by KB Anne
She attempted to pry her eyes open to take in her surroundings, but her eyelids were so heavy, and she was so vanquished. She vaguely wondered if Scott was spelling her, but it did not really concern her. She stopped fighting and gave in to the exhaustion.
Later, she became aware of someone tending to her wounds. Her gaze fell on a black-haired woman. It was the barmaid from the village, the one who had first recognized her. The woman hadn’t been angry at Caer for killing the man who tried to attack her. Instead she had proclaimed her aid to Caer, Scott, and Gallean. Many of the other villagers had aligned with them as well. It was reassuring that the barmaid was still alive. Caer hoped that others had also survived. But Caer, after years of taking care of herself, didn’t understand why the woman was still here, and perhaps more importantly, why was she taking care of her?
“What happened?”
The barmaid smiled at her and wiggled her fingers at Caer’s head. “You brought us home. I am Keturah, and it is an honor to serve you.”
Caer couldn’t fully comprehend what “home” meant, or what Keturah meant when she said it was an honor to serve her. Exhaustion’s long tendrils pulled her back under.
Some time later, she came to again. Fragments of ideas swirled around in her mind. She remembered fighting and bloodshed and the powerful warrior battling next to her, trying to keep her safe. Where was he?
“Scott,” she mumbled, her tongue thick and swollen.
“Right here,” he whispered, stroking her hair.
She stared up at him. He angled his head to stare down at her. His bright green eyes locked with hers. Just as she suspected, it was his lap her head rested on. His powerful muscles that were bulging beneath her. If the circumstances were different, she might be embarrassed, but with so much loss, her own awkwardness was unimportant.
“What happened?” she asked. She barely recognized the words coming out of her mouth. Her voice sounded garbled.
He stroked her hair off her face. “You saved us,” he murmured.
She became aware of a sea of people surrounding them. They were the villagers from the Land of Shadows. The ones who had agreed to fight with them. After spending a lifetime alone, their energy signatures crowded her mind, but there was one she did not feel. She closed her eyes and searched for the wizard’s presence, but she could not find it.
“Gallean?”
Scott’s eyes shone with wetness as he shook his head.
Last she remembered, the mighty wizard was battling his way through the throngs of monsters. Balor cast a killing curse toward Caer by means of his stony glare beneath his patch. Gallean had leapt into the air and, rather than protect himself, he shot a spell at her, a protective shield to deflect Balor’s gaze.
Gallean was the second person who had sacrificed his life to save her from the monster Balor rather than protect his own. She did not take his sacrifice lightly.
“The Queen needs her rest,” Keturah said, draping a blanket over her.
“Where are we?” Caer whispered. Her throat scratched with dryness and raw ache.
Keturah patted her cheek. “We are back in our realm. Our magic is restored. Soon we will take back the castle and our lands.”
A warning rang through Caer’s mind. They were too exposed out in the open. They must hide if they wanted to remain safe from Balor’s army. Caer tried to sit up. “We need to go. He’ll find us.”
Scott gently pulled her back down. “Your people created a shield to protect us. While we remain in it, no one will know of our presence.”
Tears pricked Caer’s eyes. “They’ll find me. It was only in the Land of Shadows that I was truly safe.”
“Hush, child,” another woman said. “Have some faith in your people. You are cloaked in here.”
Her people? The idea felt foreign to her. She’d never had her own people. Her father, of course, had his people. She supposed Mathair Mhór and Nimblefoot would have been considered her people, but they were long dead, killed by Balor’s men. For years she had lived in the shadows without any people. Why then were the villagers labeled hers?
She lifted her chin to get Scott’s attention. He bent down next to her lips. “Who are they really?”
He smiled at her. “They lived in your father’s kingdom, and they consider you their queen.”
She remembered now that Gallean had told her that when she’d asked him why the villagers were so ready to stand by her side.
She was queen of the swans, but Queen of Lake of the Dragon Mouth? It was a lot to take in. Her father’s people had adored their generous king. She supposed it would only make sense that they felt the same loyalty to her, but she was by no means prepared to lead them.
