Chapter 34
Vaelenor
The fire has burned low, so Idril’s hidden in the shadows. Which is a good damn thing because after that laugh, I’m not sure I’d be able to tear my gaze away one more time.
We lock eyes briefly before her hands fall, landing softly in her lap. Her smile vanishes. I swallow hard, wishing I could see that look on her face again and hating that she feels she has to cover it up.
“Alright,” Dax grunts. “Get on with it, Riven. What’d you find?”
The air in the room seems to drop, and I realize neither Riven nor I have responded. I turn to face Daxen’s pissed-off glare that’s definitely one-hundred percent aimed at me.
Lovely.
I clear my throat and sit down. “Ah, yeah. What did you find, Riven?”
Turning pleading eyes his way, I silently beg him to help me out. Fate must be working in my favor, because Riven places his work in front of us and spreads it out with careful movements.
“This is the first half.” He taps one finger on a paper containing a verse translated line by line from Gaelic to English. “It’s the well-known part of the story, but I wanted to be sure I was translating the dialect correctly.”
”What’s it say?” I ask, trying to make out the words.
Riven clears his throat. “‘The earth remembers the blood of kings, Water brings life to nourish their souls, Fire gives warmth and guidance, and Air will cry their names back into the void.’”
The way he reads it makes it sound like some old spell pulled straight from a grimoire.
“Damn,” I grunt. “That’s not ominous as fuck. Does it happen to give us an exact date for Armageddon, or is that part left up to interpretation?”
Dax rolls his eyes. “It’s an old story, like I said. Same as all the rest. Fairy tales. Folktales. Parables. It’s how people used to make sure their six-year-olds didn’t wander into a bog and die.”
Riven scoffs. “That’s not true, and you know it.”
Dax throws his hands up. “Really? Then explain to me what else it could be. They’re warnings dressed up as bedtime stories. It’s all the same shit: don’t make deals with naked people in the woods, don’t follow lights into the trees, don’t take drinks from a guy with antlers.”
“Don’t you mean don’t take candy from strangers?” I frown.
“No.” Dax replies flatly, “I mean what I fucking said.”
My brows jump to my hairline, but before I can question him further, he huffs.
“Listen, I just don’t see what this—” he points to the verse Riven’s holding, “will help us find what we’re looking for.”
“Because it’s this part that changes things.” Riven rotates the paper so we can see his translations.
“This is the entire story, rewritten with a second stanza. Same story, totally different words.”
He reads, “‘She will be made of Flame to keep them warm and lead them to remembrance. She will provide the Air they will need to shout their names back into the Void. She will call on Water to nourish their lost souls, and her plea will stir the Earth to remember their grief, and the grief of those lost before her.’”
Dax looks like he swallowed something sour, and I’m not too proud to admit my hair’s absolutely standing on end.
“That doesn’t mean anything. It’s the same in all the iterations. Just… phrased differently.”
I suppose Dax is in denial, pretending this isn’t weird as fuck. Unfortunately for him, weird as fuck is our entire godsdamned aesthetic lately.
“It is… but, it isn’t.” Riven taps the wood of the table with his fountain pen. “There’s a bit more here, but I’m struggling with the rest. The dialect is… off.”
Dax leans in closer. “Alright, what do you have so far?”
““Beirfich sí coróin réalta, agus beidh tine ina féitheacha.’” His voice takes on a melodic quality as he reads. “Which is roughly translated to, ‘she will be born with a crown of starlight, and carry fire in her veins.’ But the last part of this is the part I need to be sure of.”
He scrubs his palms over his face, then levels the two of us with a look. “You might want to sit down for this,” he suggests.
“Oh, Fates, just tell us what you found. I can’t take the unnecessary suspense.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Riven dismisses him with a flick of the wrist. “Can I get a glass of whiskey at least? Where’s Ford’s good shit?”
Riven looks genuinely rattled, and that, more than anything, makes me nervous.
“Omega,” Dax snaps, startling me. “Bring the whiskey and some glasses.”
I hate how he orders her around like a dog.
I hate myself even more for caring.
She doesn’t argue. She stands, wincing like her joints are causing her pain. Head down, she crosses the room toward the whiskey cart.
Why would she complain? You told her to smile and do what she’s told to do. Now you’re irritated that she’s following orders?
I scowl at her bare feet, pissed all over again that she doesn’t have anything to protect her thin skin from the cold of the stone.
We need to get some nice, thick, soft rugs in here.
When she turns back around, her eyes are trained on the floor like they always are. But even without seeing her face, I quickly notice that something’s off. Her face is pale, and her lips are so red from biting them that it makes me wince in sympathy.
