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The moment it was there, the living metal shaped around my head and tightened with thornlike spikes that dug into my skin, making it impossible for anyone other than me to remove it. If I’d been human, blood would have spilled.
I spoke in a tongue that I had lost the ability to speak all those years ago, though I had never lost the ability to understand it. They didn’t know Cináed would understand what I said. “Go, brothers. I will meet you in the great hall.”
They bowed. This was what they’d wanted from the day I’d been stripped bare, metaphorically speaking, and left to live as a man. The knowledge that Michael, whom I would have gladly given the crown to if I had a choice, had set me up to fall burned the fire of heaven in my gut.
They left, and I waited another minute before turning my attention to the boy and the hag at his feet.
“Ye’re just going to let them take my mother to be married off to another? Is that who ye are now? Ye don’t love her anymore.”
“Silence,” I demanded, but it was too late. Lilith had heard it all.
“Wait until the others hear that the demon boy born of the archangel Gabriel is the time walker’s son.”
“What others?” I said as I placed a hand on her forehead. Speared as she was, she couldn’t get away.
“Don’t do this. Lucifer will never forgive you.”
She might have been his bride, but not his only one. I would deal with Lucifer later as I watched her turn to dust. He and I had a score to settle. Especially after his trickery with Cin. I’d made a bargain I’d foolishly thought couldn’t be twisted and he’d bested me. One I had no choice but to make unless Cin be hunted and killed because he was Nephilim. I’d also needed power to protect him. Something I didn’t have enough of when I was made human. Lucifer had supplied both but not in a way I expected. Cin’s being made into what he was hadn’t been in my bargain. Ending Lilith was but a small part of the repayment in kind I owed Lucifer.
“Ye can do that? Can I?” Cináed asked like he was still a boy, excited to learn all the new wonders.
“There isn’t time.”
“But Ma?”
“Your mother and I will meet again. Our story is many lifetimes in the making. She is fine.”
Cináed’s eyes went cold. “How can ye ken?”
“I can feel her. She isn’t happy, but she isn’t in danger at the moment.” Even I’d assumed our connection would be forever broken. At least for now, I could still sense her.
“But—”
“Listen, boy. There are things you need to know, the first of which is about time. I don’t know if you have her gift, but it’s important you don’t use it to change the past.”
“Why not? She did.”
“She didn’t change anything. Time is not a linear thing like most humans perceive. The past, present and future are all happening at the same time. Though you, I and most of the world experience time as that straight line from some point in the past heading toward the future, your mother doesn’t. My past could be her present or future.”
“But ye were angry when she arrived. You wanted her to go.”
“Because I couldn’t risk revealing anything I already knew. She had to go through time on her own path.”
“So you knew all along she was my mother.”
I shook my head. “No. I truly believed her a dream. When I woke and she wasn’t there, I thought I’d forced my dreams on another woman. Lilith is responsible for that.”
“No time travel for me. If I can, that is,” Cin summarized.
“Never. Time is not forgiving. Human minds can’t handle a shift in it. If you took a pebble out of their path, they couldn’t reconcile the memory of it being there and the new memory of it gone. It wouldn’t end there. That pebble’s removal could then change something else that affects another human.”
“A domino effect.”
I nodded. “Time would correct itself by the simplest act. Remove the one who made the change to save the many who would be hurt by it.”
“So time is a being?”
“No. It’s a construct. Again, we don’t have the luxury of time. I can’t risk us being overheard. There’s one other thing you need to know.”
“What’s that?” The petulant child was back.
“Until I can have the curse lifted, stay away from the water. Do not kill a human in your kelpie form or you will be damned for eternity. There would be nothing I could do to remove the mark.”
The bargain I’d struck had resulted in my son’s transformation into a shape-shifting water horse. Any human who touched him would be stuck as he took them to the water to drown.
