Chapter Forty-Seven
Ileaned over Aed, gripping her bony shoulders.
“How do I travel back?” I shouted, shaking her in my urgency. Soon the fire would take us both. Already, I could feel its heat as it approached.
Aed laughed painfully. “Foolish girl! Can’t…travel back. Impossible…”
I believed her. If Aed didn’t know, then the Druids hadn’t, either, and it had never been done.
The blood of ancient Druids ran through my veins, but I had something they didn’t.
I had Craos’s blood. His dark magic. The ability to control people and enter their minds.
I belonged to two worlds. Two species. What I was about to do shouldn’t have been possible.
But it would be.
Aed’s eyes widened as she noticed my resolve. Not with fear, but hope.
“Are you…going…to kill me now? Free me?” she rasped, her sunken cheeks hollowing even more.
I regarded her quietly, seeing her differently for the first time.
“No,” I said. “I’m going to save you.”
I reached for my dark power, keeping it chained but using it as I needed, and entered Aed’s mind like I had Todd’s that night by the river, recoiling once again at the wrongness of it.
Unlike Todd’s, Aed’s mind was black, rotten, and terrifying. It encompassed thousands of years of pain and hopelessness. Of suffering beyond anything I could ever imagine.
There couldn’t be anything good left in here.
But I knew a lot about trauma by now, and I knew that there had to be a moment in time when Aed had felt safe, happy, and loved.
Like I had before my parents’ car crashed into the river.
I searched desperately for Aed’s last memory of joy, like mine of raindrops rolling down the window.
It should be strong. There should be some light, somewhere, in all this darkness.
But perhaps, after all this time and all her suffering, that light had been snuffed out.
I refused to give up searching. I had to believe. This was my last chance to change things. To save Owen and everyone else.
And I would not let Aed suffer this fate.
I swam through darkness so thick it felt like oil and lived every one of Aed’s horrific memories. Each one was a weight threatening to drown me. But I persisted, going back further and further in time.
And then a light emerged, so dull it was almost indistinguishable from the darkness around it. I struggled toward it. The fire in the mists was scorching our skin now, licking at Aed’s legs, and I swallowed a scream at the agony we both felt. Only a few seconds of our lives remained.
I arrived at the dull light in Aed’s mind and saw a flower.
Like a daisy except it was shaped differently and contained extra leaves.
I looked at it through Aed’s ten-year-old eyes.
She brought it to her nose and then added it to a bouquet she was gathering for her mother.
I threw myself at the memory, at the vision of the flower, clutching to it like a lifeline.
And just as the fire covered Aed’s body and burned through mine, I travelled into the past.
I landed with a smack against the hard ground, then rolled onto my back with a groan. My head was splitting, my skin damp with sweat, and blood dripped from my nose onto the long grasses around me.
That’s when I felt it. Wild magic hummed in the earth beneath my hands and whispered through the trees. It was as if the land itself breathed, the trees around me not just creaking from the wind but pulsing from the voices of the spirits within them.
Ancient Britain.
The Earth in this time felt like Neamh. Magic was abundant, free, and embedded into every aspect of nature.
I was in a meadow, grasses and wildflowers rising all around me, the sky above blue and dotted with fluffy clouds. The warmth of the sun kissed my skin. When was the last time I had felt sunshine outside of Neamh?
I slid my eyes to the side. At the edge of the meadow, a regal yew tree stood tall, reaching for the sky. It looked different from the one I would later come to know and love, but I would recognize that Yew anywhere.
It was the Tree Spirt who, in another life, became Charles. The king. It represented all the Tree Spirits’ and Earth’s ancient magic, and I needed to protect it at all costs. But the only way to do that was to ensure that the gateway to Craos’s realm never opened.
I pushed myself up, squinting against the light that fed my headache, and waited for a wave of dizziness to pass.
And then I saw her. A young girl skipped through the meadow, a bouquet of wildflowers clutched in her hand. She sang in a language I didn’t understand, but I recognized her joy. Her peace. Her youthful freedom and happiness.
Aed.
A woman called to her and the girl looked up, love spreading across her face. She held up her bouquet and ran toward her mother.
And there was the old Druid on the other side of the meadow, creeping through the shadows.
Watching. Hunting. He wanted Aed, and I didn’t have to see the rest to know exactly how the next few minutes would play out.
He would kill Aed’s mother, kidnap Aed, and the events leading to Craos’s destruction of my world would be set in motion.
I had only minutes to make a difference. To save two innocent lives and, hopefully, everyone else.
