TRUE (A Fire Born Novel Book 3)

by Laney McMann

  Blood of my Kin—

  I call you by name.

  Rise and wake from within—

  True wielder of the flame.

  The heat of the fire intensified. The golden lacy lines covering my arms seeped with blood. My Oghams burned, coiled up on themselves, and turned to blackened ash. The dagger cut across my throat, blood sprayed my shirt, my face, in crimson. Cold enveloped me, rocking me where I stood. Snowflakes mixed with the blood on my hands. I raised my head toward the pristine flurries cascading downward through the treetops, the black sun shining overhead, and my body crumbled underneath me.

  2

  MAX

  The Morrigan makes her way down the crumbling steps of the castle, the Ancient city of Mag Mell rising in ruins around her. The high collar of her rich velvet cloak fans out, encircling her head, the bodice fitting snuggly against her chest and waist. Her pale complexion highlights darkly painted lips, smoke-colored eyes, and the sharp angle of her cheekbones. Even from the afterlife, she exudes beauty as if death cannot, and has not, touched her.

  Crows surround the Crone's svelte form, the swish of their wings the only sound they create, as she continues downward, the stillness and loss of her fallen people heavy in her wake. The heels of her high black boots clap off the stone through the oppressive silence, and she comes to a stop at the base of the collapsed castle.

  Agrona bows to her knees, head tucked to her chest, her threadbare cape hanging loosely from her skeletal shoulders. "Madam Raven." Her voice rasps, as she glances up through blood-red eyes. "Everything is in place as you commanded." Her gaze skirts toward the crows encircling the Triple Goddess' head like a freakish halo. "Your niece will soon pass through the Shadow Realm gates."

  "Good." The Crone grins, bright white teeth gleaming. "Did you give her my gift?"

  "Agrona did as Madam asked."

  "Have you something for me?" The Morrigan asks, impatience coloring her tone.

  The banshee opens her cape, revealing an aged leather-bound book. "I removed this from the boy's bedroom. It is his only treasure besides the girl herself."

  The Morrigan raises a brow. "You are sure it is of great value to him?"

  "Very sure." Agrona's lopsided mouth lifts into a cruel, sideways smile. "It belongs to his mother."

  "His mother is dead." The Crone takes the book roughly from the banshee's hands and turns on her heel, marching back up the steps toward the ruined structure. "You know that."

  *****

  Something heavy landed on my stomach and woke me out of the dream. A knock rattled the hinges of my bedroom door, and I shot up with a crick in my neck as Layla's cat, Kaevnor, sat on my lap, her shaggy mess of fur scratching against my hand. I shoved her gently to the side, wondering how she'd gotten into my room.

  "Master MacKenzie?" a voice called before my door opened. "Breakfast. I made your favorite."

  "Right." I rubbed my neck, trying to loosen the knot, and my fingers traced the Fomorian Coat of Arms branded into the side of my throat. My weary eyes focused on the dark wooden floor, white bed sheets, and the dim light bleeding in through the window of my quarters. I slumped back against the pillows, the usual nightmares replaying in my head as if my brain was hard-wired to the horror channel. Still in hell.

  A large-set woman squeaked the heavy, wooden bedroom door closed behind her and shuffled into my semi-dark quarters. With a smile, she drew back the heavy red fabric draping my four poster bed, and tied the curtains with thick gold cording. I threw an arm over my face, shielding my eyes from the always-grey morning light.

  "Blueberry pancakes," she said with a tone that reminded me painfully of my grandmother.

  "Thank you." It was all I could muster the energy to say in response. The Fomore servants had been nothing short of accommodating, and more than that—shockingly sweet. I'd wondered more than once how they'd come to live in the Shadow Realm, to serve under King Elethan. After witnessing the mammoth creatures he had as his guardsmen, I’d assumed the rest of the staff would fall into a similar pattern—off center beings that resembled giant pillars of melted wax with beady solid black eyes who spoke mostly unintelligible Irish. But the housemaids, which I hated to call them, weren't anything like the guards. They were politely spoken, courteous, older women, who—most surprising—seemed genuinely concerned for my wellbeing.

