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My grandmother.
Suddenly, Sion’s innumerable deceits pale next to Máthair’s.
I must see her. Now. The Veil will help me. The moment the magical passageway enters my thoughts, the street is obscured once again with its filmy presence, wavering around both of us in a massive sphere. “You know where my grandmother is.”
“I do.” For once he doesn’t dance around the truth.
I want to scream and land my fists against his chest until ribs crack. How could he be so cruel, using my grandmother as bait all this time to keep me by his side? He said he’d help me find her, not that he knew damn well where she was.
Nothing, not my future with Sion, danger, or even the fate of the soulfall will stand between Máthair and me now. She owes me truth and answers. “Take me to my grandmother.”
The corners of Sion’s mouth droop, as the light in his green glass eyes dulls. “Once I do, there’s little chance you’ll again stand the sight of me.” He doesn’t try to talk me out of it but extends his hand. When it’s clear I have no intention of taking it, he drops it to his side. “We’ve got to pass through the Veil quickly.” He shoots a wary eye around. “Before the priest knows we’ve gone in.”
My breath catches. So, he is sure it’s Father Colm turned vengeful priest, who erased Pwyll, and tracks us on our quest to end the soulfall. By his own admission, Sion’s been pursued and thwarted before. That’s how he knows what’s after him. The dark spaces holding the volumes of what Sion isn’t telling me could blot out the stars. What truly happened between this priest and him to threaten the very substance of the space between worlds?
I don’t care right now. One pinpoint of light calls to me across time, and every part of me aches to seek it out.
Teacht orm.
Find me.
Clasping my fingers around Máthair’s charm, I pray there are enough heartbeats left in the Celtic day to confront her.
Chapter 21
The Truth
I’m not lingering inside the familiar passageway we usually travel through. Instead, the thin membrane of the Veil conforms to my shape like an opaque body suit. I stretch my arms and take a tentative step. The casing doesn’t limit my movement but obscures all details of the massive shapes towering above and around me. I seem to be in the midst of a conclave of giants that neither speak nor move.
Tentatively, I whisper, not eager to disrupt the quiet. “Sion?”
Outside my elastic prison, a gentle chime of bells repeats a phrase of music again and again. A voice as pure as a new blanket of snow echoes the succession of three notes—once and then silence.
“Sion? Are you here?”
My sheath falls away. The scene before me stops my breath. Gnarled feet of my imagined giants are roots as thick as my body. They twist and flow to form a U-shaped curve around a small meadow of clover that appears to be made of silk instead of leaf.
Rising from this river of roots, trees mimicking the shape of oak, rowan, and yew surround me. Yet here, their trunks are a pastiche of wood in shades closer to dark gold than brown. Bark and branches are infused with chips of glass that sparkle and reflect light from a crystal sun, hanging unnaturally low in the sky above me.
“Sion, where are you?”
Layered strands of glittering bark twist upward, encasing each trunk until they join to weave a canopy just below the gemstone sun. From there, branches split into a thousand lines and cascade to the ground behind the trunks like the flowing hair of a goddess.
I can’t see past the maze of branch works. Any space between shines with a brilliant white flame. Instead of leaves, millions of tiny silver tubes as thin as pencils hang from the trees. They sway in dainty arcs but make no sound.
Frustration causes me to abandon delicacy, and I raise my voice. “Sion!”
The half-circle of trees ends at a lake with bobbing currents of azure and cyan. Clover spills to the water’s edge on a shore no wider than four or five yards. Frosting the surface of the lake is a barely perceptible diamond-like film.
Glittering trees, silver tubes hanging from branches, a lake wearing a coat of precious stone?—
Awe softens my tone. “Is this the Glade of Chimes?”
Sion’s description is as inadequate as a child’s first sketch. I lay hands over my heart, realizing the music a few moments ago must have been a soul singing its song to enter eternity.
“Yes.” Sion sits on a stone nearly buried beneath the roots of a tree. His perch is no ordinary stone. It’s a deep amber color with veins of teal and chocolate chasing over a surface polished to a mirror finish. It reminds me of the precious stones lying on black velvet cloth in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s gift shop in Manhattan.
“Where is my grandmother?”