She watched as the villagers bustled within the shield, readying themselves for battle. Caer once again tried to sit up, but Scott wouldn’t let her.
“You don’t understand. It’s not safe for them. What happens when Balor shows up?”
Scott bent over and reached beneath the seat. “We will launch this into his eye,” he said, withdrawing an iron spear.
“Where did you get that?”
“Keturah kept it hidden all these years.”
Keturah stopped her shield spell work and looked over at them. “It was time to get it out and put it to use.”
Caer slipped back into unconsciousness. Tiredness still plagued her, and she didn’t understand why. She had killed many soldiers and hellhounds, but something else ate at her strength.
Grief, a voice whispered to her. She didn’t hear the voice often, only when she slept sometimes, and even then, only as the faintest of whispers. In one word, she understood what she had lost. What the world had lost.
Gallean, the most powerful wizard in all the realms, had given his life to save her. He had lived for fifteen hundred years. Once known as Niall Gallean, the boy who sacrificed his life to Carman, an evil witch, and Clayone, the Original Werewolf. When Ris, the girl he gave his life to protect, returned from her delivery to Mathair Mhór, she bound her life-force to Niall Gallean’s, thus ensuring his life for the remainder of hers.
Gallean had told Caer and Scott the rest of his story after he saw Caer reading The Druid Sisters of the Gallicenial. He had given up the name Niall and used only Gallean instead. Ris and Niall’s magic had been powerful enough to bind themselves to each other, but after he trained her, that power threatened to overwhelm all the world if they remained together. Tragic as it was, they were forced to live separately. Gallean created the Land of Shadows, an island that was part of the Earthly Realm but hidden, protected by his powerful, impenetrable shield.
When Caer ripped open a portal in his keep, it should have been the first indication that Gallean’s power was dissipating. That the Land of Shadows, or at least the mist, another safeguard of his, would disappear, allowing Balor to find Caer. She had never considered that Gallean would sacrifice his own life to save hers. But that was exactly what he had done. He’d allowed Balor to turn him to stone as he cast one last protective shield over Caer, Scott, and the remainder of her people.
And now, turned to stone and shattered into pieces, there was no way to reverse the magic and bring Gallean back to life. Rather than let the grief consume her, she grabbed hold of her thirst for vengeance instead. Balor would be hers. She gripped the iron spear as she slept. With it, she would ensure that Balor would not turn another person to stone, and she could live in a world without the monster.
She tried to read Balor’s mind, or at least consider his strategy. Would he return quickly to the Faerie Realm at Lake of the Dragon Mouth to retrieve her, or would he continue to pillage and molest the uncorrupted, pristine lands of Gallean’s Land of Shadows? Perhaps even take up residence in Gallean’s keep. The very thought sickened her.
She opened her eyes to Scott’s. He hadn’t left her side since their arrival. She still didn’t like the way her body reacted to the sight of him. Even his smell was alluring to her—a combination of sunshine and mint—but she pushed
any betraying attraction away and focused on her anger. Her true singular focus.
“Do you think he will return here?”
“Who?” Scott asked, his eyebrows pinching together.
“Balor. Do you think Balor will return to the Faerie Realm?”
He breathed in and out. She couldn’t tell if he was thinking about her question or if he was upset that she hadn’t said thank you or asked how he was. But it didn’t matter. Not in the grand scheme of things. She could clearly see that he was alive and unscathed without asking him about his emotional status. She needed an answer on her nemesis’s whereabouts. That was the only thing that mattered.
“I don’t know, but with the villagers returned to their rightful realm and their magic restored, maybe Balor won’t risk it. He’s lost the element of surprise he had the last time he took the kingdom.”
Caer felt a mixture of relief and despair. It was her destiny to destroy Balor.
