“We have a journey to take first.” The voice came from all around, part of the fog. “It’s time you came home.”
“Odran’s world will never be home, and my true grandfather lies dead by your hand.” She knew they moved, sliding like that fog, but let Yseult believe otherwise. “I won’t go with you.”
“Child, child, foolish child, you were made for this single purpose, your destiny waits. This was all designed long before you took breath.”
“You foresaw this? All that’s happened from my first breath to now?”
“Of course.”
Liar. Weak, lying coward. “If you foresaw, why did you let me cut your skin to ribbons?”
“Your power exceeded even my expectations. My small sacrifice will only reap more rewards when Odran takes that power and makes it his own.”
“His forces lay dead, burned, bloody across Talamh.”
“Aye, such a child,” Yseult said with a laugh. “What need has he of such as them when he’ll have you? The key that opens the lock, at long last.”
Near the woods now, Breen sensed. The fighting continued in patches. She could hear the drums, the clash, the screams. But nearly done.
All of it, nearly done.
“Are you afraid to show yourself?”
“You’ll see all you need to see soon enough.”
“You sent Shana to kill Keegan.”
“A foolish girl with a weak and broken mind. A pity she failed, but not unexpected.”
“You’ve failed, time and again. So now you’re afraid to pit your power against mine. You know I have more than you.”
“Do you? Yet you’re not able to clear the fog, are you now? You weren’t able to stop my power from striking, and now Marg weeps and wails. Ah, like music that is.”
By the river now, the green water, the green light. The battle here done.
She felt the stone at her heart pulsing there as they followed the river to the falls.
For Talamh, she thought, and the Fey. And closed in the fog, she crossed into Odran’s world.
Children played on the grass of the cottage, on the shore of the bay, as children should. Aisling watched, praying with all she had they’d return soon, that their world would welcome them.
That her husband stayed safe. And her brothers, her mother, her friends. Safe.
Then Finian stepped up to her. “She’s gone to the dark place, Ma, the one I don’t know.”
“What’s this now?”
“Breen. Breen Siobhan, she’s there now, like we saw the first night of the festival. In the fire.”
Alarmed, she crouched down. “What did you see, Fin?”
“I was sleepy, and it was blurry, but I saw her in a bad place, and she saw it as well.”
“Take my hands now, and go back in your mind, bring what you saw back so I can see with you.”
“It was bad,” he repeated, and put his hands in hers.
His eyes went deep and dark; power sprouted strong, Aisling thought, in such a little one. And with him, through him, she saw.