Lord of Silver Ashes (Rowan Blood Book 2), page 40
Sweat dripped from Saffron’s face and made the fabric of his shirt cling to his back, speckling him in dust and ash as he still couldn’t fully keep his composure. Any time he chuckled, the old woman next to him did, too.
“We will begin with a search for iron marks on the beantighe,” Elluin went on, clearly annoyed as her prey weren’t cowering at her feet and begging for forgiveness. It was only when she removed a black leather box from the inside of her jacket that Saffron’s mirth muzzled itself, the reflection of flames on a silver needle and quill turning his heart to ice. “Master Kaelar, if you would please strip your beantighe so that I may begin the examination.”
Kaelar’s hand found the back of Saffron’s collar—
“Keep your hands off him, Broderic,” the beannighe snapped, and Kaelar pulled away in an instant. Elluin flared her nostrils, opening her mouth to screech at her—but Saffron just shook his head and untied the string keeping his top cinched. Removing the extra fabric tucked into his waistband, he pulled it off over his head on his own volition. Elluin seemed even more annoyed by that. Behind him, Kaelar grumbled something in shared disappointment.
“As you wish, headmistress,” he said as he finished. “If you tell me what you are looking for, I can direct you right to it. The love marks left by Prince Cylvan may mask what you’re hoping to find.”
“Disgusting,” Elluin spat, but clearly something about the words, or perhaps Saffron’s obedience, made her uncertain. She glanced to the beannighe, who she thought to be Baba Yaga, and cleared her throat. “You undress as well, Nora.”
“That will not be necessary, headmistress,” the beannighe responded more articulately than Saffron expected. “You know very well what I am capable of. These theatrics exist only as fodder for you high fey to pleasure yourselves while imagining, later.”
“You—!” Elluin gasped, and Saffron burst out laughing again. “You will obey me, Nora Everhart! Undress so that I may examine you for the mark of an oath!”
The compelling intention was strong enough that even Saffron’s muscles twitched—but the beannighe didn’t move. She just smiled through her red veil at Elluin, whose flyaways caught and floated in the heat of the fire encircling them.
“I said, undress yourself!” Elluin compelled once more—
“Your words do not work on me, silver-blooded bitch,” the beannighe finally answered, voice like stones scraping a blade. “I am not enchantable by such malleable fey magic. Try to compel me one more time, Elluin mac Darbhy, and I will show you exactly why you are better off without that tongue in your mouth to start with.”
Elluin stared at her—and so did Saffron.
“How…” Elluin straightened up. She puffed up her chest. She wanted to fight back—but the words caught in her mouth. “Who are you?”
The beannighe grinned. Finally, she pulled the veil away, and Elluin’s eyes bulged. Stumbling backward, the thrust a finger in accusation—but no words fell from her gaping mouth. The beannighe just kept smiling, before turning to Saffron and offering the red veil to him.
“I believe this belongs to you, rowan spirit.”
He reached for it—but Elluin lunged, attempting to rip it away from them both. Before her fingers touched the fabric, the beannighe leapt off the ground—and sank teeth into Elluin’s neck.
Saffron tumbled backward as Elluin screeched and flailed and clawed at the woman pinning her in the grass. The beannighe didn’t bother to scoop the headmistress’ true name away, seemingly satisfied just with tearing a mouthful of flesh from bone with her teeth.
When she pulled away again, she met Saffron’s eyes, the bottom half of her face drenched in wet crimson. Beneath her, Elluin writhed and moaned, clutching her gaping wound before searching—and her eyes landed on Saffron. To his disbelief, she extended a hand toward him.
“Help me, beantighe,” she croaked, what remained of her vocal chords plucking like lute strings. “This mad woman—controls the wolf, beantighe, she must. Help me—and you can go free.”
Something in Saffron’s chest squeezed, choking him—only to erupt as more laughter. He nearly shrieked at her to just fucking die, already!, but the red veil was suddenly pulled from his hands, twisting and slamming back against his windpipe. His wrist caught in the hook, which was the only reason Kaelar’s forceful movements didn’t decapitate him entirely.
