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Yes, sister,Macha responded.
She walked with Roisin and Palon to the queen’s waiting room, where Roisin placed the crown on Badb’s head and fussed with her golden curls.
Dagda entered the room and froze. “Roisin, out.” He turned to the open door. “Palon, inside.”
Roisin and Palon complied, exchanging a glance as they switched places.
“Search her,” Dagda said to Palon.
“Yes, your majesty.” He bowed, then moved to Badb and began feeling her for weapons.
She gave Dagda a cunning smile. “Not going to search me yourself?”
He glared at her. “I shall not cancel today, but the court is aware of you. If you so much as open your mouth during the proceedings, I shall denounce you and have Palon escort you to your quarters.”
Her smirk only grew. “So frightened,” she said while Palon sifted through her skirts, coming up empty. “I wonder how much longer it will take before Morrigan sees you for what you really are. Before she resents your presence constantly at her side. How long did it take her in her past life?”
Disgust crossed his face, but she recognized it for what it was, a mask to hide that her words had hit home. “You are transparent, Badb.”
“Perhaps,” she simpered as she headed for the door to the throne room. “However, it does not mean I am wrong.”
The next day, Macha sat among the flowers and plants of the palace gardens. She watched the flash of the metal stymphalian birds as they flitted about the marble walls, carrying messages to various faerie quarters throughout the castle.
Pansies sat in perfectly manicured rows.
Guards stood at even intervals along the gates.
Water gurgled in straight streams designed to square off the garden beds.
Order, order, order.
How hideously boring.
The chaotic beauty of the wilds of the Otherworld called to her. The closer Samhain approached, the more her power grew. The more the walls of the palace threatened to drive her to madness. Yet until she was finally free, this would have to do.
She touched a budding Arlace flower, and it bloomed in her palm. The deep blue petals let off a scent that relaxed Macha, that was so alluring it made her temporarily forget she was caged here. It was the twin to another flower. This one wrapped round the violet stem of the first, thorns piercing the other as they twisted together with an intimate constriction—attempt to pull them apart and they’d both bleed out and die—and so they grew up, inflicting pain upon one another, twinging around each other’s wounds, the good and bad inextricably linked. A courtesan desperate to clasp its paramour in a relentless hold, bent on becoming one at any cost.
So exquisite.
She hadn’t called for Ornan to service her, even though she longed to feel his wicked claws scraping across her skin, his power heating every inch of her into scintillating ecstasy. Since her bargain, so many delicious thoughts about what she wanted him to do to her had laid waste to her mind.
The risk of being caught is too high. Badb’s words had blasted her desires into ruin, and Macha had pouted even while she understood. They couldn’t risk their deals being discovered. Not when so much was already going their way.
So she had to wait. In excruciating emptiness, her need rising unrelentingly within her, the forest beyond calling to her, the desire for Ornan simmering to ash in her blood.
She looked forward to when she would be free of both her sisters. No more games. No more being caught between fights over power between Badb and Morrigan. A fight that had lasted hundreds, thousands of years. Macha felt the weariness down to her bones.
But according to Badb, their time had arrived.
Macha wouldn’t rethink her allegiances now. Not when freedom was so close.
A woman wearing a long autumn gown approached. Macha noted the distress on her face.
Palon, that giant hulk of a man, loomed behind Macha. She’d tried on several occasions to break his steady, soldier-like presence with her sultry teasing, but had learned to keep her lurid comments to a minimum around that maid, Roisin. On one occasion, she’d cast Macha a murderous glare that inspired a cautiousness inside Macha that only Badb rivaled.
“Your Majesty.” The woman in the autumn gown bowed. She fumbled with her skirts as if not aware of how childish she appeared. “I am so sorry to disturb you, your majesty. I am afraid I have lost my son, Caelm. He is all of about three years, and I worry he may get himself into danger or mischief if not found soon.”
Macha stepped over to the Arlace flowers and caressed their twined violet stems. “If he lingers in the gardens, I shall find him.”
