“You must listen. Please, I’m begging you.” I was sobbing now, tears hot against my icy cheeks. “I know your father was the guardian of this Stone before the Cailleach corrupted him. And I know that Isobel loved him. She didn’t want to kill him. She did it because there was no other way.”
Something shifted in the Beithir’s expression. The rage was still there, but beneath it, I caught a glimpse of…uncertainty. The first crack in centuries of absolute conviction.
“You cannot know these things.”
“I read Isobel’s diary. Her own account of what happened that night.” My voice was steadier now, the historian in me taking over, marshaling evidence like weapons. “She wrote it in cipher, encoded so only the Wright family could read it. It’s been hidden, waiting for someone to find it. Waiting for someone to finally keep the promise she made to yourfather as he died.”
“He asked her to do something? His murderer?” the Beithir hissed and slapped his tail on the water, sending shockwaves across the surface of the loch. Across the way, my friends screamed to me, but there was nothing I could do other than focus on the Beithir in front of me.
“He asked her to tell the truth. That he, himself, had been betrayed by someone he once thought to be a friend. About how he fought the Cailleach’s influence until the very end.” I tried to steady my breathing, but it was coming in painful gasps, making it increasingly hard to talk. “He didn’t want to be remembered as a monster. He wanted people to know that he was a victim, not a villain. And Isobel promised she would tell them, but she died before she could keep that promise. She died, and the truth died with her, and your father’s last wish has gone unfulfilled.”
The Beithir fell silent.
The lightning had faded from its scales. I could only hope that was a good sign.
“My father,” it said. “You claim he asked for this?”
“With his dying breath. The corruption lifted at the end, and he was of clear mind. She said the enchantment had gone from him, and he was himself again, just for a moment. Just long enough to beg her to tell the truth about what the Cailleach had done to him.”
“And the curse?”
“It came from the Cailleach, not from your father. She was furious that Isobel had killed her weapon, ruined her plan to scatter the artifacts, so she cursed my bloodline. Every man a Wright woman truly loves, the water will claim. It’s not your curse to uphold. Don’t you see? You’re a puppet.” My voice broke.
The Beithir hissed, not liking my words, but I didn’t care. None of this mattered anyway if I couldn’t save Graham.
“Please.” I turned away from him and looked back to where the Stone of Truth was buried. “I beg of you. I call upon the Stone to see the truth in this matter. We are but your humble servants. We’vealwaysprotected you. Please. You must save us now.”
“If what you say is true...” the Beithir hissed behind me and I whirled, facing it once more.
“Itistrue. I’m standing on the Stone of Truth. Do you think it would allow me to lie and live? Don’t you see? You can change all of this. Right now.”
A black shape dove from the sky.
Murdoch, Kaia’s familiar, hit the Beithir’s face like a feathered missile of fury, his talons raking across those ancient eyes, his beak stabbing at the soft flesh around them. The creature reared back with a roar of surprise and pain, its massive head thrashing, and suddenly the night was full of wings.
Moe, Larry, and Curly, Sophie’s crows, came screaming down from the darkness, joining Murdoch in his assault. Four crows against a creature the size of a building? It should have been laughable, should have been suicide, but they were fast and the Beithir was confused and those sharp beaks kept finding their marks.
“No!” I scrambled backward as the Beithir’s tail swept across the island, missing me by inches. “Stop! I was getting through to him!”
The Beithir roared again, lightning crackling along its spine, and I saw Murdoch take a glancing blow that senthim tumbling through the air. He recovered, wings beating furiously, and dove right back in.
“No, Murdoch! You’ll be killed,” I screamed at them. “Stop it!”
The water exploded.
The Kelpies burst from the loch in a wave of shadow and fury in full attack mode. They slammed into the Beithir from all sides, their teeth tearing at its scales, their hooves striking at its coils. The creature bellowed in shock, twisting to face this new threat, and I saw something in its eyes I hadn’t seen before.
Confusion.
“What—” The Beithir’s voice cracked through the onslaught. “What is this? Your role is to serveme.Desist.”
But the Kelpies didn’t listen. They drove at the creature with a ferocity I’d never seen from them, pushing it back, away from me, away from the center of the island.
Away from the Stone.
I gasped for air as understanding hit me.
The Kelpies weren’t attacking the Beithir to protect me. They were protecting the Stone of Truth. The artifact that lay beneath this island, the sacred object that the Order had guarded for centuries. The Beithir had brought violence to this place and the Kelpies—creatures of destruction, aye, but creatures of this loch—would not allow it.
