by Skye Horn
“If his father sought revenge, why doesn’t he understand there is a better way?” Thea asked, glancing back toward the door with a desperate hope to see him return, but he didn’t.
“Hate clouds his mind. We must always remember that anger is a well-trodden path to hate, and hate is what Morrigan feeds on.”
“How do I help him?”
“You already have.” The king’s smile was genuine, and with the help of his staff, he stood. “There’s a light in his eyes since your return.”
Thea didn’t know what that meant, nor how he’d even know that Kieran had “light in his eyes,” but it appeared their visit was ending, so she rose as well. She wished to ask him more questions about her mother and about Kieran, but knew that she needed to respect the time he’d given her.
“We’ll speak again, but I’m an old man in need of rest,” he said. “Kieran needs you, Thea. He needs you as much as he needs the air he breathes. You have something that many others only dream of; let that guide you on your journey.”
Thea walked around the table and hugged the king, despite the guards’ obvious disapproval. They shifted uncomfortably near the door, looking at each other with confusion.
“Thank you, King Aragon.” She rested her head against his rumbling chest as he embraced her with a throaty chuckle.
“You may call me great-godfather if you like.” His voice no longer sounded like a king’s. In fact, Thea believed he almost sounded nervous.
“Thank you, Great-Godfather.” She stepped away, smiling up at him, and knew he could see her happiness, even without his sight. His guards came to his side then and Thea bowed low to him. “It has been my greatest pleasure to meet you.”
“And mine to meet you, dear child. Now go find what you are searching for. There is much work to be done.”
Thea allowed the guards to escort her from the throne room and found Kieran waiting for her in the hallway. He leaned against the wall looking moody.
“I thought you left me here,” she said with a nervous smile.
A moment passed as they looked at each other. Whatever thoughts of revenge and hatred Kieran had still haunted his eyes, but something else was there as well, something that Thea clung to: hope.
She walked up to him, this time extending her own arm for him to loop his through, just as they’d done when they’d arrived. He linked his arm with hers and let out a heavy breath.
“I’ll never leave you,” he said, and they left the castle arm in arm.
Chapter 8
The next few days passed in an anxious blur of tension. King Aragon had requested Kieran return to his guard duty, at least part time, to ensure the village remained protected from any unwelcome visitors, but when he wasn’t in the village, Kieran was teaching Thea how to wield the dagger, which she constantly kept hidden in her dress, or his sword. Iris seemed to avoid Thea at all costs, but Ethel always sat watching the two of them spar in the yard with an amused smile.
“Ouch!” Thea cried out as Kieran dropped her to the ground yet again, pinning her arms down with his feet as he stood over her.
“You left yourself wide open,” he scolded for about the millionth time. “You’d be dead—”
“If this were an actual fight, I know.” Thea jerked her arms out from under his boots painfully and rubbed the dirt from her skin.
“This isn’t a joke, Thea.” Kieran reached out a hand to help her up, which she accepted with bitter gratitude. They’d been at this for days. Every moment that Kieran was at the cottage he had Thea running some sort of training exercise. First, he wanted her to run—run until her Jell-O legs could no longer hold her upright anymore. Then it had been controlling the dagger and sword, and now he was trying and failing at teaching her how to dodge attacks. Bruises covered her entire body, and muscles that she hadn’t even known existed seemed to never stop aching. It didn’t help that she was having to learn to do all of this fighting in a dress either. “We don’t know when Malachi will make his next move. Amara knows you are with me. It’s only a matter of time before they find out where I am in Grimwalde. Iris’ cottage has remained off the king’s maps for years, but he is capable of anything at this point.”
His worry diffused a bit of Thea’s anger.
“I think she’s looking better,” Ethel called out from her perch on a pile of hay that Faylon was trying to take from beneath her. She shooed him away and held out a sugar cube instead.
“It’s okay, Ethel.” Thea wiped her forehead and sighed. Despite the frigid winter air, sweat dripped from her skin during these exercises. She desperately missed indoor plumbing and showers because of it. “Kieran is right.”
