Chapter 21 #2
“I don’t know,” she said, drawing absently in the dirt with the tip of her finger. She felt as though she were wrapped in a cool, rain-soft cloud, floating along mindlessly in the emptiness of the ether, an ethereal creature impervious to pain.
“I don’t know,” she said again when Finn snapped his fingers in front of her face.
“Once before, we… encountered her, when we were children, wandering about the Mhám Toirc. She tried to kill him then, to eat his heart –” Beca and Emrys made twin sounds of disgust and horror.
“But I stopped her,” continued Rory vaguely.
“I loosed the magic of the Mórrígan on her, and I saved him.” There it was – a slow, inexorable crack in this foggy armor she had constructed around herself, a shuddering in the battlements. “I – I saved him. I protected him. I –”
The bile thundered up her throat, and she lurched forward, vomiting into the dirt, violently, crippled by grief and guilt.
Beca shrieked and Gareth swore, and Emrys ran for water while Dil fell to her knees beside her spasming body, wrapping her arms around Rory’s shoulders, her tear-soaked face pressed into her back.
“It’s all right,” Dil wept. “It’s all right, let it out, let it all go, oh Rory –”
“Leave her be.” Finn loomed over them, fists clenched at his sides. “Now.”
“Finn, she’s grieving, she’s in shock –”
“I said leave her be.” As one, they flinched, and Rory wiped at her mouth, her eyes. “I need to speak with Rory,” he said, flint-like and furious. “Alone.”
“But –”
“Now.”
Rory’s breath shuddered out her, slow and unsteady. “Listen to him,” she said without looking up. “All of you – go away.”
“Rory –”
“You too, Dil. Go, and leave me alone.”
She could hear them murmuring together, fretful and low, but she kept her head bowed, hands braced on her knees, as her stomach continued to roll and turn, her chest aching with an unbearable pain.
At last, the sound of hesitantly retreating footsteps, and she looked up, shrouded in darkness by Finn’s shadow.
“Get up,” he said. “Let’s go.”
She knew what he meant, without further explanation. “No.”
“I said, get up.”
“You don’t give me orders, Finn.”
“You forfeited the right to command my obedience, Rory. I have given it to you, day in and day out, for three years now, because I recognized you for what you were the moment I first laid eyes on you. I vowed, long before you were born, to serve my motherland with my body and my soul, and I knew you to be the true queen of éire, whether you wished to be so or no.”
“I don’t wish it.”
“I don’t care,” he said, deep voice vibrating with rage. “Look at what you have done, Rory. Look at what you have allowed to come to pass. I have asked you, time and again for the past three years, to return home, and you have refused, stubborn, prideful girl that you are.”
It’s not my fault, she tried to say, but her tongue felt heavy in her mouth, painted thick with ash and regret.
It was her fault.
“I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t ever go back.”
“You have to. We have to.”
“Then go yourself.” She staggered to her feet at that, shoving her palms against his immovable chest. “Go, if you are so eager to die for nothing. éire is lost.” She drew a deep, shuddering breath.
“Why did you leave in the first place, if you are so devoted to her, our motherland? Why did you abandon her, if you loved her so much –” Her voice snapped like a brittle twig under the fall of a too-heavy boot, and her head dropped again, chest heaving.
“I left,” said Finn, a little softer than before, as though his rage had ebbed and left the same bleak devastation that blanketed her heart in his. “It’s true. I am, I admit, just as culpable as you. But –” He stepped closer, his hands wrapping around her elbows. “We can set it right now.”
“Oh Finn,” she said. “It can never be set right.”
“Your brother is the one who is lost,” he said, and a whimper escaped her lips. “We cannot bring him back, but we can save what it is he died for – what he believed in.” His grip tightened. “Rory,” said Finn, face horribly pale. “You must use it – use your gift, to save our home.”
“No – I can’t –”
“Rory, you must look, you must look and see if it can be done, if we can still save her, can save éire –”
“I don’t want to see!” She screamed, shoving free from him, hands clutching at her head, her hair. “I can’t bear to see it, what I have done, what was done to –” Nausea burned anew in her throat, filling her mouth with bitter bile. “I can’t, Finn.”
“You will let them walk free, unscathed? The traitor king MacMurchada, the Albion general, Ironstring, and The Bright One too – Aoife? You will allow them to live out their days in peace and prosperity, and not call them to account for the éraic that you are owed, not only for your brother’s life, but for that every man, woman, and child who ever walked the earth of éire – the debt that all those innocent souls now are owed? ”
For a moment, the memory of those ocean-swept eyes rose before her, that beautiful face distorted with an inhuman snarl. “I can’t,” she whispered again. “I can’t go back.”
He said nothing, but she saw his shoulders slump, the heels of his hands go up to press against his eyes.
Finn, the indomitable, the unshakeable – at long last, brought to tears.
“But rest assured – I will have my vengeance,” she said after a moment.
“I will see that my éraic is paid. I will hunt them down, these Albion monsters, every last one, and their descendants too, any who shares their blood, and I will make them pay for what they have done, until there are none left, not one still living who calls them kin.”
“Rory, please, we must go home –”
“It’s not my home,” she said, despite the keening in her heart. “I don’t deserve that, Finn. I don’t deserve to look upon her shores, to feel her wind in my hair, and call her home. I can’t – I cannot bear it.” She drew a deep breath.
Finn stared at her, his tears long gone, now stony-eyed with rage, with resentment. “And Aoife? What of The Bright One? How will you have your vengeance on her?”
“In this world or the next,” said Rory. “It doesn’t matter.
Death itself will not keep me from them.
” She could feel it, the ice in her fingers, the shadows in her soul, stronger and more powerful and wrathful than ever before.
She inhaled sharply, and for a moment, the air shuddered and grew densely cold, a hint of fog and mist slipping through the branches of the trees.
“The magic of the goddess of death is reborn in me, and I will have my vengeance in whatever world I find them.”
“Rory –”
She closed her eyes and thought of Niall, lying on his belly in the shady glen of the vale, ankles crossed, nibbling at an apple as he turned the page in his book, reading aloud to her as she lay sprawled on her back, arms folded behind her head, watching their falcons swoop and glide overhead.
It hurt too much, the remembering. Better to forget, to block it all out, and focus only on her need for blood.
“I will have my vengeance,” she said, “and then I will die.”