Page 102 of The Crown of Moonlight
The heavy weight in my chest eases once we’re all on firm ground again.Then I notice the dark look Sean gives Chyr, the look he throws around at the other Riders.The fear in his eyes when he stops his gelding as far from me as he can.
Illicit magic—I can almost hear his words hanging in the air.
I know they aren’t true.Nothing about my magic feels wrong or tainted.
But Sean wants to take the easier path.For the Riders, killing me would be safer than waiting to see what I might do to hurt them.Just as Catriona believed it would be safer to let Chyr die.
I told Catriona that we were better than the Evers.Sean and Lorcan are the worst of what I feared.
And the way Cathal is studying me from the back of his horse, I’m not sure I’m a person to him at all.He watches me more as if he sees my magic as something he covets, something he’d like to have for himself.
Kelp stinks on the stone beach around the ruins of Castle Tchirum, and the wind off the sea loch carries salt and cold and the chalky taste of old ash coming back to earth.I look back for Shade and Shadow, needing the reassurance of their presence.Catching sight of them always makes me miss Rab, and I wonder how he and those back at Dunhaelic are doing.More than anything, I wish that I could be home with them instead of here.
The seaward arch of the castle stands open, the door long gone.We dismount and file through into a weed-choked courtyard where moss and damp creep up the walls.The roofless inner structure has a tangle of grass and stinging nettles growing around the edges.They’ll be itchy to sleep on but food for the horses if we cut them, bruise them, and let the sting leach out of them for an hour.
Cathal, Sean, and Lorcan stride off to inspect the inner ward and climb to the highest structurally sound corner, though I’m not sure what they hope to see.Ronan checks the stone-curbed well in the floor of the keep, which still contains a derelict bucket.
The well is choked with reeds, and the bucket leaks as he dips it down and brings it back up, but there’s at least some liquid left.He takes the bucket out of the castle to scrub it out with sand, then searches for a trough to fill so the horses can drink.
Ronan brought down a roe deer in the willow wood last night, and we eat the remnants of that along with the last of the cheese and oatcakes Chyr and I bought from Mairi back in the hamlet near Glen Fhionain.I leave the Riders huddled around a fire that someone has masked with an illusion to suppress the smoke and glow, but I will need to be up again before dawn to find a boat.
The Shadehounds and I find a place to lay my plaids wedged between fallen stones in the innermost portion of the ruined hall, out of the way of wind and sea spray.Shadow belly crawls closer until she’s pressed right against my side, her nose resting on my knee.Shade places himself like a guard at my feet.
I don’t need to hear Shade’s low growl a short while later to know that Fergal has come to stand nearby, but for such a boulder of bone and muscle, Fergal moves with surprising stealth.
“Can I join you?”he asks.
“Why?”I sit back up and draw the plaid I was using as a blanket around my shoulders.Shade and Shadow sit up, too, watching Fergal with wary caution.
“I wanted to thank you for what you did,” Fergal says.“With the water.”
I shrug that aside.“I meant, why did you ride out on the causeway?”
“The others were talking in circles, and you seemed upset.I didn’t think the water was deep enough to be a problem.”
“It’s not the depth—that’s what I was trying to explain when I said we’ll need someone on the boats with us who understands the currents.But thank you, Fergal.It was kind.”
I sense him blushing more than I can see it in the dark.
“Sean’s feelings against humans,” Fergal says, “I’m not excusing him, but there’s a reason behind it.His mother liked to visit here long ago—before the Compact.She was here with his twin sisters when the human reprisals started after Vheara was exiled.Sean’s mother escaped, but his sisters didn’t.”
“More of us died than Evers—”
“His sisters’ heads were placed on spikes in the village square.Someone Sean knew recognised them weeks later.That’s how he found out.Seeing what the Butcher and others have done here—even some of Chyr’s supporters—it’s brought all the emotion back to the surface for Sean.Not only the anger, but the grief, too.The pain.”
Tears spill over before I’m even aware they’re coming, before I can think to hold them back.A cold wash of grief and rage settles over my heart as I think of my own mother and what the Grey did to her.
I know terrible things have been done on both sides—and they’re happening again.While that helps me understand Sean’s behaviour, I can’t excuse it.
My tears keep falling, for my family, for him, for all of us.For so many wasted lives and so much potential wiped away.For all the people left behind.
“How old were the girls?”I ask.
Fergal sits down beside me, and Shade and Shadow happily trot away as if they’ve decided they don’t need to stay with me now that he is here.
“Siorai age faster until we’re in our thirties,” Fergal says, “though that’s still not nearly as fast as humans.Sean’s sisters had lived for twelve years, but in human terms they looked like they were only five.He loved them fiercely.All children are a miracle for us, but twins especially.They’re so rare that they’re revered.”
“Did you know Sean back then?”
