Chapter Eighty
Nicole
‘NICOLE, NICOLE.’ THE WOMAN TSKED. ‘YOU DIDN’T COMPLETE your mission.’
Nicole glared as she tried to fight a violent wave of unease.
She’d been brought to a room reminiscent of the Roman Baths.
An extravagant, temple-like pool in honey-coloured stone sat in the centre of the dark space, its columns Corinthian, but the usual fluted details carved with creatures and gladiators instead.
Lit with spotlights, the pool’s unearthly emerald water steamed gently in shimmering coils.
Nicole scanned the room for exit points, spying one across to the left on a back wall. The rest of the space was modern and dark, the lack of light and awareness of space making the pool seem like a room-sized relic boxed in a museum; giving the feeling of being suspended in space and time.
About twenty feet away on either side of the columned structure were black glass walls, sleek against the ancient stone. Perfectly demonstrating how the modern hid the arcane.
If they weren’t underground in a new location, they were back at the Wake’s complex.
Her knees splintered with pain when she was thrust to the flagstones by Alexander and he bound her hands in front of her.
Distantly, Nicole remembered Callum and Kyan mentioning the Wake’s pools in Estwood, and how difficult it was to lie once you’d been in them.
She turned her attention to the woman who had given her the mission. She perched indolently on a broken pillar, the creatures carved into it screaming and fighting beneath her.
‘You set me up to fail,’ Nicole snarled.
She needed to find Kyan and a way out of here. Then, if the Druid was telling the truth and her mother was somehow alive—
‘I want to see the Empyreal that brought me in,’ Nicole said.
The woman’s eyes glittered. ‘Kyan? Oh, he’s a bit busy being rewarded for bringing in Freya’s daughter.’
Nicole schooled her expression. ‘Oh?’
The woman smiled slightly, eyes glittering with knowledge. ‘Was there a particular reason you wanted to see him?’
Nicole’s stomach knotted, but her voice was cool. ‘I’d like to feel like I’m not in danger here.’
She leaned forward, like that was exactly what she wanted to hear. ‘Trust him, do you?’
‘I don’t know him, but he’s been nicer than you.’
‘Don’t care for him, even a tiny bit?’
‘We’ve just met.’ The lie was ash on her tongue. The truth, a band around her throat, her heart.
‘Well, I suppose that’s a good thing, considering he’ll be punished for your failed mission.’
Nicole forced herself to don that cloak of pretend she was so used to wearing, even if it made her feel like a shade of herself. She was grateful the binding scar on her forearm was covered. Hiding it, hiding him, was the only way to get through this.
And she would. She had to.
‘Why don’t you give me another mission. A proper one. I can do that. That’s what I’d be doing if I swore your oath anyway, right?’
‘I’m curious,’ the woman said, ignoring the option. ‘Did your mother tell you about me?’
The shift in topic threw her.
‘I told you, my mother died when I was young. She didn’t tell me anything.’
A flicker of annoyance went through the woman’s gaze. ‘Let’s stop playing this silly game, Nicole. She left you some things, didn’t she? She would have. She couldn’t help herself. Freya wouldn’t have an oblivious daughter.’
Nicole forced her features to remain impassive, even as her heart skipped a beat at the accurate guess.
Whoever this woman was, she knew her mother very well.
‘My name is Aífe,’ she said. ‘And it seems Mummy has left out some things. Do you even know how old she is? Who she really is?’
Nicole had her suspicions, had even wondered if her own mother was Scáthach.
It fit the stories: a female Empyreal who was solitary and trained others.
Someone who would have had a wealth of knowledge about creatures that she could then have put into her bestiary and books.
But why wouldn’t Kyan have recognised her when he met Nicole, if they were supposed to have been so similar?
Unless—
Unless her mother had changed her face. Or made him forget?
Aífe was still waiting for an answer.
‘I take it I don’t,’ Nicole said flatly.
‘Did you know she was the first Empyreal who was made into what you are now? Chosen as the first to receive that extra piece of the Empyrean that allowed Empyreals to kill a Fomóir, should they ever need to? Morrígan-blessed, they called her. It gave her the ability to See, too, like she didn’t have it all, already. ’
Nicole fought the urge to shake her head. ‘That happened, like, five thousand years ago or more.’
‘I think that’s why she was a little unhinged,’ the woman said conversationally, as if this was some secret between them.
Nicole had many theories about her mother, but Freya being the first Empyreal wasn’t one of them.
‘That would mean she’d met the goddess; that—’ Nicole thought of the carvings she’d seen in the Skye temple, of the woman with the flowing hair and the piece of gold embedded in her chest.
