13. Subalpine Ecology
Orange light flickered in Ciarán’s hands, but when he lurched forward to attack, he collapsed. I did my best to catch him, but my own injuries spasmed, and we fell to the pebbles together.
“You nearly got me killed!” Ciarán seethed up at Orla. I wasn’t sure how much of the anger that roiled in my head was overflowing from Ciarán’s end of our bond and how much of it was my own.
Una growled overhead, and a bit of drool pooled on my shoulder. I looked up to see the underside of her chin as she stood over us.
“I didn’t mean—I only—” Orla gawked down at us, pale and too stricken to come up with a good enough excuse. “Is that an onchú?”
Fana and Iseult climbed into view, supporting Tiernan between them. The tiniest bit of relief needled its way through my ire. We’d all made it out. We were okay for now. Battered and bruised, but alive.
Alive despite Orla’s best efforts.
“I had Ferrin at knifepoint!” Ciarán yelled. “And you fired at me!”
“I know,” Orla whimpered.
“I almost died!” Ciarán pushed me off him but stayed on the ground. “Wren could’ve been devoured by the rotsbane!”
“He’s my uncle,” Orla said simply.
“I could’ve ended all of this!” he snarled. When Orla could only shake her head in response, he added, “You’re lucky you are a Sovereign and that we need you. Otherwise I’d leave you at the mercy of your uncle.”
“Watch it,” I snipped at him through our mental bond, and annoyed betrayal reverberated along the tether. Out loud to the others, I said, “We can’t stay here. We’re too close to the mountain and too low on Skal.”
“Orla says she knows somewhere nearby that Ferrin won’t go,” Fana offered, maneuvering Tiernan between her and Iseult as they navigated the rocky slope to meet us on the beach.
Despite the animosity still hanging over the group, Fana bore a massive grin as she clung to Tiernan’s arms. She’d missed him.
“I don’t think I used the word ‘nearby’. It’s almost two days away by foot, but there’s a Skal spring, and it’s protected.” Orla shuffled down the rock after them, refusing to meet my eye.
“Good.” Ciarán grunted, rolling onto his hands and knees in the pebbles. “If we’re fast, we can make it there in half that time.”
“Can you even walk?” Orla’s cheeks reddened in embarrassment as she asked the question.
“I’ll manage.” His tunic fell back over his wound as he stood, but I caught a final glimpse. My attempt at healing magick had managed to close the skin, but it was still mottled and puckered.
Iseult’s eyes widened at me as she and the others approached, faltering in her stride.
“Who’s the girl?” Tiernan grunted.
I screwed my face up at him. “You don’t recognize me?”
He cocked his head, then recoiled so hard that he dragged Iseult backwards with him.
“Wren?” His bruised jaw dropped open in disbelief. “This is you? The real you?”
I rubbed a self-conscious hand over the unruly undercut at the nape of my neck.
“Surprise,” I mumbled. “My real hair isn’t blue. Sorry to ruin the illusion.”
“But how are you here?” Iseult demanded.
“Wren is the one who opened the Rift!” Fana set her pack down to pull Jonquil from the drawstring top.
Tiernan and Iseult took a tandem step back, and Iseult’s hand hovered ahead of her, as if she were considering procuring a weapon in defense.
“You released the Frozen God?” she hissed.
“No, no, it’s not like that!” Orla rushed to step between us. “The Frozen God is actually Wren’s grandmother!”
A silver sword lengthened in Iseult’s hand, and Orla backpedaled into me to avoid its extending tip.
“Wren is a Saergrim?” Tiernan had looked at me in many different ways over the last few months. Usually with disdain, sometimes apathy, but never like he was looking at me now. Never with fear.
“That’s what you meant when you said the Grimguard works for you,” Iseult said. “Ferrin may be a liar, but you are too. You’ve lied to us about your identity all summer.”
“I didn’t know!” I looked between them over Orla’s shoulder.
“I only wanted to save Orla and Fana, and now my grandma is at the center of a storm to keep Ferrin out of Keldori until we can reseal her and close the Rift. That’s why we need you, Iseult.
We need you to help us put her back in the ice. ”
Iseult frowned but kept her blade extended.
“You don’t have to come with us,” Ciarán said behind me.
I turned to see Una crouching low so he could slump over her shoulders.
“But we can’t stay here. Ferrin will have soldiers out looking for us, and once night falls, he might send more rotsbane our way.
So at least come with us for now. We’ll talk once we’re safe.
We won’t stop you if you want to leave.”
The silver light of Iseult’s sword pulsed with her wavering resolve.
“And me?” Tiernan asked.
“We need a Lyrian, not you,” Ciarán deadpanned. “So feel free to stay here.”
“No!” Fana whipped around to look at Tiernan. “No, you have to come with us.”
