Page 8

CHAPTER 8

Despite the fact that the Eyelet Forest was undeniably beautiful, Innes was irked by the dark woods before her.

She’d been walking for a week, and the feeling hadn’t improved.

Green moss clung to the bark of the trees, whose branches hung over the river in sweeping boughs.

Wildflowers would soon bloom along the bank, but the late winter frost had the buds hiding.

What unnerved her was the lack of animal activity.

She heard no birds, no insects, no splashes in the river that might alert her to fish or mammal activity.

She wanted to run, but she forced this panic aside, knowing this was exactly what she searched for.

She slipped off her shoes and socks and stepped carefully into the shallows of the water.

Finding Briony’s murmur of sylphs near a river was nearly too good to be true; if the sylphs captured her in their thrall, as long as she had the wherewithal to submerge herself, she would survive.

She pulled a wreath she had woven from her pack and lifted it above her head in offering.

She hoped it would be enticing enough to capture their attention.

She spooled a thread of Ever into the wreath, heightening the magic woven there, and waited.

And waited.

When the birds chirped again she sighed in frustration.

The sylphs had moved on without accepting her offer.

She hauled herself onto the bank, disappointment gnawing at her insides as she put on her clothing and laced her boots once more.

She laid the wreath under a spruce and sent the magic back into the earth.

It would be useless trying to use the same offering again – an insult.

So she grabbed her bag and continued walking.

If witches were one of the first magical beings on the earth, second only to the danann and the gods, then sylphs were something different altogether.

Their magic was unknown in many ways.

They were both sentient and not, able to tap into the lines of Ever and read its whispers, but nothing more.

Their magic was as unknowable as a twinsoul bond; they existed, but nobody knew how or why.

Which was why Innes was traipsing through the woods, adding time to her already long journey to Vincentia, to try and find something to back up Briony’s claims.

It wasn’t that she didn’t trust her cousin.

It was that sylphs were notoriously perplexing, and if she could get even one more fraction of information, her mission in Vettona might be that much more productive.

She looked around, the eerie stillness of the forest making the hair on the back of her neck rise, and slowed her pace.

A whisper echoed and she froze, adrenalin coursing.

Her eyes danced over the river, noting the rush of water, the moss on the banks, trying to source the location of the sound.

The breeze picked up, brushing something against her forehead and without hesitating she launched into the river to avoid the caress of the sylphs.

The cold water sent a jolt through her, but she’d take that over an interaction on dry land any day.

Being in running water lowered her outright fear, but she knew better than to forgo the feeling entirely.

She scrambled for her footing and ducked, lowering herself deeper, wincing as the water rose past her chest, freezing.

She fumbled through her pack to find another wreath, but the fabric was wet and heavy, her fingers slow with cold.

When she finally got the pack open, she thrust her hand in the air and spooled a thread of Ever into the wreath, fingers gripping the holly so tightly blood dripped down her arm.

She’d sought the sylphs’ wisdom once before, after the Seacht had killed her mother.

That experience had been enough to keep her away in the years since, and she fought a grimace as pressure attached itself to the wreath, the texture of the sylphs soft and wet, drawn to the magic and the coppery tang of her life.

She ducked lower in the water so everything below her mouth was submerged, prayed this protection was enough, and spoke a welcome in the Old Language.

‘I welcome thee, murmur of sylphs, divine messengers of Ever.’

‘Child of Mabel,’ the murmur intoned, their voices no louder than a sigh.

Her throat was dry, and the pressure on her hand increased.

Sinking a few inches lower, she swallowed and focused on the sensation of the water, distracting herself from the swell of their power.

‘I seek your wisdom,’ she whispered, keeping her head bent.

‘There are whispers of Tassos. What does the Ever know about him?’

The wind increased and her senses distorted.

‘There are many whispers,’ the voices said, ‘and many more to come.’

The blood on her palm began to crust, and the pressure faded.

Innes squeezed her palm and spooled more Ever into the wreath, willing more of herself to flow out, to keep them enticed.

But the magic was slippery and hard to grasp.

‘More to come? Do you mean the Ellarch?’ she asked.

The wind paused, and the world constricted, as if it were leaning in to listen.

Her heartbeat thudded in her ears and time slowed around her, meaningless.

‘The Passageway is clear, the end near visible.’

Fear sliced through her, and whether her next words stuttered out from cold or terror, she did not know.

‘W-will I die during my Passage? Is this how I discover the truth?’

Their whispers became unintelligible, a swell of white noise she couldn’t discern.

‘Please help me,’ she said, desperation making her voice shake.

‘If you can’t tell me about Tassos and the Ellarch, what about the blight?

Why is it worsening?

’

‘Beginnings will End, until the True Beginning is once more,’ their voices intoned.

‘Balance is out of kilt, and salvation lies sleeping.’

The noise grew, the pressure in her hand lessening a fraction before their weight crashed upon her, the translucent orbs of their bodies warping her vision as they drank from her being.

She screamed and the soft flesh of one of them entered her mouth, its taste mossy and tart.

She retched, closing her eyes in terror as she blindly pulled for her Ever, but the magic slipped away, writhing in panic as the sylphs came closer and closer to consuming it.

She fell backwards, her foot slipping on a rock and her centre of gravity toppled, her pack dragging her under the river.

A crack of awareness flooded through her as soon as her head went under and she gasped, inhaling a mouthful of water as her mind scrambled to piece itself back together.

With the thrall broken, Ever flooded through her, the tattoos on her arm burning as the magic found familiar paths across her skin, encasing her body in a layer of protection as she kicked back to the surface, lungs screaming as they fought to inhale.

She heaved herself above the water, her breath coming in jagged gasps.

Only when she could think again did she inhale and force her head back under, surfacing only to take another deep breath and submerge again, waiting until enough time had elapsed for the sylphs to have lost interest.

When she was sure they had gone, she pushed herself towards the bank and allowed her grip on the magic to ease.

Without a wreath the magic was lightning under her skin, unable to find release.

There were only a few spells she could wield without a wreath, incantations she had done so many times the constellations inked on her skin acted as the conduit.

Breathing underwater was not part of her repertoire.

Everything throbbed and her mouth was fuzzy.

She could still taste the sylphs, a tangy residue on her tongue.

She turned her head, spitting into the water as the sounds of the forest came slowly back into focus.

She hauled herself over the bank, rolling to lie on her back as she let her body recalibrate, trying to figure out how the hell she had fallen for their thrall so quickly.

When her body stopped trembling, she sat up and opened her bag, then took a swig from a small vial of tonic she’d made.

She’d assumed she’d use it for a patient, not consume half the remedy in the first step of the plan, but here she was.

She spat again, trying to rid the taste of tonic and sylph, and sighed heavily.

It had been a bad idea to summon the sylphs.

They hadn’t clarified anything.

In fact, they had made everything that much more confusing.

What was salvation?

And why was her Passageway clear, the end near visible?

She groaned and hung her head in her hands.

There was a reason she didn’t usually summon sylphs, and this proved her right once again.

She was going to kill Briony when she made it home.

If she made it home.