by E. E. Holmes
Ugh. The more I thought about it, the more I sounded like a whiny romance heroine, and I wanted to slap myself soundly right across the stupid face.
The last few hours of the Airechtas dragged more slowly than I would have thought possible. Surely some sadist with a love of bureaucracy had put a Casting on the clocks to prevent the hands from budging. I knew I wasn’t the only one impatient for the meetings to end; all around us, fingers and pencils were tapping nervously, and eyes darted around from the clock, to the windows, and back down to the interminable agendas. At long, long, last, a bell tolled, and the Airechtas officially came to an end.
As a small crowd of Durupinen descended on Hannah, offering good luck and extending last minute offers of support, I slipped away and caught Finn’s attention. As the rest of the Caomhnóir filed out of the hall, he broke ranks and met me in the back corner of the hall.
“Jess, what . . .”
“I have to tell you something.”
He frowned at me, then turned and pushed open a side door. I followed him into a deserted corridor, down a flight of stairs, and into an empty classroom. He pulled the door shut behind us.
“What is it?” he asked, after ensuring the door was secure and the hallway beyond it still vacant.
Without preamble, because I didn’t know how much time we had, I launched into the story of my meeting with Fiona. Perhaps it was because I had already had time to process it all, but I felt calmer explaining it to him than I had when I’d unloaded on Hannah. He did not interrupt with terse questions, as I had expected, but let me talk myself into silence, his expression attentive.
“So . . . that’s it,” I finished lamely.
He continued to stare. I could actually see the gears turning, his brain trying to take it all in. Finally, he lifted his hands to either side of my face and pressed his lips gently to my forehead.
“How are you?” he asked earnestly.
“Honestly? Completely freaked out,” I admitted. I leaned into him, so that he kissed my forehead again. “This is helping.”
He chuckled softly. “Well, I must admit, I’ve been expecting something like this to happen.”
I pulled back and looked up into his face. “What are you talking about? You don’t expect me to believe that you already guessed I was a Seer?”
“No, of course not,” he said. “But, it’s you, isn’t it? Never a dull moment. You like to keep me on my toes.”
“Do you have any real thoughts about this?” I asked him, frowning. “Not that I don’t appreciate your newfound ability to tell a joke.”
“Apologies, love,” Finn said. “I’m just trying to diffuse the tension. I don’t mean to diminish how serious this is.” He reached down for my hands, and held them tightly in his. “But the truth is that your Muse gift has always been something rather extraordinary. I have often wondered if there might be more to it than we realized. And I agree with Fiona. This is information we should keep to ourselves until we have no choice.”
“And what about Annabelle?” I asked. “Aren’t you worried?”
“Of course,” Finn said. “But you mustn’t forget what Fiona told you. Prophecies are fleeting, and you are doing everything in your power to keep Annabelle safe and accounted for. I’m sure it’s a frustrating prospect to face, but let’s wait and see. If Annabelle is truly in danger, I have no doubt that your gift will illuminate things further.”
“When did Mr. Overprotective become so calm and reasonable?” I asked, laughing in spite of myself.
Finn shrugged. “If my time as your guardian has taught me anything, it is this: whatever the spirit world throws at us, it is likely that we have already faced—and overcome—far worse.”
“That’s true,” I said.
“Put this out of your mind for the moment,” Finn said. “At least until the election is over. Your sister is going to need you, regardless of the outcome.”
§
The waiting was almost unbearable.
In the center of the courtyard, the Geatgrima rose like a monument to the most terrifying and defining moment of my life. All around it, the clans stood assembled, clutching their candles and whispering excitedly to each other. On one side of me, Hannah was shivering with cold and anticipation. Milo was so tense that he had blinked out just to save his energy, but I could feel him buzzing like an oversized insect trapped in our connection. On my other side, Karen was gripping my arm so tightly that my fingers were starting to go numb.
“Karen. Lighten up,” I whispered, shaking her off.
“Sorry,” she murmured. “I’m just . . .”
“I know. Me, too.”
A chill wind swept the grounds, causing us all to shudder.
“Hannah, whatever happens, I am so proud of you,” I breathed in her ear.
Hannah squeezed my hand, but did not take her eyes from the South Tower, where the winning clan’s banner would appear.
“Come on,” I heard Savvy groan from somewhere nearby. “How bloody long does it take to count a few votes?”
I closed my eyes to center myself, just as a collective gasp rose from the Durupinen.
“Oh, my God,” Hannah whispered.
When I opened my eyes, the first thing I saw was Marion’s face. She was staring across at us, and the bitter defeat in her expression told me what I would see when I cast my gaze up to the tower.
I smiled at her.
And the courtyard erupted in cheers beneath the crest of the Clan Sassanaigh. A crowd descended upon us, hands reaching out to shake Hannah’s hand, to pat her shoulders. Mackie had thrust two fingers into her mouth and let lose a piercing whistle. Savvy was shouting hoarsely, hoisting us both into a violent hug.
“You did it! You bloody well did it!” she shrieked.
