by Megan Chance
Aidan frowned.
“What is it?” Diarmid demanded.
“Nothing.” Aidan shook his head. “Nothing. Listen, those words on the ogham stick you and Grace found—d’you remember them?”
The ogham stick that Grace had insisted was a clue to find the archdruid. The words on it had been those her grandmother had said before the old woman lapsed into a coma. “I’m not likely to forget them.”
“Word for word? Do you remember it that well?”
“I looked at it enough, trying to figure out what it meant. ‘The sea is the knife. Great stones crack and split. Storms will tell and the world is changed. The rivers guard treasures with no worth. To harm and to protect become as one, and all things will only be known in pieces.’”
Aidan repeated the words.
Diarmid said, “Does it mean something to you?”
“Not to me, not yet. But Grace understands some of it.”
“No, she doesn’t. She—”
“She knows how to find the archdruid,” Aidan corrected. “But the rest of it . . . I know everything my grandmother knew, but her madness keeps getting in the way. It’s all confused and . . . I know those words are important, but that’s all. I need some time to figure it out. But I can tell something’s not right. You should go back to Governors Island quickly.”
“At dawn. You heard Finn.”
“That might not be soon enough.”
“Gods save me from cryptic Druids! What does that mean? What do you know?”
“God save me from obtuse, arrogant warriors! Don’t be slow, Derry, that’s all. There’s something happening; I don’t know what. But nothing’s as it should be. Grace is . . . not as she should be. It’s just what I feel. I can’t explain.”
There was something in Aidan’s expression that disturbed Diarmid, a distraction, a shuttering, as if Aidan knew more than he was telling. Diarmid followed Grace’s brother back to the basement flat. He should have gone straight to the dock after escaping Balor, instead of returning here. He should have hired a boat. He should be stepping ashore on Governors Island right now.
But there would have been no boats to hire in the dead of night. Dawn would come soon enough, and he’d be gone. It would be all right.
He went to one of the straw pallets and had just fallen into a troubled sleep when a scream jerked him awake. Aidan had bolted upright in the corner, stark terror on his white face. “Grace, no! It’s too late! It’s too late!”
Later that night
Grace
The old man tried to shut the door. I stopped it with my foot. Everything had come to this, and I was too late. The archdruid’s power was already gone, and with it, all my hopes. “Please. Please, let me just talk with you.”
“Go away. There’s nothing for you here.”
Sarnat said, “I don’t suppose you’d like to be a boar. Let us in.”
The man’s gaze flicked to her. He swallowed nervously.
“I only want to ask a few questions,” I said.
“I’ve lost it all, missy,” the old man whined. “Please, you must go now. I’m trying to save you. You must go before—”
There was a sound behind him, a tinkling of many bells—I’d heard them before, in his music. He sagged, closing his eyes, whispering, “I told you to go.”
Sarnat went very still.
The door opened wide, though the old man hadn’t touched it. A dog—a long, thin whippet—wove around his legs. It looked up at me and Sarnat with an unsettling, almost human gaze before it slinked back into the darkness. The old man sighed and stepped back.
“Please, won’t you come in?” he asked politely, as if he hadn’t been ordering us to go only moments before.
You should go. You should run. But I wanted answers, so I stepped into that darkness, shadows within darker shadows and the smell of dust and old things and a faint and alluring perfume.
Sarnat took a great, deep breath. She turned back to the door. “We must leave.”
Her tone was so urgent and fierce that I turned too. But before we went a single step, the door slammed shut in our faces, as if some invisible hand had shoved it. The old man stood there like a puppet with cut strings, his head bowed, his nightshirt limp around his bony shins.
Sarnat grabbed the door handle, trying to wrench it open. “Let us go!” She kicked at the door. “Unlock the door!”
The old man spread his hands helplessly. “I told you.”
“You can’t keep us prisoner. You can’t—”
“He’s not keeping you,” said a voice from the darkness. “He’s just an old, helpless man.”
Sarnat twisted away from the door, her eyes wide.
