Chapter 71
Elara’s breath ghosted across a floor that remembered her.
That was her first thought after Eamon dragged her through the rift and dropped her onto polished onyx. Cold spilled up from the glass-dark stone, carrying the scent of iron and old incense, and her body knew the place before her mind could bear naming it.
Mordenhall.
Her gaze snapped up and the cavernous hall stretched before her, clad in black stone that reflected her broken image in warped fragments, their surfaces carved with old Ulrithai victories and faces given too many teeth by artists who had known exactly what kind of gods they served.
Above, claw-like chandeliers of blackened iron hung from the ribbed arches, their flames burning low and red.
“No,” she whispered.
Her breath hitched.
No, no, no.
She shoved herself upright too quickly. Pain tore across her chest, and the room lurched sideways.
Her hand slapped against the floor, fingers slipping on the cold polish, and something warm slid from her temple to her cheek.
Her breaths came faster as the walls seemed to lean closer, and when a shadow moved, Elara scrambled backward until her spine struck the base of a column.
Eamon stood several paces away, pale and still beside the rift already closing into a seam of gold-dark light. The Wound of Light hung at his belt, and the Spear of Lugh remained in his hand. Beyond him, at the far end of the hall, Osin watched from the steps beneath the throne.
At first glance, he looked diminished.
Elara saw it before fear could smother the thought. The collapse of the Fold had taken something from him and left the loss visible in the drawn hollows beneath his cheekbones, in the faint tremor that passed through one hand before he folded it neatly behind his back.
Hope sparked within her, small and reckless.
He could be hurt.
He could be weakened.
He wore white, immaculate as ever, a high-collared coat fastened with pale stones at the throat, and against the black hall, he looked less like a king than a funeral candle someone had forgotten to extinguish.
But his face was no longer the beautiful, polished thing she remembered.
Elara had seen to that.
The scars she had carved into him in the Pit still marked him, raised and livid across one cheek, dragging from temple to jaw in a brutal ruin of flesh.
They had warped the symmetry that had once made him look almost divine, pulling his mouth slightly wrong when he smiled and leaving one pale eye framed by torn, shining skin.
His eyes, though, were the same. Cold. Patient. Mildly displeased.
“Elara,” Osin said. “So good to see you again.”
Her stomach turned. The sound of her name in his mouth made the panic sharpen into something with colder. She pressed one hand beneath her cloak, felt the hidden book against her thigh, and forced air into her lungs before fear could devour the useful parts of her.
Osin descended one step. “You have been difficult to keep hold of.”
Elara’s gaze snapped to Eamon, but he would not meet her eyes.
“As we discussed,” Eamon said, his voice controlled, “the Hallowed in exchange for the freedom of my people.” The Spear of Lugh betrayed what his face would not; the blade pulsed once, faintly, with the tremor in his hand. “And for the immediate release of my sister.”
Elara’s ears rang as Osin’s reply came distant and muffled beneath the sudden rush of blood in her own head.
His sister.
Then she saw it. Eamon’s reluctance in the Concordium.
The way he had stood too close when she read the genealogy records.
The way his hand had come down over the page before she could reach the Turlaith lines, closing the book with a gentleness that had felt like care at the time.
It had not been care. His sister’s name had been there.
And Eamon, desperate, grieving, half-mad with the thought of her still breathing somewhere beneath Osin’s hand, had struck a bargain.
Elara’s nails bit into her palm. “You fool,” she gasped, the words scraping out between breaths that would not come properly.
Eamon’s jaw tightened, but he did not look at her.
Osin smiled.
Slowly.
It spread across the ruined half of his face first, dragging the scarred skin into something almost grotesque before the beautiful side followed.
The expression did not reach his eyes. Nothing in him warmed.
He only watched her with that patient, poisonous calm, as though her horror were a cup of tea brewed exactly to his liking.
“A fool?” he asked. “For playing a winning hand?” He descended another step, clicking his tongue. “No, I think not. Lord Eamon understood the terms with remarkable clarity. I wanted the Hallowed. He wanted his sister.” Osin’s gaze slid to Eamon, cold and assessing. “A simple exchange of hostages.”
Eamon flinched at the word, barely. Only a flicker near his mouth. Only the spear answering with another muted pulse.
