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Máthair presses her lips into a tight line.
“Why did Finnbheara do this for you and your son?”
Sion curves fingers around my arm, tightening his grip as if I’m ready to fly off the rock ledge, and then meets his mother’s eyes. “He loved her.”
I yank free of his hold. Fury sparks in me, flames reviving a banked fire. “Finnbheara is your father! You liar. If he’s a Faerie, so are you.” Given all the weird he chose to tell me, why did Sion never admit to his Fae heritage? How would that truth change anything? His essence comes from whatever tree or animal is a chronic liar.
“He’s not.” Tiny cracks appear in the diamond shield from the force of Máthair’s voice. They heal quickly. “Sionnach’s father is not Finnbheara. The king loved me, and for a time, I bided with him in his lands. I was young, my head filled with visions of sapphire palaces and skies shining silver white, but I woke from the dream. I couldn’t stay with him. I longed for a life rooted in the earth, and love that didn’t shift with the changing winds.”
The greenhouse. All the wondrous things growing under Máthair’s touch were her tethers to a real life as dear to her as any magical kingdom. I search Sion’s eyes, her dearest creation. I believe my grandmother loves me, but the feeling is tainted. It was born of her desperation to cultivate me into someone to save her real son.
These people—my grandmother and the man I began to let into my heart—by their own words admit I’m no more than a device. Finnbheara, the king of deception and mischief, fabricated me as a gift for the human woman he loved to allow the soul of her son to pass into eternity.
“Where does my future fit into this Faerie puzzle?” They’re defining me as a non-entity, a token to be moved from space to space in a game between worlds above and below the earth. My life is a sham. I’m nothing more than a creature who belongs in a folktale—Eala bán, the white swan sent to chase away shadows and curses.
Sion’s voice is laced with pain. “My ma accepted banishment here in exchange for Finnbheara giving her son a gift, a soulmate, anamchara, to aid my final chance to end the soulfall. You.”
I rub both hands down my face. “Why is it your final chance?”
“I was a young man when my wound was killing me.” His hand strays to the injury that lamed him. “I sent word to my folks knowing I’d never see them again. When Ma got my letter, she feared for my soul and pleaded to Finnbheara to save me. Even a king of Tír Na nÓg has a limit to his powers.” He lets out a long breath. “The bargain was struck to make me a Veil guide with two hundred tries to end the soulfall in my care so I could earn my place in the light. Ma thought it would be more than enough time for me to succeed.” His eyes drift to Máthair. “When this time came for my one final go after much failure, my mother begged the king to aid me. For the love Finnbheara bore my mother, he allowed you to be by my side, giving me a true chance to succeed.”
“You haven’t tried to end the soulfall since I was born?”
He shakes his head. “I waited for you to be ready.”
“If we succeed, then what?” My head swims with the crossover of reality and fantasy— reasons and subterfuge. The purpose of everything I’ve heard here benefits Sion, not me. I feel more alone than the day Máthair died. Their words confirm my purpose for coming to Ireland, hell, for even being born, was to become Sion’s anamchara. “Do I blip out of existence once you save the soulfall and tootle down the great cosmic highway to your destiny?”
I scoot away from this manifestation of my grandmother. One truth rises above the rest as crystal clear as the diamond coverlet on the lake.
Betrayal.
Máthair never loved Ella or Eala or whoever I am for me. She nurtured me as a tool to help her son.
I glare at Sion. “Being a Veil guide is your perk from Finnbheara not mine.”
Sion never valued me enough to share the real truth until I threatened to skip out. I’m trapped in a crumbling castle built upon a foundation of lie after lie after lie.
His cry and the smack of his palm against stone reverberate through the glade. “A perk!”
“Yes, a perk. You’re not one of those poor people stuck in a soulfall, waiting for someone else to save them.”
“Poor people? Have you not learned a thing? They’re where they are for absent virtue, and I’m charged with fixing what they broke.”
“Why did Máthair fear for your soul and strike a deal with Finnbheara in the first place?”
Sion’s face shifts between anger and despair. “I’ve much to answer for.”
I back away from the rock. My first impulse is to demand an explanation, but I shake my head to clear it. It doesn’t matter. In what world, Faerie or real, does any of this motivate me to continue?
I put more distance between us. Is this a threat? Neither Máthair nor he stated it as such, but Faeries and the people who deal with them aren’t known for being candid.
The fragrance of sweet clover imbues me with a sense of peace I absolutely do not trust to be genuine. Instead of joy at finding my grandmother, emptiness fills me, body and mind. The scant echoes of home and belonging rising in the glade are counterfeit.
“I will not be the disposable element in your cozy Loho family picture.” The mushy reunion with Máthair I wrote in my head turns into a fractured whim. The grandmother I loved died in New York City. There was never anything to find here in Ireland but pain and treachery.
The stabbing in my chest is a truth I believe. My hundred thousand heartbeats are nearly spent. I’ve done my best to help Sion with the souls, but I need to do whatever is in my power to keep existing. The only way to achieve that is to run as far and as fast from this place and these people as possible.
I whirl to face my grandmother and the traitor on the rock. “I’m sorry for your curses and banishments, but I won’t be part of your story anymore. Stay out of my life, both of you.” I curl my hands into fists and press them to my lips. Knuckles dig into my jaw.
