They traveled across the sea with great speed. Bran took them high over the storm’s edge, moonlight giving way to sunrise.

Sorcha wanted to take in the beauty. She wanted to appreciate the world because she would never see it this way again. Merrows jumped from the waves and called out to them. The Guardian swam through the depths as a shadow drifting aimlessly.

She took it all in, but her heart felt empty. Drained. She wasn’t certain if it was even there anymore.

Her faerie prince was likely dead. If he wasn’t dead, then he’d killed the mirror image of himself. Who could be the same after that?

Was killing a twin like killing oneself?

Bran’s claws dug into her skin, shredding the shoulder of her dress. The pain was dull compared to the ache of her heart. She’d always thought she would grieve like Rosaleen did when she lost a lover she liked.

The blonde waif of a girl would wail and scream. Her cheeks would burn with the salt of her tears. The house would ring with the anger of her cries, the disappointment in herself and the man who had left.

Sorcha was numb. There was nothing inside her at all. Just a dull throb where her heart used to be.

Bran’s toes shifted. “I’m bringing you home.”

She nodded, although he couldn’t see her response.

He jostled her. “Did you hear me, midwife? I’m bringing you home. Wasn’t that what you’ve wanted this whole time? To go home?”

Sorcha did not respond. Instead, she stared down at the waves and wondered how much it would hurt if he let her go. She had heard the higher one was, the more solid the surface of the water became. If he let her go, she might strike hard enough that she wouldn’t even feel it.

His toes clenched hard, squeezing the breath out of her. “It’s not the end of the world, you idiot. You have a purpose, remember?”

“Excuse me?”

“I can tell you’re moping!”

“I think I have a right to.”

“You didn’t even fall in love with him. You’ve lost a good friend, that means nothing.”

“He has become a part of me.”

The faint outline of houses appeared on the horizon. A familiar city. It felt like such a long time ago that she had stared across the table at humans. How long had it been?

Time moved differently in the Otherworld, and Macha had said it was the same in Hy-brasil. How much had her world changed?

Sorcha wasn’t certain she would survive it.

Bran soared over the tops of buildings, past ships and sailors. No one looked up at the great winged bird carrying its human cargo. He took them to a small hut. Abandoned and falling down, it may have once been a home.

No longer. Sorcha listened to the soft sound of feathers as he brought them down to the ground. He placed her gently on the roof of the hut and hopped to the dirt where he shifted forms.

Feathers melted into caramel skin. Black clothing formed over his body. Talons shrank into fingernails until only small points remained. A dusting of tiny black feathers still decorated his face, and the single raven eye glared up at her.

Bran held his arms out. “Time to get off.”

“I can’t feel my body,” she whispered. “It’s the strangest feeling. I never thought losing someone I loved could actually hurt my physical form.”

“Come Sorcha. I will tell you a story.”

She didn’t want to hear a story. She wanted him to take her back to Hy-brasil so she could look after the survivors of Fionn’s war. The hard look in his eye suggested he wouldn’t take no for an answer.

Perhaps it was better in the long run. She scooted to the edge of the thatched roof and tumbled into his arms.

He set her down carefully, then placed a hand on her back and pushed her towards two fallen logs. She sat down hard. Her hands didn’t feel right. They didn’t seem to be placed on the ends of her arms in a way she could control. They almost felt backwards, but that wasn’t right at all. She had used these hands thousands of times.

Bran reached forward and cupped the backs of her trembling fingers.

“I lost someone very dear to me. I spent my entire existence wooing her. Sticking twigs in her hair until she had to cut it to get them out. Putting frogs in her bed and mice in her slippers. I teased her endlessly and still she loved me.

“And then one night, someone took her away. There was nothing I could do, and I was promised she would be happy, but I would never see her again.

“I thought piecing myself back together would be impossible. It certainly felt like it in the first few months. But I found a different purpose as someone other than the man who loved her. I found my freedom, respect for myself, and I realized that even without her I was still a good man. I could still do great things, and that she was just a reward for working hard.”

He lifted her hands and pressed his lips into his palms. “You will find yourself again, Sorcha. And I believe it will be in healing your people with these hands.”

“How am I supposed to heal them?” Her eyes were so dry she couldn’t even blink. “He was the answer to finding a cure, and now he’s gone.”

“I’m certain you will find a way. You always have.”

“Is he really gone? Am I never going back to that wondrous isle full of faeries that I love dearly?”

“Do you think they’ll still be there?”

“I want them to be. I don’t want there to be a war and all that death. Bran, how can I stop it?”

The hands holding hers disappeared. Cold air rushed around her body, stealing the breath from her lungs. She glanced up and found that she was alone.

The sun rose into the sky far above her by the time she found the courage to stand. Her knees shook. Her body trembled. Her lungs gasped for air, and still she did not feel like a person.

Pain should ground her body. It should remind her that she was alive. It didn’t.

“Home,” she breathed. “I want to go home.”

She didn’t know where home was anymore.