  "Come on now," the woman went on, tying back the curtains over the window, only letting in more gloom. "Growing boys need to eat." She talked like I was eight years old, and I couldn't help smiling a little at the scolding nature in her tone.

  Sitting up, I rubbed my face, and shoved the blankets away, still not understanding why it was always so cold in the Fomore castle. Stone probably wasn't the best insulator. A small wood burning stove had been placed in the corner of the room, but the fire from the night before had long since died.

  Growing up between the small southern town of Historia and the Otherworld, I wasn't used to the snowy conditions that had laid waste to the Shadow Realm grounds. Clumps of dirty white slush were everywhere. My boots sat at the bedside on the floor, covered in the residue, and clean charcoal robes lined in a wooly material that reminded me of flannel, hung over the footboard.

  "Come along and get dressed, your breakfast will get cold. I'll even put some milk out for that scruffy cat."

  Kaevnor hissed, and I nodded as the housemaid swept past me, closing the door behind her as she left the room. With a groan, I fell back against the pillows again. Day three, or was it four, in the bowels of hell? I couldn't remember, but it felt like years. Poison still ate at me, coursed through my blood. My Oghams wrapped my body in deep green tendrils. They seemed to have done all they could because in the last day or two, they'd finally stopped climbing all over me like an overzealous vine. The tendrils encircled my throat, a few reaching up to my jawline, but they'd traveled no further onto my face. My biceps, forearms, and wrists were also entwined, as well as my back, shoulders, chest, and torso. I'd attempted to keep them hidden by my long robes, but it was impossible. Elethan had only grinned during dinner when my draped sleeves had risen up my arms, and again as the tendrils climbing my jaw became more obvious, no longer blending with the bruises that had been there before. My wounds were healed, and only the dark circles under my eyes remained. Likely due to barely any sleep.

  Then again, maybe I was dead already, and my Oghams had simply given up the fight in response. The poison had won out, the Battle had been fought, Layla had won, and I was dead in the frozen Underworld. I just didn't know it yet. It seemed plausible considering the fiery sizzle remaining in my veins. The poison that I knew had infiltrated the last of my defenses and my thoughts, which were more muddled than clear. A just punishment for the situation I'd put myself in—put Layla in.

  If I was thinking straight, which was hard to tell anymore, she would be showing up at the castle later. The knowledge sent electric shocks tingling all over my skin. Excitement coupled with pure dread. I couldn't wait to see her, and at the same time, I didn't want to. She had to come, though. There was no other way.

  "Master MacKenzie!" The hinges rattled on my bedroom door again, and the housemaid's footfall clapped down the hallway.

  "Coming," I groaned. Swinging my legs off the edge of the bed, I stared at the floor. My eyes screwed up as I realized what I was staring at. A heavy leather-bound book, the one my mother had left me, sat on the ground. I eyed my chamber door. Still closed. I glanced at Kaevnor, and toward the window, also firmly shut. With a head shake, I focused on the book again. How it had shown up in my chambers, I couldn't fathom. King Elethan would never have allowed me to have it. I picked it up off the floor, opened it, and set it in my lap.

  Over the past few days, I'd quickly come to understand that the book was thousands of years old, passed down through the generations to make it into my hands as a young boy. I also understood why my mother had left it to me, why my grandmother had started reading me all the stories it contained every night when I was
little. History of The Ancients was a guide. A guide my mother, and my grandmother, had to have known I would need. Still, I had no idea how it got into my room.

  Kaevnor wedged her ragged-fur body between my hand and the book, the edge of one of her long fangs rubbing against my arm like she wanted me to pet her head.

  "What are you doing?" I moved her over.

  Layla's cat had come and gone from the Fomore castle over the last few days like some kind of ghost. She would be next to me one second and gone the next as if I were dreaming her existence. Maybe I was. It wouldn't be the strangest thing I'd witnessed in my life. Sam had seen her too, though. So had Elethan.

