My grandfather spoke. “This is the daughter of Ariannon, Priestess of Anu, who passed to the Place of Souls fifteen moons past.” He paused, took a deep breath and then said reluctantly, “My granddaughter.”
The murmurs grew louder. Mael stepped forward, eyes scanning me from head to toe. “She’s blighted. There’s only one thing worse than a human and that’s a halfling.” He grabbed my grandfather’s arm and whispered fiercely, “Dear Dagda, Lairgnen. Why was she not killed at birth?”
My grandfather’s tone was tight. I’d pay for embarrassing him. “My daughter hid her until the child’s soul was firmly bonded. You know the law, Mael. Once an innocent soul has firmly bonded to the body we cannot take a life."
Mael stepped closer to my grandfather, lowering his voice. “Aye and she is damaged, her soul is blighted because of human blood. You know it as well as I. It’s why we made it unlawful for this kind of union; they are dangerous and too unpredictable... This one will be no different than the other halflings who came before her.”
Fear knotted my stomach. I knew I was unwanted. I’d heard it nearly my whole life, but I never understood why.
Mother had held on to so many secrets. She never told me what I was, only that I was special and loved. Not even Lidi knew what the blight on my soul meant and what, besides the theft of our Light, had happened in our history to make one such as myself so reviled. We’d both searched endlessly in the Hall of Records at Murias, but found nothing of others like me. It was as if the halflings of so long ago had never existed. Only the council seemed privy to the lost history, to a time when Danaans and humans mingled freely.
Because Mother was a priestess of Anu and beloved daughter to Lairgnen, I’d been given a home, an education, meals and clothing to wear. I should’ve been grateful for their charity, but I wasn’t. I was angry. And my anger had grown every day, little by little, just like the darkness and frost creeping across our land.
I met Balen’s eyes, for they’d never left mine, and I saw a flash of something. Pity? Anger?
“And the father?” Mael asked in a tight voice. “The gates have been closed since the Old War, since they stole the Light from us. How did he get in to sire this child?”
My grandfather shook his head. “I don’t know. He disappeared soon after Ariannon passed.”
There I stood before three rulers of the land. And, aye, I was a halfling, but I was also D’Anu. I was the only daughter of my mother and that alone should mean I had the courage to face whatever came next. I was already caught, already revealed. So let them look and have their fill of my oddity. Perhaps then, they’d move past it and I could proceed with my life.
My grandmother approached, a reigning beauty of Murias, but hers was a cold, hard, silver beauty that made my insides curl. Lairgnen released me as she snatched my wrist. “I will take her. Please,” she said graciously, “continue with the feast.”
At the first tug on my arm, I glanced desperately at my grandfather. His stern profile remained unchanged. He wouldn’t look at me; he rarely did. Instead, his attention had focused on Balen.
The Fire Breather spoke, his gaze never faltered, never looked away from me. “I’m willing to discuss terms of an alliance.”
Balen’s words, words everyone had wanted to hear for so long, hung in the air.
It wasn’t Balen’s words that made my stomach clench and a cold sweat prick the small of my back, it was the way he studied me, confident and calm. Too calm.
My grandfather’s face reddened. A glint of cunning flashed in Mael’s gray eyes. Voices rose and became heated, on both my family’s side and that of Sydhr. Energy gathered in the hall. Magic hung in the air.
“Take her to her room. Lock the door,” My grandfather said to his wife before turning toward Balen. “Let us speak of this in private.”
Dazed, I didn’t fight as she dragged me from the Great Hall, down the servant’s hallway toward the kitchen while I tried to keep up with her swift stride. Her fingers dug so deeply into my wrist that the small tendons and bones grated together. The servers stopped, their backs pressed against the wall to watch our progression. I ignored them, knowing I wouldn’t find any friends there.
Despite the pain in my wrist, I pulled against her. “Please stop, Grandmother. Please.”
She didn’t. I stumbled, trying not to trip on the long hem of her shimmering indigo gown. We barged into the kitchen to the startled gasps of the cooks and Lidi’s blink of astonishment.
The room Lidi and I shared was only a few doors down from the kitchen. My grandmother shoved me inside with such force that I nearly fell. Quickly, I recovered. “Wait!”
She paused in the doorframe, her chin high and her wide blue eyes full of loathing. “Balen of Sydhr might be of fire, but he has a heart of ice. He will not forgive this . . . mockery you’ve created. We should’ve left you on the rubble pile a few more days, but your grandfather has a soft heart like his daughter.”
