Chapter Sixty-Three
Nicole
FOR A MOMENT, THERE WAS NO SOUND AS NICOLE’S brAIN tried to work.
To understand.
‘That’s not possible,’ she whispered.
‘Dad?’ Bells asked, her voice soft, uncertain. Nicole felt it echo through her like a death knell.
‘He’s a Seer,’ Dylan interrupted. ‘That’s how Bells is a Seer; how Nicole can See things. He’s a Seer and our mother was an Empyreal. What about that don’t you get?’
No, she wasn’t just an Empyreal, Nicole thought.
‘What about them?’ Callum asked, nodding to Nicole and her siblings.
‘No,’ their father said.
‘Are you sure?’
Now, their father’s eyes flashed with anger. ‘Can’t you feel it?’
Callum looked like he’d strip her father of his skin if he was lying.
‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Dylan demanded.
‘How many others are there?’ Callum asked, his teeth near bared.
‘I couldn’t say.’
‘Liar.’
‘Why don’t we sit,’ their father said, fanning a hand to the couches and chairs.
Callum remained standing. They all did.
It gave her a real moment to look at him.
To search for what he’d disguised with his glasses and cardigans. The silver in his hair and softness in his eyes. Had she grown blind to it, or had he just hidden it so well? He’d always been capable. She knew he had killed to protect them. Knew the weapons in his case had been used.
But looking at him, she sought some evidence, some sign of his divinity other than the appearance of the red veins in his eyes that had become more frequent, and the dark pulse of power from the night of her transformation. She couldn’t recall clues earlier than that, that …
He was a god.
A Demon God.
And the others were currently running the Wake.
Suddenly she felt sick.
Kyan’s hand met her back gently. Warm, secure. Grounding. Part of her wanted to close her eyes and just stop listening. If she didn’t hear another word then her whole life wouldn’t change.
Nicole edged to the couch, holding the back of it as Kyan shadowed her, and she fought a heavy weariness. Bells came around reluctantly and sat, tucking her legs up under her. Dylan remained glaring between Callum and their father.
‘Did Freya know?’ Callum asked, then shook his head, as if realising that wasn’t a valid question. ‘She would have known.’
Nicole was struck by the familiarity with which he talked about her mother. As if he knew far more about her than he had let on in Estwood.
Their father gave a small smile, as if remembering. ‘She knew.’ He sighed and moved to right Bells’ overturned plate and the spilled hot chocolate. It was such a normal, fatherly thing to do it made Nicole’s throat tighten.
‘The first thing you need to know, I suppose,’ her father said, ‘is that I didn’t want to remain a part of what they were doing, even if I was a part of the Wake’s origins.’
‘So, you really …’ began Nicole.
‘That’s right,’ Callum snarled. ‘Dear Daddy founded the Wake.’
Kyan’s front met her back, telling her without words, I’m right here.
‘I was their Artifex, their inventor,’ her father continued. ‘I came up with a great many ideas because I sought the beauty of creating. I thought the Wake would protect us from Empyreals, the beings designed to kill us. I didn’t think it would become a tool for such control and destruction.
‘I refused to remain a part of it, which is why I’m here. And why I chose to help your mother when she first came to kill me.’
He met her and her siblings’ gazes, an honesty in his eyes Nicole knew she could trust.
She tried to reconcile herself to the idea that the fairy tale of her parents meeting wasn’t real either. But for once, she didn’t want to be asking questions. She wanted a flow, a flood of information. Then maybe she could make her mind up about what to think, how to feel.
‘How old are you?’ Bells asked.
‘I don’t actually know. Much older than two thousand, at least.’
A slow breath gusted out of her.
‘Keep talking,’ Callum warned.
‘In the Cath Tánaiste Maige Tuired I witnessed what Elatha, one of the leaders of our people, had done to his own son Bres: allowing him to fight the Túatha Dé – the Old Gods – after a failed attempt at being their king. It was then that I knew there was something else going on. Elatha, of course, wanted the real control. Bres was manipulated by his father. Used like a fidchell piece in a larger game. A game that, when he saw Bres would lose, he allowed him to lose. And allowed the Old Gods to believe they’d won and smothered any future rebellion or uprising; that they’d banished all Fomóiri back to our underworld.
‘But it only bought Elatha the upper hand. The Old Gods believed there would be peace, and so they returned to their Otherworld. But many of us lived on in hiding.’
‘So then they severed the harmonies and slaughtered the Druids and úaithne’s descendants,’ Callum said.
‘Does Remi know she’s right?’ Nicole managed, her voice raspy.
Her father met her gaze and nodded softly.
‘Her family were the ones that held this knowledge. Though it had been lost for generations, Adam rediscovered the theory. They needed more proof to know they were on the right track, proof they got with Freya’s last message.
They are indeed looking for —’ Her father’s throat strained and he winced.
‘The Dagda’s divine harp,’ Nicole realised.
Callum snarled.
‘Why didn’t you ever tell us?’ Bells asked.
Nicole checked on Dylan. He hadn’t spoken, his face stone.
‘I can’t explain the details. The Wake’s Empyrean oath wasn’t the first they developed. I can’t report most of the information I have on the Fomóiri. Can’t write it down, can’t speak it.’