The first god-killing Empyreal.
Her mother.
‘Did you know your mother could change her face?’ Aífe continued.
‘I couldn’t very well let Empyreals wander around, especially the women, without making sure they weren’t her in disguise.
Why do you think there are so few female Empyreals?
All tracked, all stolen, all tortured and killed.
Because women are “weaker”?’ She scoffed.
‘We sold the world that lie when the humans did. Poor precious bodies which can transform to make life, but are believed to be helpless and weak? It was easy to make the supernatural world believe the same thing.’
Horror seeped through at the woman’s words. This monster had massacred countless Empyreals in case they were her mother in disguise?
‘But she had to be a renegade, didn’t she?
Not only did she have powers granted by the goddess’ – a subtle snarl curled the woman’s upper lip – ‘but she went and took herself away like a dramatic little bitch off to an island to be all alone. Woe was her. So fucking righteous, gods!’ Aífe had tipped her head back on the word, but it wasn’t just a scoff, there was real, deep disgust.
‘Jealousy?’ Nicole realised, incredulous. She thrashed in her binds. ‘You did all of this, killed all those people out of jealousy? What happened between you that you hated her so much?’
‘Clearly, she didn’t teach you to keep your mouth shut,’ the woman hissed. ‘You don’t know anything.’
No, there was more here. A tangled, vicious history that went deeper.
‘You’re so much like her,’ Aífe said with narrowed eyes. ‘You wouldn’t want me to pretend you are her, would you? Take out all my emotions? Just purge them onto this pretty face.’
She slapped Nicole faster than she could guard herself.
Pain broke over her cheek like a lash of fire.
Mouth full of copper, skin stinging, Nicole spat her blood onto the stones then tipped her head back to look the woman in the eyes.
She felt the inside of her cheek knitting back together slowly, but blood still puddled on her tongue with its sharp taste.
‘What are you?’ Nicole snarled.
She wanted to know what creature she was going to rip to pieces to get out of here.
‘Today isn’t about me. It’s about a reunion!’ She clapped her hands. ‘Bring in the family.’
The black glass wall to the right suddenly turned opaque and Nicole’s heart nearly stopped.
Her father and sister were revealed. Both of them were shackled with their hands tied behind their backs.
Their father looked like he’d been shot, while Bells glared at Aífe.
Someone had gagged her, so the rag wrapped around Bells’ blood-speckled jaw was wet with tears, her cheek swelling like she’d been hit in the face.
Nicole had never seen such dark rage in her sister’s eyes.
‘Her whimpering was pissing me off,’ Aífe said by way of explanation.
Nicole nearly couldn’t see from the tide of red that washed across her vision. She forced herself not to launch at the woman. They were outnumbered and Alexander now strode over to her family. What damage he could do—
Her power snarled and tore anyway, feral at the sight of them so brutalised. Where was Dylan?
She scrunched her eyes shut, trying to smother the need to protect them at all costs and corral the twisting of her stomach. She needed to be calm enough to figure out how to get them out of here without making everything worse.
But the only bargaining chip she had left was the information she had promised.
‘It seems your sweet little sister bit and killed an Empyreal,’ the woman said. ‘So a rag was justified.’
Bells?
At the lack of blood on her sister’s face Nicole realised what would have actually bitten the Empyreal – the Tène still wrapped around her sister’s wrist. Hope almost lightened the dread, until Aífe spoke again.
‘If you’re wondering about your brother, he had a nice little transformation on the way in. So he’s in a cell where he will remain until he wakes up to take the oath.’
Blood drained from Nicole’s face, from every inch of her. She smothered the bright fear; the guilt that she hadn’t been there to help them.
An Empyreal pulled Bells in while Alexander hauled her father up by some kind of great chains inscribed with ancient Celtic symbols. A third Empyreal came in holding—
The portrait of her mother.
The first of the three goddessblood artefacts.
Nicole had hoped there was some pigment left in it, that the samples Verin had taken and the Wake had stolen after his murder weren’t all that was left.
Did Aífe know what secrets it held?
Someone propped it at the head of the pool, so it could watch.
‘Nicole, are you all right?’ her father asked.
‘Your daughter is fine,’ Aífe purred. ‘Unlike your wife.’
Despite the lash of anger, Nicole smothered her relief. If Aífe really thought her mother was dead as well, then if the Druid was telling the truth, maybe they had a chance to get out of here. To get to her and truly have a family reunion.
If she could get everyone out alive.