Scott lifted his hand to stroke her hair, thought better of it, and returned it to the bench. “According to Gallean’s maps, the Land of Shadows is only a short trip to the mainland by boat. Balor and his men could destroy an entire population ill-prepared for him. The humans know nothing of Druids and magic or reincarnated gods, Fae, and werewolves. A few might be familiar with the myths and legends of the Fomorians, but they don’t realize they are based on actual events in their history. They would be as helpless as your people were in the Land of Shadows when their magic was quelled and Balor attacked.”
If what Scott said was true, the Land of Shadows would provide Balor and his armies the means to ferry over to the mainland of the Earthly Realm and restore Ireland to Fomorian rule. Scott spoke of hundreds, nay thousands of lives, more than she could even fathom, who would all perish if Balor’s ships reached the shores of the mainland.
She stood up. “We have to be ready. We have to prepare for battle whether it’s here or the Earthly Realm.”
Keturah smiled at her. She unfolded sturdy wings from her back and beat them powerfully, lifting herself from the ground. “We will fight for you, Queen Caer. We are ready.”
The ground shook beneath her feet. “Good, because it appears we are no longer alone.”
17
Cleanup in Aisle Two
The warmth of Alaric’s hand grounds me to the space. Together we’d visit the Shadow Realm and figure out what the feck was going on there.
Falling into the abyss of a deep meditative state is much less jarring than portal jumping. Thank the gods for that because I wouldn’t want Alaric and my reunion to be marred by me puking on his shoes. I typically like to reserve that level of intimacy for at least the second or third date.
“Gigi, we’re here,” he whispers next to me.
I sigh. Part of me wants to stay in this dreamlike state with Alaric forever. No one is trying to separate us here, no one is trying to kill one or both of us, and we’re actually together without anyone else. But the other part, dare I call it the more obnoxious aspect of my personality, is yelling at me to get my lazy ass up and find out what in the hell happened to the Shadow Realm and, more precisely, my brother.
Alaric pulls me to a standing position.
“You’re much more focused in this seomra de rúin than I am,” I say.
He smiles, his wolf eyes flashing. Since our reunion, the wolf side of his nature comes out a lot more frequently. I still don’t know if it’s something that Alaric, Maddie, and the rest of the wolves could always do and they just didn’t realize it, or if it has something to do with Brigit and her spell—the one I almost lifted. Yeah, it might have to do with that.
“It’s not that I’m better than you in these new surroundings. It’s that I don’t want to lose any more time apart. I’ve been asleep. No, not asleep—living in a nightmare for far too long, and I don’t want to miss any more time with you.”
A weepy, sappier female would probably oooh and awww at Alaric’s romantic statement, but I’m far too critical and more than a little callous. It’s going to take a lot more than love proclamations to make this reincarnated goddess gush.
Okay, I might have purred, but I don’t consider that sappy.
The first indication that all was not well in the Shadow Realm came with the silence.
“I wonder where Gallean is?”
“Who is he exactly?”
“Gallean. The greatest wizard of all time. This is his keep, and he guards against all intruders.”
“We’re in a dream state. Besides, I thought we were on the same side.”
“Oh, he knows I’m on his side, but I figured his bear might want to challenge my wolf.”
“He has a bear?”
“No,” I laugh, pulling him over to the fire pit. “He’s a shapeshifter. He adopted the bear to demonstrate his cranky side—though personally I tend to like animals better than people as a rule.”
He shakes his head.
“Gallean?” I call out. My voice echoes through the keep. When no one comes or answers, I get a very bad feeling.
“Where is everyone?” I whisper out of the side of my mouth to Alaric—though I don’t know why I’m whispering. No one appears to be here anyway. “Scott? Caer? Where are you? Come out, come out, wherever you are.”
Alaric lifts his nose in the air and inhales. “No one’s here.”
No one?
He pulls me toward the tunnel. “I’ve got a faint trail. Let’s follow it.”
Nerves freeze me in place. “I don’t know if we can leave the keep. What if we get caught in that limbo space Granda was talking about?”
