Breen kept a hand on his shoulder as she looked around.
Harken and Morena in the fields. Boy grazing with other horses in another. A dragon and rider gliding overhead.
And racing up the road, joyful barks sounding, came Bollocks.
Breen ran to meet him, crouched down with her arms wide, and laughed when he just bowled her over.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
She’d gone through portals, or the useless witch Yseult had pulled her through. One, two, three of them. And each made her sicker than the last.
Shana despised the worlds they traveled through, however briefly. One of thick red vines and stinking ooze, the next of light so bright it seared the eyes. And into wild wind and stony mountaintops in the world of man.
And there, Yseult left her, the ugly bitch, with some hard-faced spy who took her in the way of man in a car that bumped and whined, then a boat through fog, and again a car on roads that wound and wound.
He took her as far as a village with more cars that stank and people who deserved to be burned to cinders and tossed to the winds.
When they were, she’d laugh and laugh.
From there, she’d been told to use her feet. And oh, one day she would slit Yseult’s throat and pour out her blood for the dogs to lap. Though she no longer felt sick, and indeed felt stronger than ever she had in her life, she resented every step of the journey.
One with true power would simply have whisked her where she needed to go. Instead, she’d traveled four days and three nights, faced the bitterness of cold, the brutality of heat, the endless boredom of roads.
She never questioned why Odran didn’t do the whisking, this god of all she worshipped, but laid it all at Yseult’s feet.
She never thought of the child at all, but remembered every moment of pain.
And this, Odran had whispered in her ear as he’d given her sparkling wine to drink and fine meats to eat, came from Keegan O’Broin.
The taoiseach had reached through and given her all the terrible pain, had destroyed the son she’d made for Odran out of spite and jealousy.
No blame to her, Odran said, none at all.
Keegan O’Broin, her betrayer, her tormentor, who chose a mongrel bitch from the other side over her, all the blame was his.
So Odran gave her a knife conjured from poison. Even a scratch, the barest nick from it would kill any living thing. For fun, she tried it on Beryl, her personal slave, and had watched the girl die choking on her own blood.
And laughed and laughed.
She saw this weapon as gleaming gold with jewels shining from the hilt.
But this was her madness, as the blade was black and twisted, like her mind. Like her heart.
She would kill the taoiseach, and throw Talamh into chaos. Through the chaos, the tears of mourning, the cries of despair, Odran would ride his winged horse. Before he took her up on it, he’d place a crown of gold and sparkling jewels on her head. Then together, they would burn all.
She would take the redheaded bitch as her slave and sit on a golden throne to rule beside the god as a god.
She wanted the golden crown sparkling with jewels, wanted the golden throne, wanted the redheaded bitch who’d burned her hand as a slave. She wanted to plunge the knife into Keegan and watch him die at her feet like the slave who’d served her.
So she walked this last part of her journey wearing a smile frozen with her hate. Those she passed stepped away, and felt the chill shake through them.
No one spoke to her, and parents lifted their children into their arms and moved quickly away.
Do this for me, my beauty, and all you want is yours. His voice rangin her broken mind as it had when he’d given her the sparkling wine. The wine that was his own blood. The blood she’d sipped like wine, to make her strong again.
The blood she’d drank that was never wine, and corrupted the last light left in her.
She muttered as she walked, and sometimes laughed as she imagined herself gliding along in one of her beautiful gowns, dripping with shining jewels there to sit on a golden throne.