Scion of the Sun

by Nicola Marsh

  When the last sob faded to a hiccup, I stood, embarrassed, and stepped away from Quinn to establish some distance. He didn’t say anything, and for that alone I could’ve hugged him back, but when I finally raised my reluctant gaze to his, I knew why.

  He’d seen my horror, my rage, my helplessness. All of it was reflected in those expressive green eyes, focused unswervingly on me, sending me a silent message that everything was going to be okay.

  After what I’d just seen?

  Like hell.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I paced Brigit’s office like a caged raccoon on speed. I hadn’t wanted to see her, but Quinn insisted, his cool, rational arguments no match for the blubbering mess I’d been after the last vision.

  I didn’t understand why they were coming so frequently now, couldn’t comprehend if they were real or present or future. Whatever they were, I couldn’t ignore them any longer. Seeing my mom and the monster as BFFs left me no option.

  I needed help, pronto.

  “Thanks, Quinn. I’ll take it from here.”

  Brigit waved toward the door, but Quinn didn’t move. He waited, concern creasing his brow.

  Touched by the way he’d stood by me during my semi-freak-outs—at the party and this morning—I forced a smile. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Sure?”

  “Uh-huh. And thanks.”

  With a funny half-salute at me, he nodded at Brigit and left me alone with the woman I now had to rely on.

  I didn’t like relying on anyone. I loved Nan but had shielded her: from my emptiness, from my alienation, from my desire to demand answers to questions I’d had since I was a toddler. I’d never felt close to anyone but Nan, and thanks to an understanding guy who accepted me for who I was, visions and all, I felt closer to Quinn than I had to anyone at Wolfebane High. Maybe it was all the weird stuff happening to me, but I felt strangely vulnerable. I could use a friendly face for what would come.

  Brigit slammed the door and I jumped. Her expression bordered on maniacal as she faced me. “What happened?”

  “I had another vision.”

  She squinted at me, carefully assessing. “Quinn said it was more than that.”

  I wanted to tell her everything, wanted to blurt the entire crazy truth, but something held me back, a paranoid fear that saying it out loud would make it more real.

  When I didn’t respond, she shook her head and squashed into a chair next to me. “He said you blacked out before the vision. And when he touched you, you were burning up.”

  I nodded, giving her that much.

  “Did you black out under an archway when the sun hit your forehead?”

  I stiffened, spooked by her fanatical grin as she grabbed my hand, squeezing way too tight.

  “You’re the one.”

  Wriggling my hand out of hers on the pretext of smuggling a tissue out of my pocket to swipe my nose, I couldn’t shake my increasing foreboding. First Joss, now her. I couldn’t be the one anything. I was too ordinary, the girl nobody noticed, the girl nobody cared about. Being the one implied I was special, and that was so far from the realms of reality that it was laughable.

  “There’s been a mistake. I—”

  “No mistake.” Brigit leaped from the chair, no mean feat considering her butt had been wedged a second ago, and started pacing. “I’ve been waiting for years, and now you’re finally here.”

  She stopped and considered me like I was Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy all rolled into one, and I didn’t like it. Those things were fictitious for a reason; they didn’t exist, just like Joss and Eiros and some make-believe monster called Cadifor.

  “Arwen is within reach.” She sighed, then bestowed an ecstatic smile on me.

  I still hadn’t figured out exactly what Arwen was. Too busy bad-mouthing Dream Boy and his ludicrous proclamations instead of asking questions. Proclamations now being echoed by my principal, proclamations becoming more real by the minute.

  “You teleported, didn’t you? To Eiros?”

  “How did you know?” The words were out before I could stop them. I’d been doing fine up until now, letting her do all the talking, trying to make sense of it. But something in her conviction, in the way she rattled off Arwen and Eiros as if they were facts, unnerved me. As long as I believed teleporting was a dream, I could handle it. If it became real … if I really could move between worlds, behind some creepy veil … no way, I couldn’t think about it.

  Having the visions made me feel like enough of a freak. Add teleporting to the mix and I was likely to go off the deep end.