As she sets the bottle and glasses on the table, I speak before I can stop myself. “What’s wrong with you?”
I don’t mean to sound accusatory, but based on the way she jumps, my tone is harsher than I mean for it to be.
Her eyes quickly skitter to the side, and I realize she’d been eyeing the original Gaelic version of the story Riven’s translating.
Is she trying to read it?
No. No chance. There’s no way she can read Gaelic.
I stomp down the voice in my head reminding me that we don’t really know jack shit about her.
“Nothing, just tired.” She replies.
Except for something about her voice makes it sound like a bullshit excuse.
My instincts snap to a feral kind of attention. I have to lock down the muscles in my arms to stop myself from pulling her into my lap.
I imagine holding her face to my neck, where my scent is the strongest, and watching her eyes dilate as they had earlier. I wonder if she’s ever had whiskey before. I want to offer her some. Want to watch her eyes as she takes her first sip then steal the taste from her tongue.
Fuck.
I grab my glass and throw it all back in one go, praying Dax can’t feel all my guilt and self-loathing through the Bond.
Or worse, my raging white-hot lust.
As soon as Idril’s back in her seat across the room, bending over her work, Dax turns to Riven. “Tell us what it says.”
Riven flips the sheet over. He’s scrawled more verses with their translations underneath. They’ve been crossed out, rewritten, and crossed out again. It’s sloppy, and the writing is chaotic.
“‘Is í a hamhrán an solas.’” He begins, “Which roughly means, ‘her song will be the light.’ The light, Dax.”
Dax snorts contemptuously, raking a hand through his hair. “Yeah, I get it. But that doesn’t mean anything. There are a million stories out there about girls with light. There’s no copyright on it, for fucks sake.”
Riven glares at him. “‘A músclaíonn geata na rochtaí codlata.’” When Dax gives him nothing more than a slow blink, he huffs in frustration.
“It means—and not literally, but close—‘that wakes the gate of kingdoms.’”
Shit.
I can’t speak for Dax, but hearing that has my heart thundering in my ears.
Riven, who’s apparently oblivious to how still the room has become continues.
“‘Croitfidh no focail, nuair ghlacfas sí a ríchathaoir.’”
“Which means…?” I press, dreading the answer.
“I’m still working on it.” He admits. “I think it’s something like… ‘Trembling rocks… something.’ That last word, ríchathaoir, means seat, but it’s more specific than that. Not like a chair, but—”
“You don’t know?” Dax asks, irritation flaring in his grey irises. “I thought you were fluent?”
“No one is fucking fluent in Old Irish Gaelic, Daxen.” Riven snaps.
“Modern Irish? Sure. But this dialect is a fucking dead language. It’s not just some outdated drive you can reverse-engineer.
It’s an ancient language written by people who believed the fae could steal your true name and bury it beneath a hill for a century.
Hell, they believed that their gods lived in those hills. ”
Dax grunts and leans back, silently chewing on his thumbnail. Then, apparently deciding he’s suddenly interested, he leans closer. “Repeat the whole thing back to me.”
“She will be born with a crown of starlight and carry fire in her veins. Her song will be the light that wakes the gate of kingdoms, Rocks—something… something… when she has her seat? I don’t— ”
A voice interrupts him. Soft, sweet, and barely more than a breath.
“Her song will be the light that wakes the gate of sleeping kingdoms.”
Dax and I both whip our heads across the room at the sound of Idril’s voice.
“Worlds will tremble when she takes her throne,” she murmurs.
“What?” Riven’s head snaps up, and he joins us, staring at the Omega in wide-eyed shock.
Slowly, like she’s waking from a dream, Idril blinks. Her eyes are glassy, unfocused, and for a moment, it seems like she has no idea where she is.
A furrow appears between her brows. She looks like she wants to ask us while we’re all staring at her. “W-What?”
“What was it you just said, little Omega?” Riven asks gently. I can hear the excitement under his soothing tone.
Idril shakes her head in confusion, like she’s trying to shake herself awake. Her eyes flick from her paper to Riven, then back to her paper, as if it might give her the correct answer.
“You said—”
Riven raises a hand to interrupt me. “Wait. Let her say it. I want to hear it without someone influencing her.”
“That’s hardly fair,” I grumble, crossing my arms petulantly. “I’m certainly the last fucking person who’d know the translation of a dead language,”
Dax glares at me. “Vae. Shut. Up.”
In response, I reach into my pocket, pull out a stick of gum, and stare him down as I unwrap it. I pop it in my mouth and start chewing aggressively.