The Awakening Read online

  Some the arrows pierced and burned through like acid. Some the whirling wind lifted up and tossed into the thrashing sea.

  Buildings that had begun to rise again from the rubble on the cliffs toppled and crashed.

  And still, Odran’s wrath did not abate.

  Yseult stepped out. The gale whipped at her bloodred hair, at the gown of the same color. In the dream, Breen could read the fear in her eyes no matter how she tried to hide it.

  “My king, my liege, my all.”

  He spun around, clamped his hand around her throat, and lifted her off her feet. She didn’t resist. Though the fear spiked, she didn’t resist.

  “You failed! You were to bring her to me. Why should I not hurl you into the sea? Why should I not see your body break on the rocks?”

  Instead, he threw her onto the floor of the balcony. Breen saw pain mix with the fear, but Yseult gathered herself to kneel at Odran’s feet.

  “All the power I own is yours to command. I would hurl myself onto the rocks if you command it. She has more than we believed, more rising up in her than we knew. But my king, my lord, this knowledge is to your benefit.”

  “It would benefit if you fulfilled your duty.”

  “More has awakened in her. When you have her, you won’t have to wait, not long, to drink her powers. She will become much sooner than we believed. And when you drink her dry, on that glorious day, no door will be locked to you, no world will be barred against you.”

  She bowed her head. “My king, my liege, my all, I am loyal only to you. I have forsaken all oaths but my oath to you. With the black magicks, I joined with you, with the blood of seven virgins, I helped you restore your castle. And I will fulfill my oath to help you rebuild your glorious city, to help you take your throne above all gods, above all worlds, and crush to dust any who go against you.”

  She lifted her head. “I beg you, Odran the Incomparable, not to take my life in anger. If you must have my death, let it be taken in cold blood, with cold mind, and on the altar of sacrifice so my death will serve you beyond my life.”

  He studied Yseult, gray eyes—like Breen’s father’s, like her own—calculating. “You would go to the altar willing, witch?”

  “My life is yours to use, to take, to do with as you wish. As it has been since I took my vows to you in blood and smoke.”

  “Rise.” He flicked a hand at her, turned. The killing rain ceased, and the wind died. He stood, his gold hair shining to his shoulders. “It’s not your loyalty I doubt, but your skill. You disappoint me, Yseult.”

  “I have no deeper regret.”

  “Send a slave with wine—a comely one. And see the mess below put to order again.”

  “As you wish.”

  She slipped back inside.

  Odran stepped to the wall, gazed out across the sea.

  For a moment, one terrible moment, it seemed his eyes locked with Breen’s. She saw something in his—quick surprise, dark satisfaction.

  And woke shivering as if dipped in ice.

  She grabbed her tablet, wrote it all down.

  And put the rosemary under her pillow.

  In the morning she managed to write a blog, focused on the garden. Everything bright and cheerful and full of pretty pictures.

  She started back on her book and made a little progress because she introduced an evil witch who wore a magickal pendant of two-headed snakes.

  Later, she’d bring in the live ones, but she wasn’t ready for that yet. In any case, she couldn’t keep her head in the story, not when it wanted to go back to the dream, or the fog, or the intensity in Keegan’s eyes when he’d helped her heal.

  He’d felt the pain, too, she realized. That scorching, inhuman pain. And still, he hadn’t pulled away.

  “Misneach,” she murmured, laying a hand over her wrist. He had courage.

  Some time on her own, she thought. She needed that to contemplate whether she had more than the word over her pulse.

  To let her mind clear, she decided to shut down early and take care of some household chores she’d neglected.

  She started some laundry before driving to the market in the village. That reminded her she’d gotten so used to how life worked in Talamh, the Irish village seemed like the other world.

  With laundry done, groceries put away, the garden weeded, she checked her email before leaving for her afternoon with the Fey.

  “Oh my God.”

  She read the email, pushed up. She walked around and around the room in a way that had Bollocks racing in and out.

