Cailleach’s slight intake of breath at my reaction made me wary, wondering if I’d crossed some line by commenting on her appearance. “What do you see, child?”
“You just knocked forty years off your age! Your hump is gone and your lazy eye is straight! How? Was it the same concealment charm that mutated me?”
Her expression went from cautious to emotional, the swing of it making Bastien take a step back. “Ye can see me? You’ve seen my true self?”
“Uh, care to explain that?”
Moisture welled in Cailleach’s eyes, her gaze locking in on mine as if I was the first person to ever treat her like a human being (which, of course, she wasn’t). “There was a spell cast on me long ago. I vexed Carman, so she cursed me.”
“Who’s Carman?”
“She’s the first immortal, and wicked as they come. Now people see the hag when they meet me – the façade Carman covered me with. Only immortals and truly pure souls can see me as I really am.” Her insecurity, her pain, and a little bit of triumph shone out in her expression. I saw the agony of isolation and the social stigma we all like to pretend we don’t feel when we’re ostracized. She reached out and gripped my hand as if she needed me, and not the other way around. “I haven’t been seen in so very long. Only my sister and Kerdik know my true form. And now ye do, too.”
8
Cailleach Turning Cold
I went in for another hug, because when you go through a giant shift, it helps to have someone anchoring you to the planet. “I see you, and either way, I think you’re super cool. You can hang with me anytime.” When I stepped back, Bastien caught my eye with his wary and careful steps toward my side. “This is my fiancé, Bastien.” I smiled at his stiff movements.
When he reached us, he knelt down, dipping his head in respect. “Your majesty.”
Cailleach raised her eyebrow at me. “You’ve taken an Untouchable into your bed? How fitting. I see he’s given ye his mark. Congratulations to ye both. I can see how even the strongest man might fall for your charms.”
“Oh, it’s all him. He gives me one of these,” I paused to shimmy my shoulders, shaking my boobs a little just to make her laugh, “and I just can’t help myself.”
Cailleach chuckled. “I can imagine.” Then she postured and rolled her shoulders back, getting down to business. “You say my Brìghde is being held by your mammy? How is this possible?”
I shook my head. “I’m not sure.” I explained the vision I’d had through Kerdik’s eyes, and the steps that led me to this moment of needing such a grand favor. “So I need to get there, but you can’t port me into the castle. Otherwise, your magic might fade away, and Morgan might eventually find a way to snatch it up, like she’s trying to do with Brìghde and Kerdik.”
“I’m not afraid of a mortal, least of all a woman of Avalon. Your people aren’t made of sturdy stuff, like mine are.” She eyed me with confusion. “And what about your magic? Ye said Morgan le Fae has a way of detecting strong magic, which means you’d be a target, too.”
My nose crinkled. “I don’t have strong magic. I have my birth blessings, sure, but nothing more impressive than that.”
Cailleach chuckled, as if I’d said something foolish. “Oh, wee princess. Those blessings are so strong, they no doubt transferred even up to your life in Common.” Then she reached out her hand and grasped my fingers with an arthritic grip that belied the creamy, youthful hand. She stared intently into my eyes as she squeezed my fingers with a purposeful hint of a threat, holding me in place. “I see what Kerdik did, and it’s only made your magic stronger. Brìghde told me he gave a mortal woman his blood, but I guess I had to see it to believe it.”
I lowered my voice, though I knew no one could hear us. “That’s not totally public information. Kerdik did that to save my life.”
“Aye. Brìghde did tha for a mortal once before, and it ended in heartbreak. It’s a grand thing for us to find someone we can give part of ourselves to. I’m surprised my green friend finally found someone he wants to keep around for two lifespans.” She tilted her chin so she could look me in the eyes. “Are ye worthy?”
It was a question I knew the answer to without a blink. “No.” Cailleach studied me while Bastien stiffened, but I didn’t bother backpedaling.
Cailleach cackled at my response – actually cackled. “I like tha. Ye say ye want to rescue my Brìghde? I can help conceal your magic for a time. It won’t work on an immortal, because we’re too powerful to be stuffed away. But your abilities can be cloaked, strong as they are.” She motioned for me to step back, and Bastien moved with me. “Step aside, boy.”
