“Please drop your illusions,” he said.
She waved his request aside. “Surely you will not deprive me of my small vanities in my own home?” He sensed a tiny branch of influence reaching toward him, and Gitan stiffened. He felt more confident knowing someone else sensed the same things he did.
“Stop it,” Munro said brusquely. “I will not have you trying to manipulate me.”
Her power retreated. “Forgive me,” she said. “I sometimes don’t realise I’m doing it.”
“I need to speak to Ewain immediately,” Munro said, deciding not to press the matter of her illusions. As long as he knew what she was doing, he didn’t mind if she wanted her clothing to sparkle and fake ribbons to appear in her hair. Vanities indeed. Though why she’d care what anyone here thought of her appearance, he couldn’t guess.
She bowed her head slightly. “He’s in the back. I’ll tell him you’re waiting.”
Turning with a fluid movement akin to a dance move, she swept out the way she had come. Munro turned to Gitan. “Good job,” he said. “Your talents are useful confirmation. When Ewain arrives, I’m going to ask to speak to him alone. With your abilities, you will be able to sense where Flùranach is at all times, as they are the only two who live here. Scout around as much as you can.”
“Am I looking for anything in particular?” she asked.
“Artefacts, any evidence of the type of crafting we druids do. I’d like to know if he’s working on any gates, specifically.”
She nodded her understanding as Flùranach returned, preceding Ewain by mere moments. “Munro,” Ewain said. “Did you bring the Cup?”
Munro chuckled. “Straight to the point, I see.”
Flùranach turned to Ewain. “Shall I bring refreshment for our guests?” Her eyes swept over Gitan with a look of disapproval.
“That’s not necessary. I’d rather get to the point as well,” Munro said. “I’d like to speak to you alone,” he told Ewain.
The elder druid waved Flùranach away, and she left with what could only be described as a pout. Her demeanour changed from visit to visit, so much so that Munro hardly knew who she was anymore. She didn’t seem unhappy though. Rather, she appeared to be very much in her element. Still, Munro had to wonder what she and Ewain did all day in this strange, desolate city. At Munro’s signal, Gitan bowed and returned the way they’d come. He didn’t really have high hopes that she’d find anything, but her efforts might yield interesting results.
“So,” Ewain said when they were alone. “The Cup?”
“The queen of Meditar had the most interesting story to tell about this particular artefact,” Munro said. He outlined what Grenna had said to them about Juno’s instructions and fears Ewain would someday regain the object she’d created for him.
“Juno,” Ewain muttered. “Bloody woman.”
“So you see, I know you’ve been bullshitting us. The Cup isn’t needed to open The Way. Do you even believe opening The Way will return our lost people? Or was this a scam to retrieve something you couldn’t take for yourself.”
“I didn’t lie to you,” Ewain said. When Munro opened his mouth to speak, however, the elder druid conceded, “Perhaps I didn’t reveal the whole truth.”
“I thought as much. What do you
really
need the Cup for?”
“It will heal Rory and Flùranach, as I said. Of course, I don’t care about him, but if I healed her, I could forge a bond with her.” He glanced in the direction she had gone. “The idea appeals to me. You may someday realise how much you’ve undervalued her abilities.”
“She is a compatible bond-mate to you?”
Ewain smirked. “Most every faerie can receive a bond, if you know how to prepare them. You young druids have all taken only the low-hanging fruit, the genetically perfect matches.” With a thoughtful frown, he said, “Sometimes, there are more important things to be considered. Like power and sphere.”
“You put us through all this so you could bond with Flùranach?” Remembering what Grenna had told him about Ewain’s power, he said, “I don’t buy that. I think you intend to resurrect your old plans, if you’ll pardon the pun. The other draoidh aren’t around to stop you and your undead army, so you are free to dominate the entire Otherworld. Isn’t that what you really have in mind?”
Ewain tilted his head and stared at Munro evenly. “No,” he said finally. “If I wanted to take over this modern Otherworld, I’d hardly need the Cup of Cultus to do it.”
