Page 37 of The Crown of Moonlight
He drops his head back to the bench, and I don’t like his cool, pale skin or the rasp of his breath.But I have all I need laid out, and I wash my hands, then refill the basin with heated water and pour another dose of medicine into the cup.
“Father of Light, give me no more of that,” Chyr says.“My tongue feels like an untanned hide, and my mind has turned to sludge.”
“It’s henbane, and you need it to ease the pain.”
He grasps my arm before I can bring the cup closer.The touch is firm, his palm warm and calloused, and his fingers curve slowly over my skin, his thumb a whisper across my wrist.
“Flora—” His voice cracks.For once, he doesn’t try to hide his hurt.The deep furrow between his brows, the flush along his cheekbones, the slow flare of darkness in his eyes…
Sliding his palm along mine, he folds our hands together.They fit easily, like two notes melding into a single, resonant chord.
“I’m sorry about your mother.I should have done better.She—you both—deserved better from me.”
My throat fills with an ache that stops my breath.An ache I have to fold away for another day.
You couldn’t have seen that coming,” I manage to say.“I’m the one who was arrogant enough to think I could bluff my way through and keep everyone safe.I thought I understood what the Greys were like.I didn’t.”
A shudder rolls through me, and I shut my mind against the memories.The cruel enjoyment in the colourless eyes.The crack of bone snapping in my mother’s neck.
I force myself to finish.“I saw a dead Grey on the battlefield where my father and brother died,” I say.“That was a horror, but this was the first time I’ve seen one alive—if that’s what you can call the state of them.I didn’t expect the way they watch us, like vultures plucking out their next meal.The way we’re almost dead to them already, so it’s nothing at all to take a life.”
Chyr’s fingers tighten on my hand, his eyes brighter than they should be.“This is why I need my head clear.”His voice dips low, nearly lost beneath the pop and hiss of the fire.“They need to be stopped, and I have to leave.Tonight, if you’ll loan me a horse and do what you can to patch me up again.”
“Why tonight?”I pull my hand away and blink at him because, no matter how I turn them around in my head, the words make no sense.“Are youtryingto kill yourself?”
He draws a breath, though I can’t tell whether that’s physical pain or the weight of all that’s happened.“We—I—have one chance to get back to Tirnaeve and get help to fight Vheara, but for that to happen, I need to reach Muilean by Beltane Eve.”
I flinch at the name of the Sacred Isle—and the sacred date.It’s only a week from now.Or it would have been if Fionn hadn’t killed the last Cailleach Queen and seen to it that no more queens could be crowned.There hasn’t been a Cailleachan since.
“Why Muilean?”I ask suspiciously.
Chyr closes his eyes with a sigh, then answers: “Vheara changed the seals that lock the permanent doorways between our worlds to respond only to her magic.The only exception was a doorway on Muilean that we came through last year.Either Vheara couldn’t corrupt it, or she forgot about it.It only opens once a year on the cusp of spring and summer.”
“For the Cailleachan—the Hunt.I know.”My tone is bitter.“But why would it open when there hasn’t been a hunt in 400 years?”
Chyr pushes his hair back and rubs his temple as if his head aches.“Legal documents and magic are equally tricky, and the Compact is both.It says the Master can call the doorway to open for the Anvar’thaine on Beltane Eve, and we came hunting Vheara.It should open again for us to return.”
Now it’s my turn to sigh as I pick up the cup of henbane again to offer it to him.
The more I consider what Chyr’s said, though, the more fury creates a hard knot in my chest.“You begged me to give you time because it would save us, all of us.”The words come out in a rush.“But even if you could reach Muilean in seven days, wouldn’t it be another year before you can come back and bring an army with you?Vheara would have ground the rebellion to dust by then—and every clan in the Highlands with it.”
“It’s a risk, but a small one, I think.Vheara had been working on her escape from the Gloaming a long time before she arrived in Alba Scoria, but no one knew that.There was no chance to prepare an army to come through, not before Beltane.But Chulainn’s had an entire year to be ready now.He’d already ordered his mages to find a way to send the reinforcements we need before we left.”
“Yet no one has come,” I say.
“No one has come,” Chyr says.
He’s good at schooling his expressions, but his jaw gets harder the more he pretends he isn’t bothered, and the pain is there, buried in the deep layers of his eyes.I see the months of hope and heartbreak that he and the Riders have lived through.There’s also the toll that’s taken in human lives, and I know Chyr feels that keenly.
“If we can reach the doorway in time,” he says, “with any luck, there should be an army waiting for us.”
“And if Vheara manages to seal that doorway, too?”
“We can only hope she hasn’t.Pray that she’s forgotten it exists and no one else remembers and reminds her.”
My knuckles go white on the cup, and something of my rage must show.
Chyr struggles to sit up.“Flora, I didn’t mean—”
