Chapter Twenty-Eight
Ailith
Morning came too quickly. They reached the faery hill as the dawn light turned golden.
Edan and Arne had joined them, but they’d said little to each other, Ailith afraid any words would betray her true feelings.
They found a clearing a short distance from the faery hill, gathering to clarify their plan before approaching the bogle, who had not yet arrived.
She stood at the edge of the group, the damp chill of the faery hill seeping through her tunic.
The others spoke in low voices around her, but their words were lost to her.
Her mind was still caught somewhere in the dark of the previous evening, in the brief press of Edan’s mouth against hers and the silence that had followed, a silence that somehow said more than the kiss.
She had spent six and twenty summers being careful, and a few special moments had undone her completely.
Her gaze found him across the circle without meaning to, and she discovered he was already watching her, as if he’d never stopped.
She loved the way his brown hair curled at his collar, his beard a bit of stubble this day, enhancing his looks.
There was never a chance to speak alone, not with Dyna beside her and the men gathered tightly around Magni, and yet something passed between them, something that did not need words.
She was afraid of what the day held. She had been afraid since the moment they’d stepped onto this island.
But underneath the fear, steady as a heartbeat, was the memory of the night before. She pressed her palm flat against her side and forced herself to breathe. She had not imagined it. He had not looked away first.
Lia pointed to the warriors. “You need to stay back. Do not threaten the bogle for any reason, or the hill will close up, regardless of whether John and Ailith have returned. You must use restraint. But you need to be nearby in case something arises. The same applies to any archers.” Her small stature did not deceive them. Most of them knew the power she held.
“Ailith and John will approach with Dyna, me, and Edan. We will offer the banshee hairs. Edan will cut his palm to offer his blood. Only five of us will approach: Edan, Ailith, John, Dyna, and I. No one else.”
Alasdair crossed his arms. “Two of my bairns are going, I’m going.”
“Give your sword to your wife then.” Lia’s chin lifted, and they all knew she wouldn’t budge on that demand. Her father capitulated with a growl and handed his beloved weapon to Emmalin.
Lia moved over to speak privately with Dyna and the warriors, so Ailith took the opportunity to step away for a quiet moment to gather her thoughts. A few moments later, she was about to return when a woman with golden wings stepped from the shadow of the hill as if she had always been there.
“Ailith, greetings to you again. I’m so pleased you have come to Islay.”
The faerie queen appeared smaller than she recalled at Duart. Fae queens in the old stories stood ten feet tall with fire in their eyes, but this one looked like a woman who had been tired for a very long time. She pressed both hands around Ailith’s and held them.
“You are the right one,” she said. “I knew it when I first saw you. A piece of advice for you, lass. Do not forget your stones. You are not just a seer, but a stone singer. Grandmama Maddie tells you to find more stones.”
An ache in her throat at the mention of her beloved grandmother brought tears to her eyes, but she had work to do, so she swiped them away quickly.
Erena kissed her cheek, then stood back to stare at her. Her green eyes, an odd, mesmerizing shade like the forest in moonlight, held Ailith captive, but the queen said nothing more. She turned, walked back into the shadow, and the forest swallowed her.
Ailith stood there, the warmth of those hands still on hers, turning the words over, stone singer. She considered all of her words, searching for what lay beneath. Not be careful. Not come back safely. Only that she was the right one.
She filed it away and turned toward the hill, her hand palming the stone in the fold in her tunic. She’d donned her tunic and leggings for this task, knowing she had to be able to move quickly.
Ailith took the spot next to John, his sapphire sword sheathed across his back. Her father stood behind them, Dyna positioned next to Ailith, as Lia approached the hill.
“Gruin, we’re waiting for you.”
The hill grew in front of them. Ailith swore her trembling grew at the same rate. How tall would it grow this time?
“Patience,” Lia whispered, doing her best to calm everyone. John’s eyes were as wide as Ailith’s, but her father’s eyes gave away nothing, seasoned warrior that he was.
As soon as the hill stopped moving, a door appeared.
Gruin stepped out, closing it behind him before crossing his arms. He wore gloves that covered his long fingers.
Or talons? Ailith had no idea. He sneered, his mouth pulling back to reveal an alarming number of teeth, more than Ailith had ever seen.
