by Megan Chance
“And you’ve used your experience with them so well?” Her eyes were blazing now. “All your prettiness and your . . . your . . . charm haven’t bought you trust among them.”
He stepped back, bewildered by her scorn. “Grace—”
“They do trust me.” Her gaze was steady and unrelenting. “They believe in me. I’ve made a good bargain, whatever you think. At least with Battle Annie, there’s the chance of . . .”
“Chance of what?”
“Something I can do with myself if I survive this.” She looked into the bright fog.
“I thought you already knew what you wanted to do with yourself. Save Ireland with Patrick Devlin—wasn’t that it?”
Her hands tightened on the rail. “I don’t know. Perhaps.”
Diarmid’s hope soared. It means nothing, he told himself. “Is that right? What then?”
“I suppose that depends.”
“On what?”
The fog parted magically. Before them was Governors Island, trees and short clay cliffs sloping steeply to the shore; what looked like an abandoned building—a boathouse or a storehouse—cradled in the trees. Someone shouted from the bow; the sails went slack, the ship slowed.
Grace said, “On whether I’m still alive.”
The hope he’d felt withered. Once again, he wondered if she knew about the geis and his role in her sacrifice. He didn’t know what to say except the truth he hoped for: “We’ll find the archdruid, Grace.”
She said nothing.
The island was small, but they were on the side opposite the armory of Castle Williams. Fort Jay and its barracks and parade grounds at the top of the island’s slope were hidden from view, shielded from the beach by a thin band of woods. Battle Annie’s crew had taken them to the only place on the island where it might be possible to elude discovery. He heard the plunge of the dinghy as it went over the side.
Battle Annie appeared behind them. “The boat’s ready. You’ll be safe enough if you keep in the trees.”
“Can you get word to Finn about where we are?” Diarmid asked.
She glanced at Grace as if asking permission, which irritated him. His irritation grew when Grace nodded, giving it.
“Aye,” Battle Annie said. Then, to Grace, “If you’ve need of me, you have only to call.”
“Call? And how am I to do that? Just shout across the harbor?”
Battle Annie’s smile made Diarmid shudder. “Just listen.”
Grace’s slight smile in return told Diarmid it was a joke between the two of them, and he didn’t like that either. He would be glad to be rid of the river pirate queen. Grace went down the ladder to the rowboat first, holding the leather bag of food and supplies that Battle Annie’s courtier had given her. Diarmid followed. There were only three of them—Diarmid and Grace and a sidhe sailor, but still the rowboat rocked beneath Diarmid’s weight as he boarded, and he sat uneasily, gripping the sides. The water was very close. Fog blanketed them, muffling and echoing the splash of the oars.
“You see?” Grace told him. “I’m off the ship. The food wasn’t glamoured.”
“But not off the boat,” he pointed out. “If you can set foot on land, I’ll believe you.”
The dinghy tipped and jerked in the waves. Diarmid’s stomach lurched. When they got close to shore, he wanted to jump out immediately, but he couldn’t risk that. This could all be a trick. He’d be standing on the shore watching the sailor row her back to the ship. He watched as the sidhe boy helped her over the side, her boots splashing in the shallow tide, the hem of her gown dragging. Diarmid didn’t move until both her feet were on solid ground.
“You see,” she said.
He stepped into ankle-deep water, and was relieved as he watched the boy row away.
Grace sat on a large rock at the base of the bare clay scarp and held out an apple. When he took it, she teased, “Be careful now . . . perhaps it’s glamoured still.”
He rolled his eyes and bit into the fruit. He was famished; it was all he could do not to swallow it whole.
She said, “Battle Annie told me there was something I needed here. Something to do with the archdruid.”
“Did she say anything more? Like what to look for? Or where?”
“No. Where would it be, do you think? Where the soldiers are? I don’t suppose they have fortune-tellers at Fort Jay.”
