfur that clung to the back of my throat, warning me that whatever was crawling through the clouds was getting closer.
Gazing at the sky, Fionn sniffed the air, then grabbed my arm and pulled me along the beach while the heavens roiled and stretched like saltwater taffy. He walked quickly, and I had no choice but to follow until we reached the vortex edge.
Fionn came to a halt before the opening of the vortex.
His arm slid around my back, crushing me against his chest until my resistancevanished beneaththe sheer force of him.
For a moment, I froze." It was the closest I had ever been to him.
His heat, his size, the sheer force of him pressed into every inch of space between us.
Even when we danced, I had never felt him this close, that had been a choreographed distance, almost careful. This was different, unrestrained and predatory.
I hated even more the feeling of safety that rose within me. I wasn’t safe from death, not with him, not with the vortex yawning open before us. But in this single impossible moment, I felt protected. Protected by the very man I should have feared most.
He tilted my head back, his fingers threaded firmly in my hair to force my gaze to his.
“Listen to me,” he said looking down on me.
“If we step through the vortex and you see the light leave my eyes, if they turn as black as the void, don’t wait for me to speak.
You run, Tilly, and you burn anything that stands in your way. Even me.”
My heart thundered against his ribs, the warning chilling me more than the wind from the vortex. I wanted to ask him why, but before I could find the words, he tightened his grip, pulling me to him as if I were the only thing keeping him from drifting away.
A powerful force pulled us into the currents, sweeping us along in spectral rapids. We soared and coasted through waves of pulsing light. My hair whipped around my face like a frenzied curtain. I shut my eyes and clung to Fionn, the strong cadence of his heartbeat pounding near my ear.
We rode the shifting vortex, carried along like leaves buffeted by floodwaters until we started to slow.
My eyes fluttered open to the sight of pastoral green countryside below me, bathed in the warm glow of the afternoon.
We descended into the verdant embrace of sun-dappled trees and settled onto mossy ground, back at the place where I was first taken.
Beyond us, the woods resonated with the serenade of birds.
***
I gazed around and breathed in balmy air scented with wildflowers. I was back home in the woods near the village. Tears welled in my eyes, overflowing before I could stop them.
I was still trembling, still holding on to Fionn. He looked at me, his blue eyes catching the light. The corner of his mouth lifted for the briefest second. Then gone so fast I might have imagined it.
“Is this some game?” I said as he released me.
The loss of his warmth was immediate.
“Why have you brought me here?”
I looked at him with sadness, happiness and the wonder of what the hell was going on.
“I swear you'll never know any peace as long as you remain with us,” he said .
I felt almost faint from the heady scents I thought I'd never breathe again. I began to shake, not like the fear when I was taken on this very spot. Shaking with unbelievable excitement.
“Too much has happened to you. It’s time to be with your loved ones. Go home and remember who you are. We took you from your family, and you despised us for that.”
“My family?” I whispered. “You’re allowing me to see them?” Is this some twisted game, what’s the catch.
I looked at the familiar trees, the moss I used to sit on to sketch, and it felt like a dream I was about to wake up from. He was giving me my life back, He took my hand, his mouth brushed my knuckles and kissed it with a softness that felt like a goodbye.
“I’m letting you go so you can live. We were wrong to take you the way we did. I now realise that nothing done by force ever achieves the result we hope for. Perhaps that, too, is the legacy of the curse, that we become shadows of ourselves.”
“After everything that’s happened,” I said, “you sound almost apologetic.”
Fionn held my gaze.
“You don't have long left in this world. You will continue to be hunted. Be with your family, Tilly, and remember what it is to be happy again. That’s all I want for you now.”
I stared at him in disbelief, unable to accept that after everything I had been through, I was back home, my family a short walk away. An indescribable joy overwhelmed me at the thought of my reunion, but as I looked at him, the joy felthollow.
“Go home.”
“What about you, Fionn?”
“This is as far as I go. You'll go your way, I'll go mine.”
“What about the prophecy?” I asked. “What about Vareth and your people? ”
He straightened, turning his face to the sky. “I don’t fear the stars or Vareth.” His voice dropped, quieter now, as though speaking to the universe itself.
“Only the monster they expect me to become.”
I knew he was a dark, suffering soul, but I was still being drawn toward him and his brothers.
His focus returned to me. “I know you hate us for the way we took you. In our attempts to free ourselves from the curse, we’ve become what we never were before.”
The remorse that shone from Fionn’s eyes was like the rising of the sun after a long winter night.
“Fionn? I can see the burden you carry, it's like a ball and chain.”
“Some things come at a price and can’t be forgiven.”
As he spoke, a fresh line of blood slipped from the cut across his Mark, trailing down his cheek. He wiped it away with the back of his hand, but more welled beneath his fingers.
“You’re still bleeding,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter,” he said too quickly.
“It won’t stop until Vareth allows it.”
But the monk’s words echoed through me like a pulse. Magic and power are in your blood.
Before I could think, before I could stop myself, I stepped closer.
“Tilly,” he warned, sensing something in my eyes.
“Don’t.”
“I need to try something before I go.”
My hand lifted on instinct, my heartbeat thundering in my ears. A single drop of blood, scraped from a cut I hadn’t even realised I’d made, slid from my fingertip and fell onto the wound carved through his Mark.
He froze completely and for the first time he didn’t look at me like a burden .
“If magic and power are in the blood,” I whispered. “Blood must have the power to heal.”
He smirked, or at least he tried to, but it faltered. “Your mortal blood isn’t capable of overpowering Vareth’s mark.” But as he spoke, the bleeding stopped.
I swallowed hard. The monk spoke the truth.
“Tilly…” he murmured, voice low and rough. “That's not possible.”
Fionn tried to wipe at the Mark again, slower this time. Again, no blood came away on his fingers.
He looked down towards me, his eyes locked on mine. The black I’d seen in the chamber was fighting to return, a cold, oily shadow swirling in the depths of his pupils that made my skin prickle. His jaw clenched.
“Go now. Go before I change my mind and Vareth's darkness makes the choice for me.”
Though his heart had hardened long ago, I managed to glimpse enough to know that a spark of his former self was still locked away deep within him.
I turned and walked away from him, slowly at first, then more quickly as my legs carried me through the trees toward a familiar road.
Once, I was a young girl living in a village with nothing but dreams and aspirations for a creative future, only to discover myself to be a divine-touched soul with power locked within me.
The light had been stolen from my life, and I had been plunged into darkness. Now, all I wanted to do was find the light again and a way back to who I was.
If the only way back was to bind with one of the brothers, then that was what I had to do.
As I ran, it suddenly dawned on me that I had to make the choice, even if it killed me.
I slowed down. I wasn’t going to choose because they wanted me to or because I was forced to.
I wanted to make that decision myself, and the only way I could do that was to find out which brother was meant for me.
The time had finally come for me to face who I was and break the curse.
I stopped in the middle of the road and turned back. I wanted to tell Fionn that I needed to see my family, but I wanted to go back with him.
The irony didn’t escape me. Now I knew why: I had a greater destiny to fulfil.
I had only been gone a few minutes, but when I returned to the spot where Fionn and I had arrived, he had vanished.
I was more determined than ever to stop the curse. Not because the brothers wanted me to, but because I wanted to, and I would.
“Fionn?” I cried, searching frantically for him. He wasn’t here, he was gone.