"It has to be done, Darragh. You know that."
He shook his head and took a step further into the room, filled with doubt and anguish. Rónán's face was calm and resigned to what must be done.
"They are innocent."
"How can you say that? You saw what they did."
"They didn't know. Didn't understand ..."
"They are death, Darragh. The death of billions upon billions more."
He shook his head. "I can't believe ..." He didn't finish the sentence. He couldn't.
Rónán didn't respond, turning back to stare down at the twin girls he had come to murder.
Darragh took another step closer. "I won't let you do it. You don't have to do it. You're not a tool of the Matrarchaí. Neither of us is. We don't have to do her bidding."
"Even if she's right?"
"She's dead. What difference does it make now?"
"I will end this."
"I won't let you."
"How will you stop me?" Rónán asked as he raised the blade.
"I'll kill you if I have to, Rónán, to stop this."
Rónán stared down at the twins, dismissing the empty threat. "Even if you could get across this room before the deed was done, Darragh, you can't kill me without killing yourself, which would achieve precisely what I am here to prevent."
He moved the blade a little, repositioning his grip. There was a drawn-out silence as he played the light across the blade. Behind him, Darragh remained motionless. There was no point in him trying to attack. They were two sides of the same coin. Neither man could so much as form the intent to attack without the other knowing about it.
The girls would be dead before anybody could reach the cradle to stop him.
"There must be another way." There was note of defeat in the statement; a glimmer of acceptance.
"I wouldn't be here if there was," Ren replied, still staring down at the baby he was destined to kill. "You know that," he added, glancing over his shoulder. "You're just not willing to accept the truth of it yet."
Darragh held out his hand, as if he expected the blade to be handed over, and for this night to be forgotten, somehow. Put behind them like a foolish disagreement they'd been wise enough to settle like men. "They're just babies ..."
"They are Partition and all the destruction that -"
* * *
"Hey, wake up."
Darragh jerked awake to find Rónán standing over him, shaking him by the shoulder. "What? What is it?"
"You were talking in your sleep," Rónán told him softly. "Something about partitioning. I can hear them moving about downstairs. We need to be quiet."
Darragh sat up and glanced around the unfamiliar room, a little unsure of where he was, not entirely certain this wasn't the dream and what he'd just been seeing was reality. Perhaps neither of them was real. Perhaps he was still in his cell in Portlaoise and Rónán waking him from his nightmare was just wishful thinking ...
And then Darragh remembered Rónán coming for him, and Ciarán dying and realized it wasn't a dream. This was Rónán's old room. There were in Kiva Kavanaugh's house.
Rónán had finally come for him.
"What time is it?" Darragh asked.
"Just on dawn," Rónán said, sitting on the bed beside him. "Kiva must have an early call. She's not normally up this early."
"Did you get some sleep?"
Rónán shook his head. "Someone needed to keep watch."
Darragh pushed himself up on his elbows, surprised at how awkward this soft bed with its down comforter felt. He was used to the hard foam mattress of his cell. This luxury made him uncomfortable. "I thought you said we were safe here."
"We are," he said softly, "but not if we're discovered. You're a dangerous escapee, remember."
Darragh didn't want to think about that. In fact, if he never spared Portlaoise another thought as long as he lived, it would suit him just fine.
"How's your head?" Rónán asked. "You were pretty out of it yesterday."
"Better. How are you feeling?"
"None the worse for wear," his brother assured him. "I think all the jewels are out, from one end or the other. Were you having the dream?"
Rónán didn't need to elaborate. Darragh knew what he meant. He nodded. "I haven't had that nightmare in years. It's different now, though."
"Let me guess. Now it's set in this realm, not yours?"
Darragh searched Rónán's face in the gloom. His brother was not betraying any visible emotion. But his question told Darragh a great deal more than the few simple words it took to ask it.
"What do you think has happened to change it?"
"The Hag told me it changes as it gets nearer. The closer it gets the more accurate it gets."