Karen was sobbing uncontrollably, and her words to Hannah were entirely unintelligible as she wrenched us away from Savvy and into her own embrace. All around us, the Caomhnóir were closing in, attempting to break up the crowd, to ensure that we were safe. Milo kept popping in and out of form, blinking and wavering with unrestrainable emotion.
“I knew it! I knew it, I knew it, I knew it!” he crowed whenever he reappeared.
I freed myself from Karen to wrap my arms around Hannah, whose face was still blank with disbelief.
“Is this real?” she asked me. “Tell me it’s real.”
“It’s real,” I told her. “You did it, Hannah. You won.”
Her face split into a grin that quickly crumpled into tears, and we hugged and sobbed together as the celebration continued to explode all around us.
Siobhán appeared beside us, smiling and beckoning Hannah to follow her through the crowd. Hannah took her hand and they shoved their way through, hands still reaching out to her as she went. Karen, Milo, and I followed, congratulations raining down on us from all sides. Siobhán led Hannah up onto the central dais to stand beside Celeste, who was beaming from ear to ear.
And there, on the very spot where the Prophecy had almost destroyed everything, Hannah reclaimed our family’s honor as the Council robes were draped upon her shoulders.
Of course, there were those who did not smile. There were plenty who stood like statues of disapproval, watching Hannah’s triumph with disdain and even fury. They did not matter. Not now.
I shouted myself hoarse as Celeste placed the Council circlet on Hannah’s dark curls. As I waved my arms over my head at her, Finn’s voice was suddenly in my ear. “And here I thought you didn’t buy into any of this Durupinen political drama.”
“I don’t,” I insisted through my tears and laughter. “It’s a boring and meaningless bunch of nonsense.”
As the crowd began to disperse, walking back toward the castle in twos and threes, Hannah stumbled down the stone steps, catching the overly long robe up into her hands to prevent herself from falling. Her face was as bright as a star as she beamed at me.
“I still can’t believe it!” she cried.
“Nor can I,” Karen sai
d. “I think it will take quite a while to sink in, and not just for us.” She jerked her head over her shoulder. Marion was striding toward us.
I stiffened, ready to fend off whatever bitter, nasty words she was preparing to fling at us, but she never had the chance. As she opened her mouth, the bell in the North Tower began to toll. Cries and gasps rose to meet the echoes that reverberated across the grounds.
Hannah looked at her watch, then up at me in alarm. “It’s not seven o’clock yet,” she whispered.
Staring into each other’s eyes, we began to count, hearts hammering.
Seven. Eight. Nine . . .
“Please, no,” Hannah whispered.
Eleven. Twelve. Thirteen.
I couldn’t breathe. The last clang of the bell was echoing endlessly in my head.
All around us, cries and screams rose like a flock of birds into the darkening sky. I whipped around and stared up at Finvarra’s tower just in time to see a long black banner unfurl into the twilight, flapping gently in the breeze.
“Oh, my God,” Karen murmured.
“She’s gone,” I said.
“He’s gone,” Hannah whispered.
The courtyard shrank down around me, smothering me in our collective shock and grief. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know what to feel. I wanted to scream and break things while also crawling into a hole and pulling the dirt down on top of me. I wanted to curse something, and I also wanted to breathe a sigh of relief. What was this? How did I deal with it? Did I even want to deal with it? Maybe I could just stuff it away into the dark corners of myself, where the rest of the painful things nested. My armor would not keep the pain out, but I could choose to let it keep the pain in. I could do that.
“She must have been hanging on to see what would happen with the election,” Karen said, choking back tears. “She must have been waiting for our banner to fly.”
The Durupinen all around us were bowing their heads in silent prayer, or else consoling each other. The Caomhnóir all fell, as one, to their knees, their right fists pressed over their hearts. And with a gust of spirit energy that seemed to steal all the air from the grounds, every spirit that haunted the halls of Fairhaven rose into the sky and gathered in a ring around the tower. They hung there in silent, respectful tribute, a grief-stricken cloud of souls.
I felt a hand on my shoulder and whirled around. It was Celeste.
“I need you and Hannah to come up to the High Priestess’s chambers. Quickly,” she said. Her face was streaked with tears, but her voice was urgent.
“Us? Why?” I asked, alarmed.
“Just follow me. Now, please,” she said, and started walking back toward the castle.
I stared at Hannah, who shrugged in a bewildered way and then started following in Celeste’s wake. I forced my feet to follow.
It wasn’t like Celeste to be so brusque or so cryptic. She was one of the few Durupinen that could be counted on to show a little more sensitivity in situations like this. Still, she spoke not another word as we followed her into the castle and all the way up to the top of the North Tower.
“In there,” she said. She could barely meet our eyes.
“What’s going on, Celeste?” I asked, my voice cracking with anxiety and, for some reason, fear.
“You’re wasting time. Just go in. I’m not allowed to accompany you,” she said. There was a tear trembling on the end of her nose.
Hannah pulled in a shuddering breath and pushed the door open. We both walked through it, and I closed it tightly behind me.