The landscape became more recognizable the more she stared. These fields were ones she knew like the back of her hand. Sorcha stumbled as she moved, but at least she was moving.

Each step brought her closer and closer towards the haven she remembered in her mind. A small home, quaint, three stories of stone and wood and laughter.

Gods, how she needed the laughter.

Stones crunched beneath her feet, digging into the calloused flesh until she bled. She remembered vividly another time when her feet were aching. Sorcha had dragged herself throughout the known world, only to return to this place.

Chickens clucked. The air smelled sweet, like fresh baked bread and sticky honey. Sorcha stood on the rise of the hill beyond the brothel.

She inhaled again and trembled. The smell of bread turned stale, honey turned sickly sweet, and the scent of death made her vision blur.

There were boards over the windows of the brothel. Nailed crudely from the outside, locking her family within. The side door that lead to the chicken coop was also boarded shut, and the chickens were living out in the wild.

“No,” she moaned on a trembling wheeze. “No, please no more.”

The tears came like a wave crashing over her head. She fell onto her knees and crawled to her family home, unable to stand but needing to help them.

She knew the painted markers on the windows. A red beetle, haphazardly painted as if the artist wanted to flee the area as fast as he could. Smart man. The blood beetle plague was apt to spread if they took to the air.

Sorcha didn’t care. She didn’t want her family to die alone, and she would not allow them to die if she could.

Like an old woman, she pulled herself up onto the fencing and stared at the stone walls. Flashes of anger, old and buried deep, fueled her.

She stepped forward. Each simple movement so difficult that she seemed to have forgotten how to walk. Step by step, shift by shift, she lifted foot and flexed thigh until she pressed her hands against the boards covering the door.

The wood bit into her forehead as she leaned against it, but she did not feel the pain. They were in there. The beat of their hearts called out to her.

“Rosaleen,” she whispered. “Briana, Papa… Anyone.”

She didn’t know how long she stayed there, hovering between life and death, choice and silence. Heat spread over her body, wrapping around her waist. It almost felt like arms holding her against a solid chest and breathing life into her body.

Healing would take time. But courage, strength, honor, these were things that had always been deeply embedded in her soul.

Sorcha lifted her head and yanked hard at the boards.

“Briana!” she shouted. “Let me in!”

She threw her weight into releasing the nails. Each harsh jerk wrenched her shoulders but the first board tore free. She continued to screech and shout, banging against the barrier that kept her from her family.

Finally, a voice came from the other side. Weak, but wonderful to hear. “Sorcha?”

“Yes, yes, Rosaleen it’s me! I’m coming in.”

“Don’t come in!” Her sister coughed. “It’s not safe.”

“I’m coming in whether you want me to or not. What happened?”

“We got sick.”

“Is Papa alive?”

“Barely.”

“Is anyone dead?”

“No.”

Sorcha sobbed out a breath of relief. “Good. That’s very good, now I’m going to pull at this last board and then I’m going to come in.”

“You can’t. You’ll get sick too.”

“Are the beetles still flying?”

“No.”

“Then I won’t get sick. I won’t let you or anyone else die.”

She wrenched the last board free and grasped the door knob. It wouldn’t turn.

“Rosaleen,” she groaned. “Unlock the door.”

“I’m not letting you die for me.”

“I won’t die for anyone.”

“You left us.”

“I didn’t have a choice. I was trying to find a cure and failed.” Sorcha’s throat closed and her voice turned hoarse. “Let me help you. Please, give me a purpose again. I promise that I will do nothing other than heal you.”

Silence rang louder than screams. Sorcha held her breath and counted the seconds that passed by until she heard the click of a lock.

Rosaleen opened the door and peeked through the crack. “It’s not pretty in here.”

“I know.”

“We’re not pretty anymore.”

“You will always be beautiful. Even when you are old and grey and wrinkled.”

The door opened completely. Open sores spread across Rosaleen’s body where they had tried to extract the beetles. Burn marks scarred her cheeks and circular brands traveled her arms like chains.

Sorcha ghosted her fingers over one. “What are these?”

“The healers said they knew how to stop the beetles for good. It didn’t work.”

Resolve straightened Sorcha’s spine. A beetle moved underneath her sister’s skin, traveling across the high plane of her clavicle. She could stop this. She could help, and Bran was right.

She had found her purpose, and she refused to give up.

Sorcha pulled her sister into her arms, hugging her tight. “I’m here, little sister. I’m going to keep you alive.”

“Where were you?”

“The Otherworld.”

“With the faeries?”

“Yes.”

“We always thought you were a changeling.”

Sorcha smiled. “I’m not. I’m a druid.”

“Are you going back?”

Sorcha stared into the darkness of the brothel. Shadows moved, clung to bodies, and her sisters entered the room. Her father shuffled from his bedroom and leaned against the door frame.

Their clothing hung on their skeletal frames. Hollow cheeks and haunted gazes stared at her as if she were their salvation. Sorcha knew that she was. She would expend every bit of her energy healing them.

She kissed the top of Rosaleen’s head.

“Yes. Yes, I am going back.”