Chapter Twenty-Eight
As Hector kept Aidan’s body protected on the shore, I ran to help my sisters push the rest of the Otherworld beings back. My powers ran much more smoothly now, spells coming to my mind that no one ever taught me in training. Fluidly I maneuvered in battle, spinning and twisting in my heavy water-soaked hood.
I scanned the landscape.
The winds were dying, and the waves receded as spirits flew back to the waters. It was as though someone pulled the bathtub plug, and all the dirty water swirled down the drain.
Further down the beach, a lone figure lay crumpled and bloodied, a green glow next to its side. I knew the tattered jeans and shock of red hair.
“You got this?” I shouted to my sisters who nodded in unified response.
Nice to see things a bit back to normal. I hadn’t seen my sisters work in tandem since before my parents went missing.
I dashed across the shore leaping over a fallen log, pushing aside low-hanging branches from scrub trees. Holly was nowhere in sight, and hadn’t been since I emerged from the lake with Aidan.
I stood over him. Quinn’s breathing was labored, his stomach heaving in pain from four evenly spaced scratches that ran across his torso, his face, and his calf. It looked like he was in a fight with a wildcat.
In his right hand he clutched Aidan’s axe, the head of it riddled with a tar-like substance that slowly dripped like molasses.
“Can you hear me?” I spoke right next to his ear.
His eyes fluttered opened—the same green of Aidan’s. Even the gold flecks. The wrinkles around his eyes contorted, showing each shot of pain as it echoed through his body.
“What happened to you?” I looked over his body again, bruises already forming on his limbs and around the deeply gouged scratches.
“Holly,” he whispered. It was as though he called a long-lost lover, but I knew he was saying she was the one who attacked.
“Holly did this to you?” I asked to keep him talking.
He nodded through the pain, his teeth clenched.
“Where is she?” I looked around, worried that the Leanan would suddenly reemerge, biding her time for the perfect attack.
“Gone,” he said. His shaking arm pointed into the woods. “But I gave her a nasty bite.” He smiled but then coughed, spitting up blood that trickled down the side of his mouth.
“How did you manage to do that?” I asked, surprised. I remembered Holly standing in the doorway to the cave, her fingernails over six inches long and her razor teeth protruding. I could still feel the cold touch of her hand earlier, before the other Sidhe arrived.
“I’m a sly dog,” he said and then heaved coughs.
“I’m sure you are.” I patted his shoulder, not quite sure what to do. I hoped to calm him, but wasn’t successful so far.
A peregrine falcon landed on a nearby branch.
“Onora, what should I do?” I stared at the speckled-chest falcon. My mind wandered through the files of my life.
The bird screeched and looked at me sideways.
“Let me guess. It’s something I have to do on my own,” I said. Onora didn’t answer, but simply watched.
I pulled Quinn’s shoulders and head closer onto my lap like Bridget did so many times when I was sick. I wrapped my arms around his chest and bent so my lips were inches from his ear.
His life was shrinking, and I couldn’t bear to live with two humans dying in my arms in one day. I held my arms out to the sides of Quinn’s heaving chest, wrists pointed to the sky. Then I began singing “The Song of Healing.” A song that was passed down for generations, but I never used on my own.
On the spring breeze, my voice danced. It lilted and called to my ancestors, willing the Sidhe power to heal.
Hush. Now, Sorrow, dry your eyes
Mother sees your broken heart.
Hold and cease to cry or sigh
Keep your mem’ries never far.
Silence. Now, Hurt, fly away
Over mounds of Finias.
Though fresh wounds bring fear and pain,
Still shall tears and bleeding ebb.
Peace. Now, Death’s Mark, wait a while
End your tolling melody.
Beat life’s rhythm—fate requires
One more day for child and me.
Over the lapping waves it tumbled, rhymes circling, weaving, and spinning. Until the final refrain and then my arms embraced Quinn. A single tear fell and landed on his dirt-smeared cheek.
I looked down with hope, unsure if the song was enough for the battered man. Was my heart-felt reverie enough to heal his wounds?
I held him tighter, beginning the song again in a low whisper. But before I could finish the first line, the shallowest scrape began to meld back together. My healing seemed to be working throughout his body.
I gripped him in my arms, not wanting to let go for fear of losing him and the mending power. His wounds were not fully healed, but they were far from life threatening.
He struggled to sit up, and turned to look at me, his smile complete this time.
“We did it, Onora! We did it!” I shrieked to the falcon who still sat watching nearby. I carefully laid Quinn aside and jumped to my feet, laughing and turning a circle.
We saved him. He is alright!
I spun once more and stopped suddenly. My eyes fixed on the ancient Sidhe who limped toward me down the beach, a smile on her weathered face. “You are wrong, Morgan. You did it!”
When I turned back to where the peregrine perched, it took one leap into the air and soared up over the lake.
Just a bird. I did it myself, without Onora watching over or helping with the spell-song.
I raced to her, arms outstretched, ready for one final embrace before I collapsed for good.
Onora stopped me short, her hand held out for me to stop. “I really mean you did it, but I think you better look at them arms before you hug me.”
I looked down at my usually pale forearms and saw them distinctly streaked in red.
“Pale arms bathed in Keeper’s blood,” Onora quoted.
No matter how much I had tried to escape the prophecy, it seemed that all of it came true. Somehow.
“But I—” My voice stuttered for the first time in the past two days. “But— I didn’t finish the keen!”
“Prophecies have a funny way of comin’ true now, don’t they, your Highness?” Onora replied. And then she held me close.