MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS
The frosted ground where Torin had stood slowly melted once she vanished.
We all remained quiet, piecing together what just happened, and what it meant.
Down the walkway, Nivelle stared long and hard at Niall, her eyes and facial markings pulsing blue in the dark, as if raging to the beat of her heart.
The garden didn’t seem to be quelling her temper anymore.
She slowly rose, and the bushes nearest to where she stood, wilted.
Silas snapped his wings behind him, which broke the awkward tension. “If you don’t mind, I’ll have a word with my sister.” He stepped past us.
Niall took my hand and led me out of the garden, back toward the cottage. Roirdan followed, making sure not to touch anything on his way out.
Behind us, I could hear Nivelle’s voice rise and fall alongside Silas’s.
“Why didn’t you tell us your plan?” Roirdan asked Niall.
“Because I needed to feel Torin out and choose the right moment to make the offer. I didn’t want anyone getting desperate and saying something before me.” He cast Roirdan a pointed look over his shoulder. “And patience is something you don’t like to practice, my friend.”
The commander chuckled. “Fuck off. No one has time for patience.”
“Those who are smart do. You should try it sometime.”
Roirdan shook his head and laughed. “Not really my style. I have to commend you though. I didn’t expect her to agree to help at all, but why ask to conscript the Dionachs first and not the witches?”
“If I’d begun by asking for the witches, she would have denied me from the start. I figured if I played my hand right and asked for something else, she would offer the witches like she did before.”
“And thus we’d gain both,” Roirdan thought aloud. “Clever.”
“Torin may pretend that she was too hurt from her last alliance with the fae to ever make that mistake again, but she’s a god. All gods have some level of ambition—be it for good or ill. And if I were her, I’d sure as fuck take any bargain I was offered if it meant getting off these isles.”
I glanced around the space as we walked. In the growing darkness, it was hard to make out the fine details of our surroundings, but the small slice of this illusory forest that Nivelle called home seemed well kept and cared for.
“Nivelle wasn’t going to summon Torin,” I said. “Why?”
“I haven’t quite figured that out yet,” Niall answered. “That’s why I used my power to bypass her.”
“That was rude of you, by the way.” I squeezed his hand.
He squeezed back and grinned. “Desperate measures and all that.”
Roirdan snorted.
“As long as you know what you’re doing,” I said, blowing out a breath as we came to the foot of the stairs to the cottage.
Roirdan looked back at Silas and Nivelle, who were still hashing through their discussion in the garden. “Giving them a place in the mountains . . . You sure you know what you’re doing?”
We all watched the Dionach and the witch for a moment before Niall sighed heavily, and answered. “Are any of us ever sure?”
Some hours later, after Nivelle had glowered around her cottage, packing her things, we set sail back to Anbrya with her in tow.
Once the storms and their clouds were behind us, and only the star-flecked sky flickered above, I decided to try and make conversation with the witch.
She hadn’t moved from the corner of the quarterdeck that she’d claimed as hers the moment we boarded the ship.
In fact, she hadn’t taken her eyes off the isles, even as they shrunk to black specks on the even darker horizon, then faded from sight.
The males all gave her space, opting to keep their eyes ahead, in the direction of the fae lands, which allowed her and I some privacy. I strode up beside her and folded my arms over the wooden railing. She didn’t acknowledge me, which was no surprise.
“Have you ever left the isles before?” I asked as neutrally as I could, trying to avoid being overly pleasant, hoping she might respond better to a tone similar to her own.
“No,” was all she said.
“Would you like to know what to expect in the fae lands?”
“No.”
I looked sidelong at her. Her hands were folded on the railing, and she stood in perfect stillness, hardly even blinking. After a moment, I tried again, abandoning the previous approach. “I wanted to say thank you for agreeing to come with us and help.”
Her eyes lowered to the waves—the only sign that she was listening. “I’m just following orders.”
“You could have refused.”
“No, I could not have.”
I turned to her. “What do you mean?”
“Torin’s word is law. I had no choice but to obey.”
“Oh. That seems . . . harsh.”
“It is no different from what I’m sure you are used to.” The words were bitter as she kept her gaze on the dark water.
I shook my head. “That concept is foreign to me.”
Her brows pinched ever so slightly, as if curiosity had gotten the best of her. Like several questions danced on the end of her tongue. Her voice lowered as she asked one. “It is not that way with your gods?”
“No. Our gods grant us free will. The fates guide our hands, but we are free to choose the paths we take. They’re not as involved in our daily lives—or at least, not with mine.”
She finally met my eyes. “Then what of the sacrifices?”