  Kaevnor had always been a weird cat. Disappearing and reappearing almost at will it seemed when Layla and I were little. Sometimes the cat would follow us through the Otherworld forest like a dog—her scraggly black tail standing straight up as she jogged alongside us through the underbrush, little twigs getting tangled up in her already mangled coat. She never seemed to care. Never groomed herself like a normal cat, or wanted to eat cat food. I remembered Layla's grandmother complaining that the cat only wanted to eat red meat.

  Kaevnor didn't answer me. Not like I expected her to.

  I focused back on the book, on a page I didn't remember, and flipped to the next, scanning down to the bottom where the lettering was worn. Along the margins, hand written markings, symbols, and drawings were in faint black ink. Cat heads, the night sky, and various depictions of moons. Crescents, waning, waxing, and full moons. The Triple Goddess was also written in small text near intricate drawings of ravens and crows, and along the edge of a few of the full moons, the ones that had been colored in so that they were solid black ink, was the name Layla.

  Layla?

  I looked again. I'd never heard or seen that name in any of the old Irish texts. It wasn't an Irish name, and if I were to get really technical, Layla wasn't even her real name. It was Teine. The Irish name that meant fire. For the Fire Goddess she was. I'd just never called her Teine because her father asked me not to in order to keep her hidden, and it had stuck.

  Staring at the name Layla, I couldn't imagine how, or why, it would be in History of the Ancients, a book thousands of years old, and why I'd never noticed it before, why my grandmother had never read it. I flipped to the next page, and the drawings and inscriptions doubled as if someone had been writing frantically. Sayings were everywhere in the margins in tiny black script—pages upon pages of them. Writing I'd never noticed as a child.

  Fire cannot consume wind. Air only feeds the flame. Symmetry. Harbinger of winter. When the first snow sticks. Tir na N'og.

  I reread the last word, Tir na N'og. The Land of Eternal Youth. My grandmother had read stories about the place, another place I'd simply believed a myth, but seeing the name scrawled in the book's margin could only mean one thing: it was real, just like everything else in the books I'd thought was nothing more than a story was real.

  The words, Black Moon Rising, stood out from the rest and underneath it read, "Upon the twenty-ninth day of the seventh month, the black moon shall rise, and the ashes must fall, as the White Raven flies. One day must pass, for the last to descend, merging the lost, unto which the reign will approach its end. On the thirty-first day, as Lilith comes, under the Crone's Waning Moon, undo what has been done."

  What does that mean?

  Kaevnor nudged me.

  I scooted her over, but the cat simply lay down across the open book. Sprawled out like a sluggish sloth.

  "What do you want?" I lugged her heavy weight up and over onto the bed beside me. "I'm trying to read."

  The cat half purred, half growled, and lifted her head like she wanted me to scratch underneath her chin. Hanging from her neck was a small glass vial tied to a leather cord. She nudged me again, seeming impatient, and exposed her throat, showing the only white patch of fur on her chest as if urging me to take the vial off of her. I wrinkled my brow. The cat had never worn a collar, she refused to, and would go into howling hysterics, biting and scratching, every time Layla even tried to tie one around her neck.

  Reaching out slowly, knowing the cat wouldn't hesitate to lash out if it thought I was doing the same thing, I touched the vial. She lifted her head higher and leaned in, allowing me to remove the cord from around her throat. With a shake of her whole body, her scruff of fur spiking out in a wild mass like usual, she laid back down in a ball against my thigh.

  "Okay ..."

  The small vial rested in my palm, maybe only an inch and a half long, and narrow. Corked at one end and broken at the other, little glass shards jutting out, it contained a minuscule amount of dried greenish fluid. With a terrible jolt, I recognized what it was. Memory washing potion. Layla's. The one her mother had made her drink every morning when she was younger in hopes that Layla would forget who I was. Forget everything about her childhood, even her own grandmother.

  I glanced at Kaevnor, sleeping beside me. "Why'd you bring me this?"

  She didn't move.

  "Who tied this around your neck?"

  Nothing. Not that she could tell me.

  I stared at the vial. The glass was still clear except for the light green residue from the potion so it couldn't have been very old. Not months old like the last time Layla would have drunk the potion ...

