by Kate Ristau
It was worse than that. The Eta had let the shadows take her.
“The Eta weaves as it will.”
Her stomach turned. Eri’s words. From her sister’s mouth.
Áine turned toward the sound. “Keva. You don’t understand—” she began, but as she raised her head toward her sister, her words faded away.
The old woman, the one she had rescued in the Shadowlands, was gone.
Years had left Keva’s face. The lines had smoothed. Her skin had tightened. She was still old—older than any of the fey—but her eyes were wild and strong, a hint of green in her lavender gaze. And her hair had darkened to amber—except for that single strand, which had turned black. It hung by her face like a curse, angry and defiant.
“What happened to you?” Áine asked.
“The Eta,” she said. “It weaves as it will.”
“She’s been changing,” Ciaran said. He stood up and brushed the dirt from his torn pants, his face unreadable. “Ever since we crossed. She’s practically glowing with them.”
Áine tilted her head. He was right. Eta slid over every strand of Keva’s hair—the color was growing darker before her very eyes, shifting from amber to auburn.
Áine stared at Keva’s smooth cheek, and an ache settled deep in her stomach. She knew that face. She had dreamt of it a thousand times; she had seen it wrapped in flames.
Keva looked exactly like their mother.
The Eta stretched around her, lighting up her skin and dancing in her eyes.
Keva reached out toward Áine, and Áine took her hand, pulling her sister into her arms. Warmth flooded though her, pushing away the ache and the anger.
“They fixed you,” Áine said. “The Eta. They brought you back.”
“They did,” Keva said.
“I don’t understand—”
“I love them,” Keva said, pulling back from Áine. She twirled her fingers in the air, and the Eta spun after them. Áine’s arms grew cold as the Eta flocked toward Keva.
“I can feel them swimming inside me,” Keva said. “They are wonderful”—she looked out across the meadow, her eyes scanning the horizon—“and terrifying.” Her eyes spun back toward Áine. “They are angry. So angry. Something is wrong here. There will be darkness. And death. Things are not as they were or how they should be.” She turned her eyes back toward the western horizon.
Ciaran shook his head. “She’s so creepy.”
Áine smacked his arm.
“What?” he asked. “She is. You haven’t been here with her. It’s like talking to an ashray. Forebode. Forebode! I keep waiting for her to melt, to splash apart into a stinky pool of water and rainbows.”
“She’s not an ashray,” Áine said. Her eyes narrowed as a puff of smoke floated past Ciaran’s chin. She turned back toward the smoldering remains of the Crossing.
Of Hennessy.
“We should get going,” Ciaran said quietly. “I’m sure the Queenesguard saw that explosion. And if they didn’t see it, I know they heard it. Half the Aetherlands did.”
“I’m not leaving her,” Áine said. She couldn’t see Hennessy, but she still felt the touch of her fingers, still heard the sound of her voice. She was there somewhere, on the other side of the ashes and the smoke.
“She is not here,” Keva said. Áine turned back toward her sister. Keva was still standing up straight with her eyes on the horizon.
“How do you know?” Áine asked.
As if listening, Keva tilted her head. The Eta brightened around her eyes and ears. “I cannot see her. I cannot feel her. No. She is not here. She is gone.”
“You can feel her Eta?” Ciaran asked.
“No. I could feel her shadows. She burned up her Eta when she did her Shadowmagic. Áine, your Eta have left you too. You forced them out. But they will come back again. When you choose the light.”
“I don’t want them back,” Áine said, remembering the shine of the veil in Hennessy’s eyes. “I don’t want the Eta or the shadows or any of it. It’s all gone wrong.”
“You cannot stop the shadows,” Keva said. “Your time has not yet come.”
She remembered how the shadows had burst out of her, dark and terrible. Her throat ached with the memory. She had forced them out, sliced them through the Eta.
But they had betrayed her.
She needed to know how to stop the shadows. How to stop the Eta. How to stop them all. But more than that, she wanted Hennessy back. “Where is she?”
“The dark one is gone,” Keva said. “The Eta did not want her to cross.” Keva’s eyes shimmered. “They are protecting us. They do not trust the gathering shadows.”
“They’re not protecting us,” Áine said. “The Eta—they’re crazy. Out of control. They would have killed me. Or you. You didn’t see them in the Crossing. They would have—”
“They did not desire my death,” Keva said. “Or yours. They simply did not want the dark one to cross.”
“Stop calling her that,” Áine snapped. But even as she shook the Eta off the remains of her blackened cloak, she remembered how the shadows had grabbed at Hennessy’s ankles, pulling and stretching and scraping. They had ignored Áine, except when she was pulling Hennessy forward, when she was helping her. Then, when they had their chance, the Eta had pushed Áine away—they had thrown her into the Aetherlands.
None of it made any sense. The shadows always fought the Eta, and the Eta always fought the shadows. But the Eta didn’t fight back this time—they let the shadows win. What’s worse, they let Áine use the shadows, then they let the shadows drag Hennessy away. The light had blasted Áine into the Aetherlands, tearing Áine and Hennessy apart.
