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But I would have my name back. I would have my face back. I would reclaim my identity, and I would know who and what I was and who and what I wanted to make of myself.

I smiled softly to her, finding pieces of her face I would reclaim. Parts of this woman I had just come to know but had healed parts of my heart that I hadn’t even known still existed. I would find a way to reclaim the pieces of her that she had seeded in me and wear them with pride.

“Know that you were loved, Sóna Mac Raith. From the moment your father and I met, we saw you swirling in the well for us, and our hearts were bursting with love and joy at having you as our daughter. We will always be proud of you. Even when you think we would not be. We will be. We will always love you, even when you think that you could not be loveable. And we will always, forever, hold you as the greatest joy that has ever come into our lives. We will watch you from the Well of Magic. We will forever love you. Always, Sóna Mac Raith. Always.” She leaned forward, her hand covering the wrist that held the dagger, as we both let the aching tears spill again.

I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t say anything. I knew I should say something. I knew I should tell her I loved her, too, but I couldn’t. Any words I would say would make this moment too real. And I wished to be far away from it. Any words I said would make it more real, and if I said nothing, I could convince myself this was all a terrible nightmare, that I had died in the other room with the spider gnawing on my legs.

I set the tip of the dagger over her breast. I was trembling. The tip of the knife scratching at her soft skin. I held it there forever. I couldn’t move. I couldn’t push forward.

“I love you, Cricket,” she whispered.

My heart shattered into shards and dust, and I leaned forward, letting the sharp blade of the knife slip through her body. There was no screaming, no thrashing, no fight in her at all. Only a simple welcoming of it into her body and the slight spatter of her blood across my face. I expected her to fight it like Daróg had fought the knife of his would-be assassin. Yet she merely held me to her as she lay down with the blade sticking perversely from her chest.

“Thank you,” she whispered as her last words.

I sat back on my heels and stared at her. I was, once again, beyond tears.

Goose began howling, long, deep, sorrowful sounds that clawed at the very existence of everything around us. The walls of the prison rumbled with the power of his dirge, and somewhere within the cave some sort of creature or many creatures joined Goose in his keening.

The ghost lights pulsed with him, dancing above his muzzle.

It felt fitting that someone would mourn her passing when I could not.

I buried my face into my hands and screamed. Repeatedly. I could not cry any more, but I could scream. I could howl as loud as Goose. I opened that book she had been the first to thumb through cover to cover and burned it. I tore my voice over the primal agony within myself as dark-green shards began forming around her body. I wailed into the stone as it grew from her feet up and covered her in shimmering broomstick shards.

We were a chorus of misery. And it seemed to never end. I burned the last pieces of me on the bonfire and let the ashes dance on the notes of our collective threnody. I let the void of it left within this gilded skin fill up with all the parts of me that survived the crucible and forged it into steel.

Until the last bit of her beautiful hair was covered by the shards of her crystalline coffin, we lamented in a rising and falling song. The final note of the hollow-shared misery was the sound of me snapping a shard of the dark-green and blue slivered crystal off.

“I don’t know how this works, but listen up, magic.” I was heaving with the rage and anguish pumping through me as I stared down at the way the ghost lights danced over the sarcophagus. I traced a finger over the wavering visage of her in her crystalline coffin. The world seemed to hold still, strain its ears, and pause to listen to me. “Whomever did this. Whomever is responsible for tearing my family apart, I swear to you I will have my vengeance or die trying. No matter where they hide. No matter what power they hold. I will rip them down to the roots and tear their magic from this world, once and for all. Never again will they stain magic with their name.”

Within me, a fire was kindled. Just the smallest of flames, but even as I rose from her side, I knew that small flame would become a mighty inferno. And I intended to feed off it and let it consume me. I intended to burn everything to the fucking ground for what was stolen from me. For what I had endured simply to survive.

Magh Meall would answer for its crimes against me, and I would collect my pound of flesh from every fucking Fae that had done this to me. No matter who they were.

Chapter 35

The journey back from my mother’s cavern felt endless. I had to stop and rest at least twice, but I didn’t know if that was because of the amount of time that had passed or because I was exhausted, body, soul, and mind. Every part of me felt drained of everything except the fire of bitter hate that was living in the center of my existence.

I was an empty oblivion wrapping gluttonous barbed wire arms around the ember of hate, letting a solemn funerary parade of ghost lights and Goose lead the way.

It had taken me hours to work up the courage to leave that dungeon. I filled up that time, walking every inch of that platform. With each new piece of her collection of items I touched, I lingered a little longer.

In the end, I had taken a small pack of things with me. A hair comb. The robe she had slipped off before I killed her. Clio. The teapot she served me tea with. A glass bottle of perfume. A left ear guard of beautiful silver with inlaid amethyst and silver stars and a golden cuff that was a simple filigree of twisting vines. And a length of twine that had been tied into a circular shape. I didn’t know why I had taken that. It seemed so benign, lying next to a crumpled piece of plain paper, but I wanted it.

Goose had been kind enough to carry the bag as we wove our way through the tunnels. I would have dropped it a thousand times over. Strength had not yet returned to my injured arm. I didn’t know if it ever would. The moment I felt her magic flee the chamber, the golden threads that sealed the hole melted away. The wound wept down my chest and stained the shirt I was wearing, the only tears I had left to me. It would need to be cleaned—and soon. Crawling through dark, filthy tunnels could not be good for an open gash.

When we finally crested the tunnel that led to the hallway where The Raven’s room was, I stopped. Goose’s massive head turned to me and regarded me with lens-flare eyes as the only visible part of his body.

“Goose, take the bag to my cubby in the warrens. I don’t want him to see them. Hide them somewhere. Somewhere, no one—not even me—will find them until it’s time.”

I had thought about how precious those items were to me. They were not the same as the beads that I had sworn to protect. These were different. They were my beating heart, and I would not have them vulnerable to attack or theft. I would rip the world apart from its roots if that happened.

Goose whined but slowly melted into the darkness with the satchel, leaving me with the ghost lights to finish the journey.

The room was dark, the door wide open. I couldn’t remember if I had left it closed or open, but I didn’t care.

I counted the ten steps, turned right, and counted three more. Our stride was different, though, and instead of finding my way to the head of the bed, my grasping fingers found the footboard. Exhaustion weighed me down as I walked my hands across the soft bedspread to the pillow and crawled up into the overly tall bed.