29. CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 29
Noa
Thank the gods that the rain eased up, because the nymphs looked near drowned as it was. They’d made a change from their usual dresses and wore what they called fighting clothes—leather—the pants and shirt looking a lot like what Fallon wore. Caerwen’s hair hung in a wet braid against her back, while Effa’s sprouting curls made me think of a dripping umbrella as she stomped along.
Some threat we’d be, if we encountered anything more awesome than the graceful, leaping stag who startled everyone when he crashed through the underbrush.
The King of the Forest had opened a passage that ended in the high mountains of the Carmag, where we found a hanging valley, lush and thick with trees and the wide meandering meadows that drew Effa like a drug. I’d lost my sense of direction. Didn’t know if it was east or west. Up or down.
Caerwen whispered I wasn’t meant to know, as if she feared the malevolent spirits who might be hiding, listening. Fee had a lot of valleys secreted away in the Selkirks, places where the weather never matched the season, and creatures everyone knew about but never saw lived in undisturbed peace.
Somewhere in this valley, Aine had created a wrinkle to both hide and imprison a seidr witch named Pelonie. The Queen of the Forest had drawn on ancient Norse mythology for her inspiration; I expected a massive tree and a Well of Fate, since such a place was the original home of runes and their magic.
“Tell me what Aine told you,” I said, to pass the time.
“We did our own research, lady,” Caerwen explained. “Many myths exist about the Bone Woman. Some say she’s a wrinkled crone living in the dry deserts of northern Mexico. Others say she was thrown into an ancient well. Modern witnesses swear she’s a beautiful young woman who wears cut-off jeans, a pink shirt and matching flip-flops. She parks a broken-down car along the side of the road, and when lonely men stop to help, she steals their souls.”
“Angel said to beware of an old woman with firewood tied to her back.”
“Yes,” Effa nodded. “It’s not really firewood but brown bones. The truckers often see her after midnight and know to keep driving. She has many faces and many names. The Bone Woman, the Collector, the Wolf Woman. Many witches have come after Pelonie, since she was and still is the first. The imposters often add their own flair.”
“What was Pelonie’s purpose?”
Caerwen brushed at her thigh. “They say she was more than a seidr witch. Not a demigod, but her powers were beyond those who came after. Her task was to find and preserve the bones. Bring what was lost back to life so the animals would not become extinct. She would sift through the rocks, search the hidden spaces for the bones from birds and snakes. The deer, the foxes, and wolverines. But her love was for wolf bones. She would scavenge through the hills, along the dried-up rivers, and when she’d gathered enough bones for an entire skeleton, she would put the creature back together and sing a weaving song. A nonsense song, sung over and over. Changing the words with each verse until she found the right magic to breathe life into the skeleton. Bring back its form, the muscles, the beating heart. Air in the lungs.”
The perfect witch for Aine to turn toward when she wanted to null the wolf queens.
“ Seidr magic is not evil,” Effa added. “But Pelonie used the magic in an evil way. She wanted the queens’ wolves for her own purposes, and she fled after the ritual. Took the runes with her into hiding.”
But wolf spirits were never meant to be trapped in the runes, and according to Aine, the building pressure on them was no different from the plight of silent wolves. The torture over centuries was sickening to imagine.
During the years after the ritual, Pelonie could have released the wolves. But to do so required the queens, and those who weren’t dead or insane would have killed her. The kings, too. Her sin rippled out into the world, a curse affecting the witches who followed, those in the Gemini coven. The seers. Not even Pelonie, in her wrinkled prison, escaped the consequences.
“ Seidr magic,” Caerwen said, “once released, has repercussions that are unstoppable, lady. It’s runic magic. A magic so powerful, even Odin had to sacrifice himself before he could learn the fearful knowledge, the rituals and chants.”
“Do you know any happy myths about the Wolf Woman?” I’d been unable to stop the shudders, thinking of the nonsense song I’d always sung… hush, little baby, don’t you cry…
How did anyone count the victims of magic? The queens, the failles , the Gemini Witches killed by Amal. Amal herself. Grayson. The dread lords, and the king’s curse. Even Julien.
And what of the kidnapped wolves turned into hybrids? They were victims, too.
Everything, including Fee’s magic.
“One story,” said Effa as she brushed at the wet dampening her pants legs. “I always liked it, where—if the magic is right—you can see the resurrected wolf in the moonlight. Watch as she changes into a beautiful woman who runs free.”
