Chapter Fifty-One
Nicole
NICOLE HAD TO STRAIN TO HEAR THE DRUID’S NEXT WORDS over the ringing in her ears.
‘I don’t know how many of the Fomóiri rule the Wake,’ the Druid continued. ‘I know of one that runs it, and then there’s a woman, some kind of right-hand.’
Terror seeped into Nicole’s stomach. It was one thing believing gods had once walked the earth.
But that they still did, and ran the Wake?
Gods weren’t something they could defeat. Gods were beyond the scope of the supernatural and into the divine.
She looked to Kyan for confirmation, but his eyes were still on the Druid, his jaw hard as stone, brow carved into a scowl of concentration.
‘What did you think? That the world was just Seers and Empyreals and creatures?’ The Druid stared out at the landscape for a moment before softly saying, ‘If only.’
‘How do you know this?’ Kyan asked.
Her eyes – green as the forest – slid to Nicole.
They were greener than Kyan’s, but matched the immortal loneliness in his; the sense of duty that kept them going through the ages.
A twist of grief that they hadn’t been able to support one another like she could with Dylan and Bells made it through Nicole’s ringing mind.
Had this girl been alone, all this time?
‘Not only have I lived long enough to know, but your mother has done a lot of … reconnaissance.’
Nicole recalled the vision the portrait had shown her: her mother, Elisabetta, and the whisper of another person there in white and emerald. ‘You’re the Druid who was there when her portrait was painted?’
An echo of softness bled into the girl’s eyes. ‘Yes. There are a fair few immortals that knew her. But she said that one of the most auspicious times to rise against the Wake was once you and Kyan had met each other.’
‘S-she knew Kyan and I would meet?’
The Druid’s head dipped in confirmation.
‘How? A Seer told her?’
A flicker of confusion sharpened the girl’s gaze. ‘Your mother was a Seer as well as an Empyreal. She knew a great deal of information, but her visions were threatening her sanity towards the end.’
‘No, my father is the Seer.’
The Druid’s eyes didn’t leave Nicole’s. ‘Is he.’
It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t a suggestion.
A peal of unease echoed through her. How did she know all of this? Kyan stroked his fingers across Nicole’s lower back. I’m here, that touch said. We can tackle these revelations together.
‘The Wake told me you’ve been killing people,’ Kyan said.
‘I have indeed killed and I’ll kill again. But it’s most likely not the deaths they’re trying to pin on me. Once, my role was to contact the gods and distil their wisdom to guide royals and heroes. Whatever I do, I do it to get information, protect people, or keep my existence a secret.’
‘What do the Wake want with the Wild Hunt?’ Nicole found herself asking. ‘If they’re gods, what do they want?’
‘To keep control. If your Siren friend succeeds in reharmonising the spheres, and you find the messages your mother has left, or manage to break the Wake’s control and allow the Old Gods back—’
‘Woah, wait, who said anything about allowing gods back?’ Nicole asked. She had to quell the urge to pace. ‘You mean they’re … What? Trapped away from here? On those—’ She recalled what the Muse had told her. ‘Those islands in the Otherworld they came from?’
‘In a manner of speaking, yes.’
A realisation whispered through her mind. ‘The blood in my mother’s painting, where did it come from? Whose is it?’
The Druid’s lips pulled up slightly. ‘It’s the blood of a goddess.’
The words rang through the forest, as if merely uttering the truth sent a tremor through this sacred slip of the world.
It made a divine, awful sense. This was why Verin hadn’t been able to identify it, despite having a library with the blood of every creature …
‘It is more precious than every treasure of every empire that has ever been, or ever will be,’ Elisabetta had said.
Nicole sucked in a shaky breath; let her hands meet the cool stone of the dolmen as Kyan said, ‘You expect me to believe we have the blood of a goddess?’
‘Not just any goddess,’ the Druid said. ‘The blood of the most merciless Morrígan sister.’
The goddess that had created Empyreals.
The one her mother had told her of in her earliest memories.
Nicole closed her eyes. ‘Let’s just say I believe you … how is something like that even possible? Who would have been able to cut her? Don’t gods bleed, like, ichor, or something?’
