Edan had been practicing his sword skills since early in the morning, first with John, and now with Morgan. Ailith had to admit that Morgan was a patient instructor, something she hadn’t expected. Morgan did his best to gain the title all the Grants competed for, the finest swordsman in all the land. The title had gone from Alex Grant to Loki to Jake to Connor and Alasdair. Morgan and John were the same age, seven and twenty, and they competed all the time, though her brother loved to throw out taunts. “All I need is the sapphire sword, Morgan, and I’ll take you down easily.”
She was proud of Edan for working so hard, and Morgan must have read her mind, because as soon as the seers moved into the clearing a short distance away, Morgan said, “Take a rest, Edan. If we return this eve, you’ll need to be able to swing both arms.”
Edan quickly dropped his sword and nodded in agreement before heading inside. Ailith caught his quick glance before he disappeared, sending a small flutter of happiness through her heart.
Ailith was falling hard for a man whom she may never see again after the next sennight. She hoped to see him again, but she truly had no idea what his life was like. She’d not been to hisclachannor met all his group.
“Ailith,” Lia called to her. “We need you to focus.”
“Of course. I’m here,” she replied. She didn’t tell Lia that the weight had already landed. That lives would hang on her sight. That she still didn’t trust it.Where was Heilyn? Where were the other bairns? Were they all in the same place, or scattered through that dark hill in ways she might never piece together in time?
And beneath those questions lay the worst one, the one she could not speak even to herself. What if she was wrong? What if she looked into Edan’s past and brought back something she’d misread entirely, some fragment of memory she’d bent to fit what she already suspected? The inconsistency from one vision to the next had always been her quiet torment, but here it was no longer quiet. Here it could mark their undoing.
She had gone from keeping her mother’s accounts at Castle MacLintock—columns of numbers, neat and correctable—to this. To a circle of seers in the grass, with the fairy hill waiting and a man’s daughter somewhere inside it.
Lia moved closer to Ailith, prodding her. “We need you to look into Edan’s past to uncover any explanation for the iron blood. The others will search the faery hill for warriors or creatures, whether in the open or in hiding. We need to know what we will be up against this eve. As you might have guessed, this won’t be easy. It’s not just a matter of handing over the three hairs in exchange for the lass and her cousin. We want all the children freed.”
Ailith brought her mind back to the present, listening intently to everything Lia said. Her task could be instrumental in finding the bairns.
The four of them settled into a rough circle in the long grass, close enough that their knees nearly touched. The sun was high and warm on Ailith’s shoulders, but something cold had settled in her chest the moment Lia had spoken the wordsthis eve.
“Sylvi,” Lia said, “look inside the hill itself. Any guardians, any warriors, hidden or visible. See if you can get close enough to hear their thoughts.”
Sylvi nodded and closed her eyes without a word.
“Ailith.” Lia’s gaze was steady. “I want you to delve into Edan’s past, as far back as you can reach. See if your sight will take you to his father. We need to understand why his blood is iron.”
Ailith pressed her palms flat to the grass and breathed out slowly. She had never tried to enter another person’s history so deliberately. Usually, the visions came on their own, unbidden and wild. This was different. This was reaching into a man she cared about and pulling out whatever he’d kept buried.
She closed her eyes.
The darkness behind her lids shifted, then parted, the way a curtain parts in a sudden draft.
She was somewhere cold. A poorly lit stone chamber, with a single light guttering in a draft she could not feel. A man stood with his back to her, broad-shouldered, dark-haired, wearing a plaid she did not recognize. Across from him stood a creature she had no name for. It was man-shaped but wrong, its proportions slightly off, its skin carrying a faint luminescence that made her stomach drop. She knew immediately what it was.
Unseelie.
She stood in the corner of the chamber. The creature spoke, and though she could not hear the words, she saw the man’s hands shaking as he pressed them flat to a stone table between them. He was agreeing to something. She felt it in the air—desperation, shame, and beneath both, a terrible love. He was doing thisforsomeone. A wife, perhaps. A dying family member. No, his whole family was dying. They were in a deep drought that had taken all their crops, leaving them with naught to carry them through winter. His wife, like others in theirclan, carried a bairn, their firstborn. Whatever the price he was paying, he believed it was worth it.
She moved about the chamber, looking first at the Unseelie, one she’d never seen before, then at the man in the center. A man who looked much like Edan, yet he was not Edan. And he bargained with the creature. Argued, begged, pleaded, and finally, conceded. In order to save everyone in hisclachan, he had to give them something.
“Anything but this. Please.” The desperation dripped from his words, beads of sweat dotted his brow, but the evil spirit across from him didn’t care. He knew what he wanted. He demanded the one thing the man didn’t wish to relinquish.
His firstborn child.
She knew it before she saw his hands press to the stone in agreement. She was certain of it the way seers always knew things, from the core outward.
The creature called the manReginald.
This was Edan’s father.
The vision shifted. A bedchamber. A woman pale and exhausted in the aftermath of labor, barely conscious, a midwife pressing a cloth to her brow. Ailith stood in the corner there, hoping she couldn’t be seen. Reginald, a bit older now, lines around his eyes, stood over a cradle with an expression Ailith recognized but couldn’t quite decipher. He sent the midwife away for a moment alone with his wife, then knelt next to the bed and cupped her face.
“I must go, love. I will save our son. My brother will bring you to Jura when you are strong enough. I will feed him, care for him, whatever it takes. I cannot let him go.” Tears covered his cheeks.
“Go,” she whispered, her voice weak. “Save our son, Reginald, before it’s too late. Godspeed.”
He kissed her, then reached into the cradle and wrapped the infant in a rough blanket, swaddling him tight.