Bastien shook his head. “With all due respect, I’m her Guardien, and her fiancé. Where she goes, I go.”
Cailleach grinned at the pickle I’d landed myself in. “So Kerdik finally found someone he trusts, dare I say loves, and she’s engaged to another man? A more fitting punishment I couldn’t have thought up myself for tha manipulative cretin.”
I narrowed my eyes at her. She’d called Kerdik her friend and a cretin in the span of half a minute. I wasn’t totally sure how to read their relationship. “I know we don’t know each other, but maybe our interactions could be less talk about running down one of my closest friends. Kerdik can be a good man; he just needs people to let him try.”
“Is tha so? I know a very different side of him.”
“I’m sure you do. But he’s a prisoner right now, and if we don’t set him free, then you’ll have to deal with Avalon’s whining along with Éireland’s single-handedly. So if you’re going to help us, I vote for now rather than later.”
“You’ve got quite the noisy gob on ye.”
I shrugged without pretense of apology.
Bastien held tight to my hand, and then coiled his arm around my hips, drawing me to his chest. “We’ll do what we can to set Brìghde and Kerdik free, but be prepared to help Brìghde. She’s pretty bad off right now. Morgan le Fae’s been torturing her.”
The stone walls surrounding us started to frost over and grow a layer of ice. I shivered, burrowing in Bastien’s embrace while Cailleach started murmuring in a language I didn’t know. My spine tingled with the chill, but it was equal parts the temperature, and the trepidation of not knowing what kind of help I might be getting from her.
“Bastien?” I eked out quietly, worried I might’ve done something stupid in summoning Cailleach. Maybe it wasn’t my brightest idea, exposing us to magic we couldn’t control, and had no say in. Kerdik was my safety net, and he wasn’t here.
Bastien held me tight, his arms banding around my back to let me know that whatever destiny we were bound for, he was in it with me. “I’ve got you,” he promised, though I could tell he was apprehensive.
Cailleach’s murmuring picked up in volume, and then doubled until she was shouting at us. I gasped when her irises disappeared, turning her eyeballs completely white. The snow began to fall in thick clumps from the ceiling, stacking up all around us. The incantation sounded angry now, with syllables that sounded harsh and guttural.
I shrieked when the chill wasn’t just a feeling, but became a touch that jerked at my body like chilled, slippery fingers that couldn’t be trusted.
I was ripped from Bastien and thrown against the iced wall on the other side of the room, the wind knocked out of me. Hard and thick chunks of ice jutted out and coiled around my ankles and wrists, securing me to the wall while I screamed fruitlessly. Cailleach did the same to Bastien, banding ice around his legs, torso and arms so we were separated, and could do nothing but stare in fear at each other as we shouted and struggled with our bindings.
Cailleach used her tall, spindly cane to inch her way toward me. She eyed my finger, which was powerless to do more than ball into a fist to resist her. She pried open my hand, studying my ring with a hard look to her, now that her irises had returned. “Ye summoned me,” she observed.
“Kerdik’s in trouble! You have to let me go! I’m the only one who can kill Mor
gan and stop this whole thing!” My ankles were painful with the hardness of the ice, and the arctic nature of my bindings. Still, I struggled for all I was worth.
When Cailleach twirled the ring around on my finger, I panicked. “Stop! The last person who tried to take off my ring died! Kerdik put a spell on it that only he could take it off me.”
Cailleach studied my face for lies, but that’s the thing about the truth being stranger than fiction. She leaned in and sniffed my ring, rubbing her wet nose against my knuckles. “You’re not lying. Kerdik really did think of everything. I wonder what he’s hiding in your ring. How did ye summon me?” She straightened, so she could look me in the eye. “Kerdik caused Brìghde no small amount of heartache, using her as he did. He ended her marriage, after she’d given her husband a double portion of life, as ye have. Tha Kerdik’s got his sights set on ye makes ye very intriguing to me. I’ll help ye rescue my Brìghde, wee princess, but after tha, you’ll explain to me how it was ye found a way to summon me. Not even my most faithful servants can do tha.”