‘That’s Greek. But the gods do have different blood. The Morrígan gave a small amount of hers and one of the vials of it has been guarded by my line of Druids since Druids existed. Our main purpose was to be the Old Gods’ point of contact here, especially when they were in their Otherworld.
‘But the Fomóiri slaughtered the Sirens and Druids so we couldn’t call back the Old Gods, or warn them of their enemy’s return. Though, I suspect it was also to steal their goddessblood vial.’
‘But you could contact the gods, before this?’
The Druid’s eyes gleamed for a moment. ‘Yes.’
The dog’s ears pricked up, and it left her side to jog back into the woods.
‘What does the blood do?’ Kyan asked.
‘It keeps an Empyreal alive. They take it to survive the otherwise deadly transformation they’d experience if triggered by a Demon God’s kill scent.’
‘You’re telling me that without the oath – the thing that stops us attacking members of the Wake – an Empyreal could kill a god?’ Kyan asked.
‘One type of god: the Fomóiri. Yes.
‘Thousands of years ago, after Cath Tánaiste Maige Tuired, when the Old Gods defeated the Fomóiri, the Morrígan created Empyreals.
There are arguments over whether they existed already and she layered this power into them or not.
The important thing is, after that battle – when the Old Gods had realised how dangerous the Fomóiri were – the Morrígan wanted to make sure humanity had another layer of protection against them if there was ever another uprising, or if the Old Gods were in their Otherworld.
So she needed beings capable of transforming into their biological enemies; of borrowing the type of power that could kill a god.
‘The problem, though, isn’t the transformation itself, but transforming back. Which is where her blood comes in. Only that gives an Empyreal the power to survive thanks to its properties. Or so we believe.’
‘If this was what Empyreals were made to do, why do we need blood to reverse a god-killing transformation?’ Kyan asked.
The mythic images all of this conjured seemed so similar to the ones that had been painting themselves through Nicole’s nights for months.
‘Because there needs to be balance,’ the Druid answered. ‘The Morrígan couldn’t make Empyreals capable of killing gods without consequence; that would make them just as powerful as the gods themselves.’
‘Wait,’ Nicole said, recalibrating. ‘My mother was possibly going to sacrifice herself to kill the leader of the Wake?’
The Druid nodded. ‘That’s why she wrote you all those books, in case it didn’t work.’
A complicated snarl of emotions followed her question: on the one hand, it made so much sense. Her mother had strived to defeat the Wake her whole life. Destroying them, killing them, was the logical development of her plan.
Nicole understood that. And yet, hot anger replaced it. Anger that that had been the only option; that she might have done it and left them if she didn’t survive.
Nicole looked away and felt the hot glide of a tear down her face. Kyan’s wide, warm palm cupped her shoulder and stroked, lodging more emotion in her throat.
‘What being could kill a god?’ he asked, giving her a minute. ‘What would she have turned into? Another one?’
‘You tell me,’ the Druid girl said.
She felt him shake his head. ‘I wouldn’t know.’
Nicole glanced back over, the film of tears clearing to reveal the girl’s lips moving into a smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
‘Ever recall fighting a being that looked human? One of the like you’d never come across before?’
A finger of unease ran down Nicole’s spine as she remembered the story Kyan had told her in Estwood.
The story of the death of the Druids …
‘A Fomóir killed the Druids, didn’t they? A god?’ Nicole asked.
The Druid’s head dipped slightly. ‘Why do you think the Wake wanted Kyan as one of their Empyreals? They wanted to make sure that one of their greatest enemies wasn’t capable of turning that power on them.’
Kyan was shaking his head softly. ‘If I killed a Fomóir without this goddessblood, how did I survive?’
From the look in the Druid’s eyes, it was a question she’d been waiting for, but a bark behind them stole her attention. A small wooden staff on the Druid’s belt elongated magically into more of a weapon and she grasped it as Nicole turned.
An unfamiliar figure emerged into the clearing. Evidently, the wolfhound had tracked something coming their way in the woods.
‘Jesus Christ,’ the man said. ‘The Wake will love to hear about this.’
Kyan positioned himself in front of Nicole. ‘Logan.’