Diarmid laughed. “No. And trust me, we don’t want to go anywhere near those soldiers.”
“I suppose not.” She glanced over her shoulder at the treed slope. “We’ll have to sleep in the woods, I guess.”
He finished the apple, so hungry he ate the core. “Better than a tenement closet. But I’m thinking of that storehouse. It looks like no one’s been there in a while.”
She reached into the bag and drew out his daggers, which she handed to him, along with a roll. “Here. You might need these.”
He shoved the daggers back into his belt and his boot and ate the roll in two bites. “Stay here. I’ll make certain no one’s inside.”
She looked alarmed.
“Don’t worry. I won’t leave you alone for long. I don’t want to come back to see you’ve changed your mind and gone to the city.”
“How would I do that?”
“I’m no match for sidhe magic.”
“I’m not going anywhere. I want to stay with you.”
Move, he told himself. She means nothing by it, and you’re resisting her, remember? He started off down the beach. He felt that every moment he was away from her would change her more, and he had a hard enough time already keeping the two Graces straight in his head—the one who kissed him as if she could not get enough of him and the one who wanted him to leave her alone.
He had to climb through brambles and trees to get to the storehouse, which was as abandoned as it had looked from the shore. There was a door on the water side, blocked by brambles; he tugged them out of the way, their tiny thorns and prickles scratching and biting at his bare hands. Finally, he managed to open the door wide enough to wedge himself inside. It was dim and empty; there were old crates lying about, some rusty chains, and a few bales of dusty straw smelling of must and mildew. Resting against the far wall were two sets of broken oars. Open slats just below the roof let in light and air. Dust and sand covered the floor, undisturbed. He wondered if the army even remembered this place was here.
He hurried back to her. She sat against the big rock, her face raised to the sun, her eyes closed. For a moment he just looked at her, his longing almost suffocating him before he forced himself to say, “It’s empty. I think ’tis safe enough.”
She opened her eyes. He saw again that disconcerting resolve. What had Battle Annie said to her? What had happened in that room?
“I’d feel better to be out of the open. Come on.” He held out his hand to help her up. She grabbed it, the rocks shifting beneath her feet, slipping and rolling, and she fell into his chest. His breath simply left him.
Was she breathless, too, or was he just imagining it? She looked up at him, and he saw fear in her eyes before she pulled away. Fear. Why fear? He’d done nothing to make her fear him. Unless she knew about the geis . . .
He led her to the storehouse. Inside, she walked about the room, thoughtful again, withdrawn. He sat against the wall, pulling the ogham stick from his pocket, reading the runes, trying to make sense of it.
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.
Druids and their wretched cleverness! He couldn’t figure it out. He would have dismissed it as nothing if not for Grace’s grandmother, because Grace was right—it was too coincidental. The same words, the archdruid—this had to mean something, but without a key, it was meaningless. And where to fin
d a key? Where even to look? It would be easier just to follow the sidhe until they found the archdruid.
Easier, but more dangerous. He thought of how Grace had leaned into their touch at Battle Annie’s, that expression of pleasure and desire, just as when he kissed her—
“What are you doing?”
He started. She stood before him.
“Trying to decipher it,” he said.
“I asked Battle Annie if she knew anything about a key.”
“She didn’t.”
“How do you know?”
“The fairies drink Druid power, but they don’t like Druid magic. They prefer to be the cleverest in the room.”
“Something they have in common with the Fianna,” she said, but she smiled to soften it. “Is that something you learned from the twelve books of poetry?”
He shook his head. “That I learned from a fairy I knew.”
“The one who changed from an ugly hag into a beautiful girl? Who built you the house that you lived in together—until you made her angry by reminding her too many times that she’d been ugly?”
He was surprised once again by the stories people told. That tale—where he’d been stupid and wrong—would not cast him in a very good light. Then again, he would have thought that about Grainne, too, and people had built a romance from it.
