I frowned. “How do you know that?”
“Irrelevant.” He flapped his hand in the air and the will-o-the-wisp flittered around as though startled. “I've been holding some information for you for over one hundred years, waiting for you to reappear so that I might put you on your path to restoration.”
“Why you?” Arlo snapped, and the Sage swung his ancient eyes over to his grandson with a look that could strip bark.
“Because your papa knew he wasn't long for this world, and he needed to keep this scrap safe, should the Veil Keeper reappear.” The Sage gave Arlo a long stare until the younger man—fae, god, whatever—looked away first, and the old fae turned his stare back to me. “Your knights stripped you of any knowledge pertaining to the Veil, in an attempt to preserve the magic until such time as your earthly body might be recovered. They had left you with small clues of where to begin looking, but I suspect those crumbs may have gotten lost?”
Pursing my lips, I nodded. I knew they were there, I could sense them just out of reach, but when I tried to get them I became bogged down in pain.
“As I thought.” The Sage waved a hand at his tree, and it obligingly bowed down two branches to create seats, to which he indicated I sit. “Your former Lord of Spring entrusted his portion of your memories to my son, The Father, and requested they be hidden.”
“Within the Spear of Lug,” I whispered, my vision blurring and fading as I slipped into a dark and shadowy memory.
Faces like nightmares, shrouded in heavy hoods, gleaming white fangs from between leering lips. Another silent scream tore from my throat, my voice long since destroyed by years of wailing in agony. The Nightmare yanked again on my wing and I felt it tear from my flesh a little further as wet tears slid down my face.
My body hung limp and useless from the shackles on the roof, my wrists dead to feeling where the iron held them high, and my toes barely reached the ground. Every vicious tear of my wings sent my half-dead body swaying on the chains, the musical chime of metal on concrete my constant companion.
The Nightmare wrapped its filthy claws around the base of my wing once more, and tore it a little further from my back, and this time the agony was so sharp, so blinding, that my mind slipped from my body as it had done on a thousand occasions before.
“Stick with us, mo ghaol,” my lover begged inside my pain-filled brain, “the spell is almost ready. We have but one treasure left to find and then we can complete the transfer, starting with the Spear of Lug.”
“Please,” my mind’s voice begged, “please hurry. I need to know the knowledge is safe. After that, they can do as they please to this form and never succeed.”
“Tha gaol agam ort, Gràinne,” my lover, my Lord of Spring, whispered with reverence. “Please hold on a little longer. For us. For the Veil.”
“I love you too, Curadan,” my mind sighed, as agony dragged me back to consciousness, “all of you.”
“Curadan,” I repeated, this time in my own voice, and I felt the syllables slide over my tongue, both foreign and familiar all at the same time.
“Yes, your former Lord of Spring, Curadan Mac Daibheid. He and my son were close, and as the protector of the Spear, trusted no one else to hide such valuable information.” The Sage cocked his head, watching me with eyes as old as time itself. “Would you like to know where to begin, young Keeper?”
Still lost in the memory I had just lived through, I nodded slowly. Gràinne. Another name. Was it mine? Hers? Ours? Did we have one name that carried with our body or did we keep our own name from our former life? These were questions I needed to ask, but first…
“Yes, tell me. Where do I begin?”
“The spear is guarded and heavily spelled. To access it, you will need a key.” The Sage propped his bony elbows on his knees, his twig-like fingers steepled together.
“Of course she will,” Arlo muttered under his breath, but I ignored him and his grand-daddy issues.
“Do you have it?” I asked, both eagerly and reluctantly. Did I really want to recover all my memories? If that small flashback was a taste of what was to come… perhaps I might be better off not knowing?
In the memory, it had felt like I—Gràinne—had been almost ready to give up, but I knew she hadn't. That memory was old, maybe over one hundred years, and I was confident I hadn't suffered more than five under the care of those Nightmares.
A startling noise coughed from the Sage and I jumped, before realizing he was chuckling.
“Naw, Keeper,” he grinned, and a small woodworm wriggled from the corner of his mouth and down his beard. “That'd be too easy, see? The key is held by someone strong enough to keep it safe. Papa Cocodril.”
Reece made a noise that drew my attention, and I found him with a confused and bewildered look on his handsome face. “Papa Cocodril?” he repeated, and the Sage nodded.“Dat ol' voodoo man ain't real. He nutin' more dan a story ma Mère told us as chevrette.”
“Don't you know, boy? All the best stories are based in truth.” The Sage turned his wise old eyes back to me. “Papa Cocodril is very real, and he has your key.”
His words were said carefully, and each one rang with the clean feeling of truth.
“He ran afoul of the Swamp Witch some years past, but you can still find him on the apex of the bayou, when the moon is full. You'll need to go alone, Keeper, as he won't show for any but you.” The old tree man held my gaze for a long moment, before his eyelids drooped. “Now, get you gone. This old man has had enough excitement for one year.”
My mouth opened to ask more questions, but Killian's hand closed over my wrist, pulling me gently to my feet.
“Come along, cher, the Sage has said enough. Your answers can be found along our quest, I have no doubt.” His voice was calm, and reasonable but still I wanted to argue with him. Why couldn't I just ask now?
But when I glanced back to the Sage, I found him still, like he'd been petrified. The tree was moving slowly, wrapping its limbs around him once more and pulling him back into its depths bit by bit until no sign of the Sage remained visible.
“Now what?” Amelie asked, leading the way back to where we had left the airboat.
“We can't do jack shit until the moon is full,” Arlo growled, and I shivered at his bestial tone. “Which ain't tonight.”
“We'll head back to da clubhouse,” Reece decided, hopping onto the airboat and holding out a hand to help me on. “Don't know 'bout you, but I could sure use a drink, me.”
Amelie made a noise, and pushed Arlo out of the way to take the seat beside me in the front of the boat. “Ciarah, babe. I don't want you pissed off or thinking I'm double-crossing you, I'm not. But Rafe will need to know at least some of what is going on here.”
“No fucking way,” Arlo snapped. “You breathe a fucking word of what you just heard—”