Cut off the realms.
Death stops…
I tried to shake off the words, but they kept coming, growing louder until they were shrieks right by my ear. And the shadows grew darker until I wasn’t sure I was leading anyone anymore.
By the time we made it through, I was the only one shivering. The horses were waiting on the other side. Dubh gave an anxious stamp of his feet, and I ran my hands across his face, trying to calm myself as much as him.
“That was intense,” Drake said, “but easier than before.”
Easier? I nodded absentmindedly. “You doing okay, Rumble?”
He said something, but I had caught sight of movement on the water. I ran to the cliff, almost stumbling over the edge and then falling onto my backside in my struggle to regain balance.
“Careful!” Dymphna shouted as the others followed.
I was pointed outward. Across the water was a beach in the human realm complete with a quaint lighthouse. And in the distance sailed a boat I recognised as Yvette’s. A green flag flew highest at the mast.
“It’s Brendan!” I cried out, wondering how far he was from reaching whatever was across the sea.
“He’s made it this far,” Drake said.
“If anyone can do it, he can,” Dymphna said.
I nodded, unable to speak. The worlds were so close that—I froze. That was what the voices meant. To stop the spread into the human realm, I needed to cut the realms off from each other completely. I could save Scarlet, but only if I condemned everyone else in the faery realm. I couldn’t do that. I wouldn’t even know how.
The stone was heavy in my pocket. It had been used to separate the realms, and we were about to seal up the rift. The stone of destiny could theoretically be used to cut off the human and faery realms from each other forever. But then I remembered the message had come from the Hauntings. Nothing was real there.
We camped at the summit of the Frozen Valley that night. The earth was more black than red, and when my hand moved off my blanket and onto the ground, it came away a blackened ruby colour. The stories about the Frozen Valley said the blood of fae buried there made the dirt red, but the blight had darkened it since my last visit.
“It’s gotten bad,” I murmured. I knew the others were still awake. None of us could sleep, but in the darkness, the descent was too risky.
“It’ll get worse. It can always get worse,” Drake said.
“It’ll be over in the morning,” Rumble said. “One way or another.”
That night, another dream haunted me. I saw a trio of demigoddesses, whispering and giggling about giving her back her gift. Had they been speaking to me in the Hauntings? But no, the new message was different, more confusing.
And then a voice said, “Cara, wake up,” and I sat up, confused. I rubbed my temples, trying to figure out what I had been dreaming.
“Are you well?” Rumble asked in the darkness.
I got up and moved next to him. “No. I feel like I’m losing my mind. What did you see in the Hauntings, Rumble?”
He leaned forward, his shoulders hunched. He stared into the dying fire and shrugged. “I saw faces I recognised. I saw death. I saw… heartache. Is it always that way?”
“Usually.”
He gave me a sharp look. Every scar on his face was highlighted by the glow of the fire. The more I looked, the more I saw beauty in it—a landscape of memories and strength. I was starting to see the faded stretch marks on my belly in the same light.
“What did you see?” he asked.
“I don’t know. A person, calling me. I heard rather than saw. I heard voices—or one voice—telling me what to do. And I’m terrified that maybe the realm has finally gotten to me.” I looked at him. “Maybe all I’ve ever been is a summer wife, after all. If something goes wrong, you have to leave me. You have to go back to the castle and make sure that everyone understands what has to happen next. And you and Vix have to make sure my daughter grows old.”
“Needless panic,” he murmured. “Hysterics. I thought you above all of that.”
“Then you overestimated me.”
He gave me a steady look. “I didn’t.”
“You’re going to stay outside the cave. You and Dymphna. Drake and I already agreed. If it gets bad, both of you need to take the horses and run. If you stick together, you’ll make it back through the Hauntings. If you reach the Watcher, he’ll help you if you’ve gotten caught up in the memories.”
“But—”
“Tell me you understand.”
He didn’t hesitate. “I understand.”
“Good,” I whispered.
***
The descent was difficult because the earth was wet and seeping. The horses slid, even Dubh.
“We need to climb,” Drake said, peering over the edge. “If one of the horses falls…”
I immediately got off Dubh. “Stay,” I commanded him. For a change, he listened. “Dymphna, you need to stay up here, too.”
“I do not.”
“Look at the way down. It’s practically vertical. We’re going to need you up here with a rope. When we go down, we’re going to flatten it even more. We’ll need help getting back up.”
Drake nodded. “She’s right. Rumble can hold the rope into the cave. We'll need you both for our escape.”
He started to climb down even before Dymphna had organised the rope. I followed, but Rumble waited, perhaps worried he would crush one of us. I half slid most of the way, my fingers falling through the watery earth. Drake’s face was splashed with red and black, a stark reminder of the accident he'd had the last time we'd made that same descent.
We reached the bottom without many problems. The stains on my hands were black rather than the berry they had been before. Rumble descended carefully, close to the rope. Dymphna was steady. The rope was attached to both her and the horses. It should hold if Rumble fell.
I moved to the spring to wash my hands and sighed. Last time, it had been pinkish. Now it was grey and purple.
“Are you ready?” Drake asked.
“No. Are you?”
