by Megan Chance
“Red lightning?”
“No.” Aidan lowered his voice. “Why do you keep asking me about it?”
Patrick answered, a murmur, and at the same time a dog barked, so Diarmid heard only “. . . Grace.”
Diarmid froze.
“She did what?” Aidan asked.
“She swooned speaking Gaelic.”
“Gaelic? She doesn’t even know it.”
“She said eubages, brithem, and vater. Then she asked why I’d abandoned her. She said éicse just before she swooned.”
“What does that mean?”
“Éicse was the ultimate goal of the Druids,” Patrick explained. “It means poetry and knowledge, wisdom and divination. Sort of a combination of all things. The truth of the world, I suppose, is the best way to describe it.”
Diarmid’s mind spun. Gaelic words, and éicse. Grace.
Patrick said, “Does it tell you anything?”
“Not really.” Aidan paused. “But she’s all right? She’s safe?”
“Yes. My mother and Lucy were there, but they didn’t hear what I did. They think she swooned because we were talking about Diarmid. It hasn’t happened again. I’ve told no one else. But she may have mentioned it to Lot. They’ve become friends. Have the Fianna discovered anything?”
“Not yet. They’re—” Aidan stopped. “I feel . . . something.” He rose, his shadow disturbing the darkness.
Diarmid held his breath, not daring to move.
“I have to go,” Aidan said. His footsteps thudded across the gazebo’s hollow floor, and he rushed down the steps.
Diarmid couldn’t follow until Patrick left, and then it was too late. Aidan was gone.
Diarmid’s mind would not be still. Aidan was dreaming Grace’s dreams. Ships and the sea. She had swooned chanting Gaelic while they’d been talking of him. She was friends with Lot. “She’s safe?”
Who else could it be but Grace?
Patrick had Grace, and Aidan knew it, and the two of them were keeping it secret.
Diarmid didn’t know whether to feel relief, exhilaration, or dismay. Patrick Devlin had her. She hadn’t disappeared at all, and by keeping it secret, Patrick guaranteed the Fianna would waste time looking for her—time better spent training a militia.
Had she been with Patrick the entire time? Three months? What had happened between them?
Nothing. It has to be nothing. Diarmid had seen the love-spell in her eyes. He hadn’t mistaken it. Grace was no common lass. She would never have lain with him if she hadn’t at least believed she loved him. Which meant that if Patrick had her, she was being kept against her will. Unless the spell has worn off already.
It was all Diarmid could do not to break into the house this moment.
But there were guards everywhere. He would be captured or worse. He couldn’t endanger the others by forcing them to rescue him. No, better to tell Finn and come up with a plan.
Diarmid stared at the Devlin house, at the windows glowing against the night, wondering which one was hers. He thought of touching her again. Kissing her.
Handing her over to Finn.
Diarmid felt sick. He couldn’t bear the thought of it. Watching Finn seduce her and being able to say nothing, do nothing . . . Leave her with Patrick. She would be safer. It would be better.
Except it wouldn’t. Patrick said that she and Lot had become friends, and Diarmid knew what a good liar the Fomori goddess was. Grace had been half taken in by them already. All her talk of Miogach’s reassurances and Daire Donn’s charm—Diarmid couldn’t trust that Grace could see the truth. Samhain was coming. A choice had to be made. Diarmid had a job to do.
“Are you one of us?”
“Aye,” he whispered. “Aye.”
He kept the vow in his head the whole way home.
The third week (sidhe time)
Grace
Some things remained. Iobhar taught me the movements of the stars and the planets, and I remembered those, along with their meanings. I could go into a trance at will, and I found meaning in the most convoluted of Iobhar’s riddles.
But I couldn’t do divination, no matter how often I tried, nor could I shoot lightning from my fingertips or bring a rainstorm or raise tornados.
Most importantly, I could not work the spells for the Seer. No matter how often I said them, the music told me I was doing them wrong. I had no dreams or visions.