  Oh, god ... she didn't.

  "MacKenzie!"

  I closed the book and kicked it underneath my bed with my heel. "Coming." Yanking my boots and robe on, I left the room, not bothering to look in the mirror, brush my hair, or my teeth. I'd become little more than the walking dead. Kaevnor followed me, her bushy tail standing up straight up as we walked toward the kitchen.

  3

  TEINE

  The world is a still and quiet place when you're dead.

  The grind of stone on stone touches my dormant ears, and soft candlelight peeks through the slightest of crevices above me, warming my cold face. Bones creaking, my body shifts gently to the side, twisting through darkness, as the rich aroma of melted wax wafts over me. The sweet tinge of vanilla candles. There must be hundreds just beyond my tomb. I wonder who put them there, how they stay lit.

  The spiciness of gardenia petals flits through my resting place, too, sharp and intoxicating as ever. They are perfectly pristine flowers, I remember, yet so delicate—they bruise too easily.

  The soft, protective embrace of feathered wings catches my weakened sight through the widening rift overhead, protecting me in shimmering cream and gold plumage. I don't know how long I've been here, buried underneath this heavy slab in the frigid cold of The City of The Dead, but I know MacCoinnich is near me. I feel his heat emanate through the stone. The warmth of his undying love, even in death, fills me with hope in the dark. I remember us. I remember him. All the time in the world could not make me forget. All the time in the world could not make me forget what has been taken from us—or who has taken it.

  *****

  In darkness, a familiar sensation pumped through my veins like poison. I recognized it. Had to come to know it all too well over the past months, but had been unable to harness its strength. The Morrigan's blood coursed through my body, infusing with the fire, and awakening me with electric shocks. I allowed it to infiltrate my veins, stopped fighting its presence, and let it in.

  The melding of forces was quick. Like standing up too fast. A shot of poison that went straight to my head, and for a split second made me giddy, lightheaded, and dizzy. The miniature Raven brand flapped wildly at the base of my skull. Like a butterfly pinned to a wet sidewalk. An overwhelming sensation tingled in my fingertips and toes, a rush of adrenaline that sent me reeling. A rush I liked. Wanted more of. A power I knew could destroy me—I would let destroy me, if it came to that.

  With a quick intake of breath, my eyes opened with jarring clarity, and one eye seemed clearer than the other. Far clearer than anything I remembered. The padlock still rested in my left hand, clenched tight in my grip as though I was afraid to let it go. As if it
was an old friend—the only one I had left.

  The castle gates loomed overhead under a bloody sky, and I realized I was I lying on the hard ground, freezing and covered in blood and ice. Snow flurries danced through the treetops directly above me. The steady beat of a second pulse pounded in my temples and grew stronger with every breath—a new, but familiar presence.

  The Guard hovered near with terror in their eyes, but I barely took notice. The Fomore castle had my attention, was just as I remembered it. Just as I'd seen it when Max told me it was over between us. To leave before he hurt me. With a deep breath, I forced myself to use the poisonous blood in my veins, harness it. I wouldn't allow the Morrigan's will to control mine again. Wouldn't cower to her tricks, or creep into the Shadow Realm under fear and the guise of the Raven. I would stand tall and enter for all to see. No longer as Layla, the girl who'd had her name changed and had been afraid of who and what she was, but as Teine. The girl who'd been cursed to rise and fall and rise again, not quite as herself, not quite strong enough to fight off the curse, not quite Teine. Until now.

  The Morrigan had been smart when she'd dabbled in the Accursed Arts, making sure the first Ancient Fire Goddess child would never be reborn as her true self, therefore never completely able to overthrow the Raven's strength. Never again able to claim her rightful place among the Ancient race, but that was changed. Everything had changed. Lying in the frozen wilderness, I had changed. I was the rightful ruler of the Ancient Fire Born, born millennia ago, and no one—no one would take that away from me again.

  The feeling returned to my arms and legs, and I pushed to my feet and chanced a glance for Agrona, but I saw no one but the Guard.