Chapter Eighteen

I can't stop myself from admiring how good Janet looks, bound up in chains. In any of situation, I'd pause and dwell on that, on the indentation it's making against her stomach, how when I pull it away, it'll pattern her skin with shapes and reminders of how she's been bound for me.

But this is not rope.

This is iron.

I have not touched iron in centuries. Haven't wanted to. Haven't needed to.

But now it is the thing that could save me and damn me.

I take a step forward and the hairs on my arms go up. I'm not going to be able to accomplish anything if my banshee nature steps in. Sweeping my mess of hair upwards, I force it into a bun, and pin it with even a physical pin now, just for good measure. I dressed, whilst Ciara was binding my Janet, my theory being that the less skin on display, the less there is to burn.

Time to test out that theory.

Another step forward.

Everything in me is urging me to step back, to turn and walk in the other direction as quickly as I possibly can. It's not just that there's iron, it's that there's just so fucking much of it. The Morrígan has enough here to destroy an entire army of fae, if she so wanted. At some point I intend to have a fairly strongly word conversation about that, Dark Goddess, or no Dark Goddess, but right now I'm just focused on inching my way forward towards Janet.

She smiles, encouragingly at me, and I take several steps all in a rush until I'm standing in front of her.

I can feel my skin heat, and the hair on my forearms starts to burn. Tiny sizzling pinpricks all over. It's not overwhelmingly painful. Yet.

"I love you," Janet says. My eyes meet hers and I take one more step and I'm so close to the iron I might burst into flames. But I don't care because all I can hear is I love you I love you I love you on repeat in my brain.

"How can you possibly…?"

"I don't know," she says, calmly. "I don't know how it's even possible to love someone after knowing them for such a short amount of time, but I have never felt so cherished. I have never felt so safe. I have never felt so loved."

She's not waiting for me to say it back. She's just saying it because it is her truth, and because she thinks I need to hear it.

I do.

I've never heard those words before. Something in me heals, even as I'm about to catch light.

Reaching out, I grasp the first chain. It sizzles beneath my hands and the scorching heat catches me by surprise. I jump back and look at my hand.

The skin on my palm is red raw. I roll up my sleeve and the skin under my shirt sleeves is bright pink also, and that hadn't even touched the iron.

This is not going to be an agreeable endeavour.

I take a deep breath and grasp the chains again. The smell of burning flesh fills the air, and I try to hide my whimpers of pain by clanging the chains together loudly.

"I see you," she says, and I can see pain painted across her features. She can tell how much this hurts, how much I'm willing to put my body through for her.

Ciara has done far too good a job of binding my Janet, and that makes it harder yet. Shooting pains shatter my concentration, and I have to drop links occasionally, and start untangling them from the beginning more than once.

"This better be enough for the universe," I mutter, and she laughs, not at my pain, but at my stubbornness. "We are not going through another trial after this."

"As if being with you won't be a trial in itself." Her eyes are bright with mischief and I can't help myself, I lean in to kiss her.

Heat sears my flesh, branding my endeavours on my skin, and she winces, nudging my head back, away from the iron.

"Please hurry, darling," she says. "I don't like that you're in pain."

I wrestle with the last few links and then step back, watching as they tumble to the ground and Janet—my Janet—steps free.

She runs straight to me, calling to Ciara and the Morrígan and my sister to grab the first aid kit, and doesn't stop to kiss me. Her hands go straight to the buttons of my shirt and she rips it open.

I chuckle, but it's a pale imitation of my usual laugh. "Couldn't wait to get me naked, eh, kitten?"

"Oh, hush yourself," she says, revealing the extent of the damage. "You just concentrate on healing." She looks up to the sky and makes a declaration that I feel all the way down in my toes. "We are done now. You try and send us any more trials, I'll take them and shove them up your immortal arses, I don't care how great and powerful you are. You just leave us be."

Aoibheall and I exchange glances. It's never wise to tempt fate when it comes to the gods, and my little mortal has pretty much thrown down a gauntlet to anyone who was paying a passing interest. But then the Morrígan steps up onto the stage, and places her hand on my Janet's shoulder.

"Well said, Janet." She too looks upward, and when she speaks it is not with one voice, but with three. "The trials are complete. Let any who dare challenge the word of Badb, of Macha, of Nemain, of the Morrígan." Her voice is a hoarse scream by the time she reaches her own name, and the very air itself feels as though it's thrumming with expectation.

But then Ciara, slips her hand into the Morrígan's, and she turns back into the tall woman she usually appears as. But it's hard to forget the look of a Dark Goddess, three in one, daring an entire pantheon to challenge her.

I'm glad that she's on our side.