‘You can fucking act on it,’ Callum growled.
‘No. I can’t,’ he snarled back. ‘Not when I have my children to protect. Not when they stripped me of my powers. Not when only death can break the oath.’ He dug out his reading glasses, held them up.
‘I was blind for years after Elatha was done with my punishment. He barely left me enough power to keep myself alive. If I use too much of it, it sends a shockwave out, helping them pinpoint my location, unless I’m in a highly warded place. ’
The deathly power from Estwood … Nicole recalled the feel of it ripping through the world. He’d tried to use what he could at the risk of the Wake following, to save her from Lynch. No wonder he’d been so eager to smother her scent and move on.
‘But I – I thought you have visions?’ Bells asked.
‘No. Your mother told me enough of her visions of the future that I could use that to convince people.’
‘Why don’t we have your powers?’ Nicole asked.
‘You don’t have my divinity because so much of it was taken long before you were born.
After they destroyed my ability to use it, I returned to making weapons and poisons to heal and protect myself if needed.
Then I suppressed what remained of my powers by consistently poisoning myself, so my body was so busy healing that my power didn’t give me away, while the scents of the herbs smothered my own. I experimented for … a long time.’
The tonics, his case of weapons, the greenhouse of plants. It made sense.
But this … this meant she was the daughter of one of the Demon Gods of the mythic Irish world, who had masterminded the Wake itself.
That meant the cause of – and solution to – her entire life’s problems lay with her father’s forbidden knowledge.
And he couldn’t speak a word of it.
‘What’s to say you don’t want this blood for them?’ Callum demanded.
The goddessblood.
Nicole looked to her mother’s portrait.
‘Considering I left them, they stripped me of my power, and they killed my wife, there are a few good reasons. My priority is my kids. If I can break this oath, just like your oaths, I can tell you everything. The Druid might be the key to that. She might be the key to everything, and she’s disappeared. Again.’
He raked his hand through his silvering hair and in the action, Nicole got a glimpse of his lifetime of living on the edge: of the threat of other gods hunting you down and finishing you off.
Of his wife, the only unoathed Empyreal, also being the only one who could kill the Wake.
Both of them in eternal danger if they didn’t hide.
That was why he’d told them stories, quizzed them on their mother’s bestiaries. Always kept her books on hand so they could learn more, and his weapons on hand because the Fomóiri had stripped him of his.
He had tried. For so long.
And now they were so close, even if this information made it feel like they were on the edge of a cliff, and not the edge of success.
Which meant they needed to confirm that the torc was the second goddess-blessed item. If it was, they had two, and Alexander could be the third.
They had one string of the harp and the bridge, but the rest of it – the other two strings and the harp itself – might be hidden somewhere in Skye.
‘The God of Oaths,’ Nicole said, thinking of the last of her mother’s clues from the Dante painting. ‘Is there any way to contact him?’
Her father’s eyes flickered, his jaw seemed soldered shut.
Callum didn’t notice as he distractedly said, ‘Not until the harmonies are restored.’
‘Even then, there’s only one being who can communicate with gods,’ Bells added.
Dylan looked to Kyan. ‘The Druid.’
‘We need to find out if the torc has blood in it,’ Nicole said, to grapple with something she could control.
‘He’s not allowed to watch,’ Callum said, still glaring at her father.
He gave Callum a hard look. ‘Fine. If you need me, I’ll be downstairs.
’ He looked between them, his eyes meeting Nicole’s for a heartbreaking moment.
‘You can ask me whatever you want, I just might not be able to answer. I’ve never purposefully hidden anything from any of you. I hope you can understand.’
He left, the door snicking shut behind him.
‘Can you both give us a minute?’ Nicole asked Callum and Kyan.
Callum smiled but it didn’t reach his eyes. ‘Of course. I’ll be making sure he doesn’t leave the building. Excuse me.’
He stalked out after their father.
‘Do you want me to tell Remi the news?’ Kyan asked softly.
Nicole nodded. ‘Thanks.’
As Kyan left, she sank onto the couch opposite her siblings, her dress tangled around her legs.
‘Are you all right?’ she asked them.
Dylan still stood, eyes on the door. He swallowed. Said nothing.
‘I believe him,’ Bells said.
So did Nicole.
‘All I know for sure is that he loves us,’ Dylan said after a few long moments.
‘And that evidently, the Wake have so much more of our personal history to answer for than we knew. They took our mother. They bound our father, after stealing his ideas and power and who knows what else.’ He shook his head, jaw working.
Bells’ eyes filled with tears and she blinked them back. ‘We need to end this.’
Amid the emotion singeing her airways like fire, Nicole found the curl of a bitter smile on her lips.
‘We will. We’re close.’ She had to believe that.
‘Our entire lives have been built on always telling the truth within the bounds of our home, and always lying to the outside world, and the Wake have kept that truth from us by binding him.’
‘We need to break the oaths,’ Bells said. ‘So we can hear it.’
But those answers were with a reclusive Druid Kyan would need to retrack and the hope that an Old God still walked the earth.
Exhaustion began to press Nicole to the couch. She fought it, forced her mind to sharpen.
But her father had said that the only way to break the oath was death, and the reminder of it rang in her mind with damning certainty.
She prayed he was wrong.