Iobhar threw ogham sticks and read the movements of crows, searched for answers in my palms and breathed oracle smoke. He called pigeons and twisted their necks, disemboweling them to read their entrails while I turned away, horrified and nauseated.
Each time, nothing. He cursed whatever it was he didn’t see, glaring at me as if I were deliberately trying to vex him. I’d warned Sarnat to keep her distance. Torcan and Cuan and Stag seemed to know to stay away. Roddy muttered as he ceaselessly cleaned brooches and rings. We all walked on eggshells—sometimes chairs turned into snakes as we passed, and deep pits opened in the floor without warning. Red lightning lit a stuffed cat on fire, and when I shouted at Iobhar to put it out, he brought a hurricane. Little tornados spun down the stairs, creating all new corridors and mazes.
There was much I could do, and my power grew day by day. But I was frustrated and angry, relearning the spells, trying new ones.
One day, as I beat another of Sarnat’s glamoured gang boys, I said, “At least you haven’t wasted your time.”
“That remains to be seen, doesn’t it?” she asked. “These are only glamours. Who knows what a real boy would do?”
“You mean you’re not clever enough to know?” I teased.
“I don’t think like a mortal, milady, nor would I wish to. ’Twould be like asking you to think like a worm. Who knows that they think about anything at all?”
Iobhar entered the room, gesturing for me to come with him. “We’re going to try the incantation itself.”
I went cold. “The incantation? For the ritual?”
“You think you are not ready for it?”
“No, I—”
“Then come.”
I followed Iobhar to the study. When I was done with the ritual cleansing—the half-dressed bath I’d grown used to—he handed me a small bowl full of a steaming liquid. “Drink this.”
I eyed it dubiously. It smelled bitter and foul. “What is it?”
“An infusion.”
“Is it poisonous?”
“Mildly. But ’twill bring visions.”
Dying sounded no better accompanied by dreams, however good they were. “Do I need it for the ritual?”
“No. ’Twill only make you more receptive.”
I swirled the potion in the bowl. It didn’t help.
Iobhar ordered, “Drink it.”
I took a careful sip. It tasted as nasty as it smelled, and I almost spit it out again. I held my nose and drank the rest of it quickly.
Iobhar held a knife with a sparkling jeweled handle. “’Twill require some blood before the sacrifice itself, enough to show your willingness to die. I won’t cut this time, but you must learn each step.” He took my hand. I felt the tingle of his magic calling to my power, but it was controlled, at least for now.
He ran the point of the blade lightly down the pulsing vein of my wrist. “You’ll cut vertically.”
The potion hit me then, a wave of dizziness, the sting of his magic, potent now. Iobhar released my hand. The stinging stopped. He gave me the knife and said, “Show me.”
I repeated the movements, and as I did, he spoke Gaelic, words I should not have been able to understand, though I did. They translated themselves in my head: “‘The Erne shall rise in rude torrents, hills shall be rent. Every mountain glen and bog shall quake.’”
“Say it,” he told me.
My head pounded; the room seemed to whirl around me. “The Erne—”
“In Gaelic, veleda.”
The words came as easily as if I’d been speaking English. He took my hand again, curling hi
s fingers around my wrist. Again the sting of him, the burn. His scent swirled around me. His eyes became a kaleidoscope, a hundred different hues of brown and gold, whirling and tilting, scattering and coming together.
He spoke again. “‘This is my choice. I deem it worthy and just. I deem it mine.’”
I repeated the Gaelic after him, singing as he had. I felt the bright fire of power stirring in my veins.
“‘I am the veleda chosen. Long the journey I have made from yesterday to today. The Erne I passed by leaping, though wide the flood.’”
I knew the melody of these words as if I always had.
Iobhar laid my hand flat, crossing it with the knife. “You will blood it,” he explained, showing me how I would smear my blood over the hilt, my wrist, and hand—a circle in blood.
“‘I have seen and weighed. Great stones crack and split. Storms will tell and the world is changed. I release my power to the chosen. This is the word that is spoken. This is complete.’”