He seemed surprised by this, but Thea just reached for the cup of water beside Ethel, downing the cold liquid as her lungs burned with over-exertion.
“We don’t know when my sister will make her next move.” Thea frowned. She’d started calling Amara her sister for experimental purposes, but it still felt wrong on her tongue. The girl had tried to kill her, but if everything Kieran had told her over the past couple of days was true, she’d also been raised by a monster. Would Thea have been any different in her shoes? She wasn’t sure. “But what I don’t understand is why you aren’t teaching me to wield magic.”
Apparently, Amara was only Thea’s half-sister, but Thea knew nothing about her mother. Kieran had only shrugged in response when she’d asked.
However, the facts were that her father and her sister were plotting to use her to release the Goddess of Death into Faerie, and while Kieran was trying to teach her how to defend herself against that happening, they were getting no closer to any answers about exactly how her family planned to use her, and Thea still had absolutely no clue how to use the magic that everyone claimed was in her blood.
“We’ve been over this, Thea,” Kieran said sliding his sword back into the sheath at his hip. “Until you are physically stronger, your body won’t be able to handle the magic.”
They had, in fact, been over this, but Thea still didn’t understand it. She remembered the exhaustion that had followed using magic in Ireland, but surely there was a way to train herself to control that, right? Kieran claimed it came with stamina—knowing how to balance physical exertion with magical exertion—but that just pissed her off. Thea had never played sports as a kid. She’d also never worked out. She’d been one of those girls who could stay in decent shape without ever really needing to do anything—or at least, she’d thought she was. Now that she was being forced to use foreign muscles in her body, she wondered just how fit she actually was.
“Ethel, I need you to go to village,” Iris called from the cottage door, looking out at the three of them.
Ethel let out an audible groan that made Iris raise her eyebrow and place her hands on her hips.
“You’d better just go,” Kieran warned, seeing the look on his aunt’s face. “Plus, Mica is back. I saw him there this morning.”
This changed Ethel’s expression drastically. She jumped up off the hay and ran toward Iris, saying something about grabbing her cloak. Thea watched with a moment of amusement.
“Does Ethel have a boyfriend?” she asked, tilting her head.
“No, but she has a crush on a boy in the village.” Kieran laughed and came to stand beside Thea. “You should go with her. It would be nice for you to meet some of the other villagers. They all know you are here, after all.”
“I can leave?” Thea said, sounding more shocked than she’d meant to. Kieran glanced at her with a raised eyebrow and a frown.
“You’re not a prisoner, Thea. I’m just trying to keep you safe.”
“I didn’t mean it like that,” Thea said, but Ethel was coming back from the house, cloaked now and with a satchel of coins on her hip.
“Thea will go with you, Ethel,” Kieran called out before the girl could disappear into the forest. She glanced over at Thea with a wide-eyed excitement.
“Just let me get changed,” she said, motioning to her dirty clo
thing. “I will see you later then?”
She directed the question at Kieran, who nodded his head with a small, crooked smile.
When Thea returned a few minutes later she wore a clean dress with a warm winter cloak draped around her shoulders. She pulled the hood of the cloak over her head to block out the chilly winter breeze as she went to meet Ethel.
Kieran had already slipped inside with Iris, explaining that they had matters to discuss, which he would tell her about later. Thea was curious about what matters these were, but seeing the excited look on Ethel’s face kept her to her original plan. They hadn’t gotten to spend a lot of time together, just the two of them, and Thea thought it would be nice to get to know the younger girl a little better. Plus, as Kieran had said, she wanted to meet the other villagers.
“Kieran told me that our worlds are quite different,” Ethel said as they entered the quiet forest cover. The village was not a far walk, so they left the horses and Faylon behind. Thea was secretly grateful for this, knowing that riding on Faylon’s back would have only made her already sore legs worse. “Do you ever miss it?”
