Page 161 of The Shadow Path
Forget the babies.
Magic and blood.
Magic. And blood.
Dafydd looked at her. “Carys?”
“You don’t get your average Londoner offering sacrifices to the river anymore.”
“Fae are not gods. Even though they may act it at times.”
Carys set her book on the table in front of her. “The fae are not gods.”
Dafydd shook his head. “Of course they’re not.”
“But thegodsare gods.” Carys returned to a black circle in the woods as blue and green lights danced over the Great Serpent of London and a fae prince talked to an old, old goddess.
“Depart from this place and cease your meddling, Old One. Your time has passed.”
“My time is reborn as I am.”
A beggar prince hiding in a darkened alley, grabbing Carys before the Crow Mother could steal away.
“I do wonder what you’re about.”
“You’ll find out in time, and it’s no trouble for you or your kind. In fact, it might just be to your benefit.”
A bright fae prince, allied to a queen, searching for power that he thought he’d lost.
“…anyone strong enough to hold the Saris Plain must be the chosen of the gods… A place of worship, offering, and sacrifice.”
Offering and sacrifice.
Carys looked at Dafydd, and a knot began to form in her stomach. “Cian wanted to rebuild Old Saris because it’s a place of power in every world. Naida said so. That’s where Stonehenge is in our world, and there are stone circles there in the Shadowlands.”
“Yes,” Dafydd said. “Humans have never built there because it was a place to offer…”
Carys saw the moment the realization struck Dafydd too.
“It was a place of offering,” Carys said. “The children were never the sacrifice, Dafydd. The children were just a distraction.”
As Carys rushed from the library, searching for Duncan and Laura, she flashed back to her last memory of a goddess, but it wasn’t the Crow Mother or Macha or any of the forms that the Morrigan, the goddess of war and bloodshed, had taken with her.
She remembered a goddess on horseback.
A goddess whispering in her mind.
A goddess her mother had worshipped and who had tried to warn her.
“You were wondering why the fae prince came to this place. You were wondering just why Aine’s son chose Saris Plain.”
“Duncan!” She shouted for him. “Laura?” She ran through the halls of Dafydd’s mansion, searching for her friends. “Cadell!”
Duncan found her first. He walked up the stairs and ran to her. “What’s wrong?”
“We have to get back to the Brightlands.” Her heart was racing. “I think something is really wrong.”
Laura and Cadell found them next.