The words from the prophecy. The room spun. The colors in Iobhar’s eyes reeled, and I was in a cyclone, images leaping and crossing and blurring, the dord fiann in my hands and Patrick leaning to kiss me, Diarmid glowing and my brother casting lightning, Miogach smiling at me and my mother saying “There is no veleda. It’s just a story. Just a story . . .”
Great stones crack and split. Storms will tell and the world is changed.
The images fell into darkness. I fell into nothingness. The spell splintered around me, prophecy and music, a cacophony in my ears, nothing but noise and noise and noise. Great stones . . . Storms will tell . . .
Everything stopped.
My head cleared; I heard a gasping breath—my own. “Those words. I know those words.”
“Not well enough,” Iobhar said.
“No, I mean . . . the storms will tell—”
“There’s no point saying it again.” He turned to leave.
“You don’t understand! Those words—about the storms and the rocks breaking and the world changing . . . those were part of the prophecy.”
Iobhar turned again to face me. “The incantation has passed from veleda to veleda throughout time. Of course you know them.”
“Not that prophecy,” I said. “I mean the other one. The prophecy Diarmid and I found on an ogham stick on Coney Island.”
“The potion’s effects will leave you soon. You should rest.”
“Listen to me! The ogham stick belonged to a Druid. He said it needed a key to decipher it, and then . . . Diarmid was the key and I . . . it was what brought me to you.”
Iobhar paid attention at last. “How so?”
“Part of it said, ‘The rivers guard treasures with no worth,’ and when I listened to the music, it told me where to find you. The stick told me you were here.”
Iobhar scowled. “What else did the stick say? Tell me. Leave nothing out.”
I did.
“‘All things will only be known in pieces,’” Iobhar repeated.
I remembered my brother’s words, my grandmother’s. “Everything’s broken. That’s what my brother says.”
“Your brother?”
“Aidan. He’s a stormcaster.”
“He’s a stormcaster? Your brother?”
“Didn’t you know that? I thought you knew everything.”
“That managed to escape me,” Iobhar said wryly. “What color is his lightning?”
“Purple. Why?”
“Curious.” Iobhar strode to the door.
“Why does it matter what color his lightning is? And what about this prophecy? Do you think it has something to do with why I can’t manage the spells?”
He paused at the doorway. “I think it has everything to do with it.”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Yet. But I mean to find out.”
October 20
Diarmid
You’re certain of this?” Finn asked.
Diarmid said, “I know what I heard. Devlin’s got her, and Aidan knows it.”
“’Tis worth a search, if nothing else,” Finn said. “You’ll take Oscar with you tonight. If the two of you find the lass, you’ll bring her here directly. Understood?”
Diarmid nodded. He wouldn’t let himself think of what Finn meant to do, nor how he felt about it. “Aidan can’t know.”
“Aye. I’ll leave it to you and Oscar to decide how to proceed. And Diarmid . . . don’t get caught. We haven’t the resources just now to rescue you.”
Diarmid knew that already. There had been several fights in the last few weeks, and they were all tired and bruised. That the Fomori fared no better was small consolation.
He tried not to feel giddy at the thought of seeing her again. Holding her, touching her. He couldn’t be thinking about those things. It was no longer about what he wanted. What mattered was finding her and bringing her to Finn.
Aidan’s earlier words burrowed like a guilty secret. “I won’t follow blindly.” But Aidan didn’t know what it felt like to betray one’s brothers. Diarmid refused to think of his own hopes. Grace’s rescue first, the rest he could deal with later.
He was tense with nerves and excitement as he and Oscar made their way to the Devlin house that night.
“She’ll be under heavy guard,” Oscar said.
“You’ve said that a hundred times. Afraid?”
“Not as long as Lot and Balor are far away. And Tethra too. I’ve no wish to be skewered by lightning or struck dead by an eye.”
Oscar whistled “Yankee Doodle” as they approached the Devlin gate, which was shrouded by the tangled yellowing vines of a climbing rose. He flipped the latch, saying loudly, “Curse you for stopping for that beer. We should’ve been here ten minutes ago. Hope the master don’t have our heads.”
