Chapter 16

I knew my little game was at an end when a victorious smirk slithered across her amalgamation of our faces.

His lost beloved. I'd heard her clearly, but it was as if the words couldn't fully take root in my mind. Beloved. The word felt hideous in that context. Impossible.

"Oh?" she crowed. "Perhaps there is a deal to be made, then? For it seems you do not know who, exactly, it is you face."

Her words became a spider in my mind, weaving its web, trying to connect all the various pieces of information I'd been carrying with me since Avalon.

"He is incapable of love," Caitriona snarled. "He seeks only power and pain."

"Perhaps as Lord Death," the being taunted. "But that was not always his name. He was not born a king."

"Tamsin?" Olwen began, uncertain. I knew what she was thinking. Any sort of deal would involve releasing this creature into the world again, with no doubt more deaths to follow.

"How do we know we can even trust its word?" Caitriona demanded.

The creature drew herself upright, her expression livid. Blue lightning crackled along the surface of the glass as the creature strained against it, the magic activating in an instant, throwing the being back .

She wailed pitifully, pounding her fists against the dark air.

But Caitriona's question had given me an idea. I licked my dry lips to hide my smile.

"All right. I'll release you if you tell us the truth about the man called Lord Death—"

"Tamsin!" Caitriona interjected.

I held up a hand, hoping my eyes were enough to convey the message. Trust me.

"You have to tell us everything you know about him," I continued, "and the soul he's after."

When the creature smiled, it was with all her ragged teeth. "First, you must give me a taste of your blood. Just a droplet, to bind our promise and ensure that I can hunt you and your kin should you fail to release me."

Being the only blood member of my family that I knew of, it was an easy yes. Using the pocketknife in my back pocket, I made a small cut at the tip of my index finger and let the blood run down my hand, into my palm.

Caitriona caught my wrist. "Think about this …"

"Together to the end, right?" I said.

After a moment, she nodded.

Coming as close to the mirror as I dared, I flicked a droplet of blood at the glass, watching in horrified fascination as the blood seeped through the magic to the other side and the creature greedily lapped it up with a soft sigh of pleasure.

I wrinkled my nose, disgusted, but the creature's own face did the same, her mouth twisting at the taste.

"It's … sweeter than I remember," she said, rubbing her tongue against her teeth, as if to dispel the taste.

"Well, you're the one who asked for it," I answered, offended. "Sorry it's not to your usual standards."

A strangely contemplative look crossed the creature's mockery of a face. She licked her gray lips again, as if seeking the last traces of the taste .

"The information?" Caitriona cut in.

Whatever the creature had been stewing over vanished like mist in the morning sun.

"Oh, yes. Lord Death, the King of Annwn."

"That is hopefully the one and only Lord Death," I said flatly.

"He is the second of that name," the creature said, drifting lazily back and forth behind the glass. "He killed the first and stole his crown—but that is getting ahead of myself."

As she spoke, the echo of another voice stirred in my mind. A man's voice, murmuring and indistinct, layered over hers. A ghostly image, of a bed, of a glowing candle on the table beside it, flittered through my mind. A thought slipped in through the shadows, unbidden. I know this.

No, I didn't.

I sat back on my heels, hugging my arms to my chest. A sharp prickling began at the base of my spine, clawing its way up my body to grip the back of my neck.

"His true name is Gwyn ap Nudd," the creature said, "son of Nudd Llaw Ereint, whose own father was one of the Goddess's Firstborn."

Nudd of the Silver Hand. An ancient king of Britain and legendary hero.

"Never content with what great good fortune had been given to him," the creature continued, "Gwyn saw only what others were given, heard only what praise his father offered to his brothers, tasted but the bitterness of every fruit. It is little wonder, then, that he desired a young woman already promised to another …"

The dark scene—the bedroom, the frail candle's light—painted itself in bolder strokes, refusing to be ignored. There were two children in the bed, a fair-haired girl, a boy with hair so dark it looked like a spill of ink on the pillow. The man who sat at the end of it, drawing the covers up over them, wore a leather jacket, his eyes somber as he spoke.

It was me. It was Cabell. It was Nash. But it had never happened. I would have remembered it. I would have remembered it before now. When had Nash ever tucked us into bed? It seemed almost like a little inn, but I didn't recognize it.

"Who?" Olwen's voice intruded on my spiraling thoughts.

"Who indeed," the creature said. "For this was no ordinary girl, but the divine child of the Goddess herself. A daughter she had created to be hers alone. Her name was Creiddylad."

I know this. The thought filled me with a strange panic. I knew this story, but I couldn't place how. I couldn't draw up the pages I'd read it on in my mind's eye. I couldn't remember where we'd been, or who had told me. There was only that impression of the room, of Nash sitting at the edge of the bed, darkly shimmering.