  “You’re the Scion. Part of a legend.”

  “I can’t be.”

  “Ah, but you are.” She wriggled into the seat again, staring at my forehead until I squirmed. “I’ve been waiting for a descendant of Bel to walk through these doors. The stones in some of the archways are aligned a certain way, so when the sun hits your third ‌eye—” She pointed at my forehead. “—the Scion will be teleported to Eiros, home to the Cave of the Sun.”

  Bel … Belenus. Cave of the Sun. She positively beamed while I made the connection. “Belenus, the sun god. Your family geis binds you to him.”

  Every time she said something to echo Dream Boy, it made this uncanny situation all the more real. “Geis?”

  “An unbreakable bond.”

  I shook my head, refusing to process any of this.

  “Let me explain.”

  I knew I wouldn’t like what she was about to say, not one bit.

  “You’re part of an ancient druid culture. Druids were keen observers and recognized that a child born in a certain season would develop certain abilities.”

  Unfortunately, I was beginning to see exactly what abilities she was talking about.

  “When’s your birthday?”

  “August first.”

  She nodded and gave me another ear-splitting grin. “Lammas, Celtic Lugnasad.”

  I had no idea what she was raving on about but had a feeling I’d soon find out.

  “Your calendar is different from the norm. It’s based on solar equinoxes and sabbat cross quarter festivals.” She pointed at me. “Even your name … among Celtic tree astrology, Holly has regal status. Those born under the Holly sign take on positions of leadership and power … you’re seldom defeated. … ”

  Her body quivered with excitement like a giant mound of Jell-O. “We’ll have to add extra subjects to your study load.” She scribbled down a few additions to my schedule on a manila folder and handed it to me.

  Unfortunately, lithology, semantics, and dendrology didn’t make any more sense than the rest of what she’d said. Smiling at my confusion, she ticked the subjects off on her fingers. “Lithology is the study of rock structure and composition. Semantics is the study of signs and symbols. Dendrology the study of trees. All valuable knowledge for your quest.”

  “To find Arwen and save the world,” I mumbled under my breath. “Yeah, yeah, so I’ve been told.”

  “You found your warrior already?”

  I had two choices here: play dumb, learn nothing, and end up in a nuthouse for sure, or cooperate and hopefully understand the upheaval turning my life upside down.

  Resistant to the end, I slouched and folded my arms. “All I know is when I walked along the corridor outside the dorm a little while ago, the sun poked through one of those holes in an arch. I got all hot and woke up in that Eiros place you mentioned. Some guy Joss said I was bound to him and a sorority had been expecting me.”

  I hesitated, not wanting to tell her the rest for fear she’d think I was on some weird power trip. “He mentioned I was the Scion and that Arwen thingy would save the world.”

  “Anything else?”

  I twisted my hands, indecisive, and she slammed her palms on the desk. “This isn’t some game. Your worst nightmare is about to come true if you can’t do this.”

  I didn’t like the obsessive glint in her eyes or her stupid scare tactics. Maybe Drake had b
een right? With her angry frown and compressed lips and crazy eyes, she certainly channeled psycho.

  “Listen up. You’ve heard of Armageddon? The end of the world?”

  I shrugged. Who hadn’t?

  By her glower, she didn’t appreciate my silent sullenness, but she didn’t scare me. I had scarier stuff to face than one edgy principal, like that monster in the cave if this Scion stuff was true.

  “If Cadifor finds Arwen before you do, he’ll reunite with Mider, Lord of the Underworld, and Nemain, Lord of Panic and War, and resurrect every underworld creature to cause a great war, the last for humankind. Demons, zombies, the undead, you name it, the Dark Trio will use it to battle humans, who don’t stand a chance against immortals.”

  The corner of her right eye twitched. Nerves? Lies?

  “Once they have total domination of the Inner and Outer worlds, darkness will prevail forever.”

  She paused, and I half expected her to say, “Do you want to be responsible for all that?”

  Like a guilt trip would work.