“Sacrifices?”
“All gods require sacrifices.”
I blinked. “Ours don’t.”
Her brows pinched further. “Then how do you appease your gods if you do not sacrifice to them?”
I slowly shrugged my shoulders. “I don’t know. Perhaps we stay in their graces just by being good in our hearts.”
Confusion consumed her features, and she turned to look back out at the blackened sea.
“Silas told me the story about your goddess’s origin, how she came here looking for a place to call home.”
“This world will never be our home.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I remained silent.
To my surprise, Nivelle unlaced her fingers to trace a groove in the wooden rail, and continued.
“There were gods in our homeworld who did not see eye to eye, and one became greedy. She caused a great war. Much like this Lyceius you speak of. The witches know the story of your fallen god. Torin keeps us informed of the happenings in the human and fae realms—to an extent—so that we can relay our messages and convey the necessary urgencies and instructions.”
“I see,” I said. “To be honest, I’m afraid humans have all but forgotten the importance of the gods and the role they play in our lives.
It wasn’t until I found myself in the fae realm that my eyes were truly opened to how na?ve we were—how far we’d strayed.
The fae are very much in tune with the gods, which is something I’m becoming more accustomed to. ”
Nivelle picked at a notch in the wood, then looked up at me with curious eyes. “How can a human possess the power of the gods? How is that even possible? Especially if you say humans are . . . less than worthy.”
“It’s a long story. One that I was in denial of before.
If it weren’t for Niall being my mate, I’d probably be dooming us all.
” I didn’t know why I was telling her all of this, but she was listening, and didn’t seem abhorred to do so.
“He helped me understand my power. Helped me train. Showed me that there’s so much more in this world than what I’d ever known.
The stories we grew up with warned us to stay away from the fae realm, and not to seek out anything foreign.
It turns out that those stories were all wrong. ”
The witch nodded. “Not everything is what it seems.”
The words strung a familiar chord. “That saying . . . it was on the gateway arch on your Isle, the one we entered through, from the cave’s stairway.”
“The Akksi, yes. It is spelled to only open for a witch or a Dionach. And the saying is fitting—since Torin created an entire realm for us to thrive in, all within a simple enchantment.”
“An illusion,” I confirmed.
She nodded again. “A pretty little lie.”
“But something like that—to create such an intricate illusion, and keep it going—must require a lot of power.”
“It does. That’s why ritual sacrifice is so important. It replenishes Torin’s power source. Sacrifices were something that every god demanded in our homeworld, and so we carry on the sacraments here in this one.”
“What do you sacrifice?” I asked warily, expecting her to say “humans” with no inkling of remorse.
She let a faint grin creep across her lips, like she had half the thought to say just that. “There were plenty of goats inhabiting the isles before we took up residence. Though animal blood is considered less than any other being’s, it does the job well enough.”
Goats. Splendid.
I didn’t let myself dwell on the “any other being’s” part of her answer.
“Back in your cottage, you spoke of Niall’s lineage like you recognized something in him. Torin did the same. Is there something we don’t know?”
Nivelle raised a perfectly arched brow. “You tell me.”
“As far as he knows, no one other than his ancestor has ever possessed his power. There’s no record of it before that.”
“You know this for certain?”
“Well, no. Niall has searched for answers but . . .” My voice trailed off as a thought penetrated my mind.
Had Niall really searched?
He knew about Evander’s journal, but hadn’t ever asked to read it. He knew Amarna had some insight, but as far as she let on, he’d never pried for information.
Was he afraid of what he might discover?
Nivelle placed both her hands on the railing, one atop the other.
“I only know what I can feel. And if Torin recognized it, if it bothered her that much, then I’m fairly certain your mate’s power hails from the world we came from.
A witch can sense these things, just like we can sense enchantments and compulsions and are immune to their effects.
Our heightened senses give us the ability to discern lineage, power, even the essence of one’s magic. ”
I stared out at the waves, thinking of what this might mean for Niall.
I still had so many questions.
It would make sense that Niall’s power, and Evander’s before him, could have originated from another world. But how had it ended up in their bloodline to begin with?
I glanced at Nivelle’s hands. Her skin was so smooth under the moonlight. Ageless. The way the flowers had withered under her touch earlier was in complete defiance to what she appeared capable of doing. Those delicate hands looked like they might wield life, or things of a more pleasant nature.
Not death.
“Your power . . . what is it, exactly?” I asked.
Her lips pressed into a thin line, and I could see her walls going back up. “I think I’ve had enough conversation for one day.” With that, she strode off to the other corner of the deck and claimed her solitude once more.