“I can’t even imagine,” Delmare said. “More powerful than Emma? Thesidhe’spower must be legendary.”
“Are theresidhein Ireland or Scotland?” I asked.
“They’re rumored to be,” Bapa said. “We Unseelie hid them centuries ago, but who knows if there are any still around. They’re not known to be immortal.”
“It is said that thesidhehide in the fairy-forts around Ireland and Scotland. That’s why they’re calledfairies of the underground, because they live beneath the mounds scattered across traditionally Celtic regions. Yet your Bapa and I have searched them, and we’ve come across nothing.” Babcia scowled as she set down her tea.
Her words prompted bitterness inside of me. I hadn’t asked them the question yet, but the burning inside my chest told me I couldn’t avoid it any longer. I clutched onto my teacup and averted my eyes as I asked, “Why did you leave Malovia when I was crowned queen? I needed you.”
It felt like my entire family had done that to me all my life… my mother, my father… now my grandparents. I’d been abandoned by all of them. I wanted to know why.
Babcia frowned. “We’re sorry, Emma. We didn’t wish to leave you, but we had… obligations.”
“Obligations to what?” I snapped.
“To your prophecy,” Bapa replied simply. “What else would we travel for?”
I paused, and Babcia went on. “We knew that you were on a mission to unite the Crystals of Harmony, but once you had them, what were you to do with them? Your quest was to bring them together to open up the portal to Edinmyre, but where and how would you do such a thing?”
I was aghast. I’d never even thought of that. I don’t know what I was thinking… that we’d get the Crystals and everything would magically be all right?
How silly. I should’ve realized there’d be a ceremony to open up the portal. Everything else in the fae world required one.
“Did you find out anything?” I asked. Puck was drooling on my socks— I moved my toes out of the way, and he gave a bark.
“Indeed,” Bapa replied. “As you know, we’ve been here for several months. We’ve spent our time in Ireland looking into any bit of information we could get about the Crystals of Harmony. Through our research, we’ve concluded that the Crystals must be united at the Sacred Gathering. That is the original portal to Edinmyre, and where the Crystals were first formed by the gods.”
“How’d you find out about this?” Arthur’s eyes narrowed as he adjusted his glasses.
“We figured if anyone had information about the druids, it would be the Unseelie. The library here is very old,” Babcia said. “Dumncha de Rosannawas one of the first Unseelie manors in Ireland. It’s been passed down through our family for generations.”
“It was also a refuge for druids when they were alive. You see, the druids didn’t write down their history. Most everything they taught was passed down orally, but we were lucky enough to have Unseelie historians write down what they’d learned from thedrycathrough the ages,” Bapa said. “We figured somewhere in this library there had to be knowledge of the Crystals of Harmony.”
“But even with the two of you, how’d you manage to find the right information? There have to be hundreds ofdrycascrolls and books here,” Arthur said.
“You forget that I was here with them, hiding out for many months while faking my own death,” Lucien said. “I devoted a lot of time to going through thedrycarecords. What I found was… extraordinary.”
Lucien went to a nearby shelf. He pulled out a tome that appeared very old. He sat back down and opened it up on the coffee table, rifling through the weathered parchment pages. The words were fading— they’d been inscribed with a quill and ink, and were written in a language I didn’t know.
“This is a transcription of how the Crystals of Harmony were made,” Lucien said as he turned the book toward me. “The gods put some of their power into the stones, then gave them to the fae so they’d have the ability to travel back and forth from Edinmyre to Earth. The druids were in charge of the stones, until Tomir scattered them once the Seelie and Unseelie conflict came to a head many years ago.”
“That’s when the portal to Edinmyre was shut. The gods didn’t agree with the war between the fae, so they cut off our connection to our homeland completely. The fae should’ve died right then, when they could no longer go back and forth,” Arthur said.
“But Neva, the goddess of time, put a time loop on Edinmyre so that didn’t happen. That’s why time passes differently in Edinmyre than Earth, because it doesn’t really move forward or backward. Days come and go, but the year remains the same, and that’s why fae are still able to draw their magic from Edinmyre today,” I stated.
“That’s about to come to an end. If the portal isn’t opened in time, a thousand years will pass in the blink of an eye, severing the connection between Edinmyre and Earth forever,” Delmare said. “Then the fae living here on Earth will all die at once. That’s what Milonna told us.”
“Very good. All of you have done your research,” Lucien said. “At the Sacred Gathering is the original portal to Edinmyre, and it’s there the connection has to be re-forged by Emma. The record that this historian left insists that the Crystals may only be united at the place where they were first created, and that would be the Gathering itself.”
“Do you have any information on the ceremony to reopen the portal?” I asked.
Lucien sighed. “Unfortunately, that information was sealed in a different scroll. We managed to locate it, but it won’t be easy to obtain. The scroll is actually locked up in the Darragh College archives.”
Darragh College was one of Ireland’s oldest universities, but it was also an institution for humans. “How do you know it’s there?”
“During my research, I found that the historian who left this document behind also wrote another scroll pertaining to the Crystals of Harmony, but the only living copy came into the acquisition of a professor many years ago. Before he died, he donated his existing library to the college,” Lucien said.
“Do humans have a lot of supernatural items in their hands?” I asked.
