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“I’m going with you,” Kenna announced, taking a moment to break from the line of archers. “Lower me down.”
“Nay,” Malcolm held his hand out to her. “Ye stay where ye are and help the Berserkers fend off the attack. They need yer fire.”
Kenna stood upon the wall, her amber skirts flapping against her legs in the increasingly violent winds. “I know you could have loved him.” Her eyes glowed with the fire of prophecy. “I’m sorry that you could not keep Sean and also your word as a Druid. But your decisions today will echo for millennia, one way or the other.”
Her words affected Malcolm more than he could ever have expected. So much so that all he could summon for her was a nod before he turned with his sister toward Dun Moray. It wasn’t sadness that welled up inside him as he stalked the thoroughfare of Moray Village toward where Badb stood, clutching her broom in one hand and the book in the other.
Rage. A helpless, impotent fury Malcolm had never had to grapple with in his entire life. He was a de Moray. The King of the Highland people. His family had held off the Vikings, the Romans, and the English with their might and magick.
How was it that this one crone and her coven were more dangerous than all the sword-wielding warriors who’d been after this isle since the beginning? How could it be possible that no matter which side won the day, the ultimate loss would be his? He’d always done everything required of him. Respected the earth. Studied his craft. Learned herbs, potions, incantations, leadership, justice, and mercy. Some of those lessons had been hard-won. Others came easily.
But after decades of sacrifice for his people and his Goddess, he was denied the only thing that truly mattered in this world. The one thing that would strengthen and solidify his power and allow him to become the man, the King, he was meant to be.
Love.
It was love that saved the souls of the mated Berserkers who now cherished and protected his kinswomen. Malcolm craved such love. The love of someone willing to sacrifice their eternal soul for his sake. The rare emotion that filled in the cracks of one’s being and fortified the weaknesses with a power greater than any other.
Hatred boiled in the absence of that love, filling him with a dark power that surged dangerously just beneath the surface.
“Keep Nemain busy,” he instructed Morgana. “Her fire is useless against your water. Draw from the Loch and drown her if need be.”
“What are you going to do?” Morgana asked.
“Whatever is necessary.”
The sky darkened as they stopped at the bottom of the stone steps to Dun Moray. The spires of his home now seemed sinister against the backdrop of the roiling clouds, occasionally illuminated with flashes of lightning.
Energy crackled in the very air between them. The ground was alive with it, and it sparked from the Crone’s silver eyes as he approached.
“I’ve never understood you, King Malcolm,” Badb spoke down at him from the top of the stairs, where she and the vicious girl/child, Nemain, blocked the entrance to the keep. “For a man of such power, you certainly lack vision.”
“I’m envisioning ye in yer grave,” Malcolm growled.
Badb’s cackle sounded like the crunch of gravel beneath a boot. “To say such things to your family,” she tsked.
“You’re no kin of ours,” Morgana said, her fingers twitching as she drew power into her hands and connected with the waters of the loch.
“I am a de Moray.” Badb lifted the Grimoire, the wind flipping the pages of the ancient tome until it fell open. “There are four de Moray’s behind one gate. The Prophecy of Four has foretold that we will be the ones to open the Seven Seals and bring about the Apocalypse.”
“Ye know I’d never do that,” Malcolm vowed. “I’d die before I succumbed to yer evil.”
Badb’s eyes flared, and she stepped forward, brandishing the book at him as she descended the stairs with the languor of a victor. “Evil?” she purred. “You men are always so short-sighted. You think there is only good, and only evil. You plant your flag on one side or the other and you fight to the death in service to the light or to the dark.”
“I will always choose the light.” He said this without hesitation, and still the crone laughed.
“It is easy for evil to take purchase in the soul of a good man.” Badb stopped three steps above him, bringing them all but face to face. “Bliss can be found in a sin, and bitterness often follows a good deed, is this not so?”
Victorious cries from the wall heralded a triumph over the Army of Souls. Smoke curled into the sky, mixing with the dark clouds and reflecting Kenna’s flames as though they licked skyward from the bowels of the Underworld.
“Your minions are defeated,” Malcolm informed his enemies.
Badb shrugged. “What need have I of them when I have the two of you? Once I help our master rise from the deep and seize what is left after the Apocalypse, the Army of the Damned will be my minions, and I will rule them with unimaginable power.”
“Ye’re delusional,” Malcolm spat.
“I’m a visionary,” she corrected. “And I’m willing to share that power with you, King Malcolm. I’ll give you a piece of my paradise when this is all over. And also, grant you what you desire most in this world, if you and your sister do what I want.”
With a wave of her gnarled finger and a whispered curse, a portal opened up on the steps right in front of them, a window to the Void. There, naked and curled in on himself, was Sean, shivering in a hole of desolation and anguish, whispering his name as though it were a prayer to the gods.