"That's been my experience with the Sight," Darragh agreed, certain he needed to get the full story of how Rónán came to be discussing such matters with the Brethren. "But I don't see how it can be true. I've been in prison for the past decade. I've sired no progeny." He smiled thinly. "Despite the attempts of several inmates to make me their bitch."
Rónán must have lost his sense of humor these last years. He didn't so much as crack a smile. "So is my dream just confused? Are the children yours?"
Rónán shook his head. "I'm pretty sure they're yours. They always are in my nightmares, anyway."
"Then we have nothing to worry about. At least not for a while yet. Even if I meet someone and impregnate her in the next day or two, we have a minimum of nine months to figure out a way to avoid this dreadful thing."
"Sure we have," Rónán said with a smile, but he seemed unconvinced.
"Odd though," Darragh said, "that after all this time the nightmare should come back."
"Yeah ... weird." Rónán stood up and walked to the window. He pulled the curtain back a fraction, revealing the soft post-dawn light outside. The faint sound of tyres on gravel reached them, rapidly fading as the car pulled away from the house. "Looks like Patrick is driving Kiva today. I'm going to risk going downstairs to see if we're alone. Do you know if Jack is still living next door?"
Darragh stared at Rónán for a moment, surprised by the question. It drove home to him how long they had been divided. How little they knew of each other's lives. "Of course, you wouldn't have heard."
Rónán let the curtain fall and turned back to look at him. In the gloom it was hard to make out his expression. "Heard what?"
He tossed back the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. "Jack was gaoled for his part in Hayley Boyle's kidnapping, Rónán. He was in Portlaoise with me."
Despite the dimness, his shock was clearly evident. "Jesus ... is he all right?"
"He died about three years ago," Darragh told him. "Had a stroke. Collapsed right in the middle of the exercise yard. Dead before he hit the ground, they say."
Rónán was silent. "That's too bad," he said eventually. "Are you still in touch with Sorcha?"
"She died too, Rónán," he said, his brother's ignorance driving home the vast gulf between their experiences this past decade. "The lack of magic in this realm killed her. Aged her into an old woman in a matter of days."
"I'm sorry," Rónán said after a moment. "I know she was a friend of yours." He turned and headed for the door. He eased it open, apparently satisfied they were now alone in the house and no longer in danger of discovery. And, Darragh guessed, rather anxious to change the subject. "Let's see if we can find you a change of clothes. Kiva's manager keeps a few things in the guest room wardrobe up the hall. They should fit."
"Rónán ..."
"What?"
"I'm sorry about Jack. I know he was your friend. He proved to be a good friend to me, too."
"Not half as sorry as Jack is about it, I imagine," Rónán said, stepping out into the hall. He left the door open for Darragh to follow.
With a sigh, Darragh pushed himself off the bed and headed after Rónán, wishing they could share the Comhroinn so they would know what each other had suffered.
&nbs
p; And wondering how many more awkward conversations like that were ahead of them until the Comhroinn was done.
Chapter 45
Brydie opened her eyes and lay in bed for a time, trying to figure out where she was. The last few days were such a blur. The room gave little hint of her location, other than the obvious realization she was no longer in her own reality. The elegant furniture, the expensive fabrics, the glass in the windows so clear it was like it wasn't there at all; the sterile cleanliness of the place and even the flowers artfully arranged in the fabulous porcelain vase on the carved wooden table by the door ... all screamed wealth and, more importantly, that she was no longer in her own realm.
After years trapped inside an amethyst, witnessing the machinations of Álmhath's court and then being stolen by Rónán of the Undivided and kept in his pocket for another seven years -to be brought out anytime he wanted someone to unburden himself to - Brydie figured she had just about seen everything.
She knew now that she had seen nothing, done nothing and that the idea of other realities was something she had never fully appreciated until she found herself in this one.
