Chapter 33
Sovereignty’s Maid
Flora
T
he rain has stopped. After the violence of the storm, the near silence and the stillness of the air feel expectant, like the pause before something worse.
I am curled up alone in the same spot where, a day ago, Chyr and I slept tangled in each other’s arms. He is sleeping at the back of the cavern with the other Riders, leaving me with all four of our plaids to make my bed.
That shouldn’t soften my feelings towards him.
But it’s another example of his kindness, and I do know he feels things deeply.
Maybe I’m a fool, but despite all the things he deliberately didn’t tell me and everything he let me mistakenly believe was true, Chyr’s sense of honour is the one thing I cannot doubt. That has nothing to do with his oaths—it’s who he is at his core.
In some ways, he’s a prisoner as much as I am. It might be impossible for him to choose between his oaths, and he hasn’t broken any promises that he made me.
I roll over and check on him and the others. The sound of steady breathing fills the cavern. I’ve slept in my clothes, so I’m dressed already. I wrap a plaid around my shoulders, pick up my boots, and tiptoe towards the light that streams in from outside.
Ronan’s tame fox, Rua, is still curled up near the cavern mouth where she fell into an exhausted sleep last night. Her head is cushioned on her tail, and she opens her eyes as I sneak past her. Shade and Shadow pad silently behind me. The fox pays them no attention.
“I’m only going out for a bit,” I say. “No need to move.”
It’s past midday. I don’t need to check the sun’s position to know that—the heightened senses that connect me to the landscape haven’t left me.
The hills are swollen, the earth rich and dark, leaves glistening, and puddles gleaming silver among the rocks. But wind still lashes the bracken, whipping the branches together with a sound like gnashing teeth.
I scan the glen below. A corner of the church near Mairi’s village is visible in the distance, and beyond it, a long column of black cattle moves north in the direction of Dun Uilleum, surrounded by dots in the scarlet of the uniforms Vheara’s soldiers wear.
Plumes of smoke, thicker than the peat of chimney fires, rise skyward in various places.
Not Mairi’s village—the smoke is all farther away than that—but I’ve no way of knowing what is burning.
My arms tingle as the hairs rise along them. Pressure swells within me, and I want to seize the wind and pick up every one of Vheara’s soldiers and blow them out to sea, wipe them from existence as though they’ve never been.
Standing here, helpless, the cavern walls close in. I glance back at the Riders before slipping out onto the hillside, but no one stirs.
Two steps later, Lorcan materialises beside me. “Did you think no one was keeping watch?”
My heart skips a beat. “For the enemy or to keep me from leaving?”
He shrugs. “Either—both.”
“I’d be stupid to try to get to Muilean on my own.”
“I don’t know you.”
“You haven’t given me a chance.”
He steps closer, the ever-present knife rolling absent-mindedly across his knuckles. Hilt and blade skip bone to bone without drawing blood, then flip to land flush in his palm before he flicks the knife again to repeat the process, faster and faster with a whisper of steel on skin.
Like Chyr, he towers above me. The Evers all do, but there’s something in the green of Lorcan’s glittering eyes that makes my mouth go dry, and not in a pleasant way.
He leans in closer. “Your very existence forces Chyr to choose between his oaths to the High King and his honour and loyalty to the Compact. You’ll damn him to the Gloaming or destroy him. Destroy us. What more do I need to know?”
I turn my back on him and start to pull on my boots.
“Where are you going?” he asks.
“To get the clothes I washed earlier. To get some space.”
Without taking his eyes from my face, Lorcan stills the knife and holds it against his side. I don’t retreat.
“I won’t let you be his downfall,” he says very quietly.
“Chyr is the best of all of us, and he’s paid the price for others all his life.
He accepted all the guilt for Fionn’s crimes as if he deserved to be punished for the sin of being his father’s son.
We were the only ones in his corner then, and we’ll protect him now. ”
I give a slow nod of acknowledgement, my heart hurting for the wounded young man I’ve glimpsed within Chyr occasionally. “What happened to his mother?”
“No one knows.” Lorcan slides the knife into a sheath at his wrist. “But all the things you think Siorai are? That is who Fionn was. If Chyr’s mother is still among the living, and she managed to escape him, I wouldn’t blame her.”
“I can. Who would leave a child with someone like that?”