I understood why the meadow nymph liked that story. It had a happy ending, unlike life with no guarantees.
We’d left the forest and crossed a meadow where the grass was tall and heavy with the recent rain, swishing as we pushed the way through, leaving a trampled path behind. The shrouded, purple mountains were a smudge in the misty distance. Birds soared overhead.
“What else do you know about runic magic?” I asked, since Fee used it with his borderlines, and Grayson had used it both in the rune stones near the river and when he marked similar runes on my skin.
Caerwen glanced over her shoulder and frowned. “Why would you want to mess with it?”
“I read a book from Anson’s archive. It talked about the importance of the object used when cutting the runes. Clay, or crystals, polished stones, a wooden staff.” Classic magical items from every fantasy movie I’d ever watched.
“A rune is like a word.” Caerwen wrinkled her forehead. “But more. Like a language. The sorceress uses it for guidance, for good reasons, and for bad. The practitioner carves the rune, adds the blood, and sings the magic into being.”
“Have you ever heard the song?”
“No, lady. I would not want to hear such a song.”
We walked on in silence with only the occasional bird call for company. A towering tree drew my attention. An ash tree. The massive spreading branches hid an uneasy thrumming. The nymphs were reacting, because Effa was clomping now, with so much determination that I smiled.
“Are you sure this is wise, No-ee ?” she asked as a biting insect attacked her face for the third time, no matter how she swatted it away.
“None of this is wise, but it’s what I have to do.”
“For us, too,” said Caerwen. “The magic affects nymphs in bad ways. Makes us shrink in the Carmag.”
“Not all nymphs,” I pointed out. The nymph in the Farmer’s Market hadn’t been bothered.
“But if war comes? The tree nymphs will die because they can’t leave their trees. The river nymphs cannot survive in the rivers outside these mountains,” the grotto nymph added. “Aine has fought for so long to contain what the Bone Woman unleashed. To keep our world safe.”
“And Aine and I will have a long talk when this is over.”
“Please, No-ee , don’t make her mad.” Effa still stomped but avoided the small flowers growing in the grass. “She might turn you fracky or something.”
“I think she wants this over as much as we do.”
“So do the Gemini Witches.” Caerwen sent me a look. “Have you noticed the runes drawn on that effigy?”
The runes were the answer, but I had more than one question. Did the witch know that Pelonie’s sin had cursed her coven? Did she know the seidr magic was the reason the Gemini Witches ended up dead? Unable to prevent their deaths?
None could escape the future foreseen in their scrying bowl. The curse. Amal would find them, destroy them. Because she remembered who lied about the magic. Remembered the coven, if not the ritual.
And since then, the Wolf Woman tried to bring back lost souls, gathering their bones. All the other women over the ages—the Collector, the Bone Woman, La Lobo—had done the same thing. An attempt to make amends to an unforgiving magic.
When the only way to make amends was to return the wolves to the queens. To somehow release the trapped wolf spirits from the runes and cure the original sin.
“What do I need to know about this wrinkle?” I asked no one in particular.
“What we need to know,” Effa corrected. “Pelonie can’t leave, but we have permission to come and go. There’s a challenge involved, like Odin. Proving we’re worthy.”
“You guys can stay behind.” A hopeful offer they rejected.
“We sense the magic, No-ee . You can’t.”
“How far away?”
“The opening is beneath the great tree—the Tree of Life.” Caerwen’s voice lowered. “We’ll have to jump across the Well of Urd. Fate. If you believe with a pure heart, the magic will grant permission to enter the wrinkle. If not, you fail and fall.”
It took ten more minutes before we reached the shadows cast by the tree. The trunk was thick, woody, and brooded like a gnarled dragon—an image in my head after Caerwen described the old legends. How the tree was taller than the clouds in the sky, with roots that sank into the underworld. A dragon guarded the base, along with snakes, but nothing like that lurked around the tree. Only the flickering sunlight through the leaves, falling in a disorienting pattern. Like Caerwen, when she lost substance because she didn’t want to connect with the earth—where the memories were.
At the base of the tree, a few feet from the largest roots bulging through the ground, the required well gaped with a fish’s mouth, waiting to be fed. Nothing like a wishing well, with a cute bucket and safe stone walls. No, this mouth was stone-edged and ground level. A gaping crevice, like the vent beneath the Gemini seers on their golden thrones.
