by Laney McMann
“Oh, and Teine! You mustn’t forget to wear your new dress at dinner. The light yellow one made of silk.”
“Okay, Mother.” The little girl skips across the forest, sunlight dappling her face.
“Kindred?” My grandmother’s voice shook me awake. I was lying on something soft, but stiff, staring up at glaring fluorescent lights.
The finger on my right hand stung and pulsed, like it had its own tiny heartbeat. Blood pooled in the center of my palm.
“You are awake.” My grandmother’s tone flooded with relief as she placed a cool hand on my forehead. “Your fever has not yet broken. You must continue to rest.”
Fever?
I opened and closed my hand. It was slippery, and something was missing.
“What have you done to yourself?” My grandmother touched my hand. “With all your thrashing around, I suppose I should be thankful this is the only injury you have sustained. Here, let me see.”
I opened my hand in a daze.
“Only a little blood. I have been able to stall the affect of the Raven Ogham on your neck,” she said, cleaning my hand. “The rest will be up to you.”
My eyelids drooped. What affect?
“And what is this?” She touched the inner crook of my elbow. “How … this is not possible. Kindred, how did you do this? You have removed your Evil Eye.”
“Grand … moth—”
“Can you tell me what happened?”
I shook my head slowly against the pillow. “I think … I think … buried in that ancient tomb ….”
“Tomb?” Her eyes widened, and her voice trailed off, like an echo at the end of a hallway. “Kindred?”
Stone steps led up to the castle, and I was rushed toward two huge oak doors, tucked beneath the folds of soft fabric. Rocks and debris rained down from above, but I tried to concentrate on not seeing the bodies laying scattered on the steps under my feet. As I looked closer, I wasn’t sure if the people were simply sleeping on the castle stairs, or actually dead.
Screams broke out in the distance, and my pace quickened, hurried along by the inflexible arms rushing me toward the castle doors. Something pulled at the edges of my mind, a memory of a similar place. A muffled cry caused my head to turn, and I watched as a young boy with light brown hair ran up the stairs a few paces behind me. Blood seeped from cuts across his face and arms, but he kept up his frantic pace, racing toward me through falling debris and accumulating smoke. His clothes hung from his slim frame in shreds.
Explosions trembled the concrete underfoot, and as we reached the castle doors, the continued tremors tore the ground apart. Glancing back, the boy lost his footing. Sweat and ash covered his panic-stricken face, as he tripped forward up the stairs.
I wanted to help him, to run back down the steps, and a tug at the back of my mind told me I should, but I couldn’t move—my legs and arms completely out of my own control. Smoke choked the oxygen out of the air as the unmistakable roar of fire encroached the building, but the cough tugging at my lungs wouldn’t come.
Folds of fabric were removed from around my body, and I found myself standing alone in the center of the ruined castle. Wings of bright gold and cream crowded into the space and converged from all sides inside the hall. Circling and swooping overhead, the massive wingspans regrouped and hovered over the boy, who came to a stop in the doorway, winded and shaken.
“You are too late,” a woman said.
I recognized the throaty voice. The Crone. She’d been the one who hurried me out of my house under a sheath. A black cloak was pulled close to her body as she stepped from behind me, a feathered choker encircling her narrow, pale neck. She gestured toward me, a long crooked finger pointing.
Looking down, I discovered my dress was torn, and scratches and cuts marked my shoulders and arms. Staring back at her, I tried to speak, to yell, but words wouldn’t form on my lips.
“What have you done to her?” the boy screamed, startling me.
“She has met her fate,” the woman said.
Underfoot, the castle trembled again. Pillars cracked across the plaster lining the interior walls of the fortress, and the ceiling caved in. Trying to steady myself, I found I still I couldn’t move.
“No.” The boy took a step forward, his hand held out to me as his gaze locked with mine. “Free her!”
“Or what?” The woman sneered and gathered her robes about her.
“I’ll give you anything,” the boy said, not shifting his gaze from mine. “Anything you want.”
I wanted to tell him to go, to leave me and save himself, but like a statue, I was frozen.