“Y—you’re coming with me, beantighe,” he said, voice shrill with obvious fear. “I’m your patron master, you belong to me. I’ll forgive you of your sins, I’ll take care of you—just don’t let that woman touch me. You’ll live in comfort—I’ll even share you with the prince, just—”
“Get—off of me!” Saffron hissed, attempting to jerk himself free. Kaelar tightened the loop around his neck.
“You speak boldly for an ó Caoimháin witchhunter,” the beannighe spoke to Kaelar, next, and Saffron choked as Kaelar instinctively cinched his grip again. The beannighe just tilted her head in observation, before nodding to herself. “Oh, yes, I see the resemblance. Your true name, even—it’s from your great-grandfather Broderman, isn’t it? That old cunt. I was the one who cinched him up outside the Kyteler gates, you know.”
“Yes, and how did that work out for you!” Kaelar snarled. “It brought Clymeus straight to your door, you old bitch!”
“The wolf king was coming for us, anyway,” she said, before smiling with bloody teeth. “At least my students had the thrill of gutting a witchhunter-general beforehand. Do you want to know how I killed him? Would you like a demonstration, Saffron?”
Saffron strained against the veil, how it pressed into his neck and twisted his wrist. He managed to nod. Kaelar wrenched him back again, opening his mouth to argue—but the beannighe just bent over to pick up the silver quill on the ground. Then—something shimmered from the grass next to Elluin, and Saffron bit back a cry of alarm as the headmistress’ silver needle lifted, then sliced through the air.
It was thin enough to not make a sound—but the loop around Saffron’s throat loosened, and Kaelar sank backward.
From the center of his forehead, the end of the silver rod emerged.
Saffron screamed, scrambling backward. Kaelar slumped fully onto his back, staring into the fire-rich red sky with unblinking eyes that glazed over without a drop of blood. That was—until the needle shuddered, sliding out with a slippery sound and stained red.
Saffron turned back to the beannighe, whose eyes lingered on the needle as it exhumed itself from the fey lord’s skull, then hovered like a wisp awaiting another command. Saffron didn’t have to ask to know she was the one to control it—but she must have sensed his confusion, because her eyes flickered to him.
“This is why you must give names to opulent silver; controlling tokens like rings and quills aren’t enough,” she grinned, fluttering the quill between her fingers. Saffron’s heart danced in tandem. She’d once told him the same thing about his cuffs, and even tried to help him do so for himself.
“You’re controlling it?” He asked weakly. The needle floated to him in reply, but he didn’t flinch away, even as it buzzed like pixie wings and hovered in circles around him. Unlike when Elluin carved the words into his back, the needle didn’t mimic the movements of the quill. It seemed to act on its own, just by the beannighe holding its feathery companion. “How?”
“No differently than how high fey can compel humans,” she said. “Opulence overpowers aridity; but aridity overpowers opulence. Silver overpowers iron; iron overpowers silver. Sídhe compels rowan; rowan compels Sídhe. The fey have spent these last centuries declaring themselves more powerful, more pure, the only kind of magic that needs to exist—but they are simply one side of a veil that requires both for balance. They made themselves vulnerable when they failed to kill every rowan witch like Proserpina wanted.”
“Rowan witch?” Saffron’s voice cracked, getting slowly to his feet. The needle continued to follow his movements, as if it recognized him from the first time they met. “Is that something different from a-an iron witch? Is that why my ritual with Cylvan didn’t work?”
“If you attempted a rowan-blooded spell without a veil oath, you did nothing except put on a performance for the trees, child. Don’t you remember what I said as we tried to name your silver cuffs?”
“Ah…”
You must be rowan blooded to charm anything containing even a lick of opulence…
Saffron thought he was going to be sick—but then a hot rush of realization crashed into him.
If Taran’s bones were made of opulent silver, no different than Saffron’s cuffs—perhaps he didn’t have to physically take them to control them.
