Page 71 of Broken Veil
Carys let out a harsh breath. “If she doesn’t care about creating chaos or making war in the Brightlands, why is she there?”
“Think.” Angus snarled at her. “Your Shadowkin would have been a better hero for this battle, but then Seren would never have let a fae sorceress into the Brightlands in the first place.”
“Well, she couldn’t, could she?” Carys’s felt heat flood her face. “Because she wasn’t born in the Brightlands in the first place, and also, she’sdead.”
“Finally,” the creature grumbled. “You have stopped your sniveling.”
Carys felt like she was riding a roller coaster. Nothing made sense. She’d been hoping Angus would be her guide, but she’d heard nothing from him but disdain.
“You’re not a warrior, Carys Morgan.” He loped away from her, pacing. “And yet you’re the hero the gods have chosen for this task.”
The gods had chosen her? For what task?
She’d been the one who had caused all this in the first place.
Angus crossed his burly arms over his chest. “Why did the Morrígan want to get to the Brightlands?”
“I don’t know.”
If she’d been chosen by the gods for this task, was the Morrígan always going to cross the gates? Was Carys’s birth, her life, Seren’s death, Cadell’s bond—was all of it simply the winding threads of a tapestry woven by the universe to put Carys in this exact place and time?
“You don’t know?” Angus spat out. “I thought you were a scholar.”
Carys’s mind calmed; her body stopped shivering. “Macha is only one aspect of the Morrígan.”
“Finally,” Angus said. “She’s thinking.”
“She was Badb in the Shadowlands. The Crow Mother. She pretended to be fae.”
Angus waved a hand. “The fae are not gods no matter how they wish they could be.”
That wasn’t strictly true considering the current king of the fae was the son of a Celtic sea god, but Carys wasn’t going to argue with Angus about the squishy borders of myth at that exact moment.
“She chose the Macha aspect in the Brightlands,” Carys murmured. “Macha is… from Ulster, I think?”
Angus waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter.”
Carys pictured the Morrígan’s nubile, fresh body basking in the sun. The long hair and full figure. “She’s a fertility goddess?”
What place did a fertility goddess have in the Shadowlands where the women could not give birth? She hadnoplace here. The worshippers of the Shadowlands did not need her.
“You’re finally on the path.” Angus stamped one foot. “Not there yet.”
I blessed this land by coupling with its king. Even their queens bear my mark.
“But it’s not the fertility. Notjustthe fertility.”
“War and sex. War and birth. Death and life,” Angus muttered. “You have to think like the goddess, Carys Morgan. What does she want?”
“I don’t know,” Carys said. “You’re supposed to give me answers, not more questions.”
“What do all gods want?” Angus shouted. “You know this already!”
“Worship!” The moment it left her mouth, it was obvious. So obvious. “The Morrígan just wants to be worshipped.”
Angus loped to her. “Your world is a twisted place that feeds on selfishness, greed, violence, andattention,” he said. “And what is attention but worship in another form? The Morrígan’s acolytes in the Brightlands arebeggingto be found.”
Carys pictured the intoxicated young people who had come under her spell in Gorne Wood. “She’s already started.”
