“Aye, and it would be best if you came.” He held up a hand before she could ask another question. “Eat, stretch, or what suits you. Ten minutes more, then we ride. Someone will instruct you where you need it, answer what you need. Let the dog go with Cróga until I send for you.”
When he walked away, Breen bit into the bread.
“Weight of the world on his shoulders,” Marco commented. “I was going to say something to cheer him up, but it seemed wrong.”
“He talked about us riding into pride and sorrow. I only saw the sorrow.” She took the apple around to feed to Boy. “Before, I thought how he looked…” She searched for a safe word. “Fresh, fresh and strong, considering the last twenty-four hours. But you’re right, Marco. Over and under and through all that? The weight of the world. Or more, the worlds.”
“You’re carting some of that, my Breen.”
“Not like he does.”
When they mounted again, she watched Bollocks fly overhead on Cróga. The road rose and fell with the land, and the gentle patchworks of the midlands gave way to the rolling east.
She saw a stone circle ringed in a field with a stone column in its center. She heard its hum as they passed. A graveyard where sheep wandered through the stones near a small building that looked like a little chapel of some sort.
She felt no dark from it, only quiet and soft light.
Near her, Marco chatted with other riders. She let the voices lull her, along with the steady rhythm of the horse under her, the cool air that brought the scent of peat smoke and grass, the occasional rider or wagon that went by with a salute or a greeting.
The long night with only snatches of sleep had her half dozing.
She found herself near the waterfall, in the green light where moss grew in thick carpets on the trees, and the river reflected it.
Pixies danced there, over and through the tumble of water, white against green. All the hearts beating—so many—filled her own. Dragons, tiny zips of color, winged and dipped. Enchanted, she walked closer to the bank of the river.
In this river years before, she knew, she’d been closed in glass, held under the surface. In this place not so long ago, Yseult had bespelled her—but that was done.
She was safe here, with the pixies, the baby dragons, and the music they made.
In the river, its green clear as glass, she saw the gleam of the red pendant as she had in a dream once before. The dragon’s heart stone just beyond her reach.
She started to kneel down, to stretch her arm out and down. And a shadow passed over the river, over her.
She looked up, her own heart beating fast now. Above, circling above, the dragon. Red as the stone, gold tips as bright as the chain.
She wanted to reach up. She wanted to reach down.
The dragon circled, gold eyes watching. The pendant shimmering, waiting for her hand to bring it to the surface.
Choose and become. She heard Marg’s voice in her head. Choose to become. Take your place, and both are yours.
I can’t reach either. I can’t quite reach.
She held one hand toward the sky, the other toward the water. And feeling herself slip, pulled back.
And stood on the other side of the falls. Like a ghost she stood behind Odran. His voice boomed, made her want to press her hands to her ears.
Yseult, her hair liberally streaked with white, chanted with him.
As did the demons and the damned who gathered.
She didn’t know the language, but still she knew the words.
Run with blood, feed on death. And with the feast break this lock. Unseal the door, by my command. I will take what is mine, what was denied me. Be this blood, be this death only the next in what will come.
She saw the child now, a young faerie whose pale pink wings frantically beat, as she screamed for her mother, as she tried to escape the chains that held her in the river shallows.
When he lifted the knife, Breen didn’t think. Only acted.
She threw power out so the knife spun from his hands, threw it so he cried out in shock and pain. Threw it out so the chains broke and sank under the water.
And the young faerie flew into the trees.
On the wrong side, the wrong side, Breen thought as Odran whirled.
For an instant their eyes—gray and gray—met.
She felt dark close in around her.
And someone said her name.
She jerked back, found Keegan gripping her arm. “Back straight,” he snapped, then saw her face.
“Where were you?”
“I—Odran. He had a child, a faerie child. The waterfall, a sacrifice. I stopped him. I don’t know how. I don’t know when. Now, before, yet. I don’t know. But she flew away, and he saw me. He saw me, and she’s on the other side.”