Ailith took in every detail she could: hair the color of rusted iron, going silver at the roots; hands buried in dark gloves; feet that tapered too thin; and clothing assembled from whatever he’d found, a shirt of mismatched patches, trousers in jarring stripes of red and purple.
His face appeared human, but when he grinned, his teeth banished any idea of a normal person, someone who belonged to neither the Seelie nor Unseelie.
“Do you have my banshee hairs?” He crossed his arms, flipping back the unkempt mop that had fallen into his eyes.
“We do.” Dyna strode forward, but Alasdair pulled her back.
“And who on this foul earth are you?” Gruin asked, glaring at her father.
“Alasdair Grant, father to both John and Ailith. Harm them, and I will come for you, bringing one thousand Highland warriors against you.”
Gruin laughed. “Your warriors cannot harm our underworld.”
John lifted his sapphire sword, its edge beginning to glow a beautiful shade of deep blue. “Are you certain of that?”
Gruin ignored him. “Where are the banshee hairs? My overlord will be pleased to add them to his collection.”
Dyna replied, “I have them. You have to agree to free the bairns if you want them.”
Gruin’s gaze traveled from one person to the next, finally taking in the view of the others behind him, shaking his head. “I only want you.” He pointed to Ailith. “Come forward.”
Dyna grabbed her father’s tunic to hold him back, then nodded to her, so she stepped forward. “I’ve come for the bairns. You promised.”
Gruin stepped forward, so close that she could smell his essence, a foulness to him that she couldn’t put words to, but she would not back down.
“You wish to be a strong one?” His sneer was practiced, she was certain of it.
“I do not fear you, Gruin,” she said.
He laughed, paced in a tight circle, then stopped in front of her. In a flash, he leaned forward and yelled in her face. “You should fear me!” His gloved finger was a nail’s length from her face.
Dyna still held onto her father’s tunic, but Edan had no one holding him back.
He stepped in front of her and reached for Gruin’s hand, but the Unseelie yelped, jumping back, wide-eyed as he rubbed his hand.
“You are no longer the one I want, MacRuari. She comes in alone. Give me the banshee hairs.” He pointed to Ailith but then stared at Dyna.
How he knew Dyna held the prize, she had no idea.
Dyna pulled the silky hairs from a fold in her clothing, then held them out to Gruin, but Lia stopped her. “Not until he agrees.”
“Agrees to what?” Gruin barked.
“You are completely aware of the bargain we made. You will not back down now. You must take two into the underworld to search for our two missing bairns. You promised to free them if we brought the banshee hairs. Free the bairns.”
The bogle tipped back his head and let out a deep laugh, one that silenced any chance of anyone talking around him. “Nay, you’re missing one item. I want Edan’s death. Then you can step inside. He dies, she comes inside, then perhaps you’ll find the bairns.”
Lia lifted her chin a notch. “Nay, but we will give you Edan’s blood. You didn’t say you had to take his life.”
“I want him dead inside the hill.”
“Nay. His blood or you don’t get the banshee hairs.”
Edan’s ire was growing, she could see it in the set of his chiseled jaw. He stepped forward, took his knife and cut his palm, then moved to drip it over Gruin’s arm.
But the bogle shouted and leaped toward the door, staring at Edan. “What are you?”
“You wanted my blood. I’m trying to give it to you. Where exactly do you want it?”
“Keep it and stay away from me. I hate your world, so I’m going back into my world.”
Lia yelled after him. “A lying Unseelie. That’s a surprise, is it not, Gruin? If you want anyone to ever grant your wishes, you should try to keep your word.”
The bogle stopped for a moment and called back.
“You try my patience, Lia. I’ll agree, but only if they bring the banshee hairs.
Ailith may come in with John as her protector.
” He chuckled. “MacRuari is not allowed inside.” Then he leaped over a rock and snatched the hairs from Dyna’s outstretched hands. “Never mind. I have them.”
“I need to find my daughter!” Edan bellowed. “Stop wasting time!”
Gruin marched toward him again but stopped a horse length away. “I’ll warn you, if you step inside, you’ll hate to see what happens,” Gruin glared at him. “Try it and see, fool.”
Edan took two steps closer, and the ground began to shudder. Ailith grabbed his hand while Lia pushed against him.
“There. Stay away. You have twenty breaths before I lock the door.” And he stepped inside, slamming the door behind him.
“You cannot go in. Whatever you have in your blood could collapse the underworld,” Lia said. “You must stay here if you wish for your daughter to live.”
