Chapter Seventy-Eight
Kyan
KYAN MOVED ANOTHER COUNTER DESPITE THE TICK IN HIS pulse. ‘My father was Súaltam mac Róich. Brother to Fergus—’
Elatha laughed.
The sound twisted like a pick in Kyan’s stomach. He found himself suddenly, viciously angry.
‘My boy, that human man was not your father. No, I believe they claimed that to be the case to hide your divine heritage.’
The roaring in Kyan’s mind was like the shriek of all the monsters he’d killed.
Like the terrible sound of the fire that decimated his forest home.
‘Perhaps it was to keep you from us,’ Elatha continued. ‘I suppose it worked for a while, until you killed the Fomóir at the Druid site and we tracked you down.’
Kyan shook his head softly. After that, he’d gone to Scáthach and Callum.
They’d helped drag him from his guilt and darkness, but then he’d left to find a new purpose, and the Wake had recruited him.
He would have known if he had such a father.
His mother would have told him. Clearly this was some kind of distraction technique.
‘I have no power; I’m no one’s divine son. Just who do you think I am?’
‘Oh, I know you have no obvious power. You’ve shown no essence of it in all the time you’ve been in our employ.
But, since you survived the god-killing transformation, I’ve watched you for signs.
You’ve proven to be such a good hunter. In some ways, I’ve even begun to consider you my new son.
Checking in on you, making sure you’re content.
You have been content with taking mission after mission, haven’t you?
You are so much better at taking orders than other people.
’ Elatha robbed another counter. ‘I suppose some part of me found it … charming, that I should steal the son from the god that had killed mine.’
Kyan’s eyes flashed up from the table as his mind worked to recall the old stories.
‘That’s right, dear boy. Your father is Lug Ildánach, of the Túatha Dé.’
Lug.
The God of Oaths they were looking for.
‘And, if you know your history,’ Elatha continued, ‘you’ll know that makes yours a complicated heritage. Lug’s father, Cían …’
Elatha smirked, allowing Kyan the revelation the name produced.
He had been told, long ago, that one of his grandfathers had been called Cían, but his mother hadn’t told him she was referring to the god, Cían.
The God of Healing.
When Kyan had been inducted into the Wake and chosen a new name to let go of Cú Chulainn and all the weight and grief and stories attached to it, he’d chosen Cían because it was a subtle link to Ireland.
It meant ‘enduring one’, to signify his newly solitary immortality, and the fact that he would endure.
For his mother. For the people that would need him to defend them from danger.
He could not abandon them; that purpose moored him.
‘Cían,’ continued Elatha, ‘married a Fomóir princess, Ethniu. Which makes you not just the son of the Túatha Dé and a Druid princess of Ulster, but the grandson of Fomóir royalty. You are just as much us as you are them.’
Kyan’s slow-burning rage went cold as sweat slid down his spine.
‘Hence the oath,’ Kyan realised slowly. ‘I swear the oath and I’m yours. I can’t kill another god, and you’ve neutralised the son of the god that killed yours.’
Elatha smiled. ‘I knew you’d understand. Even without evidence of any power, you’ve been so useful! You even brought us our enemy’s daughter. I’m sure you can convince her to give us her information so we can be free of this mess.’
Kyan fought the urge to fling the fidchell set across the room.
It was all lies. It had to be. But then … why would Elatha tell him this? There were so many other ways to throw him off.
‘I’ve only just met her,’ Kyan lied, willing his lungs to keep an even rhythm, even as pain spiked through his chest at the mere mention of Nicole. ‘You cut my plans short. She will likely not trust me now. Besides, I don’t know what information you seek.’
Elatha chuckled. ‘Kyan, come now. We’ve known about you and Miss Palmer since Estwood. You think we sent you after her by accident?’
His every instinct hollowed out.
If they had known all this time, why had they let him return to her? To let her gather everything she could and decode Freya’s messages so that when they were scooped up, the Wake had everything …
Get out and get to her, right now.
‘You sent me to Estwood because you knew she was there?’
‘No, we sent you to kill Lynch because he failed his mission. But regarding Miss Palmer … did you know that every laptop an Empyreal is given has a camera in it?’
That he knew, it acted as a scanner too, allowing him to access websites or the Wake’s databases by holding his scar up to it. But what—
‘That it’s always on? Always feeding us an image of you whenever you log on to check your missions or update us. When you check on the archives, for example.’