The room was in semi-darkness. There were candles burning low in brackets all around. Chairs had been grouped in a circle around a bed in the corner. The floor around them was scattered with tissues, blankets, and mugs: the remnants of a bedside vigil. Whoever had been sitting in those chairs were gone now.
As was the woman whose body was lying in the bed.
It staggered me how a body, having been alive just minutes before, could be so utterly, visibly changed by the exit of the soul. It was instantaneously recognizable that this was no longer a person that I knew. This was merely a shell now, an empty shell. It didn’t even look as though the breadth of Finvarra’s soul had ever expanded and animated this shrunken, feeble body that lay before us. And it could not have looked more desolate or abandoned now that the chairs around it sat empty, the machines silenced, the light outside fading from the room.
“Jess, what are you doing?” Hannah hissed urgently.
Without realizing it, I had drifted across the room, closing the distance between myself and the bed. I had no idea why I had done it. I didn’t want to see this. I didn’t want to see Finvarra this way, nor did I think she would have wanted anyone to see her this way. It felt indecent, like spying. And yet, I kept walking until I stood right over her, looking down into her sunken face. Her eyes were closed, and yet I kept imagining them open, the fierce light inside them extinguished at last.
I felt Hannah fill the empty space beside me. She slipped her small, cold hand into mine and squeezed.
“What are we doing here?” she whispered.
“I don’t know,” I whispered back. Why either of us was whispering, I had no idea. It wasn’t as though there was anyone left in the room who could hear us. It was just what you did, wasn’t it, in the presence of death?
“Jessica. Hannah.”
I screamed and leapt back, knocking one of the chairs over and stumbling into the end table, scattering its litter of pill bottles and medical supplies all over the floor. Hannah had frozen where she stood in her shock. It was not the sound of an unexpected voice that startled us; God knows we’d grown accustomed to unexpected voices. It was the fact that the sound of that voice—that voice—should have been impossible, gone from the world forever.
I turned. Carrick was standing there, barely distinguishable from the shadows.
“What . . . how . . . you’re supposed to be gone,” I whispered.
“Yes, by all rights I should be gone. And I will be, very very soon,” Carrick said. His voice had an echo to it, as though he were already halfway down the long path he was about to travel.
“But, how are you still here?” Hannah’s voice broke through, strangled with emotion. “I thought you had to Cross when Finvarra did.” She whipped her head around and stared at Finvarra’s body again, scanning it for signs of life she already knew to be gone.
“I do. But our High Priestess, in a display of loyalty I neither expected, nor deserved, has given this small space of time to me.”
“What do you mean?” I breathed.
“Over our many years Bound to each other, Finvarra has grown to know me very well; at times she has more insight into me than I have into myself. She knew, for instance, that in spite of all of my training and my posturing and my shows of strength, I am a coward at heart.”
Hannah shook her head. “You’re not a coward.”
But it was me, in my silence, that Carrick looked at now. “Your sister does not dispute this assessment,” he said, and though I blushed a little, I did not speak.
Carrick went on, “She is right. I am a coward, and I always have been, in matters of the heart. I used to blame it on years of military training, where I was taught to suppress all emotion as weakness, but I shall not lean on such excuses in these final moments. Deep down, I have always been so. I own it now.”
Still I did not speak. And yet, inside my armor, I squirmed a little at how familiar his words felt, as though they could have been coming from my own mouth, if I had been brave enough to speak them. Which, of course, I wasn’t.
“It was my cowardice that kept me from your mother all those years until my death. It was my cowardice that kept me from getting to know the two of you once you came here. And it was my cowardice that kept me from saying a proper goodbye to you. Finvarra, as I have said, knew this about me. She knew I was avoiding this last moment. She also knew I would regret having avoided it. And so, she arranged this.”
“But
what is this? What’s happening? How are you still here if she is gone?” Hannah asked.
“She is gone, isn’t she?” I added. “It would be really difficult for her to stay. Durupinen don’t often become ghosts, do they?” I had wondered for a long time after my mother died if I would turn one day to see her spirit walking alongside me. Karen had explained to me that Durupinen had a special protection that ran in their blood, a sort of immunity to the pull of the Gateway; otherwise their souls would have been torn from their bodies every time they performed a Crossing. But once a Durupinen had passed away, and her soul left her body, the need to Cross would be almost insurmountable. Only spirits like the Silent Child, who was so wildly desperate to remain behind so that her truth could be told, would be able to resist the pull of it.
“Finvarra encouraged me to say my goodbyes to you before it was too late. I assured her that I would, and yet even as I watched her fail, I delayed. I was in denial, I think, that her time was so short, but I also did not know what to say, or how to even begin. As the end grew near, I panicked, and sent a message to you, asking you to come. But this was perhaps the most cowardly act of all, for I thrust all responsibility, all onus onto the two of you, where it did not belong. I lied to myself, insisting that I was respecting you by giving you a choice, but really, I was avoiding having to make the choice myself. But I delayed too long. Finvarra passed and I had to pass with her.”
“But you’re here,” Hannah said slowly.
“In her final days, Finvarra instructed that a Casting be placed upon her. I was not aware that she had done so until she died, and I was not immediately pulled with her.”