I turned to face the unknown speaker. “We mean you no harm. Let us go.”
Something—an animal—brushed me. Fur, stiff and short. Something hard as bone, textured. I held my breath, more afraid than I could ever remember feeling. Then it moved away, hooves clacking on the wooden floor.
“Please,” I said. “We only came looking for the archdruid. He’s been drained, so we’ll leave. We’ll—”
“I thought you wanted answers, veleda,” said the otherworldly voice.
I went cold. “I’ll find them somewhere else. If you’ll just open the door . . .”
“Show them to their rooms, Roddy. And draw her a bath. She stinks of blood.”
“Our rooms? We’re not staying. Please, let us go. Let us go, or I’ll call for the police!”
The only answer I received was the fading tinkle of bells. The old man took Sarnat’s arm and mine in a surprisingly firm grip. “This way, milady.”
I struggled against him. “Let us go. You can’t keep us!”
“’Twas a mistake to come,” said Roddy mildly. “But now you’re here, and there will be no leaving.”
I couldn’t see Sarnat’s expression, but I felt her fear. My own was a metallic taste in my mouth. Roddy drew us through mounds of shadow, into a heavy, cloying darkness.
“Here are stairs,” he directed, taking us up a very narrow stairwell. It seemed to go on forever, walls pressing close. At the top, it was still so dark, I couldn’t tell if there was a floor or if one step might send us tumbling to our deaths. The smell of the blood on my dress and face and in my hair filled my nose, along with that perfume, which seemed to permeate everything. What was it? It was so familiar and yet so . . . strange.
The store hadn’t seemed this big from the outside, just another single-story ramshackle building, but we went up at least two flights of stairs, and three smaller sets of steps that twisted and turned through corridors and mazes. I struggled more than once in Roddy’s grasp, and each time, his hold only tightened, his wiry fingers bruising my arm. How could we ever escape this darkness? I wished Diarmid was with me. I wished I hadn’t been so stupid as to set out on my own. I’d only put myself in greater danger, as he’d predicted. The archdruid had been drained, and I was in the grasp of some . . . something, and no one knew where I was, and I’d made Battle Annie vow not to tell. Stupid, stupid, stupid—
Roddy paused at a barrier before us, a wall. He kicked at it, and a door creaked open, something I heard rather than saw, because it opened to no light. “Here we are, milady.” He gave me a little push. I went stumbling. The door closed behind me. I heard Sarnat protesting:
“No! Leave me with her. Leave me—”
Her voice just ended. There weren’t even footsteps leading away, just an abrupt silence.
I took a deep breath, trying not to panic.
“Hello?” I ventured cautiously. “Is anyone there?”
There was a whoosh, a flash, and light filled the room so suddenly, it blinded me. I staggered back and saw that the light was gaslight, from two bronze sconces on the wall, and I was in a small room, with a bed in the corner laid with red silk coverlets edged in gold. The carpet beneath my feet was thick and richly colored. There was no window, but lush tapestries. A gilded trunk stood against one wall, along with a dressing scre
en embroidered with flowers.
It was a moment before I saw that the tapestries told a story. In each were a man and a woman. The first showed the man petting two dogs as a star blazed from his forehead, while the woman watched. The second was the two of them on horseback, with an army following behind. The third was a battle between the man and leaping, vicious dogs with teeth like knives and eerie red eyes. The fourth was the two of them in a cave, his head in her lap and her hand upon his brow; and in the last, they were standing in a wood while he offered her a handful of red berries.
The story of Diarmid and Grainne.
Except the Grainne in this story wasn’t blond, as she always was, as the tales told her to be. This girl had dark hair, like mine, and dark eyes.
The Grainne in the tapestries was me.
This was a spell. I felt its power pulsing gently about me, like water in a bath. I felt the glamour as I’d felt it in the riverfront warehouse where Diarmid and I had sought out the sidhe to ask questions about the archdruid. There were fairies in this place. Very powerful ones. So powerful that even Sarnat had been afraid. I should never have come here.
There’s no going back. There’s only going forward.
