My two sons wore Tuatha de Danann skin and blue embroidered tunics that matched my own blue gown with a rabbit fur collar. Isleen wore a long dress of the same material as mine. Kellen wore the brilliant green of his Clan, and for the first time, I noticed a flash of green in his blue eyes. When we finally stopped, we were surrounded by white wildflowers and their fragrance was intoxicating.
There, in that hidden grotto, we pledged ourselves to one another.
As was the practice with Duine brides, I vowed to love Kellen and his God. I meant it with all my heart.
Kellen vowed to love me as a woman, instead of a god.
My heart skipped a beat when he said those words.
His eyes sparkled as his daughter Isleen approached, carrying something wrapped in fine linen. He carefully unwrapped it and lifted it from Isleen’s hands, a sweet fragrance rising. ‘Twas a crown made of tiny pink roses. He placed it upon my head.
“This is for you, Eire. Queen of my heart.”
I couldn’t speak, for my joy was overwhelming. Instead, I showered us with tiny golden stars. Everyone laughed and tried to catch them. I didn’t tell them, but for each star they caught, I granted them one wish.
When we had finished the Duine ceremony, Isleen led our family and trusted friends back to the cottage to wait for us. Meanwhile, Kellen and I went to an oak grove and pledged ourselves in the faery way.
There was no trickery and I made sure he understood what we were doing beforehand. This would not be like my wedding to my dead husband, Fethur, or my sister’s wedding to Faelan. No bride was kidnapped. No House would be made stronger by our union.
“When you call, I will come,” I said to him.
“When you call, I will come to you,” he said to me, but he pledged even more. “You will not be lost to me, Eire. No matter how far you wander, not even the ocean of eternity shall separate us.”
My eyes filled with tears, for I had tried to keep trickery at bay. But being a faery, there are always secrets I cannot tell.
My husband did not know that he would live almost as long I would. Our union would revive him, every single day. Just as he brought me love, I would bring him life.
But that would be my secret. He would figure it out himself, in time. I only hoped he would forgive me.
Then after our final vows were completed, we had one last thing to do before we could join the others back at our cottage. We walked together through the wood, hiding all the trails and paths that led to his home. With a spell here and there, this place would remain hidden. My children and I would be safe from Faelan and his Leanan Sidhe.
Then we paused for one more embrace, his arms wrapped around me, the heavens full of stars above us.
“You made me believe in love again,” I told him with a sigh.
He kissed me then and I vowed in my heart that I would never stop believing in something as wonderful as this again.
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Fairytale Christmas
Also, there will be another adventure in this series coming early in 2018—Wolf Haven: Book 2 in the Fair Folk Saga.
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CHAPTER ONE: FATHOM
Kira:
I never believed in ghosts.
Until I saw one, face to face, when I was twelve.
It was the middle of the summer, one of those nights when the wind scratched tree branches against my window and the Pacific roared so loud I thought it was going to sweep me away. Something startled me awake, some shifting of our house, beam against beam, old wood crying out in the damp sea breeze.
Almost instantly a chill shiver ran down my arms.
I got out of bed, the wooden floor cool and welcome against my bare feet. I paused in the hallway, noticed the fragrance of freshly cut hawthorn in the air. I used to love that smell.
Not anymore.
Then I saw something in a pool of moonlight—spots of water on the floor.
Like tiny lakes. Each one perfectly formed and separate.
Watery footprints.
Leading toward my father’s door.
I couldn’t breathe or move. Part of me wanted to disappear. Another part of me hoped that maybe the past could be erased and rewritten.
That was when I saw her. My mother.
I have her photo on my nightstand—me, my sister and her—all in a huddle of green leaves. Her dark hair twined with Katie’s and my own like the three of us were one person. We were up in our tree house. My father must have taken that picture. And here she was right in front of me, tall and slender and silver in the pale moonlight, her long dark hair swirling in the muggy summer breeze, looking like a mermaid, her skin glistening as if she had just risen from her briny home.
Dark lips parted and a small gasp came out when she saw me.
It only lasted a moment, but in that amount of time I saw too much.
Her fingers stained with fresh blood, her eyes the color of the ocean, her skin so pale it looked as if she hadn’t been in the sun for years.
“Mom,” a whisper cry came from my lips.
She came nearer then, this wraith from the past, until she could press a slender finger against my lips. She shook her head. We both knew the rules. I grew up on the Celtic legends; they were all my family talked about during the long winter nights, when the fire crackled and spit and our bellies were full.
But for now, silence filled the hallway, just long enough for me to hear the air coming in and out of my mother’s mouth, as if she had run a great distance to get here. Perhaps the gates to the Underworld were farther away than I thought. Or perhaps she had climbed the great cliff our house sat upon, all the way up from the ocean floor, to get here. Finally—when neither of us could bear the quiet any longer and I’m sure both of us would have started weeping, when words would have gushed like streams from our mouths and we would have broken every rule that protected the living from the dead—at that point, she brushed past me down the narrow hallway, toward the back door.
I turned and watched her run, across the yard through the thicket of trees and overgrown thorny bushes, toward the cliff. The same path she took seven years ago.
The night she killed my sister and then threw her tiny body in the ocean.
The very same night that my mother killed herself.