“Fionn never bothered himself with Chyr except to use him as a whipping boy, someone at whom to focus his rage on the rare occasions he was even there.”
“All the more reason.” I finish tugging on my boot. “And Chyr’s uncle?”
Lorcan stares past me, down into the glen. “Chulainn was no better. He’s more careful than Fionn, that’s all. Power can do wonders for a reputation.”
Except for the cold glitter in his emerald eyes, Lorcan’s face holds no expression. I tighten the plaid around my shoulders to keep myself from shivering.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“I need you to understand what Chyr is to us—to every one of the Riders.” He glances down at the Shadehounds, and they watch him coldly with their moonlight eyes.
Shade steps forward, but Lorcan ignores the large male and bends until his nose nearly touches mine.
“We would die for him. Kill for him. Crush little flowers without a second thought.”
“Thank you for the warning.” I manage to keep my voice steady.
With as much dignity as I can muster, I cross the hill to the stream where we watered the horses. It’s only after I round the bend out of sight that I give in to the shudders that rattle my teeth.
Leaning back against the overhanging cliff above the bathing pool, I take deep, gulping breaths. Lorcan has made it clear I’ll need to watch my back. The Riders may be oathbound to make sure I reach Muilean, but if it will save Chyr’s life, that’s an oath Lorcan, at least, is willing to break.
That moment when the soldier lit the beacon on the hill and smiled, the moment the pain first seared my shoulder, fury filled me just as it does now. But it wasn’t my fury alone. The land itself was angry. Magic rose within me to answer then, and the wind has risen in response to my anger now.
Gusts beat at the cliff and sweep through the yellow furze. Wind drowns out the sound of the stream tumbling to the rocks below.
I feel the wind’s fury, the crushed furze, and the battered stone. They match the way every part of me is being pummelled.
The thought makes me pause, and for the first time, the connection makes sense. I don’t understand the Crown of Flame yet, but here beneath the cliff, listening to the wind and water, I finally feel how the land and I connect.
That’s what it means to wear the Crown of Vines.
Alba Scoria didn’t choose me because I deserve it. She chose me because I’m needed—because I share her fury and her grief.
Vheara and these Evers are causing more damage than Fionn ever did, and I can’t defeat them. I can’t even protect myself from the Riders.
But I am not alone. If the gods believe I have the strength within me to make a difference, then there must be a solution. I need to think harder and use every tool that I’ve been given.
Letting out a slow breath, I try to still my mind. I don’t reach for the wind—I don’t reach for any magic at all—but the air begins to calm. I let my mind drift, trying not to control my thoughts.
The stream slows, too, into a gentler burbling over the rocks, down into the pool, and then cascading down again. The water is clear in the way it can be only when it’s icy cold, but the rock near the edge has been soaking up heat since the rain stopped earlier. I let my feet drift towards it.
Lorcan’s energy is a spot of heat by the cavern mouth, well out of sight. Deciding to ignore him, I drop the plaid from my shoulders onto the dry ferns on the bank. Seated on the rock, I remove my boots, shift, and stockings.
Shadow crawls forward to sit beside me, while Shade turns his back and flops to the ground, watching the direction of the cavern.
“Tell me if anyone comes,” I tell them, and I wonder how much they understand.
I gasp as the water chills my naked skin. The pool is only three feet deep, but that’s enough to let me float on my back and soak in the sun’s warmth. Submerged in the water, the world is quiet again.
Until now, I’ve fought for every drop of magic. Reached for it, torn it from the earth and sky, pushed it to do my bidding.
The Riders have limitations, the same way I do when I force magic to obey me. I pay for it in pain, but is that an Ever trait? The Riders haven’t thought to take the Veilstone away from me—not yet. Most likely, one of them will.
I think back to the moment when I first reached into the cloud above the signal fire and felt the droplets of water forming, back to the moment in this same pool earlier when I felt the water wanting me to understand it.
Instead of using my magic to control it, I let myself sink into it instead, savouring how it feels, how the droplets huddle together and drift as one.
Acknowledging the darker, cooler water flowing beneath the surface, I concentrate on the warmth near the surface and bask in the light that pours magic from the sun into the earth.
Then I stop moving the water with my hands and simply relax and let it flow around me in a circle.
The whole pool becomes a gentle eddy. I’m not pulling it in; I’m simply increasing its own momentum, using what it already is. The magic never enters my body at all.