For an endless moment, I stared at the mossy stones. The maw was about three feet in width. Three weathered boards crossed the opening; they were incapable of holding any weight more significant than birds or the small, scurrying animals.
Beside the well, leaning against the tree trunk, was an iron spear. But what drew my attention was the whitened skeleton, probably male, since a suit of tarnished Spanish armor lay collapsed in the grass.
Caerwen noticed, and said, “The Conquistadors followed the rumors. The talk of a Well that bestowed long life. This was not the Well they wanted.”
“What happened to him?”
“If you drink from the Well of Urd without permission… some things are not meant to be known.”
And if I wanted to enter Aine’s wrinkle. If I ran toward that well and jumped, failed, I would fall into the Well of Fate. Break the boards. Gasp and swallow the water. Even if I crawled out…
I fingered the bow slung over my shoulder. Drew comfort from the weight of the quiver filled with Fee’s special silver-tipped arrows. Neither nymph carried a weapon.
“Aine couldn’t make this easy.”
“It’s a prison, No-ee .”
And the Well of Fate was the perfect guardian. I sighed, shifting my weight as I glanced around. The meadow was peaceful in the glistening sunlight. The branches of the ash tree whispered. Small lights glittered and bobbed between the leaves. I hoped they were faeries, the things everyone knew about but never saw.
It might be nice to see faeries before I died.
“I’ll go first,” Caerwen said, squaring her shoulders. “I’ll catch you when you come through.”
She took a running start, leapt into the air and… vanished. Pure heart, I reminded myself. Rubbed at the black rune, Grayson’s sigil, longing for the little twitch I didn’t feel. Not here, in one of Fee’s hidden valleys. So far away.
I followed Caerwen’s path, running and refusing to think beyond leaping in the air. Feeling the whoosh of dark, moist air from the chasm beneath my feet, the Well of Urd deciding my fate, perhaps.
Then I was through the brush of magic, teetering on an edge before Caerwen gripped my arm and tugged. As I stumbled forward, a weight crashed against my back.
“Oof!” Effa barreled through the magic and tumbled to the ground on top of me. We were a knot of arms and legs until I struggled free.
She bounced upright, got to her feet. But during her entrance and our collision, I’d dropped the Bone Woman effigy. It was now a shattered toy.
“Oh, No-ee …” Effa whispered. “So many pieces…”
“We’ll put it back together,” I reassured her, and bent to do just that when, insanely, the pieces moved on their own. The splinters of wood reassembled back into the woman’s shape. I held my palms up as the bundle of tiny twigs wiggled like worms, captured by the red thread rewinding itself back into place.
Caerwen dragged Effa to the side, and when she was sure she’d dragged her far enough away, she whispered, “Fate believes in you, lady.”
I kept my attention on the animated effigy. “What are the odds it’s seidr magic and not fate?”
“That too,” the grotto nymph whispered. “It recognizes the runes carved into the wood. Reacts the way the Bone Woman would, putting the bones back together.”
I shook off the shiver racing between my shoulder blades and picked up the effigy, slid it into a pocket where it bulged. We were still in a meadow, but on the back side of the ash tree, a looming sentinel, blocking out the bright sun. The sky was a crystal blue, with puffy white clouds scuttling along, pushed by the air currents. An eagle floated with wings outstretched, his white head vivid against the dark brown body. A black crow circled above before arrowing down, talons aimed at the eagle’s head. The two birds twisted, floating in the air while engaging in a mortal combat.
The crow dove, zigged, and dove again, grasping the base of the eagle’s neck while the larger bird of prey soared higher and higher, mighty wings pounding the air. Eagles could breathe at the higher altitudes when the crow could not—I’d learned that fact during my internship with the wildlife photographer. But instead of my mentor’s wisdom, what ran through my head were the many stories from divergent cultures, all centering on the folly in flying toward the sun… reaching for more than you deserved.
When the crow fell from the eagle and plummeted toward the ground, I saw it as Fate, revealing a future.
Which I intended to change.
“Not today, bitch,” I said beneath my breath.
The eagle screamed. Caerwen threw a glance at me and smiled.
“You are more, lady,” she murmured, and although I didn’t ask, she meant I was more than the failles she’d met over the centuries. The frightened girls who sought refuge in a wrinkle that slowed time and kept them hidden.
I flexed my fingers, tried syphoning and felt the flow of sparkling… exuberance. Traces of Fee’s puppy magic.