Smiling an awful sneer, the woman said, “I have everything I want.”
“No!” The boy faltered. “Please. Wait.”
“My warnings went unheard.” She continued her descent down the castle steps. “There was only one rightful heir to the crown. Now, there is no throne, and no need for you.”
The boy stood, fists balled, face reddening as the building collapsed around us. “Take me, then! Leave her alone!” He thrusted his hands toward me.
The Crone laughed without turning back. “I have already taken you both. Look around.”
“We have to get out of here!” a voice yelled from above.
The boy’s gaze shifted upward toward hovering wings. Fractures in the floor snaked outward, breaking apart the castle’s interior. Stumbling forward again, the boy lost his footing. Yells grew louder, as the roar and spit of approaching fire moved in.
“Let her go!” someone yelled. “We’re too late!”
“No!” Another explosion rumbled the ground, chunks of the ceiling impaling the stone floor.
“She will be the death of us all. Leave her!” someone screamed again.
“I will not leave her here!” Staring into my eyes, the boy ran, weaving through the wreckage toward where I stood, pillars crashing down behind him.
Plumes of dust and ash impeded my vision. Cries rang throughout the hall. Muffled screams. Falling rubble.
Grabbing my hand, he yanked me into his warm, strong arms. “Hold on to me.”
My shoulders twitched, wrists squirmed, and wind and fire engulfed the castle as if fell. Covering my head and body with his own, the boy draped himself over me as we were buried under the wreckage.
“MacCoinnich!”
“Kindred, do you hear me?”
My eyelids fluttered at the sound of my grandmother’s voice.
“Kindred? Lorelei, bring me that vial.”
Quick, hard pressure pierced the inner crease of my elbow.
The clarity of my vision grew sharp, keen, and I watched as the half woman, half arachnid balanced on a tomb, like a spider caught in its own web.
Heartbeat quickening, I glanced toward the dilapidated tombs surrounding Agrona. We were in the Necropolis. Again. Mausoleums and crypts rose up under the moss-covered oak trees shadowing the cemetery.
“What did you do to me?” I took a step forward, fists clenched. “What am I seeing?”
“The Princess asked for my help.” Agrona bowed across the shade-drenched gravestones between us. “My help, she has received.” She hopped down from the crumbling headstone and took a few scurried steps toward me on all fours, wrinkled feet and hands sinking into the moist leaves and earth underneath her. A wicked smile twisted the banshee’s sagging, lopsided mouth.
“You said I had to become one of the Shadows in order save Max.” My gaze darted from tomb to tomb before resting on the one I was searching for. The one only a few steps away, washed in white, with the heart-shaped patina padlock still in place. Still barring the gated doorway, which led inside the freezing cold crypt, as if no one had entered. “Tell me what that means. Why you’re here.”
Agrona grinned. “The Princess is not as smart as I believed her to be,” she whispered, eyes reddening. “Not as … clever.”
My gaze narrowed.
“Magnificent, this place once was.” She swept a wrinkled finger over a decrepit
headstone. “Agrona wished to see it again.” She smiled toward the mausoleum that my gaze continued to dart to—the one gleaming a few feet behind her. “Beautiful, is it not? A shrine built for royalty.”
My breath sped.
“The Princess knows the answers to all her questions. They live in her blood. She sees them in her thoughts. Perhaps she is simply afraid of her truth? For she knows what she must do—what she must allow herself to become.”
The spot on the back of my neck seared into my flesh, as if miniature Raven wings were frantically beating against my skin.
“Your demon Prince is farther now than he has ever been. My help, you need, if you wish to save him. My help cannot be … reversed.”
“If you’ve done something to him—anything—”
“Agrona has done nothing to your beloved. Does the girl still not know who she is—what she is?” She spoke in a hushed tone, into her hands. “Impossible. No, it is not impossible. Anything is possible. Lift the curse. Free the Raven. Break the curse. End the cycle. Free the souls. Kill the—” Her head swiveled around like she was momentarily confused, her gaze falling toward me again like she’s forgotten I was there.