Tiernan’s rocky exterior gave way to an exhausted bow of his head. “Of course, my Lady.”
Orla shot the Second Sentinel a nervous glance.
“Is there room on the onchú?” she asked. “I’m not sure Tiernan’s fit to walk on his own.”
Una huffed at Tiernan, and he limped back a half-step.
“I’ll be fine,” he insisted.
“Get on the onchú, Eldguard,” Ciarán snapped.
Tiernan marched resolutely forward, as if to show us all he was perfectly capable of traveling on foot, but his ankle buckled just as he passed Una.
Iseult looped her arm under Tiernan’s to help him onto Una’s back behind Ciarán. While neither of them looked thrilled about the arrangement, Una didn’t seem bothered by the extra weight and took off down the shore at a jaunty pace.
“Wren.” Orla reached for my arm. Dirt clung to her skin, and bags weighed heavy on her eyes, but she otherwise seemed physically okay. “Wren, I’m sorry. I don’t know what happened.”
“I do. You attacked Ciarán,” I said simply, following the others down the shore.
“I didn’t attack him.” She let go of me to walk backwards at my side, keeping her gaze lifted to the peak of the Second Sentinel.
“You threw a flame ball at him and let the rotsbane loose! It nearly ripped him in half!”
“I just—” Orla’s face screwed up. “Ferrin was—I don’t know.”
“About to die?”
“Yeah.”
“Because Ciarán was going to kill him.”
“Yeah.”
“Which I told him to do.” I silently dared her to yell at me for ordering the death of her uncle, but instead she shrugged dolefully. “Why did you come back up the stairs with Ciarán?”
“To help you.”
“But I wasn’t in any real danger as far as you knew. Ferrin can’t permanently kill a Nightmare, and you didn’t know about the rotsbane. So why did you come up?”
Orla ripped her eyes away from the mountain to look at me.
“I know he’s done some bad things.” Orla grabbed my arm when I snorted and forced me to look back at her. “He killed my mother, Wren. I promise I know what he’s done.”
“You came back up the stairs to make sure we didn’t kill him. You came back for Ferrin, not for me.”
“Look, I get that it was a mistake, but at least no one died!”
“But they did, Orla! Two strangers from my world were ripped from their bodies and turned into monsters! And Ferrin is the one who did that!”
“No, he didn’t.” She shook her head. “He wouldn’t.”
“Where do you think the rotsbane came from? He summoned them as Nightmares just so he could turn them into monsters. The next time Ciarán has him on the end of a weapon, he dies.”
Orla released me. “You sound like Galahad.”
“No one sounds like Galahad because Galahad doesn’t make sound anymore because Ferrin killed him.”
“I know, Wren!” Orla pulled at her short hair.
“I know! I know that Ferrin is a monster, and now he has my brother working with him, except he’s actually my half-brother, and my mom is dead, and my real dad is dead, and I don’t have a home anymore!
” Her eyes filled with tears. “I’ve lost everything.
I promise I know Ferrin is evil and that he deserves to die, but when I saw him on the ground beneath Ciarán’s knife, I only saw the uncle who had loved me.
I know it was wrong, but in that moment, I couldn’t lose him too. ”
I kept my eyes on Jonquil where she watched from over Fana’s shoulder but reached for Orla’s hand.
She took mine in hers, and when I squeezed her fingers, she squeezed back.
We were on a quest to save my grandma and to restore my life to the way it had been before I’d been dragged to Skalterra.
Everything I had lost, I stood to gain back.
Gams, Liam, and while Von Leer might be a wash thanks to Ferrin, there were other schools with volcanology tracks I could look into after a gap year.
Orla, meanwhile, had nothing left.
“I’m still mad at you,” I clarified.
“I know. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t need to apologize to me,” I sighed. “But you should talk to Ciarán. He almost died because of you.”
“It’s weird, trusting him.” Orla wrinkled her nose, but her shoulders relaxed, and I knew she must be relieved to be moving on from the topic of her uncle.
"I trust him more than I trust Iseult.”
Orla’s cheeks flushed. “Iseult is wonderful if you give her the chance. Besides, unlike Ciarán, she’s never tried to kill us.”
“Ciarán wasn’t trying to kill us, he just wanted to save Fana.”
“By killing us.”
“The only one he ever killed was me,” I pointed out. “And he only did that because he knew I wouldn’t die permanently. Plus he saved me on the ice when I almost turned into a rotsbane.”
“Fine. But Iseult is better looking than Ciarán.” Orla stifled a laugh when I wrinkled my nose.
Disagreements about which of our travel companions was the best looking were preferable to disagreements about whether or not we should kill Orla’s uncle, so I forced myself to smile back as I let go of her hand.