As we walked on, woven dreamcatchers hung from the trees, beautiful creations crafted with sticks, twine, beads, and feathers.
“Watch out for those.” Effa’s warning matched the intuition shivering through me. “Traps. Nothing good from them.”
“Don’t dreamcatchers protect you from nightmares?”
“Not her dreamcatchers.”
“You have no weapons,” I said. “Aren’t your worried?”
Effa drew a circle in the air with her finger. Vines popped from the ground, twisting into a thorny hedgerow. Then she snapped her fingers, and the obstruction dissolved away.
From where Caerwen stood, the grinding rocks rumbled. Massive boulders rocked into new locations, inches from where they’d been. The grotto nymph huffed out a satisfied laugh, claiming victory as she glanced back at Effa—who waggled her fingers. Caerwen’s imposing boulders softened beneath a blanket of tiny pink flowers. Obviously, nymphs had their own jealousies and battle techniques. Metis and Aine weren’t the only ones who resorted to the ridiculous.
And what was the harm in that? In a battle waged with petals instead of blood?
Except that petals would not stop Amal.
I skimmed my gaze over the empty landscape, the distant trees that ended in a violet haze. The bowl of the sky.
A prison, Noa. This is not a benevolent place.
“How will we find her?” I asked, a weight settling in my spine.
“She finds us,” said Caerwen without stopping the waver in her voice.
I asked, “Do you ever miss your grotto?”
“For centuries, I was like the Bone Woman, trying to put things back together, breathe in new life. I failed.”
“What was it like—when your grotto thrived?”
“Like the dream you have right before waking. When the sun is warming away the lingering mist. The palest violet glows with pink light. Then the hint of blue, like the bird’s egg in spring. The hope in the rabbit, fresh from the bower. Faeries flit and dance with the dandelion puffs. Music flows from the dripping water, falling from the rocks, and you hear the laugher in the stream.”
I was afraid to speak. Even Effa remained silent as the grotto nymph shuddered.
“Then the dream changes, and what you hear is the stomping of booted feet. The clamor of weapons and rough shouts of those who destroy and think nothing of it. The loss. And the ground aches and screams in agony until you cannot stand to be there. Cannot stand to feel.”
I reached out and hugged her. Her scent was that of growing things. I drew in that connection to the earth and syphoned the hint of pain she carried. Offered to her what she’d always offered to me: release.
“We won’t let Amal destroy your world,” I whispered.
“No.” She shook her head as she stepped back. “You are the strong one, lady. It is why Aine was afraid. Why Metis was, too. And why they both cherish the hope they see in you.”
“I am ordinary, Caerwen.”
“Called to do extraordinary things.” She covered my fingers where I gripped the child’s toy, a wooden woman with sticks on her back. “You own the power of the queens.”
We approached a cave not unlike that belonging to the Gemini Witches. Tall standing stones framed the entrance. No iron collection box marked the path. No sense of weeping magic. Inside the main cavern, I studied the sandy cave floor. Scattered white bones seemed random, and yet, each odd, disjointed grouping had been assembled into… something. I might have drawn my weapon if Caerwen had not placed her hand on mine, shaking her head.
“Don’t awaken the magic,” she murmured. I didn’t understand until a small, pathetic thing wobbled out of the shadows. Made of bone and nothing more, the shape suggested a mix of several animals. The head of a fawn with delicate bones. Front legs splayed and awkward. And too short for what would become a magnificent deer. The long, jointed tail flicked with feline restlessness, and a softening entered my heart for something so mismatched.
A creature made from many, inexplicable.
I held out my hand, low and non-threatening. Hesitating at the last minute because the thing might bite.
The creature balked, danced on delicate feet.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“Something lost,” Effa whispered back. “What never existed.”
The mystery caught my breath, a thrall of the impossible. Of imagination, twisted and poignantly brought to life. And as the bone thing jolted, stilt-like, scrabbling backward into the shadows… a song echoed inside me, sounding like a lament. A grieving.
Then a voice scraped from the shadows with the papery rasp of someone who had not spoken in a long time. “How did you get in here?”
Effa stepped closer to my side. Her shudder became mine as I asked, “Are you the sorceress known as Pelonie?”
“And if I be?”
“We have a special pass. From the Queen of the Forest.” I paused, then added, “Your jailer.”
A hiss slid from the darkness. “I know who she be.”
“You’re a seer. Do you also know why we’re here?”
