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“Yes. I know he’s a badass, and I shouldn’t be this worried, but here I am.”
“Let’s see if we can take a look at where he is and ease your anxiety a little.” Chrissy put her hand out, and Ella took it. She did her best to push down all of her inbuilt responses to another touching her. While she was wearing her necklace, she was safe.
“Take a breath, Ella. I’m not going to hurt you,” Chrissy reassured her. Magic hummed against her skin. It was like warm sunlight and green growing things. “Touch your magic to mine. There you are, cool and deep as the ocean. Close your eyes, and let’s see what we can see.”
Ella let Chrissy guide her in gentle steps like Deidra used to. She was patient and didn’t hurry Ella.
“Focus on Mananan. Hold him in your mind's eye for me,” Chrissy said, her voice going deeper and calmer.
It wasn’t a hard task. She was always thinking about him. Ella remembered him pulling her from the sea, a mythical warrior, and how he was in Faerie as the king. She smiled, recalling him reading one of Deidra’s smutty highland romances and how he’d laughed the previous night in the hot pool. His gentle and obsessive touches. How he’d looked at her like he couldn’t believe she was real.
Ella’s inner vision shifted, and she was on a cold beach, rain driving down around her. She held out a hand but couldn’t feel the water.
“We aren’t really here,” Chrissy said beside her.
A dragon roared above her, and Ella ducked in fright. It was black and red, its wings wide as it soared over the sea. Someone was on its back.
“Is that Imogen?” Ella asked.
“Yup. And that’s Taranis’s shifted form. Rather smashing, isn’t he?” Chrissy replied.
The sea boiled offshore, and Mananan was flung out of the water. Fragarach was unsheathed and barbed tentacles where swiping after him. Mananan sliced free of them and went crashing back into the water, death on his face.
“Holy shit. Don’t ever piss off, Manan,” Chrissy said.
Ella went to the water’s edge, hating that she couldn’t see what was happening beneath the waves. The world stilled, and cold air washed over Ella. Heavy, dark magic reached out for her. She had felt that power before.The Fomorian horror.
Ella whirled around, searching for the source of it. Further down the beach, a figure appeared, like a mirage. Black robes whipped in the wind. The skull of some kind of animal was covering its face. It whirled in Ella’s direction, and she screamed and screamed.
Ella snapped back into her body. Chrissy was shaking her hard, her face panicked.
“Ella! Ella!”
“I’m back. I’m back,” she gasped, clutching at her chest. She grabbed Chrissy’s arm. “Did you see it?”
“See what? We were on the beach, and you just lost it,” Chrissy said.
“It… It was there. I could feel the Fomorian. The horror that’s in the ocean. I saw a figure on the beach.”
“Describe him to me.”
Ella told her about the feeling of the magic, the robes, and the horned skull mask. “I know it sounds crazy.”
“It doesn’t. That was the mage. I couldn’t see him at all.” Chrissy pulled Ella into a hug with one arm and grabbed her phone off the table. She put it to her ear. “Bron? Speak up! I can’t hear you over the wind. Ella had a vision. That mage was on the beach. Tell Taran!”
Ella heard a garbled reply, and Chrissy hung up. She hugged Ella tighter. “Okay, they know now. Taran will take care of it and find the bastard.”
“I… I can’t stop shaking,” Ella stammered. That horrible power had brushed against her, and her heart felt frozen. Mananan was out there, distracted by fighting horde kraken with no idea that the bigger monster was lurking close by. Its power felt the same as the mage’s, which presented her with the questions—was he controlling the beast he had summoned? Or was the beast controlling him?
* * *
Ella spentthe rest of the day pacing the castle, her anxiety for Mananan choking her. She didn’t dare try any more magic with Chrissy. She wasn’t a coward, but that mage had creeped the hell out of her. He had gotten away from Oberon and Taranis before, and she knew that she was no match for it.
Chrissy and Freya had tried to reassure her that the others would’ve told her if Mananan was hurt. He would be brought back straight away. They had given up when they realized none of it was sinking in.
At sundown, the main doors of the castle banged open, and the hunters returned. Ella ran down the staircase and launched herself at Mananan. He caught her easily and brought her close. He wasn’t hurt. He was back and safe.
“What’s all this about?” Mananan murmured.
