FIFTY
FAELAN
“I died?” I ask, the shock from Sage’s words rolling through me.
I woke up in Lailoken’s tree, Sage at my side. I didn’t even get a word out before she was tackling me and hugging me, sputtering out everything that happened after I passed out. Saying that Astrid killed me, let me bleed out—the one thing that would ensure I wouldn’t come back, since all I have left from my father is the power in my blood.
Lailoken comes into view behind Sage. “Oh, it was amazing to watch! So much tension and knots in the stomach.” His brows go up and down. “And then you were totally kaput!” He throws his hand in the air. “Who would’ve thought Mr. Shadow would be so quick to help Mr. Winter? But our tale even surprises me at times.” His smile becomes whimsical.
I’m at a loss. I sit up and give Sage a questioning look.
“Kieran brought you back.” She motions to someone across the room.
I turn my head, and a shadowed Kieran is leaning on the far wall, arms crossed over his chest, foot propped on the tree behind him. My muscles tense, my nerves buzzing again. He brought me back? Not Lailoken?
“You’re welcome,” Kieran says, his voice flat. “And I ate your ex-lover as well.”
My hands flex involuntarily, gripping the moss under me. “Astrid. You fed off—?”
“Killed her, actually,” he finishes for me, a satisfied glint in his eyes. “She was a bit more broccoli than I like, though.”
Sage glares at him. “Seriously, Kieran.”
His gaze falls on her, and his expression softens.
My pulse skips seeing him look at her like that. As if he has a heart to care for her.
“I should go,” he says. “This forest is protected from my sister’s eyes, but she’ll be missing me if I’m unseen for too long. We wouldn’t want her getting suspicious.” He pushes off the wall. “Thank you for the potion, monk.”
“Yes, yes, my boy,” Lailoken says. “I hope it helps settle him.”
“I’m sure it will.” He glances at Sage once more, like he’s hesitant to go. But then he slips out into the woods.
“What a nice young man,” Lailoken says.
Obviously they haven’t properly met.
“So now that Mr. Winter is awake, let’s get started on young Lily here.” He motions for me to sit on a bench at the table.
My legs wobble as I rise, and I have to lean on Sage as she helps me to the seat. I struggle with my emotions, watching her move back to sit beside Lailoken on the dry brown moss where I was lying.
Because I failed. In the end it was Kieran who did the protecting. Of me.
“What’s going to happen?” Sage asks the monk. “Will the spell fix the confusion with the memories?”
“Are you removing the dreams?” I ask, trying to shift my thoughts.
“No, no, there’s no helping the truth of the past,” Lailoken says. He starts plucking pieces of mint from a bush at the edge of the room and tossing them into a bowl. He turns back to Sage. “But this will allow you to accept things inside, to balance the spirits, so the tug-of-war can settle. For now, the two within must come to an understanding. This way you can serve your purpose. You can become your true self.”
Her tense shoulders relax.
“What does that mean?” I ask. There’s still so much we don’t understand. If this is about Sage’s problem with the blood memories, I need to be sure that what the monk is doing is safe. “All you have to do is take out the implant and help her with the dreams.”
Lailoken sighs. “There is much to say about that, much. I will tell you in the best way I can, and maybe you’ll understand better.” He sets down the bowl of mint and pulls the nest from his head, making an attempt to straighten his hair. “It was long ago. And I have much clouding the nut. But I will try.” He taps a finger at his temple. Then he clears his throat and takes a deep breath, closing his eyes for a second. When he opens them, they seem clearer, more . . . human. “I was the queen’s watcher, you know,” he says, directing his words to Sage.
She nods, sadness filling her eyes.
“She was so young,” he continues, “only a child when I stumbled upon her. Father Caelus at the monastery had taught us of the other things that roamed the woods, at times wolves, at times gods that masked themselves as wolves. So when I found her, I knew what she was, though I had no real knowledge of how powerful she’d become.” He stares into the small flames dancing in the trough, his eyes going distant. “The goddess came to me that first night.”
He looks up at me, then back to Sage, and it’s like he’s pleading with us to believe him, like he’s letting go of something he’s held tight for too long. “Brighid came to me in the flames—me, a lowly monk. It was a miracle.” He shakes his head like he has trouble believing it himself. “She told me who the child Lily was, told me how vital she was, and asked me to keep her daughter close. And so I did.” He releases a shaky breath. “Until the very end, I stayed with her. And when she was taken from me, when the Cast put her in that place they call the Pit, I thought I would finally die at last. I had been here on this earth so long, surely it was time to bid farewell.” He shakes his head again, looking weary.
“But I waited. I made my home deeper in the wood. And still I stayed.
“Before my Lily had been taken, we did a spell that bound her power, bound her energy and her spirit and her memories, into an owl’s egg. And then we burned it, turning it into ashes that I was to spread in the field once Lily was taken by the Cast—we knew they were coming. It was Lily’s way of being free, even as she was trapped in the Pit. Her sorrow could remain behind. She’d go forward as a mere shell, and feel nothing.” A tear slips down his weathered cheek.
“I was ashamed of what we’d done.” His voice wavers. “Her eyes were dead the day they came for her, nothing real left behind. I felt as if I’d destroyed her, and it was for nothing.” He pauses, swallowing hard. “She had become ashes in a field of bluebells. But after a moon had passed, the goddess Brighid came to me again, this time in the figure of a horned owl. She told me that she’d brought me her second daughter to care for. She told me she had another spell for me to do. And she left me with a golden-and-black egg the size of a melon, along with a lock of brown hair.”
An egg the size of a melon? The words poke at my insides and a chill runs down my spine.
