Chapter 14 #2
“Your people are acolytes of war. You revel in your bombs and your guns. In starvation and in suffering. You worship at the altar of violence. Nothing Macha could do would make your people’s suffering worse.”
Carys frowned. “Then why—”
“Why?” Angus strode to her, bent down, and stared into Carys’s eyes. “Why does she bathe in the blood of her warriors? She is not evil no matter what your human heart might perceive. Her violence has a purpose, Carys of Baywood.”
She racked her brain, but Angus’s aggression was not exactly helping clear her mind. “Uh… she’s a triple goddess. War and fate. She can…” Carys dug through her memory for everything she’d learned about Celtic mythology. “She can foretell victory in human battle.”
“And that would be a useful trait for the vultures of your world who feed on the bones of war, but that is not her purpose.”
Carys let out a harsh breath. “If she doesn’t care about creating chaos or making war in the Brightlands, why is she there?”
“Think.” Angus snarled at her. “Your Shadowkin would have been a better hero for this battle, but then Seren would never have let a fae sorceress into the Brightlands in the first place.”
“Well, she couldn’t, could she?” Carys’s felt heat flood her face. “Because she wasn’t born in the Brightlands in the first place, and also, she’s dead.”
“Finally,” the creature grumbled. “You have stopped your sniveling.”
Carys felt like she was riding a roller coaster. Nothing made sense. She’d been hoping Angus would be her guide, but she’d heard nothing from him but disdain.
“You’re not a warrior, Carys Morgan.” He loped away from her, pacing. “And yet you’re the hero the gods have chosen for this task.”
The gods had chosen her? For what task?
She’d been the one who had caused all this in the first place.
Angus crossed his burly arms over his chest. “Why did the Morrígan want to get to the Brightlands?”
“I don’t know.”
If she’d been chosen by the gods for this task, was the Morrígan always going to cross the gates? Was Carys’s birth, her life, Seren’s death, Cadell’s bond—was all of it simply the winding threads of a tapestry woven by the universe to put Carys in this exact place and time?
“You don’t know?” Angus spat out. “I thought you were a scholar.”
Carys’s mind calmed; her body stopped shivering. “Macha is only one aspect of the Morrígan.”
“Finally,” Angus said. “She’s thinking.”
“She was Badb in the Shadowlands. The Crow Mother. She pretended to be fae.”
Angus waved a hand. “The fae are not gods no matter how they wish they could be.”
That wasn’t strictly true considering the current king of the fae was the son of a Celtic sea god, but Carys wasn’t going to argue with Angus about the squishy borders of myth at that exact moment.
“She chose the Macha aspect in the Brightlands,” Carys murmured. “Macha is… from Ulster, I think?”
Angus waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter.”
Carys pictured the Morrígan’s nubile, fresh body basking in the sun. The long hair and full figure. “She’s a fertility goddess?”
What place did a fertility goddess have in the Shadowlands where the women could not give birth? She had no place here. The worshippers of the Shadowlands did not need her.
“You’re finally on the path.” Angus stamped one foot. “Not there yet.”
I blessed this land by coupling with its king. Even their queens bear my mark.
“But it’s not the fertility. Not just the fertility.”
“War and sex. War and birth. Death and life,” Angus muttered. “You have to think like the goddess, Carys Morgan. What does she want?”
“I don’t know,” Carys said. “You’re supposed to give me answers, not more questions.”
“What do all gods want?” Angus shouted. “You know this already!”
“Worship!” The moment it left her mouth, it was obvious. So obvious. “The Morrígan just wants to be worshipped.”
Angus loped to her. “Your world is a twisted place that feeds on selfishness, greed, violence, and attention,” he said. “And what is attention but worship in another form? The Morrígan’s acolytes in the Brightlands are begging to be found.”
Carys pictured the intoxicated young people who had come under her spell in Gorne Wood. “She’s already started.”
“Know this, daughter of two worlds, if there was ever a riper time for the Morrígan to take over your world, I have not seen it,” Angus said. “She aims to break the gates, let the old gods rise in power again, and assert her sovereignty over a land that once worshipped her.”
Carys finally met Angus’s eyes, and her heart began to race. “I can’t stop her. You said it yourself—I’m not a warrior.”
“No, but part of you is.” Angus lowered his head to look into Carys’s eyes. “Light, dark, and beast. Like the goddess you face, you are also three, but you don’t seem to know it. Haven’t you heard her yet?”
A shiver creeped down her spine. “Heard who?”
“You know who I mean.”
Break the enchantment. A voice on the battlefield, whispering in her mind. You end the battle.
Ogwen Valley.
“Ogwen Valley.” Why had she shouted Ogwen Valley? What did it mean? “What is Ogwen Valley?”
“Ask your dragon, young hero.”
“Are you saying…” Carys shook her head because the possibility was too much. Too confusing. Too… impossible. “Are you saying that Seren—”
“You and your sister were the gifts of a powerful goddess to one of her most devoted acolytes. Your mother was so beloved by Epona that she granted Tegan the gift of creating life.” Angus shook his head. “Do you really think Epona would simply let your Shadowkin die?”
Carys’s heart raced. Tears started to fall down her cheeks. “What are you telling me?”
Angus’s voice took on an unearthly timbre. “There are worlds, pocket worlds, shadow worlds, and underworlds.”
“Pocket worlds?” Carys looked around the strange unearthly cave that seemed to come and go from nowhere.
“There are realms of the old fae and the new, of demigods and demons. Before all this is over, you will have to learn how to walk between them.”
Her stomach dropped. “I can’t do that.”
“Don’t be foolish, child.” He put a hand on her back. “You were born to do that. If you couldn’t, you would have drowned moments after I pushed you into the pool.”
“But you knew I wasn’t going to, right?”
Angus shrugged. Then, without another word, he pushed her back into the water, and Carys was falling again.