Chapter Fourteen

By the time myself and Aoibheall realise that Janet is gone, and my banshee subjects with her, it feels like all is lost. I am tired of fighting to be heard every time we disagree, and this time it is more than I who has been inconvenienced.

If you can call being turned into a giant snake, inconvenienced.

It is she who notices first, because she falters, and then says hesitantly, as if she almost does not wish to say, "Clíodhna, your mortal is gone. And so are your banshees."

My banshees are wild things, too easily hungry for grief and sorrow, their keening gobbling up emotions like sweets, and I do not trust them with my fragile mortal woman.

I sprint to the door, looking round desperately for Janet. She is still naked, but the Morrígan of all people has given her a jumper. It dwarfs my Janet, who is as short as the Morrígan is tall, and as I hurry over, the Morrígan turns and snarls at me.

Her Godstouched mortal, Ciara, is by her side instantly, a calming hand upon the Morrígan's shoulder. But when she looks up at me her eyes, too, issue a warning.

One of my banshees steps a little too close to the three of them, and the Morrígan shifts into her wolfshape in a movement so fluid I can only envy it. Grasping the banshee by the scruff of the neck, she shakes and drops them. They stay prostrate on the floor, knowing better than to anger the Dark Goddess further.

"Ciara," I say, edging over to them, and then, "Kitten? Are you alright?"

Tear-rimmed eyes upturned in my direction and I don't care if the Morrígan wants to rip my throat out, I need to be there for my Janet. For my mortal.

I leap over the seating in a single, inhuman bound and flash banshee-red eyes at the goddess when she turns her snout in my direction.

"I'm so sorry, my sister is a bitch" —I don't bother to lower my voice and I can see Aoibheall rolling her eyes in the background— "but I wouldn't have you hurt for all the world."

But Janet doesn't seem to register my words. She looks shaken and dizzy, and keeps raising her hands to her ears, as if to block some noise.

"Janet?"

"Janet's Pack," says Ciara.

I'm confused. Pack? How can my mortal woman be Pack? Wolves make up Pack, wolves and wolf goddesses, the girlfriends of wolf goddesses, and apparently my Janet.

"I'm Pack, it does happen," Ciara points out, a touch snarkily. "But I understand your confusion. More than her being Pack, the thing we're struggling to understand, is how she can hear all of us."

"All of you?"

As fluidly as she'd shifted before, the Morrígan retakes her humanshape. "All of us. It is not something even I can do. She hears all the voices and thoughts of the Pack, and also that of my… sisters."

That's alarming. The Morrígan is a triple goddess, and her sisters are Badb, Macha and Nemain, the three different godheads that reside within her. I didn't know that anyone could hear them aside from she.

"Has it been that long?" asks Aoibheall, and I dare not look at my sister for fear that I'll attack her. She doesn't sound as if she is gloating though, merely sad. "Has it really been that long since we were last here that you have forgotten, sister?"

"Forgotten what?" I snap, my eyes searching Janet's face for some kind of clue.

"Forgotten the three trials we put our lovers through."

"The—but that is long done with," I say, confused. "Something confined to the times before the Veil."

Aoibheall's laugh is bitter. "If only. And because I triggered the first, the others will follow."

"But I can't help her with this," I protest. "I can't show her how to filter voices in her head—I've never had voices in my head."

"I have," says the Morrígan, and I'm not entirely certain what to make of that. She looks at me as if my voice is one of the ones in her head and scowls. "Stop being such a fool, Clíodhna. She is Pack now, and so I will protect her as if she were my own."

I know the truth of her words, and I hear it her voice, but it doesn't change the fact that I feel utterly hopeless.

The old trials were meant to test both the mortal and fae lovers; test the mortal for fidelity and staying power, and the fae's ability to cope with feeling utterly hopeless.

There's very little that we immortals can't fix, if we put our minds to it. Sure there, are some things that are more complicated than others, but there are gods for just about every ailment on the sun—and the moon—so feeling helpless isn't something we experience all that often.

But I'm feeling it now. Everything about this situation makes me feel out of control, and if that's how I feel, then for Janet, who didn't even know that the fae were real before this evening…

I look back at my mortal, eyes closed, a sheen of sweat on her brow, and slump onto the seat next to her.

She doesn't open her eyes, but she does lean back into me and I can feel the relief radiate through her when I take her hand.

"It's gone quiet," she says. "You've made it go quiet."