“You are far too human now to survive.”
Cernunnos wrenched the earth apart beneath their feet, ice cracking as a fissure opened up. Cillian lurched backward, somehow keeping his balance even as the heat of summer warred with winter all around them. He willed the cold to stay, for the ice to not melt, the air around him crackling with magic that made him glow. The glaive arcing through theair toward him was smacked away by Seamus’ sword as the knight threw himself between them.
“Don’t youdare,” Seamus snarled.
Ozone burned in the air as lightning streaked through every single ice statue left of the lights around them, shattering them all. Niamh lowered her arm, hand clenched in a tight fist around flickering lightning. Scáthach had put herself between Cernunnos and the forest, glaive held at the ready. Cillian glanced over his shoulder, seeing Bran standing on the Shoppe’s porch, aglow with golden magic, the ground unmoving beneath their feet, the lights in the forest held at bay.
Cernunnos didn’t seem worried, merely amused. “You think you can win? Against me? The forest obeysme, not your witch. I will kill him the same way I killed his mother and take the bean sí for my own use.”
Cillian’s rage was fierce and cold, rising like snow drifts in a blizzard. The air went frigid, but he wasn’t affected by the cold. “You won’t touch Bran.”
Because Bran was his—hadalwaysbeen his—and Cillian knew in that moment he would kill anyone who tried to take Bran away from him.
The smile slipped a little on Cernunnos’ face. In the forest, the lights screamed a warning or a protest, Cillian couldn’t tell which. But there was ice everywhere, their area in the world covered by his magic, winter a living thing he commanded. It burned through him, a wealth of power he’d never known existed before—in this life, at least.
If he thought about it too long, it might start to feel familiar, and he didn’t know if he wanted that.
Cillian stepped around Seamus, who didn’t try to hold him back, merely slotted into a spot on his left, guarding his back. Cernunnos stood his ground, summer fighting against winter, clawing out a patch of clear ground against the ice covering everything. It wasn’t much, and that realization settled Cillian somehow. Like maybe, despite Cernunnos’ power and intent, Cillian’s determination could outlast the Fae lord’s.
“You think because you know the truth now that you can best me?”Cernunnos asked silkily, hand raised, magic pooling in his palm. He was haloed with it, the glass sphere hanging from his neck pulsating softly.
“I think you’re in my world, and you don’t belong here.”
It was, perhaps, the cruelest thing he could say to a Fae—that their historical homeland was no longer theirs and never would be. Pelham might not be any town in Ireland, but the land was the same, cleaved apart geological ages ago, a long-lost memory of what the Fae would never live upon again.
And maybe Cernunnos wanted Aisling to take the Dagda’s crown, but maybe—just maybe—he wanted it for the world here. Because the Fae lord hadn’t saidwherehe wanted to rule, just that he’d have no king. And the Fae couldn’t lie but that didn’t mean their words were ever true.
“This isn’t your home anymore. It never will be again,” Cillian said, utterly truthful, utterly cruel. “It’s forgotten you and your kind, but I’ve walked this forest for years, and it knowsme.”
Cillian called to Nature, and it answered, ice breaking through Cernunnos’ defenses there on the road with savage intensity. Moonlight reflected off the white landscape spreading all around them and the piles of ice that were all that remained of the lights from the initial attack. Pelham was always beautiful in winter, even when facing off against a nightmare.
Summer heat burned where his magic and Cernunnos’ met, the air shimmering with it. Ice melted, then reformed in a vicious unending cycle, powered by Cillian’s will and intent. Cillian let his magic wash through him, let it buoy him as he dragged himself forward against air that was suddenly so heavy, the ground shaking once more beneath his feet. Ice cracked around them, loud like a crescendo, and the lights in the forest screamed in an unholy way, their monstrous forms outlined between the trees.
Cernunnos tossed his head back, one arm thrust forward, fingers more like claws in that moment and glowing with magic. His beautiful face twisted with rage, with disdain, but he hadn’t yet learned to fear Cillian. Roots broke through the asphalt, and somewhere in the forest, another tree fell. Behind Cillian, Bran started speaking in a language that might have been Irish once upon a time—so,sosimilar to the Faelanguage—but the words were full of magic that cut through the roots that would have strangled them on Cernunnos’ command.
The bit of earth around Cernunnos shrank, winter clawing ever closer. Cillian forced the ice to bend to his will, lashing at Cernunnos with blue-white shards that could have pierced skin if they’d found their target. The wind picked up suddenly, howling over the forest like a mad thing, bringing with it enough snow to blanket every leaf in the surrounding trees, pulled from the very air itself. Through the twisting flurries, he could see the lights growing brighter, coming closer, fighting back against Bran’s magic.
Cernunnos snarled, lips peeled back, teeth bared in a way that made him look like an animal now. But he wasn’t the predator here, only the prey, and Cillian didn’t let himself think about what he was doing, to second-guess himself, as he lunged forward into the circle of summer.
Heat crashed into him, a shock to his system, but he didn’t let it distract him from his goal. Cillian reached through the ice shards keeping summer at bay to wrap his blue-tipped fingers around that tiny, delicate sphere hanging from Cernunnos’ neck right as an explosion of magic sent him flying backward.
He didn’t care how much it hurt.
He got what he wanted.
Cillian slammed into a body instead of the ground, Seamus breaking his fall with a loud grunt. They slid over ice, and it only took a thought from Cillian for it to rise up like a wall, stopping their motion. Niamh slid in front of them, sword raised and lightning crackling in her other fist to guard them.
Cernunnos threw back his head and roared, his body twisting, bulging, expanding outward. His clothes and boots melted away from his body, as if they hadn’t been real. His skin split, the bones in his face breaking into something new.
What rose out of the human form was something taller than the two-story Shoppe, a macabre deer-shaped head in place of Cernunnos’ other visage. His antlers had grown, protruding high over the three glowing eyes lined up across his face. Leaves grew from the antlers, blue flowers tangled in them, as the green of his magic dripped down his furred skin, burning in the air. The Fae lord stepped forward, his legsending in cloven hooves now, and the ice beneath them shattered, the sound like bullets releasing from a gun.
Scáthach planted herself by Niamh, glaive pointed at Cernunnos’ hulking form. “Leave this place. The forest does not want you.”
Cernunnos laughed, a raspy thing that sounded like an animal. “I will take what is owed to me and leave you all to rot.”
Cillian rolled off Seamus, and they both scrambled to their feet. He looked back at Bran and Aisling on the Shoppe’s porch, both of them staring at him with equal parts fear and horror on their faces, the geas for silence a toxic shadow on Aisling’s throat.
She needed her voice.