"A daughter?" I heard Olwen repeat incredulously.

"Impossible," Caitriona said. "We would know of such a being—"

I focused on that image, holding it there at the front of my mind, refusing to let it go.

I know this. How do I know this?

The prickling at the back of my neck rose, spiking through the bone at the base of my skull. I drew in a sharp breath, my shoulders tensing as my mind gave a physical jolt, like the clunk of a key turning in an old lock.

I pushed through the dull ache building at my temple, the detritus of half-formed, fragmented memories that littered my mind like dying leaves, digging and digging through the layers of chaos until I found the clear jewel of a memory buried underneath.

I remembered.

The inn in Helmsley, Yorkshire, after another fruitless day searching for Arthur's dagger at the nearby castle. Winter's frost kissing the window. The bone-deep cold that had lingered after an entire day outside, one no fire or blanket seemed to be able to drive out. I curled my knees up to my chest to trap in some warmth, fuming silently as I pretended to sleep.

"Will you tell us a story?" Cabell whispered.

His side of the narrow bed dipped as Nash sat down. I kept my back to them, eyes squeezed shut. After the day we'd had, I wasn't in the mood to go to sleep.

"What sort of story, my dear boy?" came Nash's rumbling reply, the words warmed by the ale in his hand.

Cabell thought about it a moment. "A winter's tale."

"Ah." I felt the pressure of Nash's gaze as he glanced my way. He was quiet for a moment. Normally there'd be a story already perched on the tip of his tongue, waiting to unfurl itself, but now, he took his time, as if needing to think through his selection. "The story of that old heel Father Christmas soft-shoeing around houses, snooping on children, perhaps?"

I could imagine perfectly the face Cabell made. "No. A new one—one you've never told us before."

I bristled. Nash was always telling Cabell things he wouldn't tell me—they were always going off, leaving me behind, telling me I wouldn't understand.

"I think that ought to wait until your sister's awake," Nash said, after taking a long sip from his bottle. "Hardly seems fair otherwise."

Cabell wasn't deterred. "Tamsin's never liked a scary story. Tell me one of those."

I glowered at the window in front of me. He wasn't any braver than me. Cabell wouldn't like it either if the monsters followed him into his dreams.

"I think I know the one, then," Nash said, his voice hushed as he began to weave his tale. "Long ago, before Arthur ruled man and the Fair Folk alike, the Goddess began the great work of her creation. Her children, the Gentry, came first, then beasts of every kind, and man—but few know the story of the child she bore for herself …"

The present came into focus again as the creature stroked a long nail over her cheek in thought, then seemed to find her place again in the tale. "As much as the Goddess desired to keep her daughter by her side, Creiddylad was a curious child, and asked to live among the mortals and know their world. The Goddess entrusted her to Nudd, who swore to return her to her mother in a year's time."

Nash's lyrical telling flowed into the river of the story as it passed through my mind. "There in the house of Nudd, Creiddylad fell in love with a young man, one of the Gentry, and though her mother was reluctant to part with her own heart, she allowed them to be betrothed …"

"Gwyn, having lived with her in his father's home, was said to be taken by her beauty and set his heart on her," the creature continued.

"One night, Gwyn, in an act of foolish pride, spirited her away," Nash continued, his voice far-off in my mind. "He tried to force her hand in marriage. Her intended, however, caught up to them and a duel ensued. And in the end, Creiddylad's love fell to the power of Gwyn's blade."

"Poor Creiddylad." Olwen, with her kind heart, looked close to tears.

"Oh, yes," the creature said, smirking. "You see, Creiddylad had relinquished her divinity for a mortal life. Before Gwyn could claim his prize …"

"… she raised her lover's blade to her heart and killed herself rather than submit to him."

Cabell gasped.

"That was my reaction as well, lad," Nash said. "But her end is not the end of this tale."

"Well!" the creature continued, articulating the word with a flare of her fingers. "The Goddess was devastated, but it is not in her nature to kill."

"She punished Gwyn by sending him to Annwn as a prisoner, and so great was her grief, the Goddess herself receded, accepting the final form of a god—the incorporeal soul of the world she created," Nash continued in my mind, his telling harmonizing perfectly with the creature's telling. "It fell to the Lady of the Lake, one of the Gentry and the first priestess of Avalon, to ensure the soul's protection, when the day came for her to be reborn. For it was her destiny to protect the Goddess's heart—the sacred isle of her worship, and the child born of her being."

"And was it reborn?" Olwen asked.

"It is beyond our knowing, for a spell was cast by the Lady of the Lake to ensure she would remain hidden," the creature said. "It is meant to stay lost, child, that is the point. For a seed of evil was planted in Gwyn's soul that day, when he was denied what he felt he had won rightfully in that contest to the death."

