Dyna
Dyna stumbled out the door. Her daughter ran up to her, so she handed the two bairns into her capable hands.
“Mama? Are you hale? You look frightened. You’re never afraid of anything. What is it?”
“Naught. I’m fine. It is a different world down there. Just give me a few moments, if you please.” She shook her head, her gaze scanning the landscape, grateful to be back. The area was filled with a few happy fathers and many happy bairns, pleased to be out of the hellhole below. Pride filled her heart as she watched all the ones she loved taking care of the wee ones. Uncle Connor already had a wee lad on his shoulders and Alasdair hugged a lass who was crying.
Dyna couldn’t tell Sylvi what she’d just witnessed, nor would she tell anyone else. “Go tend Magni and the bairns. Give them the hugs they need.”
Sylvi snuggled both bairns and rushed back to Magni’s side. Dyna found a spot on the ground and sat, her legs crossed, still reeling from what she had just seen, something no one could have prepared her for.
Seeing the true image of Aunt Gwyneth and Grandda when they were young had shaken her, but not nearly as much as what else she’d seen. Only moments after Edan and Ailith had destroyed the roots, the three of them had headed for the staircase. Once John took Ailith, she’d caught something out of the corner of her eye and stopped, telling the others to go ahead. The Hollow had narrowed into a side passage to her right. A stillness came from it. Though she hadn’t stopped walking, her eyes had turned. She had slowed without meaning to, her bow shifting in her hand as she hefted a bairn high on her hip.
He had been visible through a gap in the rock.
A man, suspended a hand’s breadth above the cavern floor, stared directly at her. Tall. Fair-haired. He was bound within a thick network of silver threads that crossed his wrists, chest, throat, and ankles, threads darkened from centuries of waiting. The threads connected with the cavern walls. She couldn’t make it out at first, but then understanding dawned, the stone had grown around the threads. The hill had taken the thick, woven network and made it part of itself.
He should have looked weakened, but he did not.
He looked patient.
His eyes were open.
His gaze had found hers through the gap before she had even decided whether to look or not. Pale. Steady. A man’s eyes, not a creature’s, which was somehow worse. Erena’s words echoed in her mind. Morvran had been bound to prevent him from killing Lia, he’d then been tricked and held captive by an evil overlord. Erena’s name sat in her mind like a stone, and she knew, with an unsettling certainty, that the man was Morvran, and he knew exactly who she was. Dyna’s hand tightened on her bow like a bairn reached for its blanket.
Do not react.
Dyna hurried down the path behind Ailith, adjusting the bairns on her hips, revealing nothing. Three more paces. The gap closed behind her. The cold eased, and her knuckles on the bow had gone white. Frantic with unwanted knowledge, she refused to react, refused to look back, and continued out of that hellish underworld.
“Mama?” Sylvi stood before her, Magni at her back, his tunic bloodied but hale. “What is it?”
She remembered the way his eyes had tracked her, not with surprise, but with a chilling ancient patience, the faint hum that came from the silver threads more like a trapped hornet.
“Naught,” she replied, grateful Sylvi’s voice drew her back to the present. Yet Erena’s words—Morvran has been waiting for centuries—still echoed. She rejoined the group, but one chilling detail refused to release its hold on her mind.
She had carried other secrets over her life, true.
But never one with eyes.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Ailith
Ailith limped outside to sit by the loch the next morning. Magni and Morgan had chosen a beautiful spot to build their cottage, and she intended to enjoy the last few days they were here. The group was still celebrating the win over the Unseelie inside, but she’d developed a fierce need for quiet and left, seeking the peace of the loch. Perhaps she just needed the nearness of the stones that had given her the answer to freeing sweet Heilyn. She found a fallen log not far from shore and sat down.
Her leg felt better than it did last eve. She’d have to have Eli take a look at it, but from what she’d learned from Aunt Jennie, she didn’t think it was broken. A sprain is what her aunt had called it—turning it over too much. She’d gladly limp for a wee bit to be out of that hell hole.
On their return from the faery hill last night, they’d stopped at Edan’sclachan, where his brother and sister had waited up for him. Heilyn was as adorable as any wee one. At just a bit over a year, she didn’t talk much, but her words were quite intentional. “Da! Home!”
Fatigue covered Edan’s face, so he said a few words before taking his daughter inside. “Many thanks to you all, you’ve done so much for our family that I don’t know how to repay you. Godspeed, and I promise to bring Heilyn on the morrow after we’ve had a rest.”
That ending had left her cold. Edan’s expression had been one of relief, but the way he looked at Ailith was not the same as he’d looked at her before. A few days ago, he’d looked at her as if she was the most precious gem in the world.
This look had chilled her—exhausted and beaten. But also a look that said he didn’t care if he never saw her again.
Her mother had advised her not to think too much on how he had left, as if seeing into Ailith’s mind the way Sylvi did.
As she sat there, her mind filled with a man who had found his daughter and saved her from the fae. All she could think of was the love she saw in his heart whenever he looked at his sweet lassie. It helped her to see what she wanted in her life. A man who loved her as strongly, a man she could build a family with, a man who understood that her clan was special.