  When I deliberately stayed silent, she continued, “In a huge battle many suns ago, Bel triumphed over the trio. Mider and Nemain vanished. Cadifor renounced the light, so Bel banished him to exist underground, powerless. Arwen is the only thing that can help him rise to full status again.”

  She paused, her sideways glance shifty. “Your mother is underground too, you said, in your visions?”

  She knew. Damn it.

  On the walk over here I’d already started piecing together the coincidences of my mom being in an underground cave with a monster that just so happened to sound like this lord of darkness. What were the odds of my mom abandoning me in favor of a monster? And how much of a freaking sad case did that make me?

  Not wanting to talk about the connection I’d already made between Mom and Cadifor yet, I stalled for time. “What’s Arwen?”

  “A powerful biokinetic icon. It uses kinetic energy to rearrange or control genes in the body. If mastered, genetic reprogramming could produce superhumans.”

  Brigit’s fanaticism made me want to rub the goosebumps off my arms. “Or in the wrong hands, Arwen has the power to produce indestructibility. Immortality.”

  My doubt must’ve shown, as her fervor increased. “This isn’t fiction. There’ve been a lot of strange phenomena lately, indicating Cadifor is closer to finding Arwen. If that happens … ”

  She didn’t need to elaborate. Even a novice-to-Weirdsville like me could figure out what the lord of darkness could do with an icon to create his own version of immortals.

  Brigit fixed me with an intimidating stare. “You’re the only one who can stop him.”

  “Me?” I squeaked past the growing lump of dread in my throat.

  Brigit nodded, her expression solemn. “Druid legend says the Scion, a priestess, a descendant of Bel, will have the power to find Arwen.”

  A chill skittered down my spine as she touched my forehead, the exact opposite of what had happened when Joss touched me there.

  “And don’t forget, in doing so, you’ll find your mother.”

  She didn’t play fair. I didn’t want any of this. This responsibility, this angst, this mindless panic—it was all some huge cosmic mistake. But having Mom tied in. … Did I have a choice?

  If I found her, I’d finally get a chance to ask all those questions … to get closure … to find peace …

  “You don’t have a choice.”

  Her holier-than-thou tone made me bristle. “I do—”

  “Breaking a geis can set in motion a chain of reactionary events. It will lead to misfortune, and in most cases, death.”

  I’d initially thought my visions had to be karmic payback, the great cosmos giving me the finger. Now I had to accept the rest of this legend or face impending death too? “What if I refuse?”

  Brigit stood so abruptly her chair slammed against the polished wooden boards and I jumped, startled by the flicker of fury in her eyes. She blinked, her usual benevolence in place when she picked up her chair and resettled it.

  “You can’t. You’re the only one who can stop him.”

  Some freaking responsibility, a responsibility I hadn’t asked for, a responsibility I definitely didn’t want, but if there was no way out of this, I’d have to feel the fear and do it anyway.

  Glancing at her watch, she tsked. “I have a class to run. Help yourself to the Arwen texts over there. We’ll talk more as soon as I’m done.” She pointed to one of the floor-to-ceiling bookcases, softening her brisk tone with a fake smile that creeped me out as much as the ridiculous fairytale she’d told. “I know this is a lot to take in and you’re scared. But you won’t be alone. I’ll help you every step of the way.”

  Her offer didn’t reassure me as she swept out of the room, paisley caftan billowing behind her like a witch’s cloak.

  I had to save the world or die.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  No principal should ever trust a student to be left alone in their office, yet there I was, surrounded by all this stuff. Then again, Brigit probably had supernatural eyes in the back of her head and would come swooping in on her broom the second I touched anything other than her precious texts.

  I crossed to the bookshelf behind Brigit’s desk. My hand skimmed the spines. I adored books, and Brigit’s were fascinating. My fingers trailed along Esoteric Traditions of the Innerworld, Celtic Gods and Goddesses, and Druid Bewitching Seasons, before finally settling on The History of Arwen.