The Eta shimmered over Keva, then nestled into her hair. Áine turned away, wishing they would disappear, wishing they were gone. “We have no idea what they want.”
“Eri will know,” Ciaran said.
Áine laughed. “Seriously? You still trust her? After all of that?”
“Stop it, Áine,” Ciaran said, his face stretched thin. “Of course I trust her. I’m not going through this again. She loves us. She raised us. She cared for us.”
“She lied to us.”
Ciaran shrugged a shoulder. “She did.”
“She did,” Áine repeated. The lie shone against the slash of color in Keva’s hair and on her wrists that were warped and red from being lashed to that hospital bed for years. Decades. Eri had had all that time. She could have saved Keva.
How different could Keva’s life have been? How different Áine’s path? Why did they have to lose so much time and go through so much pain? Eri could have stopped all that years ago. She could have saved them both.
Now Keva was smiling, digging her toes into the ground. She was oblivious. It was almost like she didn’t remember. But Áine would never forget.
“I’m not going back to her. I’m going to the Yew Tree Crossing.”
“That doesn’t make any sense,” Ciaran said. “The other side of that crossing is destroyed. Who knows what it’s like on this side. You’re not going to find Hennessy there. Just come back to Eri’s. She’ll help us figure it out.”
“I’m not running back to Eri. Don’t you get it? She left Keva there. In that horrible place. With that monster. For all those years.”
“And now he’s gone,” Ciaran snapped. “And Aunt Eri’s all we’ve got. I’m getting the kids from the dryads, and I’m bringing them back home. To our home. With Eri. She can help us fix this. Together.” He spun away and headed down the hill.
But Áine wasn’t finished. “You’re not bringing her the kids!” she yelled after him. “Have you lost your fire? She’s a leanán sidhe—a soul sucker! She lied to us! And you’re running back to her. Like we’re little kids!” Ciaran kept walking away, but Áine yelled at his back. “She was feeding off us. We shouldn’t be running to her. We should be running away from her. Come on, Ciaran! This is pure leprechaun.”
Ciaran called over his shoulder, “I’m going back. I
don’t know what’s coming next. But the kids are going to need her.”
Áine opened her mouth again, then closed it.
Minka. Rashkeen. Saroo. The kids.
She watched him walk away. He didn’t look back. His back was hard and straight.
The kids. Like he cared.
It was all another act. He acted as if he knew what he was doing. He acted as if everything were fine, as if the kids were all fine and Eri would fix it. But she couldn’t. Kian, his brother. His mother. Creed. Even Kern. It was all rotten and wrong. Everything was broken.
Áine watched Ciaran. His head was high, but he shuffled his feet through the lemon balm.
He wasn’t okay. And he never would be.
Creed. It wasn’t her fault. She had had to kill him—she had no choice. He was a monster. A murdering fire fairy with a blood debt. He would never stop. What did Ciaran expect? That she would tie him up and bring him back to justice? There was no justice anymore. Creed worked for the queene, and the queene had lost her Oberon-forsaken mind. Power hungry. Deranged and cruel. She had to be stopped.
Ciaran slashed through the pussy willows. They bent toward him. What were the pussy willows saying? What did they know?
The pussy willows always had the right words. They worked their way into you with a whisper or a song. But Áine could never say anything right. What was she supposed to tell him anyway? He wouldn’t listen to her—he was running back to Aunt Eri.
“What the Hether is going on?” she said as she watched him muttering to the pussy willows, moving away from the Crossing, away from his father, Creed, and as far away from Hennessy as he could get.
Of course he would leave her. Of course he would run. Back to the only home they had ever known. Back to the woman who had betrayed them all.
Áine clenched her teeth and looked back at the ground where the Crossing had been. It was green and sparkling with life.
And Hennessy was gone.
“Cra na he.” She cursed the Eta under her breath, and Keva flinched away from her, so she cursed them louder, practically screaming at her back as Keva ran down the hill, a cloud of Eta scampering behind her. “Cra na he!”
She wanted to destroy them all.
If only it would bring Hennessy back.
She shook her head and closed her mouth, chewing on the words. It was all so broken. All Áine had ever wanted was the Eta to listen to her. And now that they could finally hear her, she realized she didn’t want them anymore.
No. More than that. She had fought them. She had pushed them back—blasted them away from her. She had destroyed them with the shadows deep inside her. She had challenged them, and she had won.
But she had still lost Hennessy.
Where Hennessy was going, years or seconds could pass. She could be hurt. Trapped.
She could be dead.
And Áine was standing on a hillside in a field of light, thinking about how to save her.
She needed to stop thinking and start acting.
If the Yew Tree Crossing was lost, the only other crossing was in Aetheria, amid the spiraling towers. That is where she would have to go. She would head to the crossroads, Ciaran would get the kids, she would convince him to stay with the dryads, and then she would take Keva and make their way to the castle.
Keva trailed behind Ciaran, running her hands through the pussy willows, sparkling light dripping from her fingertips.
Eri had a lot to explain. Áine’s father. Her mother. What in the Hether was happening to Keva.
