Page 143 of Broken Veil
“Oh.” Laura laughed. “I think I saw a snot bubble. Yeah, you’re going inside for a shower. Come on.”
Carys nodded and let Laura and Cadell lead her back into the house.
Her best friend started a shower that was so hot steam was billowing out of the bathroom when Carys walked in.
When Laura closed the door, Carys stripped off her clothes and let them fall to the ground. Sand was gritty beneath her feet.
She walked to the mirror and swept a hand over the glass so she could see her reflection, only to find a black-haired woman with a bleeding right eye staring at her from the corner of the shower.
Carys screamed, and a second later Cadell burst into the room.
She looked again, and the woman was gone.
She collapsed into her dragon’s arms, and he eased her to the ground. Cadell held her in an iron embrace and let her cry.
“Nêrys, she is not here.”
“She was in the mirror.”
“I do not doubt your vision. Dôn’s collar has opened your mind in a way that most Brightkin never experience. You have traveled to a realm of the dead. You will see things that other humans cannot.”
She clutched his arm and felt his skin pebbling beneath her fingers. “Are you going to shift?”
“No, but your perceptions have.” He brushed the hair back from her forehead. “Clean up and eat something.”
“Find Hogg’s Well and take the water in your left hand,” she whispered. “Put it in your right eye. Don’t drink it. Don’t put it in both eyes.”
“Is that what your mother told you?”
Carys nodded.
“Then that is what you will do.” His voice was grim. “Did she tell you anything else?”
“I’ve already wounded her,” Carys said. “The sea monster. The bear. The bison. All of them were her.”
“So with each battle, you wounded the Morrígan.” Cadell nodded. “You have already won, but you must understand how.”
“But I have to see the wounds to understand how to defeat her.”
“The collar has opened your mind,” Cadell said. “The water from the holy well will open your eye.”
Carys looked up into the dragon’s warm gold eyes. “Cadell, I don’t think I want to see.”
“I know.” He frowned. “But you are a nêrys ddraig of the Cymric throne. You are the Brightkin of Princess Seren of Cymru. You wear the mother goddess’s collar. You will do what you must.”
The traffic startedat the roundabout north of Cley Hill, a stop-and-go mess of cars, vans, and a few small trucks, all of it leading into the city and none of it coming out.
“What the hell is this?” Duncan muttered from the driver’s seat.
It was nearing sunset by the time they arrived, and this time Duncan didn’t have a rich friend with a country house nearby, but he had secured lodging at a swanky mansion turned hotel on the south end of town.
“It’s her.” Laura was staring at her phone. “Cley Hill is trending. There are millions of hits.”
“Millions?” Godrik’s jaw dropped.
“Even if only a fraction of them come to her in person,” Naida said, “that is an enormous show of worship.”
Carys looked out her window, and it appeared that they were stuck in traffic headed to a music festival or something like that.
