by Megan Chance
He remembered how angry and frightened she’d been then. The way the Black Hands had surprised the Fianna when he’d brought her to meet Finn. The night they’d discovered she was the veleda. The blood on his hand that had ended up on her cheek when he’d kissed her, his battle lust still raging.
He didn’t know what to say, and so he began to walk, relieved when she fell into step beside him. The streets were a little better here than at home, but there were still broken sewer pipes leaking into puddles and piles of garbage overflowing the ash cans. Women leaned wearily over stoops to talk to their neighbors; children dodged wagons, horses, and cartmen; and peddlers hawked bruised apples, swill milk, and day-old bread. Diarmid stopped to buy apples and some stale rolls, stuffed some into his pockets for Bridget’s children, and gave one of each to Grace.
She said, “You’re certain there will be a battle?”
“Aye.” He took a bite of an apple. It tasted dry and sour. Still he made himself chew and swallow and take another bite before he said, “And it won’t be a pretty one. The Fomori are fearsome. We’ve lost some of our best men to them.”
“I know they were that way once. The things the tales say—”
“True tales.”
“Perhaps. But I don’t see it now. Or . . . I don’t think I do. Balor with a poisonous eye that slays anyone he looks upon? It seems impossible in this world. Daire Donn is a flirt, and Miogach made me laugh—”
“Miogach.” He couldn’t hide his scorn. The Fomori had persuaded her as easily as he’d feared. It was no surprise. Lot’s beauty captivated. Daire Donn’s smile and confidence made you want to like him. Bres was so beguiling he’d seduced the whole of Ireland before anyone began to notice that the land was ruined and he wasn’t the benevolent ruler they thought him.
“Miogach has strange eyes,” Grace went on. “At first I didn’t know if I liked him, but he’s been the most reassuring of all when it comes to the archdruid. And the hope that there’s another spell.”
“He’s also the biggest liar. Finn treated him with nothing but kindness. I taught him sword fighting and chess, Keenan trained with him every day. He was to join us, but he betrayed us instead and killed Finn’s son. I don’t like any of the Fomori, but Miogach . . . I’d be happy to meet him in battle again, hopefully skewered on the end of my red spear.”
“He admitted that you were at odds.”
“At odds. Ha! That’s one way to put it.”
“Perhaps he has reason to hate the Fianna, Derry. My grandmother said Finn was too arrogant to believe that he wasn’t beloved by everyone. How could Miogach love any of you? You killed his father and his brother.”
“Is that what people think? That we deserved his betrayal?”
“It’s the way my grandmother tells the story, but I don’t think anyone else does. She knows things no one else seems to know. Or she did anyway.” She took a bite of the apple and made a face, but she didn’t spit it out.
Diarmid said quietly, “The world changes, and the gods change with it. Monsters don’t always look like monsters.”
Grace finished the apple in a few bites and threw the core into the street, where it was set upon by dogs. She tore off a piece of her roll. “Are Grandma’s stories about the Fianna true also? The ones where you would fight for whoever paid the most money? Or that you demanded tributes and women until the people grew tired of you and the king decided to fight you himself? His own elite guards?”
Diarmid stiffened. “’Tis the reason for the veleda. You know the prophecy as well as I do.”
“I suppose kidnapping isn’t so different from those things.”
“You don’t want to choose the Fomori, Grace.”
“They say the same about you,” she challenged.
“And they’re wrong. I’ve seen what they can do. But you’d rather trust Patrick, who believes that history is wrong even though he hasn’t lived it.”
“I don’t need Patrick to tell me what to think. I can see the truth for myself.”
They’d reached the secondhand shop that Bridget had told them about, and Grace’s gaze leaped beyond him to the dirty windows, where Murphy’s Treasure Chest was painted in peeling white.
The shop was small and crowded. Tables throughout were loaded with pots and pans, stacks of dishes, and piles of cups, spoons, and forks. Racks to one side sagged with clothing. Beneath were piles of shoes. Above, bedraggled hats perched one atop the other. A bearded man sat behind glass cases that held fans and hairpins and all manner of cheap jewelry.
The man glanced up as they entered the shop. “C’n I help you folks?”
“We’re looking for books,” Grace said.
The owner jerked his head toward the rear of the shop. “What I got is back there. Ain’t many.”
Diarmid followed Grace to a table that held perhaps ten books, all worn, most with split bindings and frayed covers. He leaned back against a table of crockery and watched her leaf eagerly through them. For the first time since he’d kidnapped her, she looked relaxed and happy, and he was surprised at how good it made him feel, to give her the books she loved.
“You don’t need to hover,” she said. “I’m fine. Why don’t you go look at . . . at knives or something.”
“I don’t need another knife.”
“Then why don’t you read this?” She threw a book at him. He caught it easily, but he didn’t open it.
“I can’t.” He threw it back. She missed, and the book fell to the floor.
“You can’t—” She frowned. “But you said you read that book of Patrick’s. The one with ‘Lament for Banba.’”
The poem was in a book he’d stolen from her so that Cannel could divine if Patrick was the one who’d called them. “Cannel read us the poem. I remembered it, that’s all.”