He sidles up next to me. “We’d finally have some much-needed alone time.”
Now, I’m overheated. “You do make a valid point.”
The ground rumbles and the loud clash of swords fills the air.
“Hurry,” he says, pulling me along like a chew toy.
I swallow the bile creeping up my throat. “What’s happening here?” The outside edges of Gallean’s keep waver as we approach. “I don’t think we can go much farther. Everything looks like it’s becoming unhinged.”
He yanks me onto his back “Maybe we can outrun it.”
I tighten my legs around his waist. “I don’t think it works that way.”
But the wavering edges of the seomra de rúin seem to pull and stretch as we move. He races toward the village, and there’s one thing I need to get off my chest.
“Hey,” I whisper in his ear, “don’t get used to carrying me around all the time.”
He growls, and for a moment, I think it’s because I’ve turned him on.
“I smell blood. Hold on.” He lunges forward, and I clutch my arms around his neck, careful not to strangle him.
We quickly cross the meadow where Scott and I first landed upon our unexpected arrival in the Shadow Realm. We weren’t supposed to arrive until the Shadow Moon, but whatever I did when I reached up to touch Alaric’s image (okay, it was his ass) on the cave wall created a portal that took us to the border lands surrounding Gallean’s keep. I tried a few times to recapture the intense emotion I was feeling to create a return portal, but I was unable to. Gallean had told me that no one could create portals in his keep, but then Caer sliced one open right in his freaking study. Guess the “all-powerful” wizard didn’t know everything.
Alaric puts more and more distance between us and Gallean’s keep. There should be at least three boundary shields to protect the keep, but as of yet, I haven’t felt any of them. I haven’t seen a hint of the energy of them either. It’s like they’re gone. At one time the shields were strong enough to keep me inside of them. A lump forms in my throat. Could it mean that Gallean is dead, or is his power simply waning?
Neither answer promises positive results. As much as I enjoyed the old wizard’s company, I fear for the world even more. Gallean showed us the ancient maps and the way the Shadow Realm, the Land of Shadows, was beginning to appear on them. I pray that the fading of Gallean’s magic isn’t an indicat
ion of the thinning of the veils between the worlds, including the prisons and sanctuaries of our world.
Granda had told us about the Fomorians and Balor. What if they got out? Balor could turn people to stone with one deadly gaze. Caer was meant to kill him. What if she fails? Who else could be capable of killing him?
The ground rumbles as the boundaries of the seomra de rúin fade in and out.
“Alaric, we’re going to get stuck in here.”
“Just a little bit farther. The scent of blood fills the air. Something terrible is happening.”
“There, in the distance,” I point over his shoulder. A lone female wielding a giant sword flies impossibly through the air and lands on a cliff overlooking the sea.
“Is that Caer?” I shout, squinting.
His pace falters. “Who’s Caer?”
I tap on his back to pick up the pace. “I’ll catch you up later, but she’s on our side.”
Along the shore, legions of monsters are fighting what look like humans. Helpless humans. My eyes prick with tears at the potential loss of all their lives. The fight is hardly fair.
Giant black dogs—hellhounds—leap at the cliff where Caer stands, trying to snap at her feet. She ignores them, her focus lasered on something else.
I follow her gaze.
“Balor,” I whisper, half in awe, half in terror.
Scott and I had discussed the Fomorian in detail. Scott believed he’d be the size of the giants in Harry Potter. I scoffed at him, assuming Balor’s size, like most things, was grossly exaggerated. A case of “mine is bigger than yours.” We were both so very wrong. He towers over his legions of monsters as if they were tiny plastic animals he could demolish with one step. A giant leather patch covers one of his eyes.
“How can we ever defeat this monstrosity?”
A flurry of activity along the shoreline draws my attention away from Balor. A warrior moves through the beasts, felling dozens at a time. Blood spurts from headless bodies before they collapse into the water. He moves so blindingly fast it’s almost impossible to track his movements except for the trail of dead bodies he’s left behind.