Burned alive. Two hundred men, including my father. The ground seemed to open up and swallow me whole. “Who set fire to the church?”
“King Sigtrygg’s men,” she said, and Leif’s head jerked up. “It happened only days after you were exiled. Sigtrygg was angry that his raid on the monastery had failed because of your father, so they retaliated. He came on a Sunday like the pagan Northman he is,” she said with a look of revulsion toward Leif, “and his men surrounded the church. They took the women and men who couldn’t fight as slaves, and the others—your father and his men—they slaughtered and locked them in the church to burn.”
A horrified silence descended upon me as I thought of what my clansmen and my father must have gone through—and the evidence was still at my feet. As I looked at the remains of what had once been living, breathing men, the number two hundred kept repeating itself in my mind. It couldn’t be a coincidence. The Morrigan had made it seem like the sacrifice of two hundred men would be something yet to come—something I would have to choose for myself—but I saw the truth now. The truth was that it had already happened.
Worse, Sigtrygg had come on the Lord’s day—just as the Northmen raiders had seven years ago. No doubt the only reason my mother and sisters had survived was because ever since that day, they had attended Mass at a different time from everyone else. In case the church was attacked again. I felt the anger continue to build. How could I have believed that duplicitous king when he told me he and áthair had come to a peaceful arrangement? My father never would have made a treaty with him.
“And Fergus and Conall?” I asked. “What of them?”
“They were among the two hundred,” she said. My stomach rolled. Sleipnir. áthair. Fergus and Conall. Was there no end to the horror? “As was Séamus.”
Her words bit into me, and I couldn’t help the flood of images of all the men I’d once loved. I thought of them fighting for their lives before finally being consumed by flames, and tears stung my eyes.
“I don’t understand,” I said with a desperate edge to my voice that even I could hear. “King Sigtrygg told me he and áthair had made peace—he said he’d dined with him in the hall.”
“He dined in our hall,” Máthair said, with such disgust she was practically spitting, “but it was after he’d burned the church to the ground. He forced our servants to wait on him, and he sat across from me as though he hadn’t just brutally murdered my husband. He sat there and told me it was his mercy that allowed myself and the princesses to live, but I know he’s only keeping them alive as a bartering tool—he thinks we answer to him now.”
I quaked with revulsion when I realized: my father and the others had already been killed by Sigtrygg while I stayed and dined in his castle. When Sigtrygg threw that great feast, it was because he had been successful in assassinating my father and murdering my clansmen.
“I fail to see how any of this is Ciara’s fault,” Leif said, his voice steadying me.
She narrowed her eyes. “If she hadn’t attacked her father with her loathsome ability, then she would have been here to stop him.”
“That seems like poor logic,” Leif said, and Máthair’s expression grew even colder.
“Máthair,” I said, reaching out to her only to have my hand sneered at. I let it drop to my side. “Máthair,” I tried again, “I am desperately sorry for what I did to áthair, and even more sorry and ashamed I wasn’t here to defend them against such treachery, but I cannot shoulder the blame for this—this was Sigtrygg’s doing. He’s the one who should pay.”
“Oh, you’re sorry, are you?” she said, jabbing her finger toward me. “Sorry won’t bring him back! For once your demonic abilities could have been useful!”
She was yelling now, and I was momentarily stunned. I’d never seen her raise her voice like that—it was almost as if áthair’s death had caused her to become unhinged.
“I’m not invincible,” I said quietly. “Not even I could have escaped a burning building.”
Leif had been listening to our exchange with a concerned look upon his face. Now he gestured toward the remains around us. “Why have they not been laid to rest?”
“This is their tomb now,” she said, her voice shaking. She wrapped her arms around herself as though cold and turned her attention back to me. “I should have never agreed to raise you! You’ve brought destruction upon this family just as I promised your father you would.”
I jerked back as though she’d struck me. Her words rang out in my mind, and though I tried to push away the meaning behind them, the horrible sinking feeling was enough to confirm the truth. “Then . . . you are not my mother?” I asked in a small voice that didn’t even sound like my own.
“Of course I am not,” she said. “You are a monster, born of your father’s pathetic moment of weakness. He begged me to raise you as my own baby after I lost my own infant in childbirth. Only your nanny knew the truth, and she died while you were still a child—no doubt because of your malevolent powers.”
I felt sick. No, I wanted to scream at her. No, you’re lying. No, there has to be another reason why everyone in my family is fair-haired and light-eyed . . . everyone but me.
With the truth out, Máthair’s facade of being a caring mother completely fell away. True loathing was apparent in the flash of her eyes, in the piercing cold of her expression. If my father had strayed from his marriage vows, and I—with all my frightening abilities—was the result, then I almost could not blame my mother for her hatred.
My pulse was pounding in my ears, my vision turning blood-tinged. “Just who am I, then?”
“You are the daughter of the king,” she said, disgust clear in her tone, “but it was the Morrigan who bore you.” An image of the Morrigan as a crow tearing out the hellhounds’ hearts appeared in my mind, and I wanted to claw at my own face. She’s just like her, my mother had once thought about me. Too powerful. Too dangerous. Now I knew who she was talking about.
“She seduced your father on a battlefield, appearing naked before him, and he was so overcome by lust he had her right there among the dead. She would not raise you herself, and we were too frightened of her to refuse. You are cursed, part demon—you taint this chapel by your very presence.”
I thought of the memory I’d seen in my father’s mind all those weeks ago when I’d taken control of him—of the Morrigan appearing to him on the battlefield—and I felt a piece of my heart shrivel. I thought of the way he’d paled when I’d told him of the Morrigan’s vision—the mere mention of the Morrigan’s name had frightened him. There had been so many signs, and I’d been foolishly blind to them all.
“Your father banned you from this church, praying it would spare us from God’s justice. He turned back to God, tried to atone for his sin on the battlefield, but it was all for naught.” My mother’s words were like sharp nails piercing my heart. “He died in the end, leaving me alone to deal with . . . everything. Sigtrygg, this kingdom, you. I agreed to take you on as my own child, but that was before you attacked your own father. You’re dangerous, you’ve always been dangerous, and now that he’s gone, I see no reason to continue the charade.” She looked at me in disgust, and something died inside me. “You shouldn’t have come back here. There’s nothing for you here.”
She turned on her heel and started to walk away. I wrapped my arms around myself protectively, hearing the echo of every time I’d been called monstrous and evil, of every fearful look and whispered aside.
I bent forward as though punched in the gut, and Leif reached down and hauled me upright. “She has gone mad with grief. Don’t let the poisonous words she spews render you incapacitated,” he said into my ear.