  I slid the book out and laid it on the desk, surprised by the normalcy of it. Considering the month I’d had, I half expected the book to glow red, sprout horns, or emit puffs of green smoke. The simple black cover and gold embossed title didn’t inspire me to read it, but the moment I flicked open to the first page and saw the sunburst, the same one I’d seen on the medallion hanging around that girl’s neck in my vision, I was hooked.

  It was the only time I’d seen her, during that vision in Brigit’s office on my first day here. I wished I’d seen the girl more clearly, but she’d been in shadows.

  Usually a methodical reader, I shrugged off my usual reserve and started flicking past pages. Chapter headings caught my eye: The Battle of Belenus, The Fall of Cadifor, Dark Trio of the Underworld, Arwen’s Triple Flame.

  Something inside me wobbled as I speed-read the text: The Druids are a spiritual elite within Celtic society. They are poets, doctors, astronomers, philosophers, and magicians. They pass on necessary knowledge in oral rhymes. Historians say it took an individual Druid twenty years to learn them all. The most important of these rhymes is the legend of Arwen, an icon that brings great power to the one who possesses it.

  Only a female descendant of Belenus has the power to find Arwen. She will be the Scion and have an affinity for heat, able to move between the Inner and Outer worlds as an extension of her clairsentience. Initially manifesting as visions, or psychic knowing, this clairsentience will develop into astral travel through the manufacture of intense temperatures via the third eye.

  The necessary high temperatures to travel will be invoked by the accurate pinpointing of heat onto the psychic eye via the sun’s rays through ancient megaliths, the pyrokinesis of a warrior, or the use of a trans-channeling crystal in the sun. Another reported travel method is the Arwen symbol coming into contact with the psychic eye, assumed to produce instant high heat and enable spontaneous teleportation.

  Horrified yet unable to stop, I read on.

  Once the rift is opened between the Inner and Outer worlds, the Scion will come. Through the acquisition of Arwen she will restore Eiros to its former glory.

  Following the Battle of Eiros, when Belenus banished Cadifor to the Underworld and ascended to the sun to take his permanent immortal place, Eiros—meaning ‘bright’ in Celtic—filled with light.

  However, if Cadifor’s powers increase and the Lord of Darkness breaches the divide to enter Eiros through nefarious means, a gray pall will settle over Eiros, indicating the immine
nt rising of the Underworld and the ultimate obliteration of all worlds.

  When Eiros oscillates between darkness and light, time is of the essence as Cadifor is close to acquiring Arwen, and the Scion must master a series of tasks in order to fulfill the prophecy of finding Arwen and saving all worlds from the last Great War and permanent darkness.

  My head spun with the implications of what I’d just read. Seeing it in print, bound in a book, made this all the more real and inescapable. I continued to skim, skipping paragraphs, reading others, the enormity of my so-called fate consuming me until the letters blurred.

  I’d had enough reality checks for one day. I stuffed the book into my bag and headed for the door, the hardcover of my destiny banging against my hip as a reminder of what I had to do. Reading Brigit’s texts on Arwen cleared up the last of my preconceptions that maybe if I ignored all this, it would go away. Seeing it in print made it more real than anything Joss or Brigit had said. I was tied to this sun-god-defeating-darkness tale, and the sooner I learned everything I could, the sooner I’d start to feel more in command.

  The lack of control pissed me off, like all these different worlds were spinning around me and depending on the moon or the sun or whatever other orbit chose to affect me today, I might end up on any one of them.

  Time to take back control. Time for me to call the shots. That meant another visit to Eiros This time, I wouldn’t let Dream Boy send me scuttling back with a blast of heat from his fingertips. This time, I wasn’t coming back until I had answers to the million questions stabbing my brain.

  I glimpsed a thick cloud cover out the window. How would I get back to Eiros? As much as I didn’t want to approach Brigit after her strangely manic behavior, I had no choice. She’d have the answers I needed.

  I yanked open the door and found Quinn and Raven silently arguing with hand gestures and comic miming. They stopped the second they caught sight of me.

  “Looking for me?”

  Raven stared like she expected I’d spontaneously combust. “Quinn told me what happened.”