  She read it again, standing up.

  “Oh my God! Stop, stop, stop. Don’t get so excited. It’s just the next step. Oh, hell with that! I’m so excited.”

  When Bollocks jumped up to lean on her, she grabbed his front paws and danced. “The agent wants to see the whole manuscript. She didn’t say don’t ever contact me again, you pitiful excuse for a writer. No, no, she said she loved the first chapter and synopsis I sent her, and wants to see the rest!”

  She had to walk outside, breathe, dance with the dog again.

  Then she made herself sit down, write a response she read over three times to make certain it was professional.

  “Okay, here goes!”

  She attached the manuscript to the email, then just sat.

  “Hit send, for God’s sake! Just hit send.”

  She looked at the dog, who’d laid his head lovingly on her thigh. “I wish you could do it. But you can’t. So . . .”

  She hit send and then breathed again. “Okay, we’ve got to get out of here or I’ll sit and obsess about this all day.”

  She obsessed about it on the walk, then firmly locked it in the back of her mind. If she thought about it, she’d end up telling someone about it. She didn’t want to tell anyone, not yet.

  Not even Marco.

  She went straight to her grandmother’s. She didn’t bring up the dream, not yet, because it would distract from the work she wanted to do.

  She had to get better, faster.

  She spent two hours spell-casting, even the one she’d written herself.

  After she’d cleaned the cauldron and tools, set the crystals out for charging, she sat with Marg over cups of tea and the biscuits Sedric put on a plate warm from the oven.

  “These smell amazing.”

  “Lemon biscuits,” Sedric told her. “Finola sent fresh lemons.”

  “Taste amazing, too.” She studied the cookie. “I’ve never baked cookies.”

  “How can that be?” Marg demanded. “They’re baked for Yule—for Christmas—this is tradition. And for the jar for children.”

  “My mother doesn’t bake, and she didn’t approve of me eating sugar. We’d sneak off to the bakery sometimes,” she remembered. “Da would take me to the bakery. I used to wonder why he so often let her have her way. I understand that better now.”

  She thought of her excitement and joy on reading an email from an agent. Of the magicks she’d practiced in the afternoon.

  Of the dream of storms and dark gods.

  “He lived in two worlds, and felt guilty for it. He couldn’t give her, or me, all of himself, because he owed a duty to Talamh. And because he had to protect me.”

  She got up to take the papers she’d folded into the pocket of her jacket.

  “I had a dream last night—or a vision. I wrote it all out. I think it’s clearer if you read it instead of me trying to tell it.”

  She sat again. “Please,” she said to Sedric. “You can read it with Nan. I understand what you are to each other. I don’t remember, but I feel these aren’t the first lemon cookies—biscuits—you’ve made for me.”

  “You always favored them.”

  He sat beside Marg, a hand on her shoulder, as they read what Breen had written.

  When they’d finished, Marg folded her hands over the pages. “She’s wily, is Yseult, offering herself in sacrifice. She would know when his mind cooled, he’d understand he needs her skill and power. But in the
end, they’ll betray each other for more. It’s their nature. She betrayed her people, her vows, as he did. There is no loyalty in either.”

  “She was afraid of him. I felt it.”

  “As she should be. And she overrates herself. That and her thirst for the more will be her undoing. As it was his,” Marg added. “They are much the same creature.”

  “He saw me, in that moment before I woke. How could he?”

  “You’re connected by blood. You opened yourself, seeking to see, and so gave him a moment to see in return. But the power was yours, the control was yours. You need to take care to keep it.”

  “He wants you.” Sedric spoke now, choosing his words carefully. “For what you are, the mix of you that offers him the unique and powerful, even more than your father.”

  “Because of my mother—human and from outside. I know you said I was the only one, but there have to be others who—”

  “There is no other with the blood of the outside, the blood of the Fey—both the Wise and the Sidhe—and the blood of the gods. You are the only,” Sedric told her, “in all the known worlds. And you are the only with his blood in you. You offer him the way to rule or destroy Talamh, the world of your mother. And with those, more still.”

