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Using the break in his grip, I stumble backward. “Lost your wits! The man I thought I knew disappeared. Did you even register I got stabbed in the neck from your tree punch? For a moment it looked like your fist was headed for me?”
He reaches for me. “No…I’d never?—”
“I can’t…keep—I’m done with travelling and that freak in the Veil. I want to be safe again.” Tears blur my vision. I wipe and wipe, but the world doesn’t become any clearer. Sadness makes my soul ache, but I can’t stay with Sionnach. Not after the frightful specter he became in the woods and the risks he refuses to acknowledge. How can I trust that version of him won’t turn on me next time? My heart aches. Leaving him means I forfeit any chance of seeing Máthair again. Wherever teacht orm was supposed to lead me will forever be a mystery.
“Anamchara—”
I point a finger at him. “Never call me that again.” I shake my fists. “You’re no better off than me. No matter what you say, the Veil’s ruined.” I’m shaking so hard that I nearly bite my tongue. “I can’t save anyone. You’ve made a terrible mistake. Your Faerie king didn’t send me. I’m no one.”
He lunges, attempting to throw his arms around me.
I flatten my palms against the front of his jacket and push him away. “Go. Leave me alone.”
He raises both hands. “I can’t. It’s you who saved them, not me. You’re the one with pure sight.”
“Stop trying to manipulate me.” I stab a finger into the dark. “Go finish the last two souls on your own. I want no part of whatever that literally bleeding tree is or what you became in the woods.” Backing away slowly, praying he doesn’t follow, I whisper. “I can’t trust you anymore. You and all your omissions and dark secrets terrify me.” My escape is cut short when the sensation of falling shoves against my chest. I drop to my knees, lowering my head to the ground while the world spins and spins.
The crash of Sion’s fists against the roof of the rental car snaps me out of the spiral.
“I keep things from you to protect you. I swore I’d tell you everything when we finished.” He redirects the blows to his temples. “If there were any chance to do this on my own, I’d leave you be.”
Bending, he digs fingers into my upper arms and lifts me to my feet before I can get away. “You’re hurting me.”
He doesn’t relax his grip. “Harriett, the wee girl at Charleville, it never occurred to me to connect with her ghost in the present. I’ve been travelling back to the day of her death and done nothing to pull her from the soulfall. And Alaina Kennedy, my own fear kept me from the very night holding the answers I needed to save her. Even there, I thought seeing the corpse of her boy would bring her the mercy of knowing his fate, but you knew it had to be a link between mother and son to send her to the light.” Sionnach’s long, straight nose nearly touches mine. “I’ve shaken that piece of mirror at the Earl of Rosse more times than a rooster calls the sun, and never managed to speak words to free him until you were next to me.”
His hands switch to the sides of my face, thumbs pressing into the skin beneath my jaw. I don’t want him to touch me, but I’m afraid resisting might reignite the frenzy I witnessed in the woods. The hum of energy beneath the pads of his fingers sends shocks through me. Sionnach is a man poised on the brink of irreversible desperation, capable of ruthlessness to get what he needs. Where’s my guarantee that I won’t be hurt or worse in this near madness?
His breath reeks of whiskey, and I see a pair of thin brown wood splinters beneath the corner of his lip. He chewed one of his spiked twigs while he left Pwyll’s coffin to come after me.
Sionnach’s forehead touches mine. “Stars could shift in the heavens for a thousand years, and I’d never seek Strongbow at the edge of Fern’s graveyard.”
To my relief, these words expend the last of his fervor, and he breaks contact. “It’s a terrible task to lay at your feet.” He rakes fingers through his hair. “Yes, there is danger. The Veil is breached. We don’t know what’s running loose, but I’m still begging you to stay with me ‘til the end.”
This hard-won admission of danger from him tips my decision closer to leaving despite the damn pull I feel toward him that’s impossible to erase. “I can’t.” I step away from him. “I’m not the person you think I’m supposed to be.”
Away from his touch, the night’s bitter cold brushes my skin. Our beautiful evening at the Leviathan telescope fades. Crystals of ice form around memories of kisses and lovemaking. I can’t believe it was only persuasion or insurance I’d stay by his side to finish his quest. I truly thought our passion was shared. Am I a fool? His attention is a potent strategy. Draw the vulnerable woman close. Kiss me as if he were the one seeking love.
I give my head one strong shake to rid myself of the thought. I know in my soul neither of us gave false kisses under that glorious moon.
A roar rises from the crowd, and I half-expect a mob of peasants waving pitchforks to march down the road singing of their victory in ridding the world of the Elemental. A sense of the horrible Veil shadow passes through me, and I focus on the pale oval of Sion’s face.
I’m finished, but I won’t withhold information from him the way he chronically does from me. I can’t bear the thought of harm coming to him. “It’s here—the thing that touched you from inside the Veil. You’ve got to leave too.”
The way he whips his head frantically, taking in the trees, the road, the sky, stokes my fear of being chased. “Where did you see him?”
“I saw the shadows of two men against the front of the castle. One died in the other’s arms and then vanished. The one left tried to touch me.”
To my horror, the undulating walls of the Veil boil up around us. I leap farther away from Sion. “I won’t travel. And you shouldn’t enter your time-warp highway this close to the vision I just saw.” As swiftly as they appeared, the walls dissipate.
Sion reaches out a hand as if to catch the fading shimmer. Incredulity infuses his whisper. He stares at me. “You sent it away.”
The sensation of a trillion bubbles popping inside me makes the ground feel as if it’s rising and falling. Sion grabs my arm to steady me. He’s the only life raft in an angry sea.
He holds fast, desperation in his voice. “Eala, you are the person I know you to be.”
I yank my arm free. “And who is that?”
He raises his palms. “The reins of my runaway intentions.”
