‘That’s right, dear boy. Your father is Lug Ildánach, of the Túatha Dé.’
Lug.
The God of Oaths they were looking for.
‘And, if you know your history,’ Elatha continued, ‘you’ll know that makes yours a complicated heritage. Lug’s father, Cían …’
Elatha smirked, allowing Kyan the revelation the name produced.
He had been told, long ago, that one of his grandfathers had been called Cían, but his mother hadn’t told him she was referring to thegod, Cían.
The God of Healing.
When Kyan had been inducted into the Wake and chosen a new name to let go of Cú Chulainn and all the weight and grief and stories attached to it, he’d chosen Cían because it was a subtle link to Ireland. It meant ‘enduring one’, to signify his newly solitary immortality, and the fact that hewouldendure. For his mother. For the people that would need him to defend them from danger.
He could not abandon them; that purpose moored him.
‘Cían,’ continued Elatha, ‘married a Fomóir princess, Ethniu. Which makes you not just the son of the Túatha Dé and a Druid princess of Ulster, but the grandson of Fomóir royalty. You are just as much us as you are them.’
Kyan’s slow-burning rage went cold as sweat slid down his spine.
‘Hence the oath,’ Kyan realised slowly. ‘I swear the oath and I’m yours. I can’t kill another god, and you’ve neutralised the son of the god that killed yours.’
Elatha smiled. ‘I knew you’d understand. Even without evidence of any power, you’ve been so useful! You even brought us our enemy’s daughter. I’m sure you can convince her to give us her information so we can be free of this mess.’
Kyan fought the urge to fling thefidchellset across the room.
It was all lies. Ithadto be. But then … why would Elatha tell him this? There were so many other ways to throw him off.
‘I’ve only just met her,’ Kyan lied, willing his lungs to keep an even rhythm, even as pain spiked through his chest at the mere mention of Nicole. ‘You cut my plans short. She will likely not trust me now. Besides, I don’t know what information you seek.’
Elatha chuckled. ‘Kyan, come now. We’ve known about you and Miss Palmer since Estwood. You think we sent you after her byaccident?’
His every instinct hollowed out.
If they had known all this time, why had they let him return to her? To let her gather everything she could and decode Freya’s messages so that when they were scooped up, the Wake had everything …
Get out and get to her, right now.
‘You sent me to Estwood because you knew she was there?’
‘No, we sent you to kill Lynch because he failed his mission. But regarding Miss Palmer … did you know that every laptop an Empyreal is given has a camera in it?’
That he knew, it acted as a scanner too, allowing him to access websites or the Wake’s databases by holding his scar up to it. But what—
‘That it’salways on? Always feeding us an image of you whenever you log on to check your missions or update us. When you check on the archives, for example.’
Kyan’s already chilled blood iced his veins.
They knew about Nicole because he’d gone through the archives with her. She’d been sitting right next to him.
He never had any control. That was what he’d wanted when he joined the Wake: he’d wanted someone elseto be in control of where he went and what he did. Someone else to tell him what to do after he’d failed so drastically.
‘Imagine our surprise when the very woman we’d been searching for for two thousand years was sitting right next to you! Except, it couldn’t be Freya, because we had her killed by our very own, newly reliable Alexander. So, yes, we’ve known about your little mission to help her gather what her mother evidently left clues to find. And now it’s time to hand it all over.’
He placed the final counter, squarely beating Kyan.
The god sat back, satisfied, and smiled. ‘Yes?’