My heart rose into my throat, not wanting to hear her anymore, wishing I could shut out her voice, her words— the inevitable truth in what she meant—what she had to mean. That’s not possible.
The edge of her mouth twitched upward as her red-eyed gaze locked with mine. “Yes, the girl sees. Agrona knew the Princess was smart, clever, and quick.” Her black-toothed grin stretched wide over her sagging face. “Always knew. Always believed.”
“Stop playing games.”
The banshee inclined her head in a gracious way. “The Princess has the power to end the curse. Did she not know? She is the only one who holds the key.” Agrona chuckled, and the spot on the base of my neck sent a zing of power through my limbs.
My Oghams twisted and turned, as if trying to free themselves from my body—from a foreign invasion infiltrating the very heart of who I was.
“How far is the Princess willing to go to save the one she loves?”
One will kill the other. That’s what my mother said.
Tentatively, I brought my hand to my neck, and pressed my fingers against the spot stabbing through my flesh like burning needles. A cacophony of high pitched caws pierced the silence of the forest, and a murder of crows blanketed the tree limbs, crypts and headstones in sable wings.
Agrona inclined her head. “The Shadows await.”
Black plumage tore through my skin. The feeling I’d grown accustomed to rocked through me. Raven wings spread wide. The landscape sharpened. Individual leaves became clear, the scuttling of a nearby black beetle, and earthworms burying themselves in the soft, damp ground. The white mausoleum shimmered before me, and the necropolis faded, nothing more than a mirage—an optical illusion.
The crows gathered like miniature soldiers. A flock of hundreds standing tall on the tree limbs, as if awaiting my command. Wrought iron gates rose from the ground and swung open. A fortress beckoned in the distance—a crumbling ruin of turrets. Trees twisted their way out of a barren landscape, like clawed fingers reaching for the dusky grey sky above. Streaks of green lightning blazed through the atmosphere like live wires as storm clouds roiled overhead.
The Shadow Realm summoned.
With wings spread wide, I soared over gate’s threshold, hundreds of black crows peppering the air in my wake. The orange glow of candlelight flickered in open archways along the fortress’s cobbled facade, and the Fomorian castle loomed ahead.
Tucking my wings in, I glided forward, and came to rest in the nearest second-story window. The crows landed in silence on available niches, eaves, and pockmarks dotting the outer decaying walls. My vantage point overlooked both the barren landscape and a massive, sunken chamber within the keep. Rock hearths, the size of small homes, housed several raging fires in the oval room. Deep orange embers floated through the air and rose up in front of my eyes, before they winked out of existence.
High above, the tower’s ceiling was lost in darkness—a steep stone spire that seems to go on forever. At the far end of the chamber, Max stood, clad in a steel breastplate and charcoal grey robes. An ancient-looking map was stretched out in front of him, stabbed into a wooden table by four silver daggers.
I couldn’t breathe.
There was no jail cell—no prison bars holding him there.
Readying myself to fly down into the chamber, I stopped when Sam walked in. Close enough that their shoulders brushed, he said, “I keep telling you it’s here.” Sam pointed toward the map with his index finger. “Why do you always argue?” There was a lilt in his tone—affection.
“I don’t always argue. I just argue with you.” Max grinned, his mouth twitching up, gaze still focused downward.
“Same difference.” Sam nudged Max’s shoulder in a friendly way and moved toward the end of the table, where various weapons lay scattered about. Long swords, maces, axes.
“What is it with The Fallen and weapons?” Max shook his head.
“What?” Sam gave him a playful smile and continued rifling through some of the rustier-looking knives. “This stuff’s cool.”
Why are they being so friendly? They hate each other.
Unsure how to proceed, I leaned slightly forward. The Raven’s keen sight was sharper than I could have imagined. Drawn across the large sheet of paper was an amphitheater. Oval in shape, its sides rose up around a central pit or performing area, in what could only be described as a tiered stadium. An arena, of sorts. Irish symbols dotted the map, but the smoke filling the chamber obscured the details. Leaning closer still, I tried to make it out, and from the corner of my eye, I saw Max shift his gaze under heavily hooded eyes. Shadows marked the lines of his cheekbones. Purple shaded the hollows under his eyes and across his left temple were bruises.
