Lachlan’s eyes widen. “Key!” He lunges towards me and envelops me in his arms. “Did ye just fly?”
But the silence is deafening.
He spins around, his sword held at the ready beside us, but no one moves to attack. There must be thousands of enemy soldiers mixed in with the Tuadanaan warriors, yet they stand frozen, motionless.
All eyes are turned beside him—to me.
Slowly, so slowly, as if time crawls. They all drop to one knee.
Enemy and ally.
Stalks of wheat in the wind.
Lachlan lets go of me and my wings spread as I prepare to launch safely back into the sky.
“What is happening?” I ask, drawing my father’s sword.
“I have no idea,” he murmurs, and wrenches my axe free from the dead man beside us and hands it to me.
“Helena!” a voice calls from the bottom of the cliff. The small black-clad figure from before, the female, races toward me, warriors part as she races through them. “Are you Helena?” Hervoice is soft and lovely. Quite the contradiction to the murderous glint I had seen in her eyes earlier.
“It’s Lena,” I answer, tucking my wings into my body.
She pulls the black helmet from her face.
Black as night hair, and eyes the color of the sea.
My father’s face.
“I’m Eira, Queen of the Fomorians, and your father’s sister.”
The world ceases to exist.
My shoulders rise and fall as I work to slow my breathing.
My father had a sister?Wait—haven’t I lived this through already?
I scan her from head to toe. There’s something familiar about her, but I’ve been here before. Gripping my axe tighter, I glare at her, not willing to concede a step in case it costs me my life, or Lachlan’s.
But dread clenches my stomach. I know next to nothing about my father’s family. And what I do know—isn’t good.
As if sensing my apprehension, she sighs and pricks her thumb on the tip of her sword.
“Glad to see you’re not dumb,” she whispers.
Holding her finger out to me, the crimson blood drips down her finger and splatters onto the blackened grass of the battlefield. It’s pure red. She’s not a shapeshifter, at the very least.
“My father never mentioned his family,” I say, staring at the familiar turquoise eyes. Those eyes are my father’s. The same shade I now have.
She chuckles. The sound washes through me and lightens my apprehension. “I understand why he wouldn’t have told you. I don’t think he fully believed me capable of achieving our goals.”
“And that was?”
She pulls her long, black, braided hair out from behind her. At the bottom, holding the plait together, is a very tattered and frayed pale blue ribbon—my offering.
“I loved your father very much. He was kind when no male in our family had ever been. Before he left Toraigh we plotted to bring peace to the realms by one of us ascending our family’s throne. But when your mother found out she was pregnant with you, it wasn’t safe for him anymore to continue our plans. I picked up the mantle and swore that I would make it safe for him to return. It didn’t matter how many I needed to kill or imprison, I was going to wipe out the scourge that had rotted our family tree.” Her smile is ravenous. “I did. But too late. He had died. I heard your call that day. You sounded so broken, so hopeless. I didn’t make it to you in time, but the little folk brought me this.”
I take a step closer to her, reaching for the ribbon I left as an offering to the fairies.To guide me, to show me the way.Emotion clogs my throat, and it burns until I force a swallow.
