“I understand, Deira. You’ve made your choice. To keep me in darkness to save Innis Fail. You’d sacrifice my chance at freedom. Just as your hero sacrificed you to do the same. Perhaps you are more like him than I thought.” Nox moved away, revealing Balen lying, unchained, on the ground in front of the pillar stone. Beside him, a tall spear was driven into the ground.
“You gave me your geás,” I reminded him, more steadily than I felt. “You cannot break it.”
“I have not broken it.”
“But he’s…” I forced myself to stay calm and upright. But Balen, he wasn’t moving. And he was so pale…
“He’s not dead, Deira. His precious raven, however...” Nox pivoted, plucked the spear from the ground, and flung it straight and true at a pillar stone nearby.
No. Drem was tied to the stone. “No!”
The spear pierced its chest. A horrible shriek rent the air and sent every bird in the trees flying.
I ran past Nox, but he grabbed my arm.
Drem’s screeches subsided, going pathetic and small, as the life ebbed out of it.
“No.” I jerked from Nox so hard I fell on my rear in the wet grass and stayed there, shock making me dazed.
“If one dies, the other dies... That is the legend, isn’t it?” He sighed. “I am the Lord of the Underworld. I have learned a thing or two. Two half-souls just went into the Place of Souls. The other two halves reside in Balen, who is not mortally wounded.”
I didn’t understand.
Nox tossed Balen’s chains at my feet. “He’ll sleep forever, unable to die, unable to live, so you see, Deira, he is not exactly . . . harmed . . . is he?”
He grabbed the fruit in my hand, but I held on tight, surging out of my shock. “No, you can’t take it.” I grappled with him, rising to my feet. I needed it, needed it to save Drem. I could feed it to him. It would heal him and heal Balen. I had to try.
“Damn it, Deira, let it go.”
I leaned all my weight back, refusing to give in. “No.” Tears clouded my vision.
His grip became stronger on my hand, unbearable. My knuckles squeezed together, making me cry out in pain.
“Let it go.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t. I wouldn’t.
Then, the bones in my hand snapped. Pain shot up my arm. I sucked in a stunned gasp and let go. I couldn’t breathe—the pain stealing my breath. I fell to my knees and cradled my hand. It was my writing hand, the crooked fingers still stained in ink.
“Deira,” Nox said, anger and regret lacing his tone.
He cursed, hesitated a moment as though he’d help me, and then he marched away, disappearing into the mist.
Balen was lost to me. Nox was gone. The fruit was gone. And it felt like there was a gaping hole in my chest.
I held my broken hand against my chest, taking in the pain and the hot throb. I might never be able to use it to write again, but it barely mattered. The physical pain, I welcomed because it overshadowed the overwhelming loss I felt on the inside.
Silent tears slid down my face as I scooted to Balen. There was no rise to his chest. I cleared the hair from his noble face, kissed his lips, and then covered him with my cloak.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” I lay over him, rested my head on his chest and grieved.
After some time, I rose and went to the raven, removed its body from the pillar, and buried it next to the pillar where Balen lay.
Then I left. Again.
The hounds blocked my path near the entrance to the underground caverns, but I’d expected it. I’d already accepted my path and the things I must do.
A calm came over me.
There was no insecurity or wondering if I could. I just did.
Standing there, grief-stricken and hollow, I left Deira D’Anu behind, opened myself to my tainted blood, and let my dark power overtake me.
It lashed out, an angry, black, greedy force, surrounding the hounds and stealing every bit of life they had within them. It relished this. It thrived on the taking. It fed me, made me stronger, made the pain in my hand go away. The hounds’ strength and blood lust, their life force, zinged down my limbs, raced through my veins, and filled me with power.
I stepped over their corpses and entered the hill.
Those whom I met along the way, I disposed of with a swipe of my hand, using the dark power to lash out. I had no need to kill, just to render unconscious. While the power of the hounds was in me, it was a simple thing to do, but it was already ebbing away.
I didn’t stop until I came to the golden tree.
There, I drew in a deep breath, expelled it, and opened myself once again to my power. Warm tears trailed down my face, but inside I wasn’t crying. I was lost in a black, empty, hurting void, filling up with a golden power that was not my own. It sucked the tree dry, taking its glow, its luster, its life…
In the back of my mind, I knew it was too much, too much life for one body to hold. But I was drunk on it and didn’t care. I swayed on my feet. My mouth opened. I screamed, but heard nothing. The world titled and I fell back, eyes wide open, staring at the sky.