“What else should he expect, calling for us so late?” Diarmid followed Oscar into the yard, letting the gate clang shut behind him.
“Who goes there?” The Fomori guard, a rifle at the ready, stepped from the shadows.
“The master called us down from the stables,” Oscar said.
“What for?”
“How do we know?” Diarmid said irritably. “Rich men have their whims.”
The guard said, “’Tis late for a drive. The master’s probably gone to bed.”
“We ain’t too happy about the time ourselves.”
“I don’t know anything about any stableboys called down.”
“I guess he forgot to tell you,” Oscar said.
The guard peered at them through the darkness. “No. I think not. Why don’t the two of you just turn around and go—”
Oscar struck the guard on the temple with the hilt of his dagger and then cut his throat. Together, he and Diarmid pulled the dying man beneath a bush near the back stoop.
“It’ll be awhile before they see him,” Oscar whispered with satisfaction, wiping his bloody dagger on the grass. “If we’re lucky, morning.”
“Don’t count on it.” Diarmid tucked his own dagger back into his belt as he went up the stoop. He looked through the small, wavery window into the dark kitchen, and then tried the door, which opened easily and soundlessly. There was no one inside. When he knew it was safe, he motioned for Oscar to follow him. Grace was here, somewhere. In minutes, he would see her again.
Diarmid led the way into a hall. To his left were the servants’ stairs. Stealthily, he and Oscar went up. At the top, Diarmid slowed, peering around the corner. There was no one in the hall, only closed doors on either side. He reached around, twisting the key on the sconce. The gaslight sputtered out.
He tried to remember which rooms were which. Patrick’s at the end of the hall, next to an adjoining room meant for a wife. It had been empty the first time Diarmid had broken into this house. Was it still? An adjoining room, where Patrick could have access to her at all hours . . .
Don’t think it. Not now.
If he were Patrick, he would have guards posted at her door, but there was no
one. Not in front of that room, nor the other that he knew to be a guest room. Odd. Or stupid. It didn’t make sense, but Diarmid couldn’t leave until he checked.
He motioned to the two rooms, and Oscar nodded. They crept down the hall. Diarmid reached for the nearest doorknob; Oscar moved in close.
Behind them, a door opened.
He and Oscar threw themselves against the wall. The open door cast dim yellow light into the hallway. A woman stepped out with it. She wore a dressing gown. A long blond braid fell over her shoulder.
Lucy.
Her gaze went right to them. She froze, gasping—she was going to scream.
Diarmid flung himself at her, clapping his hand over her mouth, pressing her back into the bedroom. Her blue eyes widened in recognition, and she stopped struggling. Oscar came in behind them, closing the door.
Diarmid whispered fiercely, “Lucy, lass, we mean no harm.” He looked for the lovespell in her eyes and found it. He said gently, “I’m going to take my hand away. Don’t scream. D’you understand me, lass? D’you promise?”
She nodded. Slowly, Diarmid took away his hand, prepared to silence her again in a moment.
“Derry,” she breathed. “You came. I told them you would.”
Oscar said, “Just tell us where she is, and we’ll be gone.”
“Who is he?” Lucy asked.
“A friend of mine. Look, we can’t stay. We’re just here to find—”
Lucy laid her hand against his chest. “I can’t believe you’re really here.”
He drew her hand away. “’Tis good to see you, lass, but we have to go. If your brother finds me here . . .”
She licked her full, perfect lips. “You stayed away so long. Everyone said you’d abandoned me. You must promise not to go away like that again, Derry. I’ve missed you so. I can hardly stand to be without you.”
Oscar snorted. Diarmid glared at him. “I promise,” he lied. “Now, if you could just tell me where she is . . .”
“She?”
“Grace,” he said, still gripping her hand. “Tell me where your brother is keeping Grace. Which room, milis? Quickly now, we haven’t much time.”
