Page 217 of A Sanctuary from Shadow
Myrddin shook his head.
I strangled one of my book bag straps. “Then we better hit it.” Forging onward, I waved Morus over. “Come on. Just don’t try to steal anything else from me.”
Morus’s laughter was like jangling change. “Wouldn’t dream of it, Amaranthine.” He started after me, ambling much faster than I’d figured he would.
“One more thing, Amy,” Myrddin stopped us before we returned to Mother Time. “One of your powers—if you haven’t already grasped as much—is thescoránheart.”
That explained very little.
“No door is locked to you,” Myrddin stated.
Recent memories flitted through my mind: the pocket door blocking me from the Danann elders’ meetings in my family dining room; Howlite’s tavern chamber door; his seed chest—they’d all opened at my slightest touch.
“Can’t imagine that gift will be very useful in the jungle,” I said. “Where there are no doors.”
Myrddin shrugged, fluid as milk in his robes. “Nonetheless, the fates have pressed me to inform you.”
“Thank them for me,” I said, brow arching.
The prophet bowed his head, amused despite the dangers lurking in my near future. At least he had faith in me. Otherwise, he wouldn’t let me go.
Right?
Banishing that disastrous thought, I swung the sack of food over my shoulder and soldiered ahead. “Let’s go, Morus. We’re wasting time.”
Pete
BloodoozedfromPete’snose, trickled from his mouth. He sagged like a sweaty trout against the shadowy bonds tethering him to one of the crystal willows. After the Leprechauns had sprayed him with Gentian’s voiding potion hours ago, stagnating the bulk of his prowess, he’d given up trying to escape, needing what little energy and focus he had left to resist the temptation to give into the torture. Hecouldn’texpose Eden.
Glaring down at his swollen fists, Dando huffed at one of his orange-topped bed-fellas, Lugh, and ripped the proffered canteen from his meaty hand.
“Fecking humans,” Dando snarled after guzzling a river, making Pete’s cottony mouth twist. Pete hadn’t had a sip of anything since the cider that morning. Blearing up at the canopy through swollen eyes, he judged the blazing suns were now near to setting. “You just won’t see reason, no matter the motivation.”
Pete spat blood, hoping he’d missed his boot. “That’s more an Irish failing, old chum. Loyalty—that’shuman, ken?”
“And what of your loyalty to your brothers and sisters?” Alys fisted her bloodiedscians, eager to inscribe more of her undue wrath upon Pete’s flesh. Pete’s jerkin now lay at his feet beside his weapons and rucksack, where Shorty’s rag doll still rested, undiscovered. His shirt hung in tatters from his stinging, mutilated trunk. “Aren’t we harbingers more deserving of your allegiance than the spawn of the bastard who let us all rot in those bloody cages?”
Pete was glad he’d never occasioned to fight Alys in the ring. She was little, aye, but her rage would frighten Lucifