Page 79 of The Moorwitch
Lachlan continues. “I told you just enough to set you on your way, and itworked. You’re behind Conrad North’s defenses. You’re in his confidence.”
I look beyond him, to the waterfall, my thoughts an angry snarl. I’d known before I even came here what his defense would be, but it doesn’t soothe me in the least.
“Now tell me about Morgaine,” he says. “Did you speak to her? Does she have any idea you work for me?”
Now that I study him, I see his similarities to Morgaine. His coloring is entirely different, but their bone structures are very much alike, long and finely carved, able to go from snow-soft to ice-sharp in a moment.
“You’re related,” I realize.
He nods once. “The faerie queen is my sister. Or was, before she betrayed me.”
I always figured him for a faerie lord; now I know he is faerieroyalty. And that brutal savagery is a family trait. As is manipulating mortals like marionettes.
I see Conrad as if in mirror to myself. He is caught up with the faerie queen in the same way I am bound to Lachlan. The how and why of it may differ, but we are both but tools to immortals far older and stranger than I could imagine. Whatever the nature of the game between Lachlan and Morgaine, I see now that Conrad and I are the pieces they have selected to pit against one another.
“Did she threaten you?” Lachlan asks, likely misreading the horror on my face.
“She was going to erase every memory from my head,” I say shakily, “down to my very name.”
Lachlan gives me a grave look, then sighs and flicks his fingers. “Walk with me, and start at the beginning.”
For a moment, I hesitate. I cannot trust him, of that I have no doubt. I want to tell him nothing.
But I cannot dismiss the reality of my predicament. I am alone in the wilds of Scotland, with no way out. Even if I turned and walked away now, I would not make it far.
No, I need time to plan and think and find out what’s really going on here. And so, for now, that means playing along.
We follow the burn through the rocks, leaving the silver waterfall behind. I tell Lachlan of how I found Conrad battling Tarkin’s fire-bears, and how I followed him into Elfhame. Lachlan’s eyes narrow when I tell him how I met the queen of the fae, and he nods knowingly when I tell him of the revel and the memory-altering spells.
“It is disgusting,” he half snarls. “The way they lull themselves into forgetting, spreading a veneer over the past as if that could erase it. As if it could save them. They are like drunkards drowning their woes. Pathetic.”
“What are you, really?” I ask. “Why were you exiled from Elfhame, and all these other fae with you? I want the truth. Can’t you just give me something real?”
“Like what?”
“Yourname, for starters. Your true name. There is no reason to keep secrets from me now, is there?”
He blinks, and a fog masks his eyes. His gaze fixes over my shoulder, and his terrible age drags at the corners of his mouth. He will not answer, I think at first. He will think it beneath him to explain himself to a mere mortal, and one who has so grandly twisted up the finely laid strings of his scheming.
But then he stirs, like a gargoyle shaking off its stone casing. His eyes, when they meet mine, hold something I would callsorrow,if I thought him capable of it. Instead, I suspect it to be another manipulation.
“I have many names, so many I cannot recall which was the first. Manannán, Oirbsen, those are only a few. And once, I was king of Elfhame.” He lifts his chin, his eyes going to the sky. “Morgaine was my sister, and together we were the last of our kind, the Tuath Dé, with the last of the aos sí, the lesser fae races, relying on us for their survival. The humans had pushed us back and ever back, and we knew we faced a choice: stand and fight ... or diminish and burrow into the earth, like so many others of our kin had done across the world. Morgaine was weak minded and swayed by her affection for the mortals who came to worship her. She did not have the stomach for war. So we planted the Dwirra Tree and nourished it with magic older than the race of men, and we built a haven on the outside of the world.”
“The tree ... it was like nothing I’d seen before.”
“There are many trees like the Dwirra, all over the globe. If this place is a tapestry woven by the Fates or the Norns or Matrones, or any of the countless other names the triple goddess has been given, then the Dwirra and its kin grow on thewrong sideof the cloth, rising out of a chaotic tangle of threads, and in their shade our kind have found refuge. But instead of withdrawing completely, Morgaine wanted to leave a few pathways open, through the stone circles. That is how the moorwitches came to Elfhame long ago and learned our magic, such as moving from place to place in an instant by navigating the very fabric of the world—powerful magic, and I knew it would bring us trouble if they ever turned against us. But Morgaine wouldn’t listen to reason.”
“It wasyou,” I whisper, horror tangling in my rib cage like a viper. I think of the broken looms and spinning wheels moldering at the foot of the Dwirra Tree like rotting bones. “Youkilled them, not her.”
The earth and sky seem to change places, the world reordering itself in my mind as I see Lachlan truly for the first time.
He is a monster.
He is a villain.
I should have listened to my instincts from the start, that inner voice which whispered he could not be trusted; he must be feared. But then he threw Lorellan in my face, and that damnabletearrolling down his cheek—he played me like a fiddle. He strummed the strings of empathy and humanity in my heart until they soundedhistune. And I, fool that I am, let him. I wanted to believe there was something noble in him, some redeemable heart as desperate as my own. But it was all a manipulation.
And Conrad—oh, Conrad. I have been wrong about him too. He knew what Lachlan is. He must know the truth about the moorwitches and Morgaine too.