I surged to my feet, fighting against the dizziness that threatened to overwhelm me, and reached for my power.
Aed and her mother screamed when they saw me, but standing between them and the old Druid, I was their shield as Owen had so often been mine. Aed and her mother ran away, barely pausing to look back, but they were safe. The old Druid would not pass me so long as I breathed.
Wrapped in furs, his hair braided with bones and feathers, the old Druid’s eyes widened as he took in my strange clothing. Then his eyes narrowed as he seemed to realize I stood between him and his prey, and the air between us grew tense, thrumming with unseen power.
I lashed at him, striking him in the chest with a powerful blast that pushed him back.
He was stunned at first, but he shook off the shock and sneered as he dug his fingers into the earth, summoning roots with a whispered chant. They burst from the earth, writhing like serpents, then flew at me.
I cut the roots off at the base with another blast and they fell to the ground. Then I countered with grass that turned into thorned vines, lashing out in arcs toward him. The trees around us swayed, watching and waiting.
The old Druid growled and shifted. His skin rippled, his bones snapped, and a wolf with glowing eyes charged at me, shaking the ground.
Shit.
But if he could do that, then I could, too.
I imagined the animal I wished to become and screamed in pain as my muscles twisted and my bones broke. I dissolved into shadow and re-formed into a great black raven midflight, my talons glowing as I struck fast.
More roots exploded from the soil, thick and gnarled, reaching like fingers to drag me down. I responded with a wave of fire that roared up from the ground to meet him. He swiped it away, his fur bristling and fangs gleaming.
We crashed together in a dance of talons and fangs, blood staining the earth around us.
The sky split with lightning as a storm answered our rage. Winds howled and thunder cracked. Birds scattered from the trees as spells tore through the meadow. Magic surged around us, raw and barely controlled.
But neither of us could gain the upper hand. I drew on the blood of Craos and shot spears of fire at the old Druid, but he was more experienced in calling on the power of the natural world.
What would Owen do in this situation? He wouldn’t dance around, that was for sure. He had always been lethal and efficient. When he fought, he focused not on showmanship but on damage.
I could hear his voice now as he’d taught me how to use a knife. “Knives are not for dancing around, love. They’re for ending things.”
I shifted to my human form and grabbed the knife strapped to my thigh. With a scream of rage, I plunged it into the wolf’s heart and twisted. I pulled it out, then plunged it into his chest again and again.
The wolf collapsed with a low groan and a whimper, gradually shifting back into the old Druid as the life faded from his shocked eyes.
“Checkmate,” I whispered to Craos, half wishing he could hear me.
Covered in fur and blood, I crawled along the ground, every movement sending agonizing pain through my arms and legs. Finally, I pulled myself to the Yew’s trunk and rested against it. Leaning back, I stared up at the leafy boughs. Dying in the shelter of a friend wouldn’t be the worst way to go.
“Hey, Charles,” I whispered, placing my hands on his sturdy roots as blood dripped onto his bark.
It hurt to breathe. “I know you’re not Charles right now, but I’ll always think of you that way.
You don’t know me, and I suppose now you never will, but I’m going to rest here a bit.
Okay? Don’t think I’ll be here much longer.
You probably don’t understand what I’m saying since they don’t speak my form of English yet, but I’m going to tell you a story. ”
I told him everything. How the portal was originally opened and the earth Druid, Fintan, joined with the Yew to become the Rootstone Guardian.
How he took a human form, chose the name Charles, met Marion, and fell in love.
How I met Charles as an elderly man and he played matchmaker between me and Owen.
How we found the stones and Owen veil-walked to rescue me.
How we recovered in Neamh and that time was the happiest of my life.
I told him about Jace and Shae, Freya and Shamus.
I told him about Owen giving his life for me so I could save the world and all the Tree Spirits like him.
Tears ran down my cheeks, but I was too exhausted to wipe them away. They fell on the Yew’s roots and soaked into the ground. It was comforting to think of Charles taking them and holding my pain. Holding me.
Would I meet Owen in the next life? Would I even travel to the Veil when I died?
I felt myself beginning to fade from existence, as if I had never been.
Because I’d denied Craos the opportunity to enter our world and plant his seed into Aed’s bloodline, I was now truly an impossibility. I would never be born.
My eyes drifted shut, and my head lolled to the side. I focused on the sound of the wind rustling the leaves, the chittering of the birds in the branches, the sensation of the earth below me filled with quiet, ancient magic. It was time.
Wake up, daughter of two worlds.
“Wake up? Owen is dead. I think I’ll rest now. My story has ended.”
No. Your story has just begun.