“You can’t read?”
“Not this language. But I can read ogham. Of us all, I’m the one with the most learning. Taught by Manannan’s Druids.” He said it with pride, hoping to impress her.
“Manannan,” she said. “The god of the sea.”
“Aye.”
“It’s disconcerting, you know, having legends suddenly come alive.”
“I imagine so,” he said dryly.
“Were they legends even then? Were there stories written about them?”
“Nothing written down,” he told her.
She looked stricken. “But then, what was there to read? How did anyone know the legends? What about poetry?”
“Not many could read but for the Druids, and not even all of them. There was no need of it, not with so many bards traveling about. There was at least one every night, no matter where you were. Everyone gathered around the fire, drinking ale and listening to tales and songs . . . ’twas the best time of day.” He had a vision of her sitting beside him in the hall, nestled in furs, rapt as the bards sang and joked. For a moment, it was as real as a memory. “I wish I could show you. You would have loved it.”
She smiled as if she shared the vision, and the moment was companionable and sweet, until her expression tightened; her eyes hardened. He wondered what had changed, what she was thinking.
“Go look at knives,” she said.
“I think ’tis better if I stay close.”
“I’m perfectly safe and you’re right here if I need you.”
He didn’t move.
She said, “Please. Just give me a minute. Please, Diarmid.”
It was his name that did it. She hadn’t said it before, only Derry, and the way she said it, that acknowledgment of who he really was—everything he was, as if she’d never called him anything else—sank into him. He found himself doing as she asked. What could it hurt? He would be between her and the door; nothing could get to her without going through him.
The knives were cheap and dull and useless. He hefted one or two anyway. T
hen he saw a movement at the window, and he glanced up to see a boy, tall and thin and pale, with brown hair and black, fathomless eyes, pressing his hands against the glass. There was something troubling about him, something not quite right—
Diarmid heard a door behind him creak open and slam closed.
He twisted around. Grace was gone.
The next moment
Diarmid
Diarmid dropped the knife in his hand. It clattered to the floor as he sprinted to the back of the shop.
The owner called out, “Hey, wait a minute!”
Diarmid pushed through racks of clothes that hid a door he hadn’t seen. Stupid! More than stupid. He jerked it open, plunging into a dim back alley, pausing only long enough to see which direction she had gone—and there she was, lifting her skirts as she ran full-out, her dark hair flying behind her.
Even without her skirts and corset, she would have been no match for him, and he reached her in seconds. He grabbed her arm, spinning her to a stop. “By the gods, what do you think—”
They materialized from around a corner. Four of them—three boys and a beautiful girl, their eyes glittering and cunning. It was only then that Diarmid realized there were more behind him—the boy from the shop window, along with three others—and before he knew it, he and Grace were surrounded.
Grace squinted in a way that was familiar. “They’re glowing silver.”
And he knew. The children of the sidhe. Diarmid could barely breathe. There was nothing more dangerous to a veleda. He’d seen Druids drained by the sidhe, left mindless, soulless. He cursed himself for not thinking of it—a veleda and archdruid together in the same city, and Aidan too . . . of course the sidhe would be swarming. He should have locked Grace in that tenement room. He should have known.
A fair boy glided forward. “We mean you no harm, friend Diarmid.”
Grace swayed as if they pulled her. Diarmid pushed her behind him, keeping a tight hold. “Perhaps that’s true.”
“Nor her either.” The boy looked at the beautiful girl with eyes the color of cornflowers. “Do we, Deirdre?”
“Of course not,” she said.
The boy reached out. “We merely want to touch—”
Diarmid slapped his hand away. Grace lurched as if suddenly released from a tether. “You’ll have to go through me first.”
The boy frowned. “We only want to gift her.”
“I know your gifts. She wants nothing from you.”
“Why not let her tell us that?” said Deirdre. “She has her own voice, does she not? She does not belong to you.”
“My task is to protect her.”
“Is it?” The fairy’s eyes widened in obvious disbelief. They all laughed. The sound was like music, enchanting. “Perhaps she would be safer with us.”
Grace said, “You’re fairies, aren’t you? The children of the sidhe?”
“Quiet,” Diarmid said to her. He looked back at the girl. “I’ve never harmed one of you, though I’ve had reason. We’ve been friends in the past. Let us go now.”
Deirdre ignored him. She said to Grace, “Your people call us fairies sometimes. We’re happy to serve you. What would you ask of us?”
“Nothing,” Diarmid said. “Ask nothing, Grace.”
The fairy stepped up to him. She pressed her hand to his chest. The touch shuddered through him. Fairies were beautiful and seductive and quick to offer either pleasure or cruelty, depending on whatever they felt at the moment.
“You are very beautiful, Diarmid,” the fairy said. “But perhaps you would be better as a stag.”
Grace said, “You’ll turn him into nothing of the kind.”
“Grace, don’t,” he said sharply.
Deirdre looked at Grace. “Is that your command?”
“Does it have to be a command for you to do as I ask?”
The fairy cocked her head as if considering. “As a favor—”
“No. No favors. Tell her, Grace,” Diarmid demanded.
Deirdre’s eyes narrowed. “I would hear it from her.” But she lifted her hand from his chest.