Thea thought about this for a moment. She hadn’t thought of herself as being homesick before, but as Ethel said the words, her stomach twisted into a familiar aching knot. Her parents had died less than three months ago, and even though she’d had plenty of distractions, she missed them desperately. She wished for her mother especially, thinking of how she could always read the way Thea was feeling just by looking at her. She also wondered what her father would think of Kieran. Even though Kieran and Thea weren’t anything more than friends, she knew her father would have seen right through her feelings.
Her father had never really liked Marcus. He’d told her she was made for a far greater life than what a small-town boy could bring her, but was that greater life one at Kieran’s side?
“I’m sorry, milady.” Ethel put her hand on Thea’s with a sympathetic smile. “I don’t remember me ma or pa, but I can’t imagine losing Kieran or Iris, or even you.”
Thea squeezed her hand, trying to escape the depressing thoughts in her head. At least she had memories to hold onto. Ethel was an orphan, but she constantly remained optimistic despite all the lemons life threw in her direction. Thea wished she was more like that.
“It’s difficult to think of the parents that I lost or of those I left behind, but I know where I belong.” Thea glanced over at the younger girl with a kind smile. “I spent my entire life wondering where I belonged, but I understand what was always missing. If anything, I was homesick before—and now, I’m home.”
Thea’s feet ached after the twenty-minute walk to town. The beautiful path distracted her along the way, but now that they’d reached the cobblestone roads, she felt the blisters inside her leather shoes. She didn’t want to complain as Ethel continued the same cheerful chatter since their heartfelt conversation.
Thea found it easy to be around her. It amazed Thea how carefree Ethel was, despite the circumstances she’d grown up in, and Thea felt slightly ashamed of how she herself had acted at that age towards her own parents.
“We need to see Mirielle to pick up some herbs for Iris,” Ethel said as they slowed down in front of a small wooden cart. It was full of many plants that Thea didn’t recognize. A single mule stood attached to the cart, with his muzzle in a bucket of grain and a blanket over his back.
“Ethel!” A young man came running around the back of the cart, grinning ear to ear as he lifted Ethel’s small body into his arms, spinning her in a playful circle. He looked only a couple of years older than Ethel, who squealed something about how she would be sick before the young man sat her feet firmly back on the ground. He tossed an arm around her shoulders.
“Liar,” he teased, leading her toward the back of the cart where an older lady, with the same yellow eyes as the boy, sat smiling. “Ma, look who finally came to see me.”
“Mica, dear. Let the poor girl go.” The woman laughed and Ethel blushed as Mica removed his arm with an apologetic bow.
“And who is it that she’s brought with her?” Mica’s mother looked past Ethel at Thea, and her eyes widened.
“Goddess above, you look just like her.” The woman placed a hand upon her heart and stood, walking over to Thea’s frozen body. Ethel gave her an encouraging smile.
The woman bowed low in front of Thea, motioning for her confused boy to do the same.
“That’s really unnecessary,” Thea blurted, looking around with embarrassment as a few villagers glanced their way.
“This is Princess Claire, but she goes by Thea, so really, this is Princess Thea,” Ethel whispered to Mica, who looked up with his mother’s same wide eyes. “Thea, this is Mica and his mother, Mirielle.”
“Please make them stop,” Thea begged Ethel, who giggled in response.
“You really should get used to this type of behavior, milady.”
Thea knew she never would.
She reached out to help Mica’s mother back into a standing position, but when their hands touched, Mirielle shrieked as if Thea had burnt her.
Thea immediately dropped her hands, and Mica ran to his mother’s side.
“I’m so sorry,” Thea gasped, bewildered at what she’d done to the woman. “Did I hurt you? I meant to help…”
“Shh,” Mica said, not looking at Thea. Ethel came to her side quickly, her face shining with excitement.
“She’s having a vision!” Ethel whispered loudly.
“She’s a seer?” Thea asked. She’d met only one other seer, King Aragon, but he hadn’t acted like this when he touched her. He’d just seemed to know unexplainable things.