“What then?” Munro asked.
“I’m leaving this place,” Ewain said with a disdainful glance around the dilapidated palace. “To get where I want to go, I need the Cup.”
The announcement came as a shock. “So tell me, where do you want to go so desperately, and why did Juno want to stop you? Not that it matters. Queen Grenna said she would destroy the Cup as soon as she returned to her homeland. If the thing is as dangerous as you say, it’s safer if it doesn’t exist at all.” Munro still hadn’t worked out how Juno knew what would happen, but so much about the draoidh was a mystery to the modern druids.
“I suppose
where
is the wrong term. I should say
when
.” Ewain sighed. “Without the Cup, I…” He waved as though sweeping the rest of the thought away. “It’s truly destroyed?”
“Yes,” Munro said. He wasn’t entirely certain the deed had been carried out already, but he didn’t want Ewain cooking up some other scheme to get hold of it. Best if he believed it was a lost cause.
Suddenly Ewain looked older, defeated. “I hate this new Otherworld,” he muttered. “When I was in the shadow realm so long, touching the flows, of course, was something I’d missed more than breathing. But all the people who mattered are gone and mostly forgotten. This new world,” he said, indicating the palace walls, “is a crumbling ruin.”
“I’ve told you before you don’t have to live here alone. Come to the Druid Hall.”
“This whole world is a crumbling ruin. Power is a tenth what it once was. The glorious days of innovation and creation are past. You are nothing but children, grappling in the dark. Maybe someday, you will recover a fraction of what we once had, but it will never be more than a shadow. The Otherworld is dying. A father should never live long enough to watch his children die. It’s time for me to leave this place.”
Munro hesitated, uncertain if Ewain was talking about suicide or if he still had some plan to what, time travel? The concept boggled his mind. Tràth had never managed to go back in time more than an hour. Surely Flùranach wasn’t that much stronger than him. Still, with Ewain guiding her evolution, who knew what she might be capable of? Munro feared they might someday regret bringing her here.
“Did you ever think The Way had anything to do with my friends’ disappearance, or was that part of your manipulation?”
If Ewain detected an insult in the question, he didn’t show it. “If they disappeared in The Bleak within a hundred miles of The Way, then they are dead…or worse. Forget about them. Grieve for their loss, then move on.” He met Munro’s gaze. “If you never believed a word I said, believe this.”
A chill crept over Munro’s skin. “If there’s a chance they’re alive, I have to keep searching.” He hesitated, loath to ask Ewain for advice, but certain he was the only one who could help him. “My daughter, an astral lethfae, has bonded with another boy, who is blood lethfae. The children claim they can track his mother through his blood. Do you know if that’s possible?”
“Of course it is,” he said. “I’ve told you before your children understand more about their power than the rest of you put together. You brains have been hardened by modern times.”
With a sigh, Munro nodded. He hated to admit the truth, but Maiya and Jago might be their only hope for finding Huck and Demi alive. No matter what Ewain said, Munro wasn’t prepared to give up, not while there was any hope. “I don’t doubt you’re right,” he said. Turning to the door, he raised his voice. “Gitan,” he called.
The Mistwatcher entered the room as though she’d been waiting just outside the entire time. He might have thought she had, but she had a strange look on her face, as though something disturbed her greatly. “Give my regards to Flùranach,” Munro said. “I’ll be going now.”
Ewain nodded. “Munro, when you brought me here from the shadow realm, I promised I would never do harm to a member of the Druid Hall. I owe you no more. But because you saved my life, I will offer this as well: do not return to The Way, and whatever you do, do not take your daughter near it. My brethren destroyed it for good reason.”
“Were
you
that reason?” Munro asked.
“There are worse things than me,” Ewain said with a smile that wasn’t entirely pleasant. “Those things live in The Way. Without the Cup of Cultus, even I won’t venture there.”