Osin’s smile widened. “And once that matter is concluded,” he said softly, “our other disagreement may continue.”
Elara gathered herself one breath at a time. The first came shallow. The second scraped down her throat. By the third, her fingers had found the cold onyx beneath her palms, and she pushed herself up from the floor.
She would not cower beneath these two.
Her knees trembled as she rose, and she hated them for it. Hated that the sight of Osin could still do this to her, could drag her backward through time until she was that frightened little girl again, small and alone and looking for mercy in a room that had none to give.
But she was not that girl anymore.
She had crossed realms. She had loved and been loved.
Had known courage. Rage. She had survived monsters, men, grief, and the terrible, endless ache of being used by those who saw her only as a thing to wield.
She had found courage in places no one had thought to look.
She had grown teeth where Osin had once carved wounds.
There was no loneliness left for him to exploit. No fragile, hollow place for him to press his fingers into and break.
Elara lifted her chin.
She was something he had never faced before.
She was Eilíara.
Eamon’s gaze snapped back to her, and Elara met it fully, letting him see every cold, lethal inch of the betrayal burning through her—the promise in her eyes.
His grip shifted on the spear, fingers whitening around the ancient shaft as the gold markings gave one faint, uneasy pulse beneath his hand.
“Are you Lugh, then?” she asked. “The Patron?”
Eamon snarled, fangs flashing. “Of course not.”
Elara looked pointedly at the Spear of Lugh, then lifted one brow.
Color rose along the high line of his cheekbones, though his voice sharpened with wounded pride.
“This relic has been protected by my family for centuries. It belongs to the Tuatha.” His gaze dropped to the dagger at his belt, and something possessive settled over his face. “They all belong to the Tuatha.”
“And you did not think to mention that through all those days of research?” she asked, her voice low enough to make him look at her again. “Does Reynnar know?”
Eamon’s throat moved, and in the gleam of the onyx hall, with Osin watching and the Spear of Lugh burning faintly between them, his refusal to answer told her everything.
No. He did not.
Osin sighed softly. “While all of this has been very entertaining, I have other matters to attend to that are of considerably more importance than your little squabble.”
He lifted one hand and snapped his fingers, and the great doors of Mordenhall opened.
Legion black poured into the chamber in a dark, disciplined wave, boots striking the polished onyx in perfect unison.
Elara went cold before she understood why.
Then the first helmed face turned toward her, and gooseflesh rose along her arms.
Shades.
But their mouths did not hang slack. Their hands did not twitch with mindless hunger.
They did not lurch or drag themselves forward like dead things pulled by an invisible chain.
They arranged themselves along the hall in flawless formation, spacing exact, blades angled downward in mirrored discipline while the red chandelier-light crawled over their armor like blood over oil.
Soldiers.
Elara’s fingers curled against her sides.
Osin saw her notice and smiled. “Yes,” he said. “Remarkable, isn’t it? The Fold’s collapse was inconvenient in many respects, but one must not ignore the gifts hidden inside catastrophe. A lesser man might mourn the loss of a leash. I prefer to study what learns to stand once it is removed.”
One shade turned its head slightly toward Eamon.
“Bring her,” Osin commanded.
The shade nearest the doors moved first, and a Legion soldier entered behind it with one hand wrapped around a child’s upper arm.
A little Sídhe girl.
She was so young.
Young enough that Reynnar, Aoife, and Caelion might never have known she existed.
Her hair was dark blonde, braided back from her face with pale ribbon, and her eyes were the same verdant green as Eamon’s.
Too large in her small face. Too bright with fear.
Osin had dressed her impeccably, of course.
A little cream-colored gown with pearl buttons at the throat, soft slippers, a green sash tied with careful hands at her waist. Her stomach gave a sick twist.
The soldier brought the girl to the base of the dais, and Osin descended the final step with that same unhurried grace, as if receiving a guest rather than returning a stolen child. He rested one pale hand on her shoulder.
Eamon growled.
The sound rolled through the hall, low and lethal enough that the shades shifted as one. The little girl flinched beneath Osin’s touch, and that small movement did more to break Eamon than any accusation Elara could have thrown at him.
Osin merely glanced down at the girl with mild reproach, as if Eamon were the one being discourteous. His ruined smile softened into something almost paternal.
Elara's skin crawled with rage.