Grace wrenched free of his hold and stepped from behind him. “No favors. But I’m looking for someone. I need an archdruid. Can you tell me . . . do you know of one?”
“Aye, we know of one,” Deirdre said.
“Where is he? Where might I find him?”
“In County Kildare. Near the Hill of Allen.”
The fey boy from the shop window laughed. “Oh, ’tis a long time since he’s been gone, my love, remember? When we were there last, only stones remained.”
“Two hundred years ago, I think,” said another.
“No, three!”
“Four!”
They all began to laugh. Diarmid felt Grace’s tension; it matched his own. He whispered to her, “They don’t know anything. Let’s go.”
Grace didn’t budge. She said to Deirdre, “Not in Ireland. There’s one here. I know there is.”
Deirdre reached out. Diarmid moved, ready to bat her away, but she stopped, her fingers only inches from Grace, who was swaying again, staring at Deirdre’s hand.
“Don’t let her touch you,” he said.
“’Tis what I require,” Deirdre said, her voice hard as diamonds. “Whatever I know is hers to discover. For a price.”
The price was Grace’s power, he knew. “Grace,” he warned.
She didn’t look at him. She was staring at that hand, mesmerized.
“Grace,” he said again, louder. When her gaze came to him, he held it. “She can hurt you. Listen to what she’s saying. She’s not saying she knows anything at all. Don’t be fooled.”
Deirdre laughed—clear and rushing as a river over stones. She gestured to her fellows. “Enough of this game!” And they were gone, vanishing into corners and alleyways as if they’d never been. Not even footprints remained in the dust.
Diarmid grabbed Grace’s hand and ran, dragging her after him. The apples he’d bought for the children tumbled from his pockets, rolling away. He couldn’t risk retrieving them. When he finally slowed before the tenement door, he was surprised to see that none of the sidhe had followed.
Grace was gasping, her hand pressed to her stomach as she tried to grab a breath. He let go of her and she wavered; he reached for her. But he’d no sooner touched her than she managed to draw a breath and pushed him away. “It’s only . . . the corset.”
He took her arm again. “Come. ’Tis safer inside.”
She wrenched away. “I want to go home.”
“You can’t. And now you see part of the reason why.”
“I want to find the archdruid.”
“You don’t know what you’re doing. You can’t go around asking the sidhe for favors, Grace. You can’t. Do you know what they would have done if you’d agreed?”
“What?”
“They would have sucked your power dry and left you a madwoman. Or an owl or a doe or something else equally unpleasant. You were lucky I was there.”
“How are those things worse than what my future holds now? At least the fairies will help me—”
“Help you? Weren’t you listening? They’ll drain you to nothing. They’ll leave you mad if they don’t kill you.”
“But they must know where the archdruid is. My grandmother said they’d help me.”
“Your grandmother said what?”
“She told me to find the archdruid, and she said the sidhe would help me.”
“Your grandmother’s mad. You said it yourself. That she suggested you hunt out the sidhe only proves it.”
“Some of what she told me was true. Maybe this is one of those things.”
It was true that if an archdruid was about, the sidhe would know it. But to ask for their help . . . it was foolishness. Beyond risky. Still . . . Diarmid
saw Grace’s determination and he knew she wasn’t listening. She would try to find the sidhe again if he let her.
Use the lovespot and then if you tell her to stay, she’ll stay. Keep her safe. Do as Finn wants.
“I know what the sidhe want,” she said desperately. “I heard them. They sang to me, and it was so . . . so beautiful. I wanted to let them touch me. They frighten me, but I need that archdruid. I don’t want to die, Derry. I’m only seventeen, and I want . . . so much. My only hope is to find him. The sidhe can help. I know they can.”
Diarmid’s throat tightened. “Then at least let me talk to them.”
“How will you be any more safe? She threatened to turn you into a deer.”
“I know how to deal with them. Deirdre’s threat was an idle one. There are those in Ireland who’d be enraged if they harmed me, and I don’t think she’d risk their ire. I’m a favored child.”
“Yes, so I heard,” Grace said, and he wondered what that meant. She sighed. “Let me go, Derry. You told me once that you thought I could do anything. Prove to me you mean it. Tell me it matters to you that I live. Show me you really do care.”
Her words reminded him of another time when she’d told him the things she’d wanted: “Can you change the world?”
He wondered if there was another spell, one that would keep her alive and remove the geis. Was there a future he hadn’t been able to see because he was mired in prophecy and fate? But fate was ever-changing; he’d said it to her only this morning. When a man’s will was free, nothing was set in stone.
Can you change the world?
Could he?
Use the lovespot. Keep her safe.
Let her go.
In the end, he could do neither. Neither make her his against her will nor let her run headlong into danger—not just the sidhe, but the Fomori too. He felt bound, the world demanding his compliance. He wanted to give in to his desire. He wanted her to love him because she wanted to, not because of any spell. He wanted her to share whatever future he had. His and no one else’s.
Because of that, he found himself clinging to the hope she’d offered. What if an archdruid did know a way to save her? If so, showing her the lovespot now would ruin any chance at real love they might have.