He smiled and urged me toward the cave. It was darker than I remembered. No Realtín lit our way. “At last, I’ll get my chance,” he said. “What was it like? In the Fade, I mean.”
“Terrifying. It felt like we could get lost in there forever, and the fenris was just… unreal.”
“You still have the scars.” He looked down at me, but my leg was covered. “They talked about you.”
“Everyone keeps saying that.”
“It’s true. The gossip in the courts is always ridiculous, but you were the one constant—the human who changed everything. The one who kept two souls in one body. The one who freed the wrong soul. The one who went to the Fade to bring back the true king. The one who carried an heir. The one who managed to outsmart Sadler. The one who got away. The warrior queen. And now this will be spoken of for lifetimes. Our great-great-great-grandchildren will know Cara Kelly’s true name. Don’t you know how special that is?”
“I’m the upstart who stole a crown and caused the blight to worsen,” I said snidely. “The one who ruined everything for everyone, and now I’m known for going back to the places I’ve already visited in a weak attempt to fix my own mistakes.”
“Now you’re just fishing for compliments.”
I laughed, surprised to find myself still able to. “And you’re still… you somewhere in there.”
He gave me a pained look.
Rumble joined us then. “Are you ready?”
Drake and I exchanged a look and nodded as one.
Rumble let down the rope. “I’ll go first,” I said. “I’ve done this before.”
“No,” Drake said.
“Yes,” I said firmly. I was over being told what to do by faeries. It was motherhood, rather than being regent, that made me exasperated with being treated like a child.
I lifted my leg over and climbed into the cave. This time, I wasn’t as reckless or determined as befor
e. Without Realtín’s light, the cave was scarier. I held on to the rope, trying not to put too much pressure on it. The water that dripped down the wall stung my eyes and left black spots in my already poor vision, but still, I lowered myself. Eventually, I made it to the bottom.
Drake followed. His wings were loose, the light in the darkness, just as he had looked the night we first met. He moved steadily, more sure-footed than I had been. I remembered the last time I had been in the cave, and I suppressed a nervous giggle. The scar on my calf itched as though the proximity of the rift irritated it.
Drake jumped to the end and reached for me. “Now for the hard part.”
“You have the stone, right?”
He gave me a long, weary look before I told him I was kidding.
“How do we do this?” I whispered as we moved into the back of the cave, following the eerie green light that announced the rift’s presence.
“We’ll wing it,” he replied, his eyes on the gap. “This is… not what I expected.”
The green was as I remembered it, but in the light, I saw veins of black across the cave walls. I shivered at the thought of the cave being a living, blighted thing.
“The gap sort of sucked us through,” I said, bending my head. “Let’s hope we don’t have to pass through.”
“What if the stone doesn’t work?”
I gave him a sharp look. “Shut up, Drake.”
We crawled next to the rift. “Don’t touch it,” I said. “You might get pulled through.”
He took deep breaths as I lifted the stone out of my pocket. It lay in my hands, a plain piece of rock—nothing special, nothing important—and I panicked. “What if—”
Drake pressed his finger against my lips. “You can shut up now, too.”
He dragged his finger down, pulling my lower lip with it. And there it was again, that spark of attraction when we were in the face of danger. I jerked back then squeezed my eyes shut and held out my hand. I only opened my eyes when I felt his touch. He laid his hand over mine, and the two of us touched the stone together. Almost immediately, it transformed into a tablet. This time, it drew what was left of the blackthorns and then a cú sídhe before ending on the same image the Watcher had shown us.
“Is it just me, or is the blackness spreading across the drawing?” I whispered.
Drake nodded, his pale skin a sickly green in the light. “Can you feel that?”
I could. The tablet was pure. There was something cool and reliable about it. The darkness that shrouded us seemed to shrink away. I gestured at the wall. “Look at that.” The veins of black were vanishing.
“We should hold it close to the rift,” Drake said. “We need to hold on tight.”
We gingerly held it toward the green rift in the Fade. The tablet seemed to sparkle in the darkness. The green light wavered than reached out and smothered our hands and the tablet.
“Hold on,” I cried as the rift tried to suck in the tablet and ourselves. We braced ourselves, leaning against the walls even as our arms shook with the effort of holding on.
The sensation increased, and my shoulder wrenched with pain. “Something’s happening!”
The light and the tablet were shimmering. For a moment, I worried that the Fade was breaking through, but the tablet warmed in my hands, and the green light shrank. The wall began to seal itself.
“It’s working!” Drake shouted.
But our hands were still there; we were at risk of being trapped.
“At the last moment, we pull back, Drake.”
I felt the tablet working. The stone of destiny was sealing the pathway between worlds just as it had done before. It grew almost too hot to hold. The rift decreased and transformed and shook around our hands. We inched back slowly, still feeling the pull. The rift was closing, but it wanted to take the tablet with it.
As the rift was reduced to only a thin line of colour, we pulled back. The tablet stuck fast, along with our hands.
“Pull!” Drake cried.
I leaned my feet against the wall and used my entire body to pull. With a strange scream, the rift let us go. We fell back, the tablet too hot to hold, and the rift was gone, leaving us in darkness.