I sat up, pulse pounding. I was in the courtyard. It was still early morning, still quiet.
My hand throbbed hot with every beat of my heart.
The tree loomed in front of me, an old, withered, gnarled thing. The golden glow was gone from its leaves. The fruit, now rotten, littered the dry, grassy circle at its trunk.
The remains of the Lia Fail clung to me and surrounded me in golden light. I blinked a few times, trying to clear the drowsy warmth away. I wasn’t sure what happened exactly. Perhaps I drew too much, couldn’t contain it, and most of it ebbed from me as I slept. Or was it all there, just under the surface, waiting to be called upon?
I felt . . . lighter. A faint hum echoed in my ears.
“Deira?”
Father stood behind me, his eyes shining with regret and pity. And love. He shook his head, as he’d often done when I was a child and had done something foolish, and then lifted me to my feet to wrap me in his arms. I held on tight and wept, love and sorrow in the tears that dampened his shirt.
“Come,” he said at length, his voice thick with emotion as he withdrew from our embrace and held out his hand. I hesitated, still a bit disoriented. “Come. I will show you the way back to Innis Fail.”
I frowned. “You? But—”
“You were right, Deira. The time of making decisions for you was over a long time ago. You are a grown woman, capable of making your own choices. You are the best of both of us, your mother and me. Brave. Strong. Kind-hearted. Beautiful. Glowing.”
I glanced down. Indeed I was.
“It is where you want to go, is it not? Back to Innis Fail?” he asked, studying me.
So many thoughts and emotions weighed on me. I remembered the seeds in my pocket and a faint stirring of hope woke inside me. Balen would want me to finish. “Aye, I want to go back.”
Approval settled over his features. “I thought so.” My father slipped his arm around my shoulder and together we walked away from the garden.
“And Nox?”
He didn’t answer, and I sensed the worry in my father. I heard it in his soft sigh as he opened a servant’s door off the courtyard, revealing a long corridor. “You care for him, don’t you?”
He ushered me inside. “He is . . . a lost soul. Weary of this life. He is hard, volatile, mad at times. But he has good in him too. I do not always agree with his methods, but he is desperate to find his place in the living world, instead of the dead.”
“What will he do when he finds out you’ve helped me?”
“I am old, child. Old and tired. I have lived to see you grown and I am proud. It matters not what Nox does or does not do. But you must be careful. You have hurt him. For a long time, he has watched you, loved you even. He believed he’d found an ally, someone like him with dark power, someone who would truly accept all of him. For now, he takes out his rage in the Underworld, but when he learns you have taken the Light…” A soft chuckle escaped him. “He will be as shocked as I am that you were able to do such a thing.”
Shocked was putting it mildly.
“Why doesn’t he walk away, abdicate his throne? He could live in Éire among the living, in daylight.”
“The Underworld must have a ruler, Deira. In order to be free, Nox must pass his power to another willing to take it. They must first taste the darkness and then decide. He cannot ask, plead, coerce, extort, or threaten another to take it. When the Lia Fail was stolen, Nox realized it could work in his favor. So he sought it, found it here in Éire.”
“But why would he put himself so close to the Light? It weakens him.”
“Aye. It weakens his dark power. But he is Sydhr, too. He needs the light just like every Danaan. Once he found it, he began his assault against the other houses. He wants them to pay for shunning him, to push them to the edge of destruction. The houses, the council, they know what he really wants. They know without him asking. For Nox to return the Light someone must take his place. He is patient. He will sit back and wait. And once the land is truly in peril, someone will come willingly to take his place.”
“But he brought me here,” I said. And I’d changed everything.
“He never considered you’d be able to do what he foretold. There was no reason for any of us to think you could.”
“Come with me,” I said suddenly as we entered a store room. “We can return to Innis Fail together. Be a family.”
“I cannot leave Cathair Crofin.” He paused, making sure I understood. “I would go to the ends of the world with you if I could, Deira. But the bargain I made… I cannot leave the forest. You understand?”
I did. He’d die if he left. I gave a pained nod before crossing to another door.
“I have hidden your warrior in an old mound within the forest,” he informed me as we came out of the palace on the west side. At my surprise, he winked. “I am not without friends here. These were my woods long before the King of Annwn laid claim.”