“No.” The sorceress lied; I heard it in her voice. Recognized it in her posture as she emerged from the shadows to stand in the cave light, a bluish bioluminescence that bounced from wall to wall.
For an instant, she was the sacred Three in reverse: crone, mother, virgin. Each face morphed in and out. First was a woman stooped with age, her hair thin and gray. Then the mother, and after her, it was the young girl, wearing a gossamer white gown. Her long hair was the palest blonde, held back from her face by a headband of pearls and jewels, a woven web that grazed her forehead like an upside-down crown. Blue eyes glowed with an inner light above cheeks that were plump and perfect. Her pouty mouth was that of a child’s, innocent and full, and yet the cunning of a sorceress hid beneath the faint half-smile of knowing.
A snowy owl perched on her shoulder. At least, the head and wings belonged to an owl. The furry body resembled a cat; the tail coiling around the witch’s arm was reptilian. Another creature with many mingled parts. An unholy merger by a witch with limited resources or an unsound mind.
“Are you an assassin?” Pelonie asked with the young girl’s voice. Eerie, like the voices of the Gemini Witches.
“Did you see my past? Look into your scrying bowl and see me in that witch cave?”
A small shrug. “And if I did?”
“Even if you didn’t,” I challenged. “Know that the two witches you saw were your spiritual descendants. Members of your coven. And the woman who destroyed them is a monster you created.”
“If that is so, what am I expected to feel?”
“Guilt, if it’s possible. Their curse comes from you.”
A flutter from the owl perched on the young girl’s shoulder as she said, “I cursed no witch.”
“You misused the gift you’d been given.”
“There is nothing to be done.”
The young Pelonie turned away. I followed her through the shadows. Effa and Caerwen followed me.
After a moment, the owl lifted from Pelonie’s shoulder, flew silently away with its odd cat body trailing like captured prey.
As we entered a larger cavern, the light changed, coming from the torches and flames burning in bronze bowls. Grotesque shadows wavered over dark niches in the walls. Crude furniture decorated the space. A table cluttered with odd objects. Chairs and a fireplace with a cooking pot suspended from an iron hook.
Then the witch turned, and I stared at the mother, not the girl. Tall, slender, her hair was now a rich brunette, pulled back from her temples by twenty woven braids. Her eyes were dark, her skin darker, her ethnicity a blend of exotic culture and mysterious grace. She might have come from Africa, or the ancient lands of Mesopotamia. Wandered through deserts, or worn veils and secreted herself behind lattice screens. Her scent was that of the roses of Ta’if, the Black Iris of Jordan, with traces of Oud wood and frankincense.
“You are here for revenge?” the mother asked.
“Aine believes you deceived both the kings and the queens.”
The small laugh was knowing and ironic. “Deceit is part of the game, and she plays it quite well.”
“What was the bargain you made with the kings?”
“To hide the runes until it was safe to return.”
“It was never safe, though.”
“No. Deceit was all they knew. And a craven need to destroy. Had I returned, I would have been dead before I could speak.”
“And what was the bargain with Aine?”
“A refuge from the weight of the world, in exchange for declawed queens.”
I tipped my head. “You didn’t foresee the outcome?”
“You think to trick me, girl?” The mother was gone. In her place was the crone with her dowager’s hump, her toothless smile in a wrinkled, age-spotted face. She wore rags, tied together with many scarves, a sad mimic of the disjointed creatures she put together, tried to bring to life.
I let pity for this sorceress burn for fifteen seconds before I smudged it out. “Two of the greatest seers are dead because of you. An entire coven suffers. Imposters roam the world pretending to be you.”
A cackle as the laugh. “None of them have my power.”
“None of them are held prisoner.”
The old woman shook herself, and once again it was the young girl in white who faced me. Effa’s agitation was a warning, along with Caerwen’s still, ready posture.
“What bargain do you wish to make, girl?” the young Pelonie asked.
“Allow me to put the seidr magic right. End the cycle.”
“Impossible. You cannot wield such magic.”
I glanced around the cave, at the misassembled skeletons, the carved sticks thrust into the ground. The niches carved into the stone walls, hundreds of niches, holding hundreds of stones, some carved with runes.
A throbbing pulse, faint and thready, floated in the air. My throat closed up until I swallowed.
“You still have the trapped wolves,” I said. “The rune stones.”
The young girl waved a languid hand. “Somewhere in this mess. Although most of them have died.” Her smile turned coy. “They only live as long as their queens, and it’s been centuries. All of them, dead and gone. Good riddance.”
