Page 103 of Broken Veil
At the slap of his words, Carys felt as small as a child being reprimanded in school.
“You were tricked by a goddess and fumbled the one task Epona gave you by letting powerful, magical blood spill on Saris Plain.”
Her temper was piqued. “You forgot the part where Cadell and I broke the fae enchantment that stopped that battle from turning into an all-out war.”
“Actually,” Jack said, “the blacksmith did that.”
He wasn’t wrong.
“Face it,” Jack continued. “You’re no candidate to be a hero.”
“Good point.” She scrambled to her feet. “Well said. The good news is I have a passport. Why don’t I get on a plane and fly out of here? Go back to California and let you all figure out your old-god politics without me.”
Jack’s voice grew deeper, and his skin flickered with a bark-like texture before it smoothed out again. “This is your mess, Carys Morgan. You let a powerful goddess into the Brightlands.”
“Oh yeah?” She leaned forward. “And who locked her up in the first place?”
“Epona.”
“So tell the horse goddess to come and get her.”
“Oh, but that’s not the way the story is written.” Jack picked a dandelion and the stem grew in his hand, the bud blooming bright yellow, then immediately turning to white fluff that drifted away in the breeze. “I don’t write, myself. They sang my songs long before they could write. But others came after. Jibril and the Builder. They love a goodword.” Jack looked up into thecanopy of the apple trees. “Love a good scroll, those two. People of the books and all that.Yourkind.”
“Do you just love spouting nonsense?” Carys wanted to hit him.
“See, it’s all about stories. Storytellers like you. Don’t have to be written. But they can be.” Jack stared into the trees, and his green beard grew longer as the ivy in the garden bed wrapped around his legs.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Sit down, Carys Morgan.” His eyes locked with hers.
Carys took a seat, but she glared at him the whole time.
“Bad stories weave enchantments,” the wild man whispered. Then he smiled. “But good stories can break them.”
He was finally telling her something important.
“I have to break another enchantment?”
How was she supposed to break an enchantment in the Brightlands? In the Shadowlands, steel could break fae magic. Dragon’s blood could break fae wards. In the Brightlands? Steel was everywhere. And dragon blood meant nothing.
What had Jibril told her yesterday?Ideas are all that is needed to create a god.
“Macha is enchanting the world right now,” Carys said.
“Is that what she’s doing?” Jack picked a blade of grass.
“So how do I break that enchantment?”
“How?” The blade of grass grew between Jack’s fingers until a nodding head of golden seeds bloomed from the end and those seeds fluttered away in the breeze, taking their grains to other parts of the garden. “You have to tell the right story.”
“To whom?”
Jack shrugged. “That is not for me to say.”
Once again, she was seconds away from throttling an ancient nature god.
Duncan opened the front door. “Carys?” He walked out, holding a cup of coffee. “Have a cup of coffee, lass. Jibril just brewed it.”