Perhaps—Saffron merely had to give them a name.
A name was to control them, and to control Taran mac Delbaith. To control the wolf.
Saffron only had to become rowan blooded, first.
“Tell me,” he said. “Tell me what I have to do. I’ll do it, if it means I can protect him. Tell me how I can become rowan blooded.”
The beannighe’s smile curled into something more curious, more sinister. Behind her, Elluin groaned and gurgled on her own blood, barely clinging to breath. The beannighe disregarded her entirely, despite the headmistress’ blood still caked on her chin and cheeks.
“This is what you will become when your bridge-partner on the other side dies,” the beannighe said, motioning to her mouth. “A wild thing like me. Bodies weren’t meant to contain this much magic without someone to help carry the burden. And you, little witch—I would not even consider you iron. You are only a spring berry.”
“Tell me,” Saffron insisted, clenching his fist around the red veil and pulling it into his chest. “I don’t care—just let me try. Let me help Cylvan, so that I can help everyone. Everyone whose home burns around us, and everyone whose home burned beneath the last Night Court.”
The old crone’s eyes sparkled. She looked almost thrilled to deny him again, as if loving every moment he insisted—but from the treeline, a voice came.
“Headmistress,” Baba Yaga emerged, and both Saffron and the beannighe turned to find her. At the henmother’s back, shadowed behind trees illuminated by the flames of the burning village, Saffron recognized those he wasn’t able to protect. “Show him. No one has made an oath with the veil in centuries—perhaps it will extend him mercy.”
“Nora,” the beannighe grinned. “You were always too tenacious for your own good. I see nothing has changed.”
Baba Yaga’s expression was intense, made more biting in the shadows of their crumbling homes.
“If there is anyone who can help us now, it is Saffron and Prince Cylvan. Let him try.”
The beannighe turned back to Saffron, meeting his eyes. Saffron squared his shoulders. He would do anything to save his prince, his friends, the magic he was owed. No longer would he accept any fate that forced him to choose one over the other—he would force his own that gave him everything he wanted.
He would be the human in myth who forced their own fate despite the will of the gods.
He would be the divine mercy that tore Cylvan from the fate Taran forced him to accept.
He would be the sun Taran mac Delbaith flew too close to.
* * *
Blooming smoke turned the moon red. Saffron couldn’t help staring as she hung overhead, guiding them. Into the darkness, flames grew ever-distant at his back as they trekked between the trees, past shadowy wild things that watched as a rowan-blooded witch clambered through undergrowth younger than she was.
From the shadows, Saffron heard voices. Hands reached from the darkness to touch him, to trail over his arms and cup his hands, as if extending Imbolc wishes as he passed. He would be back to grant them. He would be back to offer peace and safety. He would no longer wait and beg for Brìghde to hear him—he would force her to obey.
If it meant Saffron could save Cylvan, he would do it.
If it meant he could keep Taran mac Delbaith out of power, he would do it.
If it meant protecting the people he cared for most, no matter the cost—Saffron would do it. No matter what it took, he would give it for the promise of protecting everyone who ever protected him. Even if it eventually turned him mad like the bloody crone, the beannighe, the one who protected the school beneath a circle of memory-threaded deliverance, for centuries. Even if the initial beg of the veil killed him—Saffron would try. He would force his fate. He would no longer bend to the fey who expected his life to be one of always accepting the lot he was given.
Approaching the ruins beneath a crimson moon, the overgrown entrance gave way to a single touch from the beannighe’s hand. It bent inward upon creaking hinges, ripping vines between the bars.
“Baba Yaga called you headmistress,” he whispered as they entered the trees on the other side. The thick mist was gone, the pure silence was gone, inundating them with the sound of opulence sinking into every once-cleansed pore of the soil, the trees, the air. “What is your name, beannighe?”
“Names are power,” she muttered in reply. From the trees, a host of pixies suddenly emerged, swirling around her silver hair before searching Saffron and kissing anywhere blood dried on his skin. “I cast mine off long ago.”