Sage—but that was so long ago.
“That was me,” Sage says, wonder in her voice. “I was born from an egg?”
“You were, child,” Lailoken says. “All children of a goddess are born from an egg.” He stands and walks over, pulling a small box from a nook in the wall of the tree. He brings it over to me and opens it, showing me the contents.
Sitting inside are three large pieces of what look like a broken porcelain bowl, the inside shiny sky blue, the outer swirled in black and gold—the remnants of Sage’s shell. And beside the pieces of shell is a curl of light brown hair, tied with a piece of vine. I frown at the contents, not understanding.
“You gave this bit of hair to my Lily,” he says to me. “Yes?”
“I don’t—” I’m about to say I don’t know what he’s talking about, but then I remember, the silver coin. Queen Lily had asked for a lock of my hair in exchange for a silver coin three nights before she was taken by the Cast. “Yes, I gave her my hair.” And then I thought nothing of it.
“The goddess placed this and the large egg at my feet that night, and she told me to lay one over the other, to cast protection and loyalty between them. I was to give the sturdiness and loyalty of the winter wolf to the source of the hair and the determination and passion of the flame to the life within the egg. I was to speak it over them for as long as they were in my care. And make them into two sides of a coin.”
“How long ago was that?” Sage asks.
He looks to the side, like he’s trying to remember. “I counted the moons, one, two, three . . . the years, one, two, three . . . and the decades, one, two, three . . . and on and on. I moved deeper and deeper into the wood, hiding and keeping it all to ourselves, lost and forgotten. Finally, she hatched. Eighteen years ago.” He shrugs, tipping his head at Sage.
Sage swallows, her eyes turning glassy.
“Your tiny pale body was so delicate,” he continues. “If not for the owls bringing milk and shiny baubles to me from far away, I don’t know how I’d have cared for you. You were such a fragile doll.” He smiles at her softly and reaches out, taking her hand.
A tear slips down her cheek. “But I don’t understand. How did I end up with Lauren?”
“I was told not to keep you past your third year. I didn’t understand, you see, what to do.” Guilt fills his eyes, and he gives her a pleading look. “But when I went into the world again, to find your path for you, I was overwhelmed. It was all a big noise. So many things hurt my eyes, my ears. And I got confused.” He leans forward, like he needs Sage to understand. “I was to follow a trail of gold, that’s what the goddess had said. The gold energy led me to a most horrible place. But I didn’t know. If I’d known what that woman was, I wouldn’t have obeyed, I don’t think.” He looks away, his eyes haunted. “I found the dead child in the green box full of trash down the road. But I’d already left my treasure—you—in its place. When I went back to the woman, she was holding my little fire-haired girl and singing her a song, crying quietly. I thought perhaps . . . perhaps you’d be all right.” He shakes his head, his shoulders sinking. “Perhaps . . . I am so sorry, child. I should not have obeyed.” He dares to look at Sage again. “I went back many times to search for you. But I’d forgotten where I put you. I’d forgotten where the road was. I looked for days and days, finding only sadness and pain.”
Tears streak Sage’s face. She just nods. But she grips his hand back now, like she’s trying to reassure him.
He sniffs and wipes his nose with his wide sleeve. “But all was not lost, as I thought,” he says, his voice brightening. “A sennight ago, this boy brought you to me.” A smile grows on his face. “And in that moment, when I realized who you were, my despair washed away. Things cleared in my mind that had been muddy for so long. I’d nearly forgotten my task, you see. Now I understand what the goddess meant.”
I lean forward. “So you knew who Sage was that day? Why didn’t you tell me all of this before I left with her?”
“And what?” he scoffs. “Reveal the truth before the tale had even begun?” He rises and goes back to plucking mint. “No, no, boy. I marked her with my protection before you left again, so that most would stay out of the way. It was all taken care of. She would be safe, see.”
“Wait, it was you who marked me?” Sage says.
“Of course!” he says. “I wouldn’t dare allow you to be lost from me again.”
“But I don’t understand,” I say. “Why did she stay hidden for so long with the humans?”
“The goddess cloaked her—cloaked her power, her name, her birthright.” He grinds his pestle into the bowl, mixing the ingredients. “She needed to keep her Lily safe.”
“Wait, how is that related to Sage?” I ask, not sure the dots are connecting. Because what I’m thinking can’t really be right.
He pauses his potion making, setting the bowl down again. He scoops some of the contents into her palm. “Sage’s power is her own, but it’s Lily’s too, you see.” He shows me what’s in his hand, pieces of mint leaves and lavender, mixed with what looks like cinder. “The ashes I spread into the earth kept the spirit, the energy, the memories safe. Brighid pressed them into her new daughter, hoping to join them together and allow her first to have a voice again.”
Two sources, Sage and Lily, joined together. Holy Danu, that’s a lot of power in one vessel. I’ve never heard of such a thing.
He spits in the bowl of mint and then turns to me. “I hate to ask, but this requires more blood from you, Mr. Winter.”
“Why do you keep calling me that?” I ask.
He squints at me. “You are Mr. Winter, are you not? The protector? The gray wolf?”
I don’t see how any of it connects. “I’m Sage’s protector, but—”
“Well, then.” He raises his brow at me and holds out a blade and a bowl. “I need blood.”
I sigh. “What for?” I eye the contents of the bowl warily. There’s been too much spellwork in this mess already.
“I wish to ease her struggle,” he says. “The two spirits need to come to an understanding. Your blood will be key in that, since you are her balance, the ice to her flame. You see?” His eyes brighten like he’s just revealed the key to the whole story. But I’m still lost.
I pull out my dagger anyway. “How much do you need?”