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“When you embarrass, the color across your skin doesn’t glow with the blood beneath, lass.”

Veil Sprites twirl and float inside me, ballerinas across a stage. My heart flutters as I lay a hand over his. Why is it once you’ve touched someone, kissed them, caressed them, it’s nearly impossible not to keep doing it?

He brings our joined hands to his lips. “’Tis the morning kiss of sunlight, waking the palest pink rose, amber and blush mix to a thing lovelier than dawn.”

I slide my hands over his shoulders and lock them together under his curls. My fate, whatever moments I have left in this world where a sun does rise and a moon follows, will be tied with the soul in my embrace. I raise my face for a kiss, my oath to him, to Máthair, to the souls that will bind my end of days.

There is no kiss.

Sion takes my wrists and guides me away from him. His hands release me.

The rejection fractures my spirit, and pain compresses my chest as the truth of what I heard him saying moments before is confirmed. The musket ball was an offering, a prayer for Máthair’s soul, not mine. If he wanted me, nothing I said in the Glade of Chimes would have kept him from coming after me.

I take a step backward and then another until my back meets stone wall. I’ve become the last Faerie story in my grandmother’s repertoire. An Eala bán, the white swan will guide souls to their destiny and then cease to be. I’m a shell of life only entitled to artifice, not love. Finnbheara’s Eala Duir is the means to an end in someone else’s tale.

If Sion doesn’t need or want me to help with the final two souls, then Finnbheara can damn well take me now.

I forbid my tears to fall. “I need to tell you two things, and then you’ll be rid of me.” I slide a foot closer to the doorway, praying I can get my information out and leave him before I dissolve back into the essence from which I was made. “Charlie might be the priest destroying the Veil. Don’t ask me to explain just take me seriously.”

Sion tries to speak, but I raise my voice above his, addressing the center of his chest to avoid his green glass stare. “Track down the explorer’s brother. I think he’s going to grab Vicars’s spare key and steal the Crown Jewels. It’s a hunch, but I wonder if you’ve retrieved the spare key too early. Maybe the theft of the spare key has to happen before it will work to free Vicars from the soulfall. Once the thief, whoever it is, has stolen the key, you take it back and give it to Vicars’s soul. I believe that will confirm his innocence and restore the virtue of his diligence.”

Before I’m able to slip around the corner and out of the gate lodge, Sion blocks my way.

“Please move. After Vicars is free, you’ll save the last soul on your own. I’ve nothing more to say.”

“It sure ain’t all I have to say.” He plants his feet and stands like a soldier ready to engage in combat. “You said your peace, now ‘tis fair you hear mine.”

“Fair!” I laugh and make a noise dangerously close to Sion’s derisive grunt. “What in the name of the moon and Veil Sprites is fair about any of this?”

He’s breathing heavily, and I expect the famous Sion Loho temper to explode any second. Instead, he scrubs hands over his face. “If fair is off the table, will you hear truth?”

My voice is low but steady. “Are you capable of telling the truth?”

The gold ring around the green of his irises flares. “I’ve kept this and that from you, but never lied.” He grabs my hands. “And I won’t lie to you now.” Sion pulls me against his body. “Damn me more than I’m already damned, but I love you, Eala.” He rests his forehead against mine, his skin as hot as a Beltane bonfire. “I am in love with you. It wasn’t meant to happen. It makes us both as weak as the shell of a bird’s egg still in the nest.”

The blaze in his eyes heats my Veil Sprites to an intensity that brings on lightheadedness. Suddenly, his lips are on mine, rough and desperate. His tongue sweeps inside my mouth to capture all it touches as if to remember everything for eternity. My soul cries with joy. This is home—in Sionnach Loho’s arms.

There’s a loud smack as he abruptly ends the kiss. “The night I kissed you at Leap Castle, tasted your sweet breath of butter and honey, and witnessed your grace in saving the lad—I fell completely.” He gazes at the chipped stone ceiling. “I’ve been falling in love with you for years as I watched the passion you invested in your life’s work, your kindness to everyone lucky enough to be in your life, and a thousand other reasons. Damn me for it.” His arms drop from my waist as he whirls to pace the length of the gate lodge.

I want to run to him and tell him I’m as damned as he if love is what damns us.

“Calling you to me was a mistake.” He pulls at his hair as if to rip it from his head. “All those years, I sent dreams to test your mettle. They turned you into a creature of fear who crumbled when life got too big. I ruined you for the souls. And my weakness of heart has finished the job.”

I slip along the wall to the arch. “If your faith in me is gone, then we’re truly finished.” I spin, gripping the stones for balance and ready myself to jump to the ground.

Sion throws his arms around me from behind, locking me to his chest as he drags me further inside the gate lodge. His voice is raw against my ear. “Did you not hear me at the seat, you damn woman? The mistake was tainting your life by bringing you into my failure.”

He twirls me in his arms, bringing our faces inches apart. “I’m an arrogant bastard who resented you. I wanted to prove to Himself I could free the soulfall on my own. That’s why I never told you the whole of it. The danger. My mother. Your fate.” His fingers dig into my arms. “Did you not hear me beg Finnbheara to take my miserable soul and let you be? To grant you a life apart from the fate of the souls.” He tilts his head to shout at the stone ceiling. “Curse his promise to my mother. If I’m to fail, I won’t take you into ruination by my side.”

He releases me and presses the marble-sized ball into my palm. “Here’s the musket ball that lamed me. It’s the key tying me to the soulfall as their guide.”

The ball is warm in my hand. I was right. It’s his artifact.

“Take this token of a soul who loves you with everything a man has to give of himself.” Sion takes my face in his hands and kisses me tenderly. “And forgive me.”

The walls of the Veil rise around him as he presses his fingers to his lips then holds them toward me in farewell.

He’s releasing me from obligation. Breath catches in my throat. The gift is not Sionnach’s to grant. The souls are as much in my charge as his. I was created by Finnbheara, King of the Connacht Fae, to walk through fire hand-in-hand with Sionnach Loho and light the path that leads beyond this life for those who cannot see.