Kyan’s already chilled blood iced his veins.
They knew about Nicole because he’d gone through the archives with her. She’d been sitting right next to him.
He never had any control. That was what he’d wanted when he joined the Wake: he’d wanted someone else to be in control of where he went and what he did. Someone else to tell him what to do after he’d failed so drastically.
‘Imagine our surprise when the very woman we’d been searching for for two thousand years was sitting right next to you!
Except, it couldn’t be Freya, because we had her killed by our very own, newly reliable Alexander.
So, yes, we’ve known about your little mission to help her gather what her mother evidently left clues to find. And now it’s time to hand it all over.’
He placed the final counter, squarely beating Kyan.
The god sat back, satisfied, and smiled. ‘Yes?’
Yes?
No.
No fucking way.
They hadn’t done all of this to be bested.
Nicole and her family hadn’t figured out these clues, fought through memories and countries, creatures and fears, just to have it taken away from them now.
And neither had Kyan. He’d learned he had a godsdamn sister who had fought to get to him and protect this secret.
That he had divine heritage slumbering inside him.
He just about resisted rubbing the painful new heat in his chest which turned hotter than when Logan had found them in the Druid site.
Heartbreak? Overwhelm?
‘What exactly do you want to do with whatever information she might have?’ Kyan asked, keeping his voice level. ‘If you got it, would you let them go?’
‘Of course. We’re not monsters, Kyan, despite what the stories would have you believe. This is all just … éraic.’
An ancient form of compensation.
A debt paid.
And this was a game that had been played since gods walked the sacred ground of Ireland, with a set of rules and magic he had no true comprehension of.
‘Why don’t I speak with her when she’s returned, then?’ Kyan said, rising.
Every cell in his body needed him to check on her.
As long as he could see she was all right, they could sort this out.
He’d fight through a wall of Empyreals to get her out of this damn building.
They could lie. Say they were going to collect what the Wake wanted, then find a way to track the Druid, and—
The god clicked his tongue, head tilted as if someone had whispered to him.
‘Oh dear. It seems Miss Palmer has returned clean-handed from her test mission.’
Kyan froze.
Elatha rose. ‘I must go. I have an oath swearing to attend.’
‘No.’
He hadn’t realised the word would come out quite as low, as threatening. As if his body had returned to the awareness of the fact that he was the nephew to a legendary Irish king and – and the son of a god.
The heat in his chest increased and his bracelet-less arm tingled.
Elatha chuckled. ‘I shall return after, and we can continue our conversation.’
‘No,’ Kyan repeated. ‘She won’t be swearing the oath.’
‘I’m afraid she will. As will her newly transformed brother. Oh, yes, we’ve got the whole family. I’m sure we can find some way to punish the smallest one. Not to mention their father.’
The glimpse of the demonic god beneath fractured through, then. Eyes that turned for a moment into pure, pale fire; power that lanced through Elatha’s form like a lightning bolt. There and gone in a moment.
‘You’ll let them go. You have me,’ Kyan snarled.
‘Do I? Because you have not been a good soldier, lately, Kyan. And unfortunately, they’re of more use to me now than you are.’
Kyan’s scar seared with pain as the oath activated, as if sensing his desire to physically harm the Fomóir before him. ‘You’re going to tell me where she is right-fucking-now, or you’re not leaving this room with your head.’
He hated that it was amusement that flickered through Elatha’s eyes.
Not fear, not respect.
Not even a little bit.
‘I see the hound has not quite left you.’ Elatha smiled slightly.
‘But that is all you’ve ever been, Cú Chulainn.
First, the hound of your people, then, the hound of the Wake.
This dalliance with rebellion is ending here and now.
If not, we might just have to try a replica of our experiment on Alexander on you.
It might be fairly invasive, considering divine blood already runs through your veins, but I’m sure my doctors can come up with something.
They’ve had to be very inventive in mutating creatures so enough dark beings walk the earth that the Hunt is overloaded. Prime for us to tear open.’
‘People would notice I’m different, other Empyreals—’
Elatha laughed. ‘You’ve secluded yourself from everyone but your single, vapid friend, Callum.
I’ll admit, it had the added bonus that you were never influenced by all their talk.
You have no idea how easy it was to make people believe Alexander had been dangerous and unruly before we had you kill him.
He had all these tiresome questions. And he was so convincing to the other Empyreals.