Edan’s entire body trembled, and it took all her control not to console him. Now was not the time. “How will they know it’s my daughter? I need to go.”
Ailith stepped closer and took his hand, holding a piece of linen she had in the folds of her tunic against his bleeding wound. “What was she wearing? What color is her hair? What is her favorite toy?”
Dyna whispered, “You cannot go, Edan. You have to trust Ailith.”
He nodded, accepting his fate. “Red curls just to her ears. She wore a blue nightgown with flowers her mother embroidered around the neck. Her favorite toy is a horse I carved for her. Its name is Horsy.”
Ailith held his gaze a moment longer than she needed to, committing every detail to memory as if carving it there. “I’ll find her. I promise you I’ll look for her first. What about Milo?”
“Brown hair, short. Brown trews and a light tunic. He carries a piece of our brown plaid with him.”
The ground gave a cracking sound, and Dyna yanked him back. “You cannot get any closer, Edan.”
Lia turned back to John and Ailith. “Go in and see what you can find out. If you don’t save them this time, we’ll use what you learned to find another way. Learn everything you can about the underworld. Do not put yourselves at risk. I cannot go inside, and neither can Erena.”
Ailith blew a kiss to her mother and father, then took one step inside the door, and the world changed.
She stopped breathing.
The staircase in front of her descended so far into the dark that she could not see the bottom, only a faint smear of dim light somewhere far below, the kind of light that gave no warmth and illuminated nothing.
She reached back for her brother’s hand, gripping it without looking, her fingers finding his out of pure need.
There was a railing on one side, cold and slick beneath her palm, and she clung to it because the staircase tilted at an angle no human hand had made.
The stone steps were not uniform, some were wide, some narrow, some dropped farther than expected.
The air tasted of earth and something older and musty.
Her belly roiled in response, but she did her best to ignore it.
“John, where are we going?” Her voice came back strange, flattened, as though the dark absorbed it.
Gruin’s laughter echoed in the new land, rolling up from the deep below them like something alive. “Welcome to the Dark Hollow. Enjoy your stay!”
“We’re not staying,” John bellowed. “Lead us to the bairns, and we’ll get them and leave.”
Gruin’s laughter continued, twisting as it rose, until it no longer sounded like laughter at all. “Two days until the threads start to thin!”
John squeezed her hand. “I’m going ahead of you.
” They switched places, and he reached back to hold her hand, his sapphire sword casting a hard blue light that threw sharp shadows against the walls.
The stone on either side was wet and dark-veined, strange markings cut into it at irregular intervals, not writing she recognized or symbols she had ever seen, and she made a point of not looking at them too long.
When they finally reached the bottom, the staircase ended without warning, giving way to flat ground with nowhere to go but right.
A path opened before them through a forest of trees she had no name for.
Their bark was the color of a bruise, deep purple and silvery-dark, and their branches hung toward the ground like willows, except these branches moved when nothing moved them, trailing slowly and deliberately as fingers searching for something to touch.
“I don’t want those branches touching me.” She kept close to John’s back.
“I’ll keep us clear. There’s light ahead.”
“How far does this go?”
“It’s endless, Ailith. We will not go that far.”
The trees swayed in a rhythm with no wind to stir them, and the sound was something like the croaking of frogs, but lower and longer, layered beneath a dry crackling that came and went. It was the sound of something frozen just beginning to crack apart.
“Is that sound breaking branches or flames in hearths? What is it, John?”
He shook his head and kept moving.
They reached the clearing and stopped together.
On either side of the path stood clear, faintly luminous blocks, taller than a man, arranged in rows stretching back into the dimness.
Not ice, because there was no cold rising from them, no melt, no drip.
Whatever held the figures inside was something else entirely.
To the left, warriors. Men in armor, poised for battle, swords half-raised, mouths open in silent cries, eyes seeing nothing. To the right, the bairns.
Rows and rows of them in silver-walled blocks, each child suspended in stillness, eyes open and fixed on the warriors opposite.
None of them moved. None of them blinked.
But they were breathing. She could see the faint rise and fall of small chests, and that single fact was the only thing that stopped her from shattering entirely.
Ailith fell against her brother’s shoulder, tears streaming. Her tears didn’t last long.
The first warrior stepped out of his cage and ran straight at John.