  “By draining me. Like a transfusion.”

  “Your power, your light, your life.”

  “He will never have you. Mo stór, from the moment of your birth we’ve protected you. We will never stop.”

  “My father, Keegan’s father, how many others died to protect me? You brought me here, gave me the means to find you, so I’d learn how to protect myself.”

  “You’ve done well,” Marg began.

  “With the magicks, pretty well. Because I like it. With the rest? Not so much, really, because I don’t like it. That has to change.”

  And would, she promised herself. Starting now.

  Keegan brought the swords to the near field he’d designated as training ground. He saw her walking up the road from Marg’s cottage. One thing could be said about Breen, he thought. She was prompt, always.

  Clumsy with a sword she was, and he feared she would ever be. Pitifully easy to fell in a physical battle. But she was reliably timely.

  She’d tied her hair back in a horse’s tail, but there was simply too much of it to fully contain. She wore the pants that molded her legs and hips, and would provide ease of movement, and an open jacket though the day was warm and bright.

  Why, he wondered, when the woman moved with true athletic grace in a walk did her feet turn into leaden clumps whenever they sparred?

  A mystery, he thought. She had many of them.

  The dog reached him first, as ever thrilled with a rub before he raced off to devil the sheep and horses.

  Keegan started to speak, but Breen took papers from the pocket of her jacket and thrust them out to him.

  “Read this first.”

  With that, she strode off to watch the horses in the paddock.

  She’d written down the dream in a way that brought him into it so he smelled the burning flesh and hides of Odran’s supplicants and slaves.

  The sulfur on the wind, the turbulent crash of the sea.

  The fact he could all but taste Yseult’s fear brought him deep satisfaction.

  Refolding the papers, he walked to her.

  “You let him see you.”

  “Not on purpose.”

  “You had the reins,” he said.

  Unlike her grandmother, she thought, Keegan wouldn’t soften things. She’d let him read her dream because she needed the hard from him.

  “I understand that now, but I didn’t. And I thought—I believed I understood what he wanted from me and why. But I didn’t, not really. Not enough. I do now. And I understand, after I was born, my father was more obstacle than prize to him. So he killed him. My father died to protect me. Yours, too. So many others. I understood that in my head, but it didn’t reach my gut until now. It’s a lot to take in, in one summer, so I think I’m entitled.”

  She took the papers back and put them into her pocket. “Sedric said I was unique. God, I used to long to be special in some way. In any way. Now if that’s what I am, it’s not all bright and shiny. It’s a burden, and a responsibility.”

  She turned to him. “I’m pretty good at responsibility, and doing things I don’t really want to do because they’re expected of me. That ought to be a decent foundation for all of this.”

  She took off her jacket, hung it over the fence, and stood in a black T-shirt that showed off strong arms.

  “So, you have to push me harder. With fighting—defense, offense. And teach me how to focus and channel what else I have. It can’t just come when I’m pissed off. That didn’t help me with Yseult yesterday.”

  “You were bitten.”

  “Before that.”

  He disliked making excuses for anyone, but in this, he felt, she earned them. “She bespelled the fog. Like a drug.”

  “Then I should’ve recognized that, and had some way to fight back.”

  He nodded. “Aye, you should. You do. You don’t wield it well.”

  “It’s your job to teach me how to wield it well.” She marched back, picked up her sword. “Do your damn job.”

  He tried, and failed to turn his smile into a sneer as he went back for his own sword. “And so now it’s myself who’s lacking.”

  “I’ve been a crap teacher, so it’s easy to recognize another.”

  He cocked his head, considered he was thought of as one of the best trainers in Talamh. But not, apparently, when it came to her. So he’d try another way.

  “When you walk, you walk with confidence, with grace. You have strength in your body, good limbs. Then you pick up a sword and you’re clumsy, awkward.”

