“First of all,” I say, “I don’t think that’s true. Second of all—”
“So maybe it isn’t true, but what do you think of a lobster for a pet?” Aithinne asks suddenly, as if she’s thought long and hard about this. “I used to have a falcon—”
“Aithinne.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. Those two thousand years she spent underground really affected her focus. One minute she’s intense, the next minute she’s talking about lobsters and driving me insane. “You’re distracting me again. What was her name?”
“The falcon? Oh, her name was—”
“The Cailleach’s sister.” Blast it all. “Soldiers coming. Impending war. Our possible demise. Talk quickly.”
Aithinne waves a hand, as if it’s a minor detail. “She was called something different then, but her name has lived on as the Morrigan.”
That name is not a minor detail. That name does not deserve a hand-wave, as if to say, oh, it’s just So-and-So from Such-and-Such.
What little I know about the Morrigan is only from legends, but they were certainly enough to leave a terrifying impression. Like the Cailleach, the Morrigan was considered a goddess—a powerful creature of war. Though the Cailleach was capable of brutality, there were plenty of stories that spoke of her small acts of kindness.
The Morrigan had no acts of kindness. She was renowned in stories for the death and destruction she wrought.
She was the faery who almost wiped out the human race.
CHAPTER 13
REMEMBER THAT not-good feeling?” I ask Aithinne.
“The one you had a moment ago?”
“Right. That feeling. It just got worse.” I draw in a long breath. “Let me guess—and I am saying this purely on it being the worst thing I can come up with since I have a habit of attracting disaster. The Morrigan wrote the damn Book, didn’t she?”
“I’m afraid so.” Aithinne looks at me, concerned. “You’re not going to vomit again, are you? Would you like a bucket?”
“Just tell me about the Morrigan and the Book.”
She moves to sit next to me on the cot. “It started out as a history of the fae. How we were created, our great families, the geography of the Old Kingdom. When the Morrigan became monarch, she began to use it as her spell book.” She smiles sadly. “The Morrigan was the first Seelie Queen, you know? She loved knowledge. But the more she wrote, the more the Book became a creature independent of its creator.”
I swallow hard. I don’t like the sound of that. “What does that mean?”
“We have a belief,” Aithinne says, “that if you put enough power and importance into an object, over time it can take on a life of its own. It can become a force, capable of being used for great things—or terrible things.” Her eyes meet mine, intent. “You saw this with the crystal. How Sorcha was able to project enough power through it to overtake mine. If that’s done enough times, the object becomes infused with that power.”
The crystal. It was once a part of the Old Kingdom, the only relic of its kind left. Believed to have been lost, it was actually buried beneath the pixie kingdom. It was so powerful that the pixies were able to create small worlds within their city, built at the whims of their creators.
I can’t help but feel for the scar beneath my shirt, my fingertips grazing the upraised skin. When Lonnrach discovered where the crystal was, he demolished the pixie kingdom to unearth it, hoping to use its power to steal mine. Instead, Sorcha used it to turn Kiaran back into the Unseelie King.
I tried to destroy the crystal the night I died. I failed.
“Did the Cailleach use the crystal against the Morrigan?” I ask, trying to keep the emotions out of my voice. Sometimes my memories are too much to bear. “Did she overthrow her?”
“No.” Aithinne shakes her head sharply. “As long as she had the Book, the Morrigan was much too strong. She grew more cruel, with an insatiable desire for war. The Seelie powers she had were twisted into something darker, and she became the first Unseelie. She gifted loyal subjects with the same abilities. They grew into the Unseelie Court.
“I know you thought my mother was merciless, but she was considered by many to be a fair monarch. For all her faults, she brought prosperity to both Courts when she came to power. The Morrigan’s kingdom was forged in darkness. Her rule was absolute. And with the Book by her side, no one could challenge her.”
“But the first Cailleach did.”
“She had no choice,” Aithinne explains. “Dissent grew in the kingdoms. There was talk of rebelling, and my ancestors knew they would all be slaughtered if they tried. The Cailleach was the only one strong enough to slay the Morrigan.”
Her own sister. Just like every other Cailleach after her, sibling killing sibling. Exactly as Kiaran and Aithinne are expected to do. “And did she?”
“This is where the story becomes unclear. It’s not known whether the Morrigan’s own consort betrayed her or was used by the Cailleach to lure the Morrigan into a prison between worlds, but the Book was hidden somewhere in that place. Some say the Morrigan found the Book and is still alive there. Others say the disappearance of the Morrigan means the Cailleach must have succeeded in killing her.” Aithinne lifts her shoulders in a shrug. “The wisp wasn’t certain. He just knew that . . .”
Aithinne looks away. I don’t have to see her expression to know her eyes are wet. “Aithinne? Knew what?”
“Before the Book disappeared, the Morrigan used it to make the Cailleach suffer,” Aithinne says flatly. “The last thing she wrote was a curse: Each Cailleach shall give birth to two children of power, one with the gift of death, the other with the gift of life. The most powerful shall inherit the throne only when they have killed the other. Over and over and over, forever. And if they try to escape the fate written for them in that Book, they will rip the realms asunder.”
Aithinne stands in anger, her back to me. Her hands fist at her sides. “In every version of the story, the last lines she wrote were the same.” Aithinne looks at me, her jaw tight. “As it begins in death, so shall it end in death, until the day a child of the Cailleach confronts their fate with a true lie on their lips and sacrifices that which they prize most: their heart.”
A true lie on their lips. No circumvention. No manipulation. And the fae can’t lie. “So never,” I say. “She might as well have said Nothing can undo this curse.”
“In order to create a curse, you have to provide a way to break it,” Aithinne says bitterly. “As you’ve already surmised, we sìthichean have come up with creative ways around our limitations. The Morrigan was very clever.”
“The worst fae usually are.”
“So we’ll find it.” Aithinne grabs my sword in its sheath and presses it to my palm. Her eyes are intense, molten silver. The way Kiaran’s get just before a battle. “We’ll find that damn Book and change your realm back to the way it was, and we’ll write out that curse.”