It wasn't just the curious girl who rubbed the jewel and set her free. That made sense really. Even in her own realm the way to summon a djinni was to polish the item in which he was confined. It was wasn't even that she went from wondering if she might be pregnant to giving birth to Darragh's children in a matter of hours. The spell that trapped her in the jewel had unravelled alarmingly, but not unexpectedly, as soon as she was released.
But the flying machine the Matrarchaí had sent for her. That was truly something.
As was the fact that she had gone from enchanted prisoner to exhausted mother overnight.
Brydie hadn't seen her babies. The efficient but not very talkative midwives overseeing her care had bustled them away almost as soon as they were born. She didn't remember much about the birth, either, other than she had delivered twins and that the babies had been cut from her womb to save them.
The doctor had explained it to her afterwards. Or at least, she'd tried to. Brydie really wasn't sure what she was saying. She spoke a foreign language to start with, and when she finally switched to a language Brydie could understand, the dialect seemed wrong and many of the words she used were unfamiliar.
In the end, one of the other women translated for her. The babies were in trouble, she'd said. They'd been trying to fight their way out but she wasn't dilating fast enough for them to escape, and so they had to help them out. Brydie had tried to explain why she wasn't able to birth them naturally. Her babies had been waiting all this time, but her body hadn't known anything about being pregnant. It had no time to prepare. No time to do much of anything.
But they'd given her something for the pain, and then she'd fallen asleep. When she woke her body showed evidence of her recent - and exceedingly brief - pregnancy: she had a dressing just above her pubic bone covering the incision the doctor made to remove her babies, a needle in the back of her hand attached to a tube running clear fluid into her arm from a bag on a stand beside the bed, and a clutter of strange women smiling at her, congratulating her on giving birth to two beautiful baby girls.
Brydie couldn't decide how she felt about being a mother so unexpectedly. She'd not had time to feel the new life growing inside her. She'd not felt her babies kick, or move, or hummed lullabies to them in the womb so they would know the sound of her voice, as she had seen other expectant mothers do.
Her babies seemed to have come from nothing. Perhaps that explained why she felt nothing for them.
Come to us, mama, she imagined them calling to her. Come to us now.
The door opened and a woman entered carrying a tray. She smiled when she saw that Brydie was awake and put the tray down on the dresser under the window to then draw back the curtains, flooding the room with bright sunshine. She came to the bed and helped Brydie to sit up, checked the drip, rearranged her pillows and offered to help her out of bed and into the bathroom, speaking a language close enough to her own that she understood almost every word. Brydie declined the offer. Her bladder felt near to bursting, but she had no intention of relieving herself in a bath.
The woman brought Brydie the tray - a large wicker affair with legs that kept the weight off her sore body. She lifted a silver dome to reveal a plate piled with bacon, poached eggs, mushrooms, thick toast and what looked like fried potatoes next to a steaming cup of tea. There was a knife made of silver and another eating implement that looked like a tiny pitchfork, but no spoon. Perhaps they ate everything in this realm with their fingers.
Brydie accepted the food gratefully, though, not caring how she ate it, ravenous now she was awake. This would be the first food she'd eaten in years.
Nothing, she suspected, would ever taste quite so good again.
The midwife saw she was settled and then left the room as another woman came in. This one was tall and elegantly dressed in a grey suit whose tight-fitting skirt finished - scandalously - just above her knees. She smiled at Brydie, closed the door and came to sit at the foot of the bed to watch Brydie eat.
"You are consuming that food like you haven't been fed in a month," the woman remarked with smile.
"It's been far longer for than a month," Brydie told her through a mouthful of delicious bacon and mushrooms. "More like years."
"Did they not feed you, in your realm?"
The seemingly inane question told Brydie a great deal and reminded her sharply of where she was. These people were not random strangers doing her a kindness. This was the Matrarchaí. "I was trapped in an enchanted jewel. I never really got hungry until now."