Diarmid’s voice was in my head as if he stood beside me. He was right; I could not change the choices I’d made. I couldn’t surrender to despair. I had to go forward, which meant I had to somehow harness my fear and think. There was no one to help me here—even Sarnat had been useless.
You have to be clever. You have to be smart. Listen.
I closed my eyes, casting out the web. I could no longer feel my brother; the connection had snapped. The hovering, watching other was not there either. But I heard the bells, and the archdruid’s music, faint but clear, and that was puzzling, because when I’d touched Roddy, the music had vanished instead of growing stronger. Now, when I listened more closely, I heard what I hadn’t before. The music was cloaked in other strains, foreign chords that screamed danger.
I opened my eyes. There was power here, and I felt my peril. Whoever had spoken in the darkness had glamoured this room especially for me, which meant he already knew too much about who I was and what I wanted.
But I was the veleda. I could not let some sidhe or demon take choice away from me. Whatever this place was, I had to fight it. I had to keep fighting.
Exhaustion overwhelmed me. It had to be near dawn. The last time I’d slept seemed forever ago, and there hadn’t been much of it, thanks to Diarmid—well, it hadn’t been only his fault, I had to admit. Thinking of it brought a rush of heat, but it gave me courage too. Diarmid would expect me to do what I must to survive.
And for now, that meant sleep. I curled up on the bed and stared at the tapestry before me, the one with Diarmid’s head on Grainne’s lap. It was the part of the story where she’d sung him to sleep with the “Wandering Song,” and I closed my eyes now and let the poetry play in my head . . . sleep here soundly, soundly, Diarmid, to whom I have given my love . . .
Tonight, I would let myself dream of him.
Tomorrow, I would fight.
July 29
Patrick
Patrick Devlin stared out the window of the meeting room in the Fenian Brotherhood clubhouse. The traffic on Broadway was at a standstill thanks to a collision between a carriage and a delivery wagon. Bright green peppers and cabbages rolled in the street, and passersby were trying to right the carriage while the drivers screamed obscenities at each other.
Not much different from what was happening in the room behind him. The Fomori were arguing over the Fianna’s rescue of Oscar, which had been a disaster—though not for Patrick, who struggled to hide his relief. It had gone as he’d hoped. Oscar had escaped with Patrick’s message for Aidan. All Patrick hoped was that Aidan understood it.
“You should have killed Diarmid.” Bres, the leader of the Fomori, said to Balor. “All you had to do was lift that eye patch and strike him down. Now, two of their best warriors are returned to them.”
Bres was so blond and handsome that it was hard to believe he could be as ruthless as he sounded right now. But Patrick knew the deadliness in his tone was no illusion. Patrick glanced over his shoulder as the giant Balor crossed his massive arms over his equally massive chest and gave his leader a steely, one-eyed stare.
“’Tis only Diarmid who knows where the veleda is.” Daire Donn, the former self-proclaimed King of the World, tried to placate Bres. “If Balor killed him, we would never find her.”
“You think the rest of the Fianna don’t know her whereabouts?” Bres snapped. “Don’t be a fool.”
“In any case, it was badly done all around,” said Simon MacRonan, the Fenian Brotherhood’s Druid Seer, who sat at the table, rearranging rune sticks.
“’Twas clear they were ready for us,” Bres said, pacing. “I grow tired of spies. Who among us is the traitor?”
“You’re too suspicious, my love.”
The beautiful blond Lot entered, followed closely by Patrick’s closest friend in the Fenian Brotherhood, Jonathan Olwen, and Miogach, whose gray eyes were always sharp and assessing. Patrick had not spoken to him since the gang riot a few days ago, when Miogach had sent an assassin after Aidan.
Bres stopped his pacing and sighed, but his chiseled face was hard. “Aye, perhaps ’tis so. But the Fianna are stronger with Oscar, and when you add Diarmid’s return . . .”
“Without the veleda,” Simon noted. He shoved the rune sticks on the table, pushing one and then another. “Which is very interesting, wouldn’t you say? Why not bring her with him?”
