TWENTY-EIGHT
Patrick
Patrick glanced out the window as the carriage lumbered to a stop. The traffic on Broadway was at a complete standstill. He knocked on the ceiling to signal his driver and then got out, shouting to Leonard, “I’ll walk from here.”
He wove through the wagons with their cursing drivers and the other stalled carriages on the street. The weather pressed upon him, that ever-present, unnerving thunder.
The Fianna were here. Grace was the veleda. Grace. If he’d only known . . .
He thought of the way she’d looked up at him in the park. Those dark, trusting eyes. Why hadn’t the horn brought the Fianna to the club the way the spell had brought the Fomori? Why to a tenement? Why had there been such confusion? Spells weren’t supposed to work that way.
Why?
He hated that he didn’t know. He hated it more because that one thing, that singular thing, had cost him everything. Had the Fianna appeared as they were supposed to, he never would have called the Fomori, and the Fianna would have joined with the Fenian Brotherhood, and the veleda’s choice would be clear. Patrick hadn’t even considered that the cause might prove unworthy, and it wasn’t. Diarmid had said so.
But still . . . Grace. Grace would have to choose. And she would have to die.
There had to be another way.
Patrick reached the redbrick building and sprinted up the stairs, wrenching open the door and racing to the meeting room. His message to the others had declared an emergency, and they were all there.
“Why have you called us here, Devlin?” Rory Nolan asked. “Have the Fomori arrived early?”
“The Fianna are here!” Patrick announced.
They went silent.
“What?” Jonathan asked finally. “They’re here? How can that be?”
“The horn worked,” Patrick explained. “It brought them to a tenement, where they’ve been posing as a gang.”
Simon said, “But they should have come here, just as Daire Donn did.”
“Yes, they should have come here. No one knows why they didn’t.”
“How did you discover them?” Rory asked.
Patrick sank into a chair, burying his face in his hands. “Diarmid Ua Duibhne is my stableboy.”
Rory said, “Perhaps you’d better start at the beginning.”
Patrick looked up. “The Fianna have been searching for who called them. They looked for Irish organizations. That brought them to the Brotherhood, which brought them to me. Ua Duibhne took a job as my stableboy, hoping to get close to me. I discovered the truth only this morning. I’ve spoken with him. Finn’s here too—all of them.”
Jonathan let out his breath. “Thank God. Well then, that’s it, isn’t it? The Fianna are here. We’ll win. We’ll win at last!”
Patrick said, “The Fomori are coming, too, remember? And the Fianna have refused to fight with them.”
“They’ve refused?” Jonathan looked stunned. “But . . . we called them. Can they refuse us?”
“Of course they can.” Simon sat down heavily. “They have free will. No one can compel them. The point was for the Fianna to learn a lesson. They can choose a side. They must choose a side if they want the chance to keep living.” He looked at Patrick. “Did our fight not interest them? Surely you explained it? Surely they want to win self-rule for Ireland?”
Patrick nodded. “Diarmid said they were more than willing to do that. Until I told him the Fomori were involved.”
“Did you tell him that things are no longer as they were?” asked Rory. “That we can control the Fomori? That Daire Donn—”
“I told him all that. He said that no one could control them. That the world would fall to devastation and despair if they were involved.”
Simon sat back. “Well, then, that is a problem.”
“So they won’t fight for us,” Rory said. “We have the Fomori now. We don’t need them.”
Simon shook his head. “I’m afraid it doesn’t work that way. The Fianna have been called, and now the fight has changed. It’s the Fianna against us and the Fomori. Which means we have to beat them. And we need the veleda to choose us.” He looked at Patrick. “I assume your sister is the one, after all, as she blooded the horn?”
Patrick’s throat tightened. “No. It isn’t Lucy.”
“Then who? Did Ua Duibhne know who she is? Have they found her?”
This was worse than he could have imagined. “They know who she is.”
“Do they have her?” Simon asked. “We can’t let them have any advantage.”
“They don’t have the advantage. Not yet anyway. We do. Or . . . I think we do. She’s my soon-to-be fiancée. Grace Knox.”
His announcement was met with astonished stares.
Jonathan said, “Are you certain? Does she know she’s the veleda?”
Patrick threaded his fingers through his hair, gripping his pounding skull. “Yes, I’m certain. I don’t know if she knows. I haven’t spoken to her. I came directly here.”
“Your soon-to-be fiancée,” Simon said. “What exactly does that mean?”
“I haven’t proposed yet. I would have, but she felt we were moving too quickly—”
“Will she accept your suit?”
“I believe so.”
“Because she loves you?” Simon asked.
“I hope so. I think so.”
“Listen carefully to me, Devlin,” Simon said. “We need more than the girl accepting you because she sees the benefit of marrying a rich young man. She will have to choose between us and the Fianna. Does she love you? Do we have an advantage?”
Jonathan said, “But wait . . . doesn’t Diarmid Ua Duibhne have a . . . what was that called? The thing that compelled women to love him?”
“The ball seirce. And yes. He used it on my sister,” Patrick said dully.
“Does he know your fiancée? Has he used it on her?”
“I don’t think so,” Patrick said. Grace had said Diarmid was attentive, but she hadn’t seemed lovestruck. Not like Lucy—
“But he might,” Simon said. “Finn MacCool is brilliant and ruthless. He’ll see the ball seirce as a tool. You need to secure her, Devlin. Now. Keep her away from Ua Duibhne. Propose to her. Win her to our side. I don’t suppose you can rush the marriage?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps.”
“You must try.”
Hopelessness swept over Patrick. “There’s one other thing Diarmid told me. The veleda makes the choice, but she must die to ensure it. She must die.”
Even Simon looked shocked.
Patrick went on, “That part of the prophecy was lost. It wasn’t in any of the stories I knew. Why would it be lost? Why would we not know it?”
“It’s been two thousand years,” Simon said. “Things go missing. But even if we’d known it, would it have changed what we did? Would you have refused to call the Fianna?”
“I thought the veleda was my sister. Of course I would have refused.”
“Would you really?” Simon asked. “It seems a small price to pay. One life for thousands.”
“Goddamn you, Simon. What if it were your sister? Your fiancée?”
“I would still have called them,” Simon said firmly.
Around the room, the others nodded.
“You’re either willing to sacrifice everything for the cause, or you’re not the man we thought you were,” Simon said.
Patrick’s life had been dedicated to this cause, and they were questioning it. He knew he wasn’t weak, and he wasn’t wavering. But this . . .
He said rawly, “I love Grace. How can I watch her . . .?”
“This is for Ireland, Patrick,” Rory said gently. “You said you were willing to die for her.”
“That was me. This is different. I can’t condemn Grace.”
“You have no choice,” Simon said. “The prophecy is already in play. The veleda is bound to the Fianna. There is no other way.”
“Perhaps there’s another spell. Perhaps she doesn’t need to die. The Fomori might know, don’t you think?”
Simon sighed. “Yes. Yes, perhaps. We’ll ask Daire Donn when they arrive.”
But Patrick saw that Simon didn’t believe it.
“If there is another way, we’ll find it,” Jonathan reassured him.
Rory added, “We’ll all study the problem. But in the meantime, Simon is right; you must secure her. We can’t lose her to the Fianna, and if she loves you, well . . . we need her help. You know this.”
Simon was watching him. They all were. Patrick looked down at his clasped hands. At long last, the fight was to be had, and he was at the fulcrum of it. He could make a difference. He could change the world.
And none of it would matter, because he would lose her.
“Yes,” he whispered. “I know.”