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Through the fog of anguish, I struggled to put the pieces together. There were so many things that didn’t make sense. It felt like I was trying to read braille, with no one having taken the time to tell me what each of the raised dots and positions meant. It wasn’t hard, wasn’t strange or foreign, but indecipherable nonetheless.

“A goddess shackled by the words of her own oath to magic, my darling girl. Even if you were to strike those iron runes from the floor, I could no more step out of this prison as I could strike down the one that put me here. It was the terms of my oath.”

“What was your oath?”

My words were hollow, devoid of emotion, as all of it drained from the river of tears that poured from my eyes into Clio’s fur. She had been too familiar with the taste of my weeping for it to bother her much, though her last feast was salty clear, and these dusted her in a thin milky sheen.

“Have you learned nothing of oaths yet, dear one?” Her cheek moved from my head, and her gaze darted back and forth as she examined mine. “I see at least one oath behind your eyes. Did you enter a pact with a Fae unknowingly?”

“No. I knew it was an oath. I still don’t know what the price is, or when she will pay me what she owes me,” I hissed, the tiny match flame of anger sparking in my blood.

“And the others? There is another thread. It is weak and unattended to, but it is there.”

The prolonged eye contact would normally make me squirm, but her gaze made me feel more embraced than her arms did.

“I’ve sworn an oath to the Bandrui.” A wry but innocuous smile was given to this and I pushed on. “Aside from that, there is nothing. Nothing but the tongue lock the Ard Rí has on my true name.”

She frowned. A finger wormed its way past my lips and wrapped around my tongue. My eyes rounded at the unexpected invasion as she gripped me. She hissed low words that I did not understand and pulled. Something wriggled along the base of my tongue, joined by another that whipped about next to it. It caught on my front teeth and slid up the back of my throat, where I gagged on it as she tugged and spoke.

Finally, the tension broke, and she hissed and flicked something wet and sloppy onto the stones behind her. The sound of two wet, fleshy unseen things hitting the stones and splattering across it made my stomach lurch.

“Filthy things. Filthy disgusting abuses of magic. Always have been and always will be. If you are Fae enough to take a daor, you are Fae enough to hear their ire. To rob someone of such a simple freedom is anathema to the true ways of the Fae.”

Revulsion was slithering through the pair of us as she pressed me deeper into her, a protective instinct to shield me from the already dismissed danger.

“I shouldn’t ask . . . but what was that?”

“The tongue locks. I took hold of the magic that bound them and ripped them out. I hate those things. They were vile magic, rotten and rancid when they were first imagined, and now they are even more fetid and loathsome. They will trouble you no longer but mind that only we will know they are gone. Do not tell whoever put them on you that you are free of their magic yoke. They would have naturally weakened and fallen away with your acceptance of Sóna not being your true name. I merely sped up the inevitable.”

“I . . . I don’t understand. If I’m Fae, I should be able to use magic, right?”

I didn’t want to think about the way the wet things had splattered against the stone. The sound alone haunted me. I didn’t want to acknowledge the faint slick sliding against the stones that I could make out over our voices as a pair of somethings slipped toward the edge of the platform.

“I’m sorry, beloved. What was taken cannot be returned. You will never wield magic like other Fae. You are as much Fae now as you ever were or will be. Would that I could have left you with some of my own magic. Just some luck would have been better than the tapestry that I feel woven within you.” She was unbraiding my hair, slowly working free the tight ribbon that held it back from my face.

I snorted a bitter laugh. “I always said I had no luck but bad luck.”

“Half right there, beloved. Even bad luck is a type of luck. Cleena left you a perfect void of it. Your presence in Human devoured the luck of those around you. It ate it and fueled your survival. She would have knit the threads of magic around you to draw in fate when magic called to you but tight enough that any who searched for the taste of our lineage on the winds would have caught no scent of us. She might not have been very creative in her naming, but Cleena was the most intricate magic weaver I had ever met in all my long years. Better than even your father. Only she could have accomplished such a feat. It was why I sent you away with her. I knew she would find a way to accomplish what I asked of her.”

“What happened to her?”

My eyes slid closed as her fingers began working knots from the ends of my hair.

“I don’t truly know, sweet one. She has not stepped foot back in Magh Meall since she left it. She could still be in Human somewhere. She could be dead, and I will have lost both years and years with my daughter and my beloved only sister, or she could be hiding waiting to return when it is safe. The coins have not shown me her face since the night she fled with you, still covered in my blood.”

“Thanks, Auntie Cleena. Rictus was a bit much.”

I felt the soft smile pull at her lips. “That is a name I have not heard in a long time. Rictus still lives?”

“Until I find him.”

“Ah, same Rictus, then. Be still with him, young one. He and his entire ship were the only fleet of Far Darrigs that came to our aid when we sounded the horns of war. He did not hesitate a single minute when he felt magic ripple with our need.”

“He finger-fucked me into . . . this . . . this thing.” I whipped my accusation at her and glared.

Her smile was soft and placating. “I’m sure he did.”

“And that’s okay with you?”