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Sorrow passed across Mikhal’s face like a shadow. “Alone is best, Morgan. Conor wants none to witness what he must do. Call it a final wish.”
Ellery grimaced. Not if she could help it, it wouldn’t be. They never noticed her, but still she had backed away without making a sound. At least this way they might not realize her own departure until it was too late.
Bats swung low across the trees, and the air smelled sweet with lilac and the first wild cherries. She wrinkled her nose against the faint tang of woodsmoke. The Bel-fires already? Dusk would mark the beginning of Beltane. Sundown to sundown. Tonight the countryside would celebrate the turning of the season with giant bonfires.
Morgan had talked of the wild revelries in the hills and the deep, creek-fed valleys where drinking and dancing would strengthen into something more with the passing hours as couples honored the new spring in their own way. For most, the day’s origins lay obscured in myth and legend. But for the race of Other, it was a sacred time of great power and deep magic when the walls between fey and Mortal were thinnest.
Conor was counting on it.
As was she. She’d once asked Conor if the fey considered Asher enough of a threat to act. He hadn’t answered her. But Ruan had, even if he hadn’t recognized it. The fey held the reliquary. The fey must understand the danger. Certainly, they would do what needed to be done to end the threat. Use her to repair the seals and send Asher back.
The mounds rose unnaturally in a low, flat field surrounded by thick woods. Like waves, they rippled and curled, their tops awash in the last bright gleam of westering sun. She shivered as heat danced over her skin, across her face. Settled around her shoulders like a comforting arm. Or a coercing one. Suddenly, the heat became a flame that licked at her insides. Buried itself within her like a blade. She clamped her mouth shut on a cry of both pain and fear. She’d come here for one purpose. She wouldn’t back down now.
The sun flashed and was gone, leaving a sky murky and starless. The air thickened. Became heavy. And she knew that somewhere close by, Conor was already at war.
“You.” The voice came from behind her, the word hurled like a curse.
Ellery swung around to face a woman whose perfect features were twisted into a mask of outrage and disbelief. Her hair and skin shimmered like pearl, but her eyes glowed white-hot. Furious. “Where is he? Where is Bligh?”
“He’s not coming.”
The woman eyed her with distaste. “He chooses now of all times to grow a conscience.” She turned to address a tall, elegant man, his beauty hard as crystal. Ellery hadn’t seen him at first, her attention taken completely with the ice goddess.
“I should have known he’d fail us,” the woman spat.
“He’s weak, Aeval,” the man said. He looked down his nose at Ellery. “Too much of the human runs in his veins.”
“Conor thinks he can destroy Asher,” Ellery explained, “not just imprison him. He wants to end the threat forever.”
Aeval stopped her furious pacing to level a scathing look at Ellery. “You’re frightened. I feel your terror.”
Ellery lifted her chin, faced the fey as if she stood at the cannon’s mouth. “Not of you.”
Aeval smiled, the chilly smile of a snake. “No? Do you know who I am? In between his whispered words of passionate nonsense, has Bligh told you anything of us? Of me?”
“No.”
That seemed to make her even more furious, but it was quickly mastered, and her expression was once again regal, solemn as dead kings. “Bligh is no match for Asher,” Aeval said. “He goes to his doom. And all for the tupping of a common strumpet.”
“Not so common,” Ellery shot back, tired of being everyone’s favorite target. “In this, I’m more powerful than you or Conor or any of the fey. I can rid you of Asher. My blood alone can reseal the reliquary.”
Aeval raised her brows, eying Ellery in a new light. “So it can.” She tilted her head, considering. “You have more courage than I’d have thought.”
“I’m doing what I have to.” It grew harder to breathe, the longer she remained. She inhaled, but her lungs felt squashy, useless. Was this Asher’s power growing? Or did all the true fey affect her this way? An idle question in another few moments. “You do have the reliquary, don’t you?”
“For now, we guard it,” the man answered.
“Will you take me to Ilcum Bledh?” Ellery swallowed around the choking dread. “Will you use me to save Conor?”
The man hesitated, but Aeval grabbed her by the arm. “I will. Come.”
With a rush of wind, the world fell away. A brilliant glare dazzled Ellery’s eyes, an iridescent shine of colors that washed over her, through her, merged with her hair, her body, swam with her blood. Aeval’s hand was the only thing she felt, the only sound a chiming of faery bells. Bright and sweet at first, they sharpened, intensified into something louder, more sinister. The harsh, discordant cries of battle. And then the river of light was gone. And she stood on a barren hill with the ancient, weathered stones of Ilcum Bledh before her. And within the doorway of the leaning tomb’s mouth, dwarfed by the giant stones, two dark figures struggled.
She was in time.
Conor reeled back, striking his head on the sharp-edged stone of the quoit, lights exploding in his eyes. He shook it off, dazed, but knowing that even a moment’s lapse would bring Asher down on him.
The demon shifted from foot to foot, still inexplicably wearing the glamorie of a London man about town, though he’d discarded his walking stick for a barbed sword. “It’s over, amhas-draoi. Admit it,” he hissed.