Firelight blazed at his back, as he stood, outlining the dark silhouette of his body in one solid line of orange light. Slowly removing the dagger closest to him from its embedded spot in the wooden table, he slipped the blade into a belt across his hips, and took a step forward.
“What’s wrong?” Sam’s stance grew rigid.
Max gave a slight shake of his head as his gaze roved the second-story windows, where I sat masked by shadows and fire smoke. Black pupils eclipsed the light grey of his eyes.
Pulse speeding, I eased farther back and kept my eyes fixed to the scene below.
Footfalls clapped against the stone floor, echoing off the walls, and the Leanaan Sidhe strode into the palatial room. Coming up behind Max, she hung her arm casually over his shoulder and whispered in his ear. He didn’t shift, move her arm, or flinch in any way. Instead, he relaxed his stance slightly, and tilted his head back, kissing her pink lips softly, gently, adoringly. As if he’d done it a thousand times before.
A choking, squawking sound escaped my throat as my breathing seized up. Max’s head whipped around, glaring toward the second floor again. My chest tightened, and I gripped the wood underneath me with clawed talons, to keep from screaming, shifting, or bursting into flames, splinters cutting into bare flesh.
‘You are the other’s sworn enemy.’ My aunt’s words played in my head.
I glanced again. The brand on Max’s neck—the Fomorian Crest—had grown. Stretched out in a wide disarray of pointed red spear tips. Livid red. Like a leech feeding off its host.
‘It was never the boy’s place to live among us. A grievous mistake, your father made, binding you to the Formorian,’ the Tree Nymph had said. ‘The Demon Gods have no place in our world.’
Pain bit into my heart, climbing and shimmying through my limbs.
‘If there is a Tear, the MacKenzie you know and love … he will no longer exist,’ my grandmother told me.
A weight pushed on my chest, as if someone sat on my ribcage, threatening to split it in two.
“You did not believe his love for you was real?” Laughter cackled in
my thoughts. The same voice—the one that had been a constant since I fell from the sky. “Foolish, foolish girl.”
The pressure quickened in my heart. Tears clouded my sight. Disbelieving, I forced the voice away, moved out from under the window’s cover, and flew up, perched on the staircase banister in clear sight. Screeches and caws sang out a deafening alarm behind me, as the crows followed suit and crowded into the fiery chamber.
Three faces lifted in sync, all eyes wide.
The Leanaan Sidhe’s hand slipped from Max’s shoulder, and she took a step back, her mouth dropping open. Sam straightened, his shoulders broad and proud, a sly grin playing at his mouth.
My gaze stayed focused on Max, who stiffened like a steel plank. His eyes shifted in their sockets toward the throng of rioting birds before meeting my gaze. What slight color he has left drained from his face, making his bruises stand out in startling contrast to his skin.
With wings opened wide, I dropped through the air, and shifted, landing on my feet in the middle of the chamber, in my human form.
The Leanaan Sidhe took another step back. Sam held his ground, still grinning. Max’s jaw muscles tightened, his chest rising and falling, fists clenched at his sides.
There was no warmth in his expression, no love or yearning, only something much worse.
Hatred.
No thoughts ran through his head—none that I could hear—and I found myself glaring at his dead-eyed stare as I would an enemy, heat pumping through my veins.
At the base of his throat, his pulse raced, thrumming rapidly with the beat of his heart.
“A magical binding held you together. Nothing more,” the voice in my head says. “The Tie has been Torn. MacKenzie was never yours.”
Max’s eyes narrowed, and an unbridled kind of fury marked the harsh angles of his drawn, bruised face. His hand wrapped the dagger’s hilt at his waist. Fingers twitched, knuckles whitened, as he stood otherwise frozen, and I realized I was the enemy in the room. The one he was born to hate.
“It’s over.” He held my glare, and his eyes shifted toward the bracelet wrapping my wrist. “You and me—it’s done.” His chest rose sharply, nostrils flaring. “Get away from here before I hurt you.”