Grace sat beside him. “I know your whole life, I think. It must seem unfair to you, since you don’t know the same things about me. But I guess it evens everything out.”
“Evens everything how?”
“You’ll always have an advantage, won’t you? You’re so . . . the way you look, and you . . . you have the ball seirce. I need some defense against you.”
That terrible hope again—it was impossible to pretend it wasn’t there. “Why do you need a defense, Grace?” he whispered. “What’s wrong with giving in? You know how I—”
“Sssh. You promised.”
He let out his breath in frustration. “You’re turning me into a madman. You kiss me one moment and push me away the next. How can I convince you that I mean what I say? What do you want from me?”
She twisted her fingers together. “When I was with Battle Annie, she said some things . . .”
“What things?”
“That I needed to open my eyes. That I had been blind.” She paused. “I’m the veleda.”
Her words confused him. “Aye.”
“No, I mean, I know I am. These last days, I’ve felt a power in me and . . . it’s all true. The prophecy. The choice. All of it.”
“We’ll find the archdruid, Grace. We’ll—”
“And I know you’re the one who has to kill me.”
He felt as if she’d struck him.
She said quietly, “Patrick told me about the geis. Though you haven’t—you’ve been keeping it from me. But it’s true, isn’t it?”
He had trouble finding his voice. “Aye.”
“And you mean to do it. You’ll do it because you belong to the Fianna. Because to belong to them is all you ever wanted. More than love, you said.”
“Grace—I want to save your life as much as you do. If there’s a spell that says you don’t have to die, or a way I don’t have to kill you . . .” Her expression made the words die on his tongue. “What is it? Why are you looking at me that way?”
“I wish I could tell whether you’re lying the same way I knew that food from Battle Annie wasn’t glamoured, but I . . . I can’t. When you kiss me I believe you, but I know that’s only a lie and—”
“It’s not a lie.”
“Of course you would say that. But I’ve only ever kissed one other boy, just Patrick, and . . . and I don’t know enough to tell—” Her cheeks pinked with embarrassment. “Oh, I’m making a muddle of this. I don’t even know what I’m saying. It’s just that in my dreams, Aidan keeps telling me I need you, and I . . . I can’t run away from you, though I know I should. The truth is . . . you frighten me. More than anything I’ve ever known.”
It was not what he’d hoped for, but he understood, because she frightened him too. Because he should run from her as well, and he couldn’t. He felt fate’s hand again, that sense of needing her beyond the geis or the prophecy or anything else. Worlds hung in the balance—his own and hers and that of the Irish, and it was both bigger than anything he’d ever known and as small as the two of them.
“I know. I feel it too.” He brought his hand up to touch her, and then he remembered his vow and let it fall again. He saw her swallow. He waited for her to tell him it was all right, to say, Touch me. Kiss me.
Then she looked away, and he knew she meant to stick to the deal they’d made, and it felt so . . . wrong. Disastrously wrong. Tragically wrong. As if each moment that they didn’t touch put everything farther out of reach.
She leaned her head back against the wall, staring up at the open slats above, the sunlight slanting through. “Tell me how it feels to die.”
It was so far from what he was thinking that it was as if she were speaking a foreign language. “Grace, it’s not going to come to that. It can’t—”
“Did it hurt?”
“Grace—”
“Tell me the truth,” she said. “I want to hear a truth I can believe. Please.”
He closed his eyes, unable to bear her implied admission—I know I have to die—or his own fear. He forced himself to be as honest as she wanted him to be. “Aye, it hurt. At least at the beginning. But I’d been gored by a boar. More than once. There are less painful ways to die.”
“You said ‘at least at the beginning.’”
