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The smirk in my tone was not missed, and she turned on me again like a petulant child and tutted.

“Do not toy with things you do not understand, Cricket. If you touch the wrong one, you risk incurring the ire of Étain. Touch the right one, and it is an invitation for more. Make no mistake, Cricket. You are familiar with a quiet god, a silent god, who is used to betrayal and has hardened his heart to it. These are not that god. These gods are alive, pulsing with life and all its vigors. They are capricious. They are malevolent. They are mischievous. They are bored almost always. And you are a bright flame foolishly flashing in the darkness. Do not call attention to yourself when you are not yet ready to be seen.”

I tilted my head to her, narrowing my eyes at the strange way she put that.

I didn’t like that each of her words curled up and rested on my shoulder, tittering with glee at my cautious suspicion.

“Right. Rule three,” I mumbled to myself.

She heard me, though, and smirked.

I was not prepared for the temple proper. I don’t think I could have ever been prepared for it. I had seen so many bizarre, otherworldly things in my short stay in Magh Meall, but this was different. It was not just the great splendor laid out before me. It was not the nine massive towering stonework sculptures of godly perfection. It was not the redolent scent of the loveliest incense I had ever smelled in my life. It was not the magic of thousands of sootless candles burning all around me.

What I was not prepared for was a sensation I had been hunting my entire life. It was the sensation of stepping into my home. My own home. That was the sensation that washed over me the moment I stepped my bare foot from the cold blue-grey stone of the rest of the temple. The warm polished black marble shot through with iridescent marbled veins cast dark rainbows back on me. It was like I had fallen into a cosmic womb of some sorts, with a motherly figure humming softly to me as she rubbed the taut belly between us.

The Bandrui set her unnecessary lantern down at the side entrance nestled between two of the statues and bid me forward. “Come and meet them.”

I followed, too stunned by the feeling to speak. How was it that I had spent twenty-seven years hunting for this, and only when I was kidnapped, tortured and enslaved did I finally find it?

“Honored assembly, I bid you see and welcome our guest, Cricket.” I expected her to whisper. Weren’t priests supposed to whisper when in the presence of the divine? She did not. She spoke with her same laughing voice, as if she were speaking to old friends rather than stonework statues of deities. “Come, Cricket. Let me introduce you.”

She pressed a long rushlight into my hand and lit it against one of the nearby candles. She gathered up nine small fat candles and waved to me to follow.

I did, moving into the narrow passage carved in between the two rows of statues.

She paused in front of one of them, searching through her burden before handing me her selected candle. It smelled of mint, crocus, and fresh rain. “This is Senán. Lord of Winter. God of suffering, mourning, hidden things, deception, and grief. Bid him a fare greeting.”

I took the candle, looking up to the stern-faced Fae man before me. I expected the statues to have symbols carved into them. To have some iconography that would be associated with whatever they were a god of. But aside from the glowing string that bound the wrist of one of his outstretched hands, there was nothing remarkable about him. His long, carved hair was pulled back, away from his stunningly handsome face. A delicately tatted lace veil covered his carved face from the bridge of his nose, his eyes, and his forehead like a blindfold, but there was nothing else.

“Hello, Senán, it is nice to meet you—” I paused and looked back at the Bandrui, searching for how to address a god.

She mouthed, My lord.

“My lord?”

She nodded happily and looked up to the covered face of the statue. “Be good to her, Senán, if you have the inclining to do so. She is a guest.”

One by one, we moved through the temple, and I greeted each of the gods by lighting one of the candles the Bandrui handed me and introducing myself. Faolán, The Great Wolf of Spring, god of nature, harvest, new life, natural creatures, and creativity. Caoilfhionn, Lady of Summer, goddess of primordial forces such as lightning, floods, and magma. Odharnait, Benefic of Autumn, goddess of nightmares, fear, subterfuge, illusion and sworn enemy and lover of Senán. Feidlimid, Lord of Dawn, god of joy, love, sex, hunting, and music. Étain, Lady of Night, goddess of jealousy, passion, sorrow, death, and darkness.

Each of them bore no symbols that would guide the uninitiated as to their purpose, their job. They were presented as individuals, knowable and touchable, merely encased in stone before me. The act of greeting them and speaking to them as if they were living, breathing entities that one would bump into at the Market slowly rooted this idea into me. By the time I bent to set a crackling and spitting angry candle at the foot of Ailbhe, I needed no help from the Bandrui.

“Hello, Ailbhe. They call me Cricket. Thank you for sending your drui to assist me in regaining my strength. I feel so much better, even if the exercises hurt a little. It was very kind of you to grant them that knowledge.” I looked up at the androgynous features of the statue and watched them be kissed by the crackling light of my naughty candle.

Closer . . .

The whisper was as soft as the subtle chewing of the flame in the wax at the foot of the statue.

Come closer, little guest. You have greeted all of us so politely. Do you wish a gift in return? It is rare that a guest thanks me with such impeccable manners. Tell me, Cricket, do you wish another gift?

I leaned closer to the statue, trying to hear the soft whisper. I could almost make it out. It was an itch at the edge of my consciousness.

A claw-like hand gripped my shoulder and pulled me back away from the statue. “Dammit, Ailbhe! You know the rules in my temple! Hospitality! When I see you next, you will apologize,” the Bandrui barked at the statue.

A deep masculine laugh intertwined with the bell-like laugh of a woman filled the chamber and ruffled the flames of the candles around us. I snatched my hand that had been reaching on its own toward the statue back and held it close to my body like it had been burned.

The Bandrui was pulling me away, clucking her disapproval. “Of course Ailbhe would show the most interest in you. Patron of Day. Divine ruler of rage, transformation, new beginnings from destruction and healing. You might as well be carved in their image for all your hissing and scratching.”

She placed another candle in my hand. This one scented in warm honey, carnation, and clover. A sadness fell over the Bandrui’s beautiful face as she turned her gaze up to the statue of a woman. “Airgetlám. Lady of Dusk. Honored wife of Túathal. Goddess of luck, wealth, communication, and persuasion.”