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“Gods fucking dammit! I said fucking run!”

“You don’t use that! Ever! Fucking ever!” she screamed back, her hands curled into rage tipped claws as we ran.

The magic storm was gaining on me. I had no choice. None at all.

“I’m sorry. You can hate me for this later,” I whispered and caught her around the waist. She was so light, almost hollow. I hurled her with all my strength down the hill, away from me and the storm.

I winced when I heard her hit with a crack and watched her roll several yards. If she was going to get up from that, it wasn’t going to be anytime soon. She was twisted in a way I was sure she’d survive, but one that would require a drui of Ailbhe.

There was nothing now between me and the crackling storm behind me. I raced down the rolling dip of the green hill and headed for the broken-tooth crags, away from where my friends had taken shelter. I would run until my feet burned off if none of them would ever have to feel the kiss of the glacier that followed me. I would run until I could no longer breathe, and the last thing I could do was throw my carcass into the whims of the crackling, snapping vortex of light behind me.

My sides cramped in agony, my lungs strained, and I slipped occasionally when the blood from jagged stones biting at my feet grew too slick on the grass. Even my spine ached from the burden of my exhausted muscles but every time I looked behind me the ghost of my demise was still bobbing like a grim pale balloon, following an invisible string tied to my ankle.

The small glade we had rested next to was but a smudge on a distant ridgeline, and I was alone in the vastness of red and gold grasses broken only by the dark grey of boulders that rose into uneven mountains and tors. It would be a beautiful grave.

With my mind made up, I turned into the mountains and began my ascent. If I was to die, I wanted to die screaming into the face of my murderer. My fingers bled and burned against the bite of the sharp rocks, but as I hauled myself over a lip in the scarp I found a gap in the cover just wide enough for me to shimmy through if I tried hard enough.

I grinned, wild and feral with the small chance at hope, and turned to the dancing magic storm, laughing as I shoved my legs into the hole and flipped it my favorite goodbye. “Not today, fuckface!”

I pushed and I shimmied, my flesh scraping deep against the small opening until I finally slipped through and dropped.

I was falling through the world itself, the small aperture of the opening slowly growing smaller with the moon of the magic storm hovering and pushing against the opening. It was too big though.

Magic had mass, it seemed. It was not some ephemeral force that could pass through doors and windows. I could see it bulging through the space like an over-inflated water balloon as my back hit the solid pad of hard packed dirt beneath.

I lay there, pain radiating from every inch of my existence and bleeding its way from some unidentified opening at the back of my head as the storm above tried to force its way through the hole. What else was I going to do? I couldn’t move for the moment—my body had decided that this was as far as it was willing to carry me for a while—and aside from the blackness that swallowed the walls of the cavern I had fallen into, the storm was the only point of interest.

It was beautiful though, even if it was deadly. I had thought it was just a ball of crackling, white light, but the more it tried to force itself through the hole, the more colors I saw pulsing within it. Vivid neon lavenders and soft pinks pulsed next to pale sky-blue and emerald-green. Tiny sparks of light shot from it where it touched the edges like sparks leaping from a smith’s hammer.

The more I watched it, the more I could swear I saw images shivering just beyond the white center, though it was hard to make out. It was just a slightly less bright edge to outlines of vague shapes along the surface of the sun. Spots danced behind my eyes when I closed them until all I could see was the flashing negative of the magic storm drifting into my nightmares as consciousness fled.

I dreamed of spiders. A world full of spiders weaving and spinning their webs. A cosmos of nothing but darkness and silvery webs catching silvery droplets of water and binding them with shards of glittering light. Brambles of blackthorn pushed into the edges of the galaxy of spinners like a galactic womb. None of them noticed me. Yet all of them seemed to hum and sing me a welcome. The moon I had left in the waking world rose at my back and cast a long shadow into their home, dark and solid except for the hole where one of them had pierced my shoulder. That hole cast its own moon, and tiny spiderlings gathered in its light to dance among its pale beams.

Chapter 19

Ard Tiarna Emrys of Breacadh an Lae, The Raven of the Dawn

My journey back to the palace was grueling, not merely because I had to commandeer a new girth strap for my saddle, but because I fought every ember of my being not to chase after her. I had no idea which direction they could have gone. I, of course, knew the eventual destination, but on my own, to lay siege to the fortress of the Abhartach would have been a suicide mission both for me and potentially for her. I did not know who, if any, of the challengers for the oak throne had prevailed, and how they would feel about my execution of their predecessor.

The long trek back without her felt inherently wrong. I had no plan when I set out, my only concern to find her. And I had. To return now with nothing more than our singular night together felt like a victory won at the expense of everything I held sacred.

The better idea had been to return. I would rally with Silvertree, the Bandrui, and Prince Sorrow. All three of my closest allies lay within the palace grounds, but it was not the destination I wanted, and I hated every step of the journey. My teeth were ground nearly to nubs by the time I reached the bridge into the palace and allowed a groom to take Venom back to the stables.

“Captain,” barked the chipper voice of one of my soldiers. I gave her a nod as I passed, pushing my way through the receiving foyer, hoping to reach my quarters so I could sink into my bed and rest my aching body. I would go down to the public baths after a rest.

She followed me at a small jog, my stride too long for her to keep up with. “Pardon my rudeness, Captain, but His Majesty advised the guard that when you returned, you be directed to his chambers.”

“Just what I need,” I let slip, exhaustion loosening my tongue.

“His Majesty’s presence is indeed a balm, sir,” she said with a sunny smile.

I let a skeptical glance creep over to her. Was she daft? I had assumed all my soldiers had been inured to the charms of the Ard Rí; I hadn’t seen any of them overly loyal. It was one of the criteria I used when selecting soldiers from the stock sent every spring. Was their loyalty to the Ard Rí unbreakable? If it were, they were not selected. If it had chips and cracks that I could worm my way into, I took on their apprenticeship.

I preferred the Country Fae, though; they saw the position as less of an honor to them and their house’s legacy, and more of a practical means. They would earn a stable wage, have safety from the magic storms, and a skill, be it war or another. The younger Fae I would even ensure had training in specialty magics that would make them near among the nobility. Or at least as much as one could be in the rigid system that Daróg had adopted when he took the throne.

The games of crowns and thrones were not ones Mabh had liked to play. It was one of many things we had taken for granted under her ageless guidance and stranglehold on power.

“Have you taken the Ard Rí’s healing attentions often, Ciar?” I let the mantle of a courtier slide back over me, let it push away the road weariness and anger. It was not wise to let even this soldier, who I had trained from girlhood and had watched her learn to stand on her own feet, see the rancor within me.