“Death is coming,” Mirielle cried, grabbing Thea by the hands.
Thea felt like she was drowning beneath icy waters. Her breath caught, and the village faded away. A flock of black ravens swarmed around her, clawing at her skin and screeching so loudly that she thought her ears would bleed. When Thea resurfaced, a voice sang seductively from the middle of the flock.
We see you, Princess. We’re coming.
Thea tried to find the source of the voice but all she saw was blackness as the ravens engulfed her.
The vision was gone as quickly as it came, and Thea stumbled backwards, nearly tripping over the uneven cobblestone ground. Mirielle’s crystalline eyes, which had looked identical to King Aragon’s for a moment, returned to their soft yellow tone.
The color returned to her cheeks, but she fell against Mica’s chest and sobbed horribly. Thea stood frozen, trying to steady her breathing as Ethel approached Mirielle. Concern replaced her excitement as she knelt.
“Mirielle,” Ethel clutched the woman’s other hand tightly, “what did you see?”
“Malachi’s daughter is here.”
“Yes, but we already knew that…” Mica said, glancing up at Thea, then back to his mother in confusion. Thea and Mirielle’s eyes met. The woman was completely drained, that much was clear, but there was something else, something Thea was supposed to understand.
She was regaining control of her senses too slowly; she tried to wrap her mind around the vision, to recall why the words felt so familiar to her. Who was coming?
All at once, it hit her. She remembered the ravens painted in the murals of death in King Aragon’s castle. The Fae associated Morrigan with ravens, and she was the one who kept taunting her, who kept saying she was coming. Malachi’s daughter…
“Not me,” Thea said abruptly and looked at both Mica and Ethel. “She’s not talking about me! Ethel, you need to get Kieran.” Panic was tearing at her, but she fought for control of her emotions.
Malachi’s daughter is here.
Mirielle wasn’t talking about Thea; she was talking about Amara. Amara had found a way into the village, undetected by King Aragon’s guard. Mirielle had seen death coming, but Kieran had said the visions weren’t always clear.
Thea hoped that was the case now.
“I don’t have a horse…” Ethel said, looking p
ale. Thea cursed. It’d taken them nearly half an hour to get to the village by foot.
“I’ll go,” Mica said. “I’m half-Fae; I can run faster.”
Ethel looked embarrassed, but nodded her head in agreement. He was gone before anyone could think of another option, and Mirielle’s voice broke the silent panic as they watched him go.
“We need to hide you, Princess.”
And then, the screaming began.
Chapter 9
Kieran and Iris were sitting in the parlor discussing Thea’s upcoming training when they heard Mica screaming outside.
“Kieran! Kieran, come quickly!” The boy’s face was bright red as he tried to catch his breath. He looked as if he might collapse, but Iris shouldered herself under his arm to keep him upright. Kieran’s heart raced in anticipation as his eyes scouted the area for whatever danger Mica had come to warn him of, but he saw no immediate threat. Mica coughed, trying to breathe and speak, but he’d obviously overexerted himself with whatever magic he’d used to enhance his abilities in getting to them.
“What happened?” Kieran demanded. He knew he sounded cruel, but whatever had driven Mica to come find him loomed out of his reach.
“My ma,” he said, coughing again. It was a rasping cough that tore at his throat. “She said—”
“Out with it, boy,” Iris said, but her tone was kinder than Kieran’s.
“Malachi’s daughter is here.”
“Well, yes, Thea is in town with Ethel…” Iris said, looking with clear relief toward Kieran. Mica was shaking his head frantically, though. His eyes were closing as exhaustion threatened to overtake him.
“Thea sent me—”
Kieran needed no further explanation, knowing Thea would have only sent Mica to warn Kieran if the danger was real.
“Take him inside to heal,” Kieran said, not waiting for a response from his aunt. He ran toward the village with his wings outstretched behind him, and the earth disappeared from beneath his feet.