She reached down deep and touched the darkness already gathering in her chest. It swirled within her, its cold edging across her cheeks.
She didn’t just need to know about what had happened to her family. She needed to know what was happening inside her. She needed to know how to stop it.
Hennessy couldn’t hear her, but it didn’t matter. “I’ll make this right,” she promised, and after one long look at the barren hillside, she headed down toward the Barrows.
Three
They tore at her legs, ripped at her shins. Pushing, pulsing pain streaked through her. They hurled her into the air and then folded her back into themselves. Shadows—darkness—cutting through her skin like water, dragging her further into the night, away from the light, until nothing remained but the pain—agony in every twist of her arm.
And still she fought them. With everything that was in her, Hennessy wrenched and twisted her body away from the shadows, and then exploded back into them again, jerking and fighting as they whipped tight around her legs.
She pushed back hard, but her hands slipped through them like they were smoke. Even as the shadows dug into her skin, her fingers slid right past them. They snaked around her, gliding back up her arms.
She scratched them off. Clawing and tearing at her own skin, she felt them dive into the blood that dripped down her arms. The pain was hot, then warm as they closed in, pulling her nails away, forcing her arms to her sides. The shadows held her tight and wrapped around and around and around, sealing her in, like a cocoon made of darkness, of death.
“No!” she screamed. “No! No!” Angry breaths pushed out with each cry, smashing into them, but they tightened around her throat. She took a deep breath—and they slipped inside her mouth.
She coughed hard, spitting them out, coughing them up, and they ran down her chin. She slammed her mouth closed, shutting them out, locking her jaw. But they forced her lips open, prying their way in, sliding between her teeth, over her tongue, and down her throat.
Shadows stretched and strained inside of her, filling every inch of her chest, her lungs, and her throat, hot and pulsing, pressing against her eyes, then crashing into her stomach, swirling inside her until suddenly, like a rush of wind, they forced her chest to collapse, to breathe out the stale air, to breathe them out.
She coughed and gagged. They slid past her tongue and through her teeth, then spooled out of her mouth, and with her next breath, the air streamed back into her lungs, heady and sweet like the smell of rain on asphalt, raw against her throat.
The darkness throbbed against her cheeks. Shadows pulled on her fingers, her arms, her legs. She took a ragged breath as they slipped through her toes, her hair, searching, searching for something. They swirled around her.
Hennessy’s blood slowed; the air came heavy, filled with weight. And then they lifted her into the air.
A cool breeze splashed against her face as they carried her forward. Her head rolled—woozy, spinning, dizzy. They tightened around her, then suddenly loosened their grip, becoming soft and slack around her arms and legs.
She braced for the fall, but pillow soft, they nestled against her cheek and held her up, and the breeze blew through her hair as they carried her on. Through the darkness, forward, forward, relentlessly forward. Toward what?
She didn’t know. She couldn’t see.
The light was gone. But the anger was gone too, and all the weight, and all the meaning, and all the words. Everything. Gone. She was empty, wrung out like an old bar towel.
So, she gave in. She fell into the darkness. She fell into them.
Four
He is mad.
Áine tried to ignore them, but the pussy willows surrounded her, whispering words only she could hear.
He is quite mad.
He told us.
Angry.
Disappointed.
She hurried down the path, eyes forward. She would cover her ears if she thought it would help, but they would worm their way in anyway.
He always tells us.
Even when he says nothing.
You are not nice to him.
So mean.
We do not like you.
“That’s not fair!” Áine snapped. The pussy willows swayed toward her legs. She pulled in her arms and walked faster along the path.
We knew that would make you respond.
Talk to us.
Listen to us.
You cannot ignore us.
We are many.
We know how to get your attention.
“How?” Áine said. They brushed against her leg, and she walked on, resisting the urge to slap them away.
Making you mad.
You are always so mad.
It is so very easy.
To make you mad.
So much anger.
So much shadow.
So human.
“Maybe,” she said, feeling the heat rising in her face. “Maybe. But I’m starting to think that’s not such a bad thing.”
Good?
Bad?
We don’t care about that.
It’s not what you are.
It’s what you do.
And you are going to do terrible things.
“You don’t know that,” Áine said, shaking her head.
We do.
You are on the edge.
Balancing on a shadow.
The darkness inside you.
The emptiness.
We know.
Áine stopped. A pussy willow bent toward her hand. Her fingers twitched as it nestled against her thumb.
We can feel it.
The Eta feel it too.
But they do not reject you.
They want to claim you.
“Screw the Eta,” Áine said.
The pussy willow stilled. The entire meadow stopped swaying, then slowly bent toward her all at once.
They would not like that.
No, not the Eta.
They feel your hatred.
Your rejection.
They do not like it.
But do not worry.
They do not like you either.
“What do you know about the shadows?” Áine demanded. A pussy willow nudged her leg, and she slapped it away. “Tell me.”
They are inside you.
And they are dark.
“Come on!” she said. “What else? How did they get there? I feel them again. I thought I forced them all out.”