∞
Flùranach waited in the shadows away from the Mistgate. She inverted her power as Ewain had recently taught her, which should make her even more invisible than if she merely used a visual illusion. However, when Munro and his Mistwatcher walked by as they departed Danastai, for an instant, he’d looked directly at her. She shivered but didn’t move, hoping that he had no clue that she’d passed through his Mistgate while he was with Ewain. The Mistwatcher had tried to follow her, but she was easier to fool. Flùranach led the soldier on a bit of a chase, but stopped in time to slip through the gate. Nobody could see through that.
Even invisible, she believed with certainty the second Mistwatcher, the one on duty at the Druid Hall, would have detected her presence had she not again used her temporal abilities. She breathed slowly for a moment to steady her nerves, then began the painful process of turning time backward.
Stopping it for a brief instant wasn’t difficult, but she needed to fight against enormous pressure to go back all the way to the moment the queen of Meditar had come through with Rory. A twinge of regret bloomed in Flùranach’s chest when she saw him, but she pushed the shame aside.
Once she found a moment when the courtyard was empty and the Mistgate pointed to Meditar, she walked through. She rushed, even though she knew, logically, she had all the time in the world. Using her astral abilities to stay invisible, she released the flows enough to let time move forward but not return her to the present. The effort pushed every ability she’d acquired through Ewain’s teachings, but she
needed
to retrieve that artefact, no matter the difficulty. The Father of the Sky wanted her to be his bond-mate, and she wasn’t about to risk being sent away in favour of someone whose bond wasn’t scarred beyond repair.
A strong swimmer, she used her feet to propel herself from building to building fast enough so she could duck inside for a breath of air when necessary. The sea fae didn’t seem to have any indication she was there. Occasionally, someone would hear her and turn, but they never appeared alarmed. From what Munro said, all of them were blood fae. Their isolation from the other kingdoms likely meant they weren’t prepared to defend against illusion.
In truth, finding the Cup wasn’t difficult. Once in the palace, she used her temporal abilities to freeze time and search. Munro had given enough clues that she knew the artefact was in the palace, and the sea fae, like most of their kind, didn’t bother with doors and locks…with one exception. Once she located the only protected chamber, she knew she’d found the right place. The locks were not difficult to bypass. Likely they were ornamental and intended more as a warning. The fae, as a rule, would never steal, so the locks acted as a polite signpost, saying “these objects are not yours to take.”
Flùranach couldn’t read most of the intricate runework around the vault, but from what she gathered, they served to create a severe reaction in druids, both physical illness and aversion. She felt a mild distaste and realised she must possess a few drops of druid blood, as Ewain had claimed. The news that she bore some human blood had come as a not-entirely pleasant surprise. Only by using her astral illusions to give herself confidence was she able to push past the sensations. Juno, she supposed, had never expected a faerie to seek the Cup. Perhaps in her time, the fae were too afraid of Ewain and none of the fae race would dare aid him.
Flùranach didn’t fear him though. His power was a thing of beauty, and his soul was not destructive. He thirsted for power, but so did she. That desire had brought them together.
Once inside the vault, she hesitated. A tiny cup rested on an intricately carved marble stand, and she became entranced. Approaching through the pressure of stopped time, she grasped the artefact. Power screamed in her ear and time rushed forward. Not until she managed to hide the Cup in her coat could she regain enough control over her flows to make herself invisible again and stop time.
She stood, panting in the vault, trying to collect herself. Foolishly, she’d triggered some unseen alarm. Juno wasn’t perhaps as careless as Flùranach had believed. Still, Flùranach had every confidence in her success. The fact that Juno had known Ewain would try to acquire the Cup in the far future told Flùranach he
would
succeed and they
would
return to the past together. Otherwise, how could Juno have known to try to prevent it? Flùranach’s success was predetermined by fate.
Anticipation propelled her forward. Finally, she would be whole. She would have everything she deserved. She could barely contain her excitement as she retraced her steps through stopped time. She didn’t dare release her temporal flows, which meant she had to fight both the resistance of time as well as water when she returned through the sea. Instead of attempting to hold her breath for an impossible amount of time, she took out the Cup again.