Saffron understood that sentiment. It was the power of a name that drove everyone to madness around him, after all.
“I will really be able to help the person I love?” He asked. The words were like thorns trailing up the back of his throat. “If I become rowan blooded, I can protect the people I care about?”
“You will be able to do anything you like, without any high fey interference at all,” she smirked back at him, eyes flashing in the low red light of the moon. “Why else do you think the queen tried to kill every single one of us? We were the only ones she truly couldn’t anticipate.”
Grief, determination, resentment gripped Saffron’s heart. Reaching down into his shirt, he pulled out the amethyst pendant and squeezed it. When the icy surface never warmed in response, his heart twisted in a fury.
Unlike Queen Proserpina, there would be at least one royal high fey to anticipate Saffron coming.
Two, if Taran valued his life.
52
THE BEGOTTEN
Saffron almost expected to be taken to the same ritual circle where he’d failed to perform the spell between himself and Cylvan, but the beannighe instead walked him all the way to the burned-out library. It smelled no different than the fire of Beantighe Village, acrid and thick with the scent of ancient wood devoured by flames.
Most of the ceiling had been burned away, allowing red moonlight to sink all the way to the blackened floor. Nearly every fairy fruit that once speckled the ground had been eaten by Asche’s magic, and it was surreal to pass through the little that remained. Kicking up dust and soot, Saffron realized he witnessed the library as it once was. As it sat after Clymeus came and purged the students of their places of study. Empty, abandoned, echoing with ghosts and only hints of the magic that once floated there.
Approaching the singed veil carving in the floor, the air was thick with buzzing electricity, as if a thousand pink-tinged veil bees still hummed in a cloud around him. The markings existed as ghostly remnants beneath licking flames, but not all of Sunbeam’s hard work had gone to waste, just like she assured him in Fern Room.
Kneeling down to touch the nearest line, he jerked his finger back again as the carving was unexpectedly sharp. It nicked his finger instantly, tasting him, before thrumming with a low heartbeat.
“There is only one way to initiate a veil oath without an opulent partner on the other side… and that is to take advantage of an already-open door. It will be dangerous, however. It might even kill you.”
The beannighe’s voice echoed between what remained of the shelves, bouncing off the charred walls and into the sky for the moon to take for itself. Her tone was thoughtful again, as if returning to the comforting air of the ruins cleansed her of the manic fury and bloodlust demonstrated in the burning village. Elluin’s viscera remained on the bottom half of her face as she spoke.
“If you are willing to try, once I return to the earth, beseech the spirit inside for what you want.”
“R-return to the earth?” Saffron asked in surprise, but the beannighe didn’t say anything, just searched through the ash for tiny morsels of wild fruits that managed to evade destruction.
“I’ve lived a very long time, child, and have no more deliverance to offer this place. Perhaps I can thank the ashen wolf king for one thing—and that is the clarity I saw once he destroyed my circle of threads outside. I realized there is no one else here to protect… and I’m sorry I was not quick enough to save the hamlet, either.”
The hamlet, Saffron recalled that word written on the old signpost at the end of the main road, realizing she referred to Beantighe Village. The cottages must have been dormitories for students attending the Kyteler school. His chest throbbed in heightened anger.
Saffron didn’t say anything else, just followed the woman’s eyes as they trailed over piles of bones turned black in the heat of the fire. They remained scattered where Saffron had once disturbed them, and he had to look away again.
“There is nothing left for me to do here,” she repeated in a whisper, returning her eyes to the circle in the floor. “But I can pass on knowing I saw my oath to the end. I protected my students long enough to empty every shelf, and for as many of them as possible to flee to the other side.”
Closing her eyes, she shook her head again, then approached the markings.
“I will beseech the veil first, by performing my half of the ritual in reverse. It is symbolic of acknowledging everything I have received and given. Once it takes me, you should make your choice and step inside, repeating the spell from beginning to end, opposite the way I do it. Please—do not take this decision lightly. There are few people who have ever survived making an oath without a counterbalance on the other side.”