I shivered, just wanting the whole thing to be over. “Kerdik gave me abilities I don’t totally understand. He doesn’t talk to me about them; he just does his thing and doesn’t feel the need to explain himself.”
“Ah, now tha does sound like Kerdik. Had ye said anything else, I don’t think I’d have believed it.” She tapped the ring twice, and then stepped back. “Your ring knows me.”
I spoke through chattering teeth. “Dude, I’ve g-g-got no idea what that means.”
Only I did know. Éireland’s lost magic was hidden inside my ring. Though it was in plain view of Cailleach, no one assumed Kerdik would entrust me with such a dangerous trinket.
Cailleach closed the gap between us, sizing me up for who knows what purpose. I tried to hold my chin high and keep my composure, but when her cane bumped to the ring on my right hand, heat shot through both of us. I screamed, and Cailleach dropped her cane, jumping back as if the twisted wood had bitten her. “What did ye do?” she accused me with wide eyes.
“Nothing! What could I p-p-possibly do, frozen to the wall like this? Your cane burned me!” It scared me that something had happened that not even an immortal could explain away. Her look of alarm matched my own.
Cailleach lifted up her cane with caution, checking it for cracks. Then she looked at me with wide eyes, as if I was the danger, though I hadn’t done a thing.
Bastien called out for me, angry as he struggled fruitlessly against his bindings. “Let her go! If you’re not going to help us, then let Rosie go.”
Cailleach reached out and squeezed my chin, smooshing my cheeks in that way old ladies did that made you feel like a five-year-old, no matter how grown you got. She studied my mismatched irises with a careful eye. “Why did Kerdik give ye his blood?”
I swallowed hard. “To heal m-m-me when I was almost d-d-dead.”
“He’s in love with ye, then.” She jerked her chin in the direction of the end table, which still held the stone vase he’d made me, along with the yellow roses that never lost an ounce of their luster. “Those are from him. I can tell his signature. He put them there so he could find ye, and ward off anyone who might come looking for trouble.”
I closed my eyes through a shiver that rocked my body. The ice at my back was freezing through my tank top, setting a cold deep down in my spine. “I d-d-don’t want to t-t-talk about it.”
“Don’t think tha just because I’m granting ye my help this one time, I’ll be persuaded to lift his curse.” She wrenched my jaw in her deceptively strong grip and jerked her head in Bastien’s direction. “The day ye throw this brute aside and go for Kerdik is the day Avalon gets another dragon.”
“Dude, stop evil villain monologuing, and help us get them out of there! I’m past my patience with people in power threatening me. Either help us or don’t!”
Cailleach stepped back, dropping her hand from my face in surprise that I had the gall to talk back to her. “Very well.” She waved her cane toward my bed, said, “cacher la magie,” and out from the tip of her cane shot a puff of snow that feathered over my mattress. When she blew away the flakes, two black capes were lying there. “Wear those, and it’ll conceal most of the magic you’re carrying. Kerdik’s blood in ye will be detected if ye step outside of that cape. Be sure ye stay tight inside of it. If your Untouchable wears his, you’ll be able to see each other, but no one will be able to see either of ye.” Then she clicked her fingers, and just like that, the ice fell away from us, loosening our limbs so we both collapsed to our knees. I wanted to crawl to Bastien, but my limbs were immobile from the freeze. My whole body felt like one giant icicle that might break if it was moved.
Cailleach rolled her eyes at us, as if our inability to move was our own fault, and not hers. She moved slowly to the capes, lifting them and then draping them over our shoulders. I gasped when Bastien disappeared, but then reappeared when my own cape was donned. It was like walkie-talkies, but for sight.
Bastien was the first to be able to move, and he stumbled toward me with all the ferocious determination of the warrior I knew he was. “I’ve g-g-got you,” he promised again, wrapping his icy arm around my back, so we could freeze together in our misery.