I felt Drake reach for my hand. We held on to the tablet, even though it burned, because we knew how close we had come to being stuck forever.
My eyes adjusted to the darkness, and Drake’s wings gave off a faint shimmer as he bent to pick up the tablet, which had turned back into a stone. He wrapped his arms around me. “We really did it,” he whispered in my ear. “We closed the rift.”
Brendan had better not get sent to the Fade again.
The thought came unbidden, and I shivered. The rift was closed, and there was now no way to get into the Fade, bar death. In the future, if any of us were sent there, we would never leave.
Chapter Twenty-Five
The task was done. I'd given Drake the stone for safekeeping. All that was left for us to do was wait for Brendan to return with the trees we needed. The blight couldn’t continue anymore, not with the rift sealed.
Unless a god made it so.
The four of us headed back as quickly as possible. The ship was long gone when we passed the cliff with the sea view. Weirdly, the sky over the beach was black and stormy, while ours was clear and blue. I desperately hoped I hadn’t lost another year. I hadn’t entered the Fade this time. Perhaps that made a difference.
Again, I heard whispers in the Hauntings, but they sounded disappointed. I ignored them.
We finally made it to the Watcher. He looked us all over with a great deal of concern, but finally, he gave us the all clear.
The Wife took me aside as we prepared to head for the tunnel. “We felt something,” she said under her breath. “Heard something different in the Hauntings.”
“Me, too,” I said, but neither of us could explain what it had been. At least I knew I wasn’t crazy. I wasn’t the only one hearing the voices.
“Be wary,” she said abruptly, pulling my cloak tight around my shoulders. “There’s an evil wind blowing.”
“We closed the rift.”
“Then perhaps the rift was never the biggest problem.”
All the way through the tunnel, I kept going over everything in my head. Something was off. I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly. As we exited the tunnel, I happened to look up just in time to see a white raven fly overhead.
We rode together until we came across an exhausted rider who had apparently been searching for Drake. “The queen,” she gasped. “She’s ill. They sent me to find you.”
The little colour Drake had drained from his face. “I have to go.”
“Go,” I said. “We’ve already done our part.”
He reached out and squeezed my hand. “Thank you. Be ever watchful.”
“I’ll accompany you,” Dymphna said, worry lines forming on her face.
“What do you want me to do about Eithne?” I asked.
“If you take her back to your court, I’ll come for her as soon as I can,” she promised.
“I will. Good luck, both of you.”
We parted ways. I breathed out a sigh. “It doesn’t feel quite real.”
“You did a great thing,” Rumble said. “It will feel real to the realm.”
“Unless it doesn’t work. Come on. I need to speak to the water fae.”
“The water fae?” But he followed me without hesitation.
“I’m not going to be able to relax until I ask them something.”
We rode until we made it to the banks of the River Garbh. I called out for the water fae. Only ripples appeared in the water at first. Then a young woman with a fishlike tail burst through the surface, somersaulting in the air before diving back in with a splash. When she lifted her head above water the second time, she was grinning. “She comes again.”
“You all helped the realm once,” I said. “But it’s not over. We’ve sealed the rift in the Fade, but there’s a ship on its way to find the First Tree.
Across the water.”
Murmurs from underneath the water made the river ripple.
“The trees will clean the earth, and the water, of the blight,” I said loudly. “If the ship doesn’t make it back safely, we’re all dead. Can you guard it? Or watch for it to return? Anything?”
The mermaid-looking fae disappeared under the water. I waited impatiently for a few moments.
What looked like seaweed rose from the water to reveal a bare-breasted woman covered in grey-green scales. I knew that faery better than the other water fae.
“This is the last favour,” she said, bobbing at the surface.
“It’s not a favour,” I said. “It’s survival. Do it or don’t, but the water is affected by this just as much as the soil.”
The dozen or so tentacles that made up her lower body curled up from the water, revealing blackened tips. “We’ll watch for the ship.” She sank under the water again.
Relieved, I turned away. I wiped my eyes as I mounted Dubh. Rumble was watching me, but he didn’t ask any questions. We rode on in silence, resting only when we had to, until we reached the castle.
We were greeted joyfully—the news had reached the court, and everyone knew that we had succeeded in sealing the rift. As the fae in my court congratulated me, I realised just how exhausted I was.
I spotted Rafe and waved him over. “Has Fiadh returned?”
He shook his head.
“Have you heard from her?”
“Only rumours.”
“Rumours in which many children were murdered?” I asked coldly.
“I warned her not to be foolish,” he said. “I told her that it would displease you.”
“Send someone to find out what happened. If she harmed one child, she’s not to return here. I don’t want to see her. It’s up to her whether she wants Setanta to stay here or be sent to her. I won’t punish him for her actions.” I hesitated. “And make sure she understands that if any harm comes to my foster daughter, it’ll be on her head.”
“Foster daughter?”
I sank into my throne and closed my eyes. “You’ll meet her soon enough. One of Glic’s children escaped before Fiadh got there, and I’ll be taking care of her. She’s to be treated as Scarlet’s sister.” I opened my eyes. “Understand?”