He kept his eyes closed. He and Grainne had been visiting her father. It was the first time they’d been there since their elopement. There was a feast planned, a celebration with family and friends—including the Fianna . . . and Finn. Diarmid had been anxious and nervous; he’d slept restlessly. He woke near dawn to the howling of his dogs. Grainne murmured, “’Tis nothing, my love. Go back to sleep.” He’d tried to, but the noise only grew louder with the sunrise. Finally, he got up to look. “Take your great sword and your red spear,” she’d said, but it seemed too much. The dogs had probably only cornered a fox. Why would he need the great spear and sword for that? So he’d taken the smaller ones instead, and he’d been halfway out the door when Finn waylaid him in the hall.
He hadn’t seen Finn since Aengus Og had brokered the uneasy peace between them. And so when Finn told him the dogs had a boar, and it was best that Diarmid not go after it—“’Tis the boar prophesied to kill you, my friend. Why else did Aengus put a geis on you never to hunt boar?”—Diarmid was annoyed. Finn telling him what to do once again, and besides, he’d known nothing of any geis about boar. How would Finn know of a prophecy that Aengus hadn’t told his own foster son? Diarmid suspected that Finn had made it up just to taunt him, and so he ignored the warning. He asked for the use of Finn’s best dog, which Finn refused. Diarmid had been angry, and determined not to show any weakness when he faced the Boar of Ben Bulben—that was actually his own half brother shape-changed and fierce with hatred and jealousy. Diarmid’s vanity had blinded him to the truth. Because of pride, he’d lain dying on that high, grassy plain, bleeding through many wounds.
He didn’t open his eyes as he told Grace, “I remember being thirsty. I was thirsty more than anything else.”
“And Finn brought you water,” she said. “It would have saved you, but he hesitated.”
“He was still angry with me. But I didn’t trust him either.”
“Three times he let the water run through his fingers, until the others begged him to save you.”
“Ossian and Oscar.” He saw Oscar leaning over him, tears in his green eyes, the morning sun haloing his hair.
“By the time Finn finally brought you the water, it was too late.”
“’Twas like falling into a dream
.” It was as though a veil had covered the world. “Like being . . . released. I suppose that’s the best way to put it.”
“And the pain?”
“’Twas gone. I never felt as good as that. As if nothing could weigh on me or trouble me again.”
“You were happy?” she asked.
“Not happy. Not sad either. Just existing, and everything moving around me. The past and the present and whatever was meant to be. I—” He opened his eyes as a sudden memory seared him, something he’d forgotten. “I saw you.”
“You saw me?”
“Aye.” When he’d seen her then, he’d thought her only a comforting spirit sent to welcome him to the Otherworld, where layers of time wrapped around him, life as it had been and as it was and as it would be, all at once.
Amazed, he said, “I’ve always felt as if I already knew you, but—aye, you were there. Or at least, the vision of you.”
“What did I do? What did I say?”
“It was brief. I don’t even think I saw your face. It was more your . . . your presence. You were waiting in a place I wanted to be.”
She looked skeptical—and hopeful too. “You’re not just making this up?”
“I swear to you I’m not.” Diarmid laughed disbelievingly. “I didn’t remember it until this moment. When I was dying, I didn’t know who you were. Only that I was supposed to go toward you.”
“Did you? Where was I?”
“Waiting. It’s hard to explain.”
“Was there an Otherworld, the way the legends say? Is that where I was?”
Diarmid tried to remember. That bright silver veil; Grace waiting, something he knew he was meant to go toward. And then . . . a great yank, and the next thing he knew he was in his old body, in a room in his foster father’s house, and Aengus was talking to him. Talking and talking, and Diarmid wanting so badly to return to the world where she waited, though he couldn’t remember where that was.
“If there is an Otherworld, I never got there. Aengus brought my body back, and he wouldn’t let my spirit go. He was grieving. He missed me too much. He kept me . . . tethered. Now and then, he’d pull me into my body so I could talk to him. And then Finn died, and Aengus sent me with the others to fall into the undying sleep.” He leaned his head back, closing his eyes once more as memory washed over him. “I never saw or felt you again. Not until we woke here, and I found you swooning in Patrick’s yard.”