I huddled into him, afraid that I’d once again bitten off more than I could chew. Still, Bastien didn’t desert me, but offered his freezing body up as my shelter, tucking me in the safety of his arms and shielding my body with his. Not once did he remind me that this was all on me, since I’d summoned Cailleach. I adored him for being a man who loved me more than he clung to being right.
His words had venom in them when he finally was steady enough to speak to her. “You take your anger out on me, n-n-not her.” Then he gave her the coordinates of the castle.
Cailleach looked down her upturned nose at Bastien. “I’ll do as I please. Now, see tha ye don’t disappoint in bringing my Brìghde home. I’ll not always be as pleasant as I was today.” With a boom that seemed to shake the castle, Cailleach and my walled-in bedroom disappeared from our view.
My eyes jerked shut as the world went dark and seemed to suck at our skin. I opened them two seconds later, when our bodies were slammed into the grass at the back of my mother’s property. Cailleach was nowhere to be found in the twilight, instead leaving us to our shock and unrelenting shivers.
9
Vegetarian with a Knife
For several long minutes, neither of us stood, but chose to huddle together like children who’d escaped a natural disaster. “I’m s-s-sorry, Bastien. I didn’t know she’d hate Kerdik so much.”
Bastien kept the lecture stapled tight inside of him. “There’s nothing for it now. Let’s get ourselves together and make a plan.” His arms around me were unbending, capturing me in his love. The tight compression calmed my shivering as the warmth of Avalon slowly trickled into my pores, unlocking my stiff body. When I finally slumped in his arms, he somehow found the strength to hold me together. “Hey,” he whispered when he felt me despairing. “It’s going to be alright. You got us here. It was risky, but it worked. I say we get Lane and them out first, since Kerdik and Brìghde might be more difficult to bust free.”
I nodded, brushing my cheek against his hard, flannelled chest. “You know I love you, right?”
“I have a very short memory about that, so you might have to remind me every day for the rest of our lives.” His frosty fingers found my face, fingering my jaw as if I was something delicate and precious. “I don’t like anyone laying a hand on my wife. From the first time I met you, there was this draw to make sure no one ever hurt you. Then I ended up doing most of the hurting.” He moved his cheek to mine, so we could share a little body heat. “Then when I took your lueur, that pull you had on me grew until it was unbearable to be apart. Now that you’re going to be my wife?” He steadied his grip on me, communicating with the tight hold how scared he’d been. “I can’t handle seeing you in pain. It breaks me up inside. I can see myself throwing
people out of the way and moving whole buildings just to make sure you’re alright.”
My lips found his and offered up a quaking kiss. “I’m alright. No more injured from the cold than you are.”
Bastien couldn’t stop touching my face, so I let him, since it seemed to calm him down from the fear that we’d almost been torn apart by an immortal. “When we get in there, you have to direct us, but I want you to stay behind me. If something comes for us, you get hit last. Understood?”
I wanted to argue, but knew there was no point. “You can lead for now, since you have the knives.”
He let out a nervous bluster of a chuckle. “That looked like it was hard for you to say. Well done.”
My gut tugged me toward the castle, so I stood on shaking legs, tying my cape around my neck with stiff fingers. The hood went over my head, and though there were half a dozen soldiers in the distance, they didn’t give any indication that they’d seen me. I smirked at Bastien when he fiddled with the ties on his cape. “You’re pretty in that thing,” I commented with a light kiss to his lips.
“I want you to remember that you called me pretty. You might forget, after I start laying out the soldiers who messed with Reyn.”
“Will do, princess.”
“Hmm.” He squinted at me, and then picked up my hand to move it to his belt under his cape, so that we moved together towards the castle.
I shuddered when my gaze fell to the well near where we were at the back of the property. The dark that was quickly falling around us spooked me as I recalled the narrow tunnel I had been dropped in. I closed my eyes against Bastien when he drew me to his side so we walked in-step. My mother had dumped me down a well over a piece of jewelry. Ain’t no shrink qualified to wade through that sewage without a hazmat suit. “Bastien?”
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