“What?”
She slammed the door. The lock clicked.
“No, wait!”
Her words rang in my head and made the hairs on my arms rise. I sat on my bed, trying to make sense of her tirade. The lock clicked again. I jumped up as Lidi rushed in and threw her arms around me.
“Oh, Deira! What have you done?” Tears and panic muddled her voice. “Why don’t you listen? Why?” She stepped back, smoothed the hair away from my face. Her glassy eyes grew larger and rounder. Even in her sadness she was painfully beautiful. “What were you thinking?”
I dropped to the bed, hanging my head. “I don’t know. I just wanted to see. I wanted to find a way to leave...” Lidi plopped down next to me, held one of my hands and patted the top. I winced. My wrist throbbed. “Grandmother said they left me on the rubble pile when I was little. I have memories. But I kept telling myself they were just dreams, nightmares... Is it true, Lidi?”
“I’ve always wondered when you’d ask,” she said quietly. “I never should’ve brought you here.”
“They left me to die.”
She nodded, unable to look at me. “I couldn’t stop them, to tell them you were innocent, just a child, but they wouldn’t listen. They abandoned you, left you on the hill.”
With the garbage of Murias. I felt sick.
“Why?” Pain squeezed my chest. I hugged myself, remembering those awful nights that weren’t dreams, terrified to move, exposed to the elements and not an ounce of power in my being to save me.
“After a fortnight, your grandfather was overtaken by guilt. He sent his guards to bring your body back, to give you a proper burial, but when they arrived, you were still alive.” She looked at me then, her face stricken with so much guilt and confusion. “You were so small. Do you remember?”
I put my head in my hands. My temples throbbed. I saw flashes of myself as a child, curled up amid the garbage of our great city, crying, while the wind lashed the rocky hill. The bugs. Calling out to Mother. The nightmares. The dead birds and animals that mounted up as each day passed.
“They say you stole the life from every living thing around you, that’s how you survived.”
“No,” I choked out, stunned and sickened by what she said. “That’s… No, I couldn’t.”
“So they brought you back. No one knew what to do with you. They were more afraid of you than ever, afraid you’d do the same to them if they harmed you.”
No, I hadn’t done what she said. I couldn’t have. I didn’t remember doing something so foul. I wanted to scream my denial. “Lidi.” I lifted my head to look at her. “How could I do that? What am I that I could do that?”
“I don’t know. No one knows except those within the council. I think, long ago, when humans traveled freely between our lands and others like you were born, they did terrible things, had terrible powers like yours. That’s why they fear you. But they don’t know your heart, like I do, Deira. They were blinded by whatever happened in the past. It was a moment of madness, what they did.”
We stayed together on the bed for a long time as I tried to process what I’d learned and accept the things she’d said. But I couldn’t. I couldn’t have done what she said.
“Perhaps it’s not as bad as we think,” she said after my tears had dried. She placed a finger under my chin, forcing me to look at her. “Your mother once told me you were meant to be in our world, and I believe her still. You have a purpose, Deira. We don’t yet know your fate.”
I jerked my chin away. “I know it. To be roasted to a crisp by a Fire Breather.”
She smiled. “I thought you didn’t believe in those myths.”
“What’s going to happen, Lidi?”
Her arm came around my shoulder. I leaned into her. Our sides pressed fully together from shoulder to knee. Scenarios crammed my mind until I couldn’t think anymore. Where was my goddess in my time of need? From the first moment I drew breath, Anu had turned her back on me. I’d never felt her power or her blessing, yet I found myself bereft at her absence all the same.
Earth. Air. Fire. Water. Every Danaan could claim descent from one of the creators, the four Ageless Ones. Two gods: Sydhr of fire and Taranis of air. And two goddesses: Anu of water and Dagda of earth. Our four Houses.
But there was another house. The House of Annwn. The Underworld.
The legends claimed its ruler, Nox of Annwn, everything from a direct offspring of the gods, to an Ageless One himself, a holder of a fifth element, that which was unknown and unseen but existed in everything. Some claimed it was the power of the spirit, some claimed it was the life force running through us all. Whatever it was, it gave him dominion over the Deadlands and the Place of Souls.
And me? I possessed nothing. I, who was the daughter of one of the greatest priestesses of Anu, couldn’t even summon a raindrop.
After a long time, the door opened to reveal my grandfather’s regal form. “Lidi, please help Deira gather her things. She will leave immediately. The House of Sydhr has agreed to the alliance. They are taking Deira with them.”