"He burned with fury at being sent to the world of the dead," Nash continued. "Being of noble blood, he ingratiated himself to Arawn, the true King of Annwn. Seeing the death magic at the king's command, a terrible notion overcame him, and Gwyn killed Arawn and took his place on the throne."

"Industrious of him," I heard myself say.

"Gwyn ruled when Arthur and his knights came to Annwn, showering them with gifts in exchange for any morsel of information about the soul," the creature said. "And so he began his hunt again."

"So great was his desperation to find Creiddylad's soul, Gwyn destroyed Otherlands with the Wild Hunt, tearing through them with sword and claw." Nash's voice was fading, the memory sinking back into the same dark morass I'd pulled it from. "All because he believed the soul had been hidden there. Then one year, when winter arrived to haunt the world once more, the Wild Hunt did not accompany it. Many believed the hunt had ended for good, but there are those who know better, who believe Lord Death will one day ride again …"

Cabell had fallen asleep long before then, carried into the darkness of dreams. I'd felt his breathing even out as certainly as I'd felt Nash reach over and brush my brow, whispering, "But do not worry yourself with such things …"

Dread walked along my skin, stinging. I was sure the others could see the pulse jumping in my throat—that they could hear it thundering in their own ears. But Olwen and Caitriona had looked to one another, as if to silently debate the truth of it between them. A story they'd never been told.

But I had.

Nash had known it, had spoken it. He prided himself on collecting little-known legends and stories, but this … I'd never read any record of it. Hadn't even been able to summon the memory until something the creature had said cracked the forgotten archive open and allowed it to come spilling out again .

How did Nash know this story?

And why had I forgotten it?

"And so I end my tale, having told you the whole of it, from head to hind," the creature said. "Now release me—"

"Wait!" Emrys's voice sent a warm frisson racing up my spine. My body turned toward his of its own accord, trying to chase the almost unbearable fluttering sensation in my chest.

Beside me, Caitriona relaxed her blade-straight posture ever so slightly, drawing in a deep breath as Emrys and Neve ran across the warehouse.

"Do we hate him?" the creature whispered to me. "Is his meat stringy with greed? Is there malice in his marrow? Which one is the pretty one you spoke of? They both have such succulent flesh and delicate bones …"

I ignored her, scanning Neve to make sure she was all right. The priestess only stared wide-eyed at the creature, her lips parting in surprise.

"You can't let it out," Emrys told me, breathless.

"And why not?" the creature sputtered, asking for the both of us.

"That's Rosydd, Hag of the Bogs," he said.

Caitriona, Olwen, and I all turned back toward the mirror, at the creature sputtering with outrage. Somehow the fact that we were speaking with a primordial monster was the least surprising part of this turn of events.

"Hag of the Moors, " the creature growled. "Moors!"

It didn't seem like the opportune moment—or the right audience—to point out that bogs were just wet moorlands.

"How do you know that?" Olwen asked Emrys.

"One of the Hollowers told us—well, bragged is probably the more accurate description," Neve said, rolling her eyes. "They're all drunk as skunks up there."

"Sounds delicious," the creature noted to herself. "They've marinated their meat. "

"You can't let the hag out," Emrys said, a new edge to his tone. One that sounded suspiciously like fear. "She'll devour all of us."

"I wasn't planning to," I told him.

"What?" the hag roared. "You swore it! You made a blood vow!"

I looked back over my shoulder. Almost a decade of bargaining with sorceresses had taught me a thing or two about slippery language. "Yes, I did promise to release you. But you never asked me to specify when. "

Emrys's brows rose. "Not bad, Lark. Did you even know that a hag can't break a sworn vow, or were you rolling the dice on that one?"

I glared at him. "Of course I knew that." Just now, after he told me.

"Uh-huh," he said, crossing his arms over his chest.

The hag drew near to the glass, electrifying the protective layer of magic. "You think yourself cunning, little fox, but there are bigger teeth in the forest."

"Good thing we're nowhere near a forest, then," I said.

"As much as I'm enjoying this face-off, we need to get out of here," Emrys said. "Right now, and I think we should leave the mirror and come back for it another day. There's supposedly an exit out of here hidden behind one of the cases."

"Don't be ridiculous," Caitriona said. "We're here, aren't we? We just need to carry the accursed thing out."

Neve looked torn. "Yes, but Emrys is right, there isn't time."

Emrys reached into the inner pocket of his jacket for something. "This isn't just a celebration of the season, or a party to show off the mantle."

When he opened his fist, a small silver object glowed in the dim light.

The pin. The hand holding the branch.

Sweat broke out along my neck and back. The hair on my arms rose, pricking with the sensation of a growing electrical charge in the air.

And above us, the deep blare of a horn sounded.