  “It doesn’t feel natural. It doesn’t feel like me.”

  “It’s not you, but must be an extension of you or you defeat yourself, not an enemy. You had training in dance.”

  “Well, I had ballet lessons, but only until I was about eleven.”

  “Why did you stop?”

  “I was . . . my mother said I’d never be more than average at best, and she couldn’t afford the time or the money as a single parent.”

  He thought of his own mother, who would never have demeaned any of her children so. Who would have lowered anyone who had done so.

  Sympathy rose up, but he shrugged. “By eleven, what you learned is in your muscles. So use it. Can you . . .” He twirled a finger in the air.

  “What? Pirouette? What’s the point?”

  “I’m your teacher. If you argue, it wastes time. Show me.” He twirled his finger again.

  She already felt stupid, but started to lay down the sword and obey.

  “No, with the sword.”

  She’d probably trip and impale herself, but she set, rose up, spun.

  “Your body knows. Do it again. Good. You know more steps. Show me.”

  She dug them up—a little jeté, an arabesque, even a couple of fouetté turns. Boots were not ballet shoes, after all.

  “So, today, combat is a dance.” And now he set. “We’ll dance.”

  He worked her hard, but this time she considered the bruises and twinges badges of honor. And once, she surprised him—and herself—by incorporating a pirouette with a sword strike, then a kick that got through and landed—without much impact—on his belly.

  “You let your body think,” he told her. “It’s better. But now.” He punched power at her enough to have her stumble back. “What do you do?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Block!” He punched out again.

  “Stop. I don’t know what’s not enough, what’s too much.”

  “Block,” he insisted, and shot a shock wave from her toes to the crown of her head.

  It wasn’t answer so much as reaction this time. She threw up her hand, and their powers met and clashed. Light flashed between them, crackling, raining sparks. It singed the air.

  “N
ow push. You hold it. It comes from you. It is you. Push.”

  It built. Flowing up through her, flowing out of her, hotter, stronger. And he met and matched until her body trembled from the effort of holding force against force.

  “There’s a sword in my hand,” he called out over the clashing powers. “I mean to kill you with it. Take it away from me.”

  “How? I’m pretty damn busy here.”

  “Take it or die.” With his free hand he swung the sword in the air.

  She set it on fire, hilt and all. The warring powers fell away as the sword clattered to the ground. Harken, who’d come in from the fields to watch, started to rush forward. Then stopped when Breen leaped over to grab Keegan’s wrist.

  “Oh Jesus, oh God.” The outline of the hilt had seared into his flesh. Even as her stomach pitched, she laid hers over it.

  “I’m sorry, so sorry. I—”

  Before he could snatch his hand away, she gasped, went bone white. She felt the burn scorch her palm.

  “Stop. Not so fast, not so deep. Look at me. Look.” He cupped her chin, gently this time, to lift her gaze to his. “Ease back now. Slowly back. The light heals, but not in a flash. It goes slowly or you risk too much, take too much.”

  Staring into his eyes, she nodded. At first she only sensed the difference, then she felt it. The cooling, the relief, the release.

  “Let me see,” she murmured, and turned his palm up. “It’s okay now. I set the sword on fire.”

  “And a fine way to disarm an opponent that is. But it’s a good sword, so put the fire out.”

  Not so different from lighting a fire in the hearth, she thought, and put it out the same way.

  “I need a break.”

  “You said to work you hard,” he reminded her. “We have time left before you go back.”

  “I need a break,” she repeated. “Five damn minutes. I hurt you, and that’s the second time. Maybe it doesn’t matter to you, in your macho, I’m-the-big-taoiseach world, but it does to me. What if I’d set you on fire? I can’t do this until I learn how to control it.”

  Because she wanted that five damn minutes, she sat on the ground. Keegan crouched in front of her.

  She’d done well, he thought, better than he’d believed she could. And there, he’d misjudged.