“Amal is alive,” I said. “An original queen. Return her wolf.”
Pelonie stilled. “How can this be?”
“Vampires turned her. She’s as immortal as you are—an unending chance for you to put this right.”
“Vile abominations—vampires. I’d rather rot than do what you ask.”
Effa plucked at the bow slung over my shoulder. Caerwen had stepped to the side. Her hands were at her sides, but her fingers twitched, and small pebbles at her feet began to roll around.
From the shadows, I saw what had alarmed the nymphs. Small, bony creatures were creeping forward. Some were crab-like, with flat, wide bodies and jointed legs. Others reminded me of those Amal created, but without flesh and blood, and impossible to kill since they were nothing more than animated bones. I reached into my pocket and closed my fingers around the effigy. Around the energy vibrating through it.
More skeletal things emerged. In the corners, they were already several layers deep, like rolling skulls, some of them. A faint clacking sent frissons of distress down my spine.
I stiffened, let the ice creep in, the ice I’d always felt when facing bullies.
“What of your spiritual descendants?” I asked the young Pelonie. She’d folded her hands in front of her, framed by her white gown. “Amal will continue to hunt and kill them.”
“They are not my concern.”
“What of your own life?”
A beatific smile. “I cannot be killed.”
“Everything can be killed. I plan on killing Amal. I’d like to return her wolf before I do it, though. Break the same magic cycle that condemns innocents.”
“Your morality is charming.”
“You wouldn’t like my true morality.” The effigy pulsed in my pocket, but I was afraid to move my fingers, release my hold.
Pelonie tipped her head. “You are threatening me?”
“Not at all.”
“The queens got what they deserved. They were jealous, hostile women, exacting revenge on the nymphs, the witches, the kings. Anyone who would not honor them. Who displeased them. Even the flowers in the field were not safe if they did not bloom with the desired color that day.”
The young Pelonie narrowed her gaze on Effa as she said that, and the meadow nymph stilled her restless movements. Raised her chin. Satisfied, the witch smiled at me.
“What I did was necessary. I preserved what was good.”
“You didn’t preserve. You destroyed. The wolves you wanted to protect are dead, and others never came into existence. Gather all the bones you want. Be La Loba, or the Wolf Woman. The Collector. Sing over their remains. But you’ll never make it right. Never restore what you broke into a million pieces.”
“That is a lie,” she hissed.
“That is your curse,” I hissed back while electric jolts bounced around the cave, disjointed like the bone creatures. The power wasn’t mine. It was hers, and moisture dewed at the small of my back. “Your ritual made the loss permanent for the daughters of the queens. And their daughter’s daughters. They call it a king’s curse.”
Pelonie smiled. “How… fitting.”
“Thousands of females carry a curse because you failed to honor the magic. You weren’t worthy. That’s why you are here.”
“Should I care?”
Her bone creatures scrabbled over the botched efforts—thin wing bones connected to jointed toe bones and fragile talons, bones that tried to walk but couldn’t. I syphoned energy from the effigy, let it float like a ribbon in a breeze.
Strands of Pelonie’s pale hair lifted, her only reaction.
“The sin isn’t only in your weakness, the selfish decision you made,” I said. “It’s in denying anyone else the chance to put it right. To realign the magic you released. Close the circle, so evil no longer flows into the world.”
Power sparked, both hers and mine, crisscrossing the cave, leaving glowing trails through the air.
“Do you like your prison, Pelonie?” I asked. “Can you collect enough bones to save yourself? Or would you rather others did it for you and basked in the glory?”
The sorceress was changing; her face shifted from girl to woman to crone faster than her clothes changed until, in one bizarre moment, the crone wore the white gown with the webbed crown hanging over her wrinkled forehead.
“I am your one chance,” I told her. “Give me the rune. Let me close the circle. Only then will you be free.”
The deceit in that statement didn’t matter. The kings had lied to the queens, and the queens lied in return, while Pelonie was nothing but lies. Even Aine lied to me, to herself. To Metis. Now I was lying. I wanted the rune to end Amal. And if my request for the stone held out false hope to Pelonie, hinted at freedom—well, her hopes were her own. Like the queens. That was how the magic worked, wasn’t it? A mutual desire?
Pelonie’s smile sharpened. “You’ll need the chant to sing the wolf into being.”
“What will that cost me, Pelonie?”
“The nymphs.”