“Indeed. Why not? Especially now that the lovespot is working its magic.” Balor scowled. “He has her well in his control.”
“Please,” Jonathan protested. “Consider Patrick when you speak of her. She is his fiancée.”
Patrick couldn’t face the compassion in his friend’s gaze. He turned back to the window. The overturned carriage was righted; traffic was starting to move. Peppers had rolled up against the piles of garbage at the curb, bright green spots of color that stood out among the refuse like the emeralds in the necklace he’d planned to give Grace on their wedding day. So many times, he’d imagined putting them around her neck, the way she would kiss him as she had in his parlor, tangling her fingers in his hair, pressing against him. To think of her kissing Diarmid instead, wanting him . . .
Patrick wanted her back desperately. But more than that, he wanted her safe. He suspected that the Fomori weren’t looking for the archdruid at all, despite their promises, and the attempt on Aidan’s life bothered him greatly. And there was also the fact that Aidan had told him the Fianna believed Grace had the threefold power of a goddess, the kind of power that, once released, could remake the world. If the Fomori discovered it . . . Patrick didn’t quite trust them to resist it. No, it was best if Diarmid kept her away from the city, at least until Patrick understood what he was dealing with.
Miogach came up beside him. “A fine mess.”
Patrick wasn’t certain whether he spoke of the accident in the street or of Oscar’s escape.
“I owe you an apology for what happened with the stormcaster.”
Patrick’s stomach tightened. “Bres said you were only trying to protect me.”
“Aye, but I took it too far. I won’t lie to you—I hate the Fianna. They stole everything from me. Seeing them again . . . I forgot myself. I shouldn’t have sent that boy after the stormcaster. ’Twas foolish. There were other ways to manage it. ’Tis Ireland I should be thinking of, not my own petty revenge. It won’t happen again, I vow.”
Miogach looked sincere, and Patrick was relieved. “That’s good to hear.”
Miogach leaned close. “But a word of warning, Devlin: old friendships can get in the way. I know from experience that Bres is quick to see disloyalty where there may be none.”
Patrick tried to hide his guilt. The Fomori didn’t know of his alliance with Aidan to save Grace’s life, and he wanted to keep it that way. It looked like b
etrayal, though it wasn’t. It was just . . . caution. “He thinks I’m disloyal?”
“Not yet, though your actions troubled him. I’ve reminded him that the stormcaster was your friend and is the veleda’s brother.”
“I understand,” Patrick said quietly.
Miogach smiled. As always, it softened the sharpness of his features and made Patrick want to smile back. “I like you, Devlin, and I’m glad you called us. We’ll protect the stormcaster if we can. But ’tis war, you must remember. You cannot be on both sides.”
“I’m not on both sides,” Patrick insisted. “But I am worried that there’s no progress in finding the archdruid.”
“Aye. We’re looking, believe me. No one wants to see Miss Knox die. When I think of what we can win together, of a free Ireland . . . ’tis what we want above all. We shall have it, I promise you.”
Patrick was reminded of what was important. The Fomori were the only ones who could help him win Ireland’s freedom. He needed them, and when it came to Ireland, he trusted them.
Lot came up to them, saying, “I’m going to your house, my darling, if you’d like a ride. Your fiancée’s mother asked for my opinion on your wedding supper.”
It was a relief to know that, whatever else changed, the plans for his future with Grace continued on. Patrick felt a hope he sorely needed. “I think I would. If you—”
“What could this be?” Simon’s voice cut through the talk.
Patrick turned to see him frowning over the rune sticks.
Bres demanded, “What is it? What do you see?”
“Something has changed.”
“Things are always changing.” Daire Donn raked his long hair from his face as he looked over Simon’s shoulder. “’Tis the nature of divination, is it not?”
Simon tapped the rune sticks. “But this is to do with the veleda. This shows . . . three.”
“‘She sees, she weighs, she chooses,’” Daire Donn quoted the prophecy. “She is the eubages, brithem, and vater combined.”