The woman didn't bat an eyelid when Brydie told her about being trapped, accepting the statement as if it was a perfectly normal occurrence. She shouldn't be surprised. It was likely that Delphine had reported back to the Matrarchaí about the girl trapped in Anwen's necklace. Years ago, Anwen had told Delphine about her, but Delphine never came back to give Anwen any orders about what to do with her and then Ren had come for her and stolen the amethyst from Anwen's necklace, taking her out of the reach of the Matrarchaí. Ren had known where to find her, he told her later in one of their many one-sided conversations, because he'd taken the memory from Delphine when she died.
"Well, we shall have to see about a second helping, won't we? With two lusty babes to feed, you'll need to keep your strength up for when your milk comes in. Do you have a name?"
Odd that they hadn't asked her that before now. Not that there'd been much time, what with her sudden onset of labour. Good to know the babies were fine, although Brydie struggled to feel something for them other than mild relief to learn they had survived.
"My name is Brydie Ni'Seanan," she said.
"My name is Marie-Claire," the woman said, nodding, as if Brydie had simply confirmed something she already suspected. "I come from a realm not dissimilar to the one you hail from." She smiled, adding, "Although I have to say, my arrival here was not nearly so dramatic as yours. I'll see you have help adjusting while you're here."
"And where am I, exactly?"
"Cambria Castle estate near Dublin. Eblana you'd call it in your realm, I think."
"I don't mean that. I mean what realm is this?"
"It is ... the true reality," Marie-Claire said with a shrug, as if the question puzzled her.
"Does that mean this is Ren's reality?" Brydie asked, wondering if she should be mentioning his name almost at the same time as she realized she didn't owe Ren Kavanaugh anything. "The one where Darragh has been trapped all this time?"
Marie-Claire hesitated for the briefest of moments. "Do you know where Darragh is?"
Brydie shook her head. She was about to say Ren came to this reality looking for him, and then thought better of it. Why not say something? It's not as if you've ever actually met Ren in person. "I have no idea were Darragh is. Do you know him?" Marie-Claire hadn't asked for any sort of explanation about who Ren or Darragh might be. She obviously kne
w.
"Only by reputation," Marie-Claire said. "We've not met. What do you know of his brother?"
"Not much," Brydie lied. "I've been kept in the dark these past few years. Literally."
This time Marie-Claire didn't even try to pretend she wasn't surprised. "You have spoken to Ren Kavanaugh recently?"
"Not spoken to him as such," she explained, as she bit into the delicious toast. "I couldn't talk to anybody trapped in that damn jewel, but he talked to me ... now and then. Guess I made a good listener, what with not being able to answer back and all."
"And how is it you were trapped inside a jewel in the first place?" Marie-Claire asked. "What did you do to anger one of the Djinn?"
"I have no idea," she said with a shrug. "I was on my way to Sí an Bhrú, when Marcroy Tarth gave me the jewel. I think the djinni was already inside. After Darragh disappeared, Jamaspa - that was the djinni - trapped me in the jewel and kept asking me questions about Rónán and Darragh that I couldn't answer, then one day he stopped coming and I never saw him again."
Again, Marie-Claire didn't even blink at the oddity of Brydie's tale. "And how did you end up tucked behind a rock in this realm?"
"Well, let me see." She took a deep breath. "First I was in Darragh's room at Sí an Bhrú, and then Colmán stole me from Darragh's room and gave me to Anwen who told Torcán to hide the stone, so he took me to a goldsmith and had the amethyst set into a necklace for Anwen to wear at her wedding, and then Ren stole the jewel from her and took me back to his realm and I was there for ages, and then he was leaving to go to another realm because Darragh asked him to come, so he gave me to a Leipreachán to keep the jewel safe, but then Marcroy found the reality and took Trása prisoner, so Nika decided to pretend she was dead and smuggled her out of Tír Na nÓg and they came to this realm to find Pete and Logan, which probably means it's the same realm where Ren and Darragh are, too." She shrugged. "I think Toyoda shoved me down behind the rock at the stone circle because Ren made him swear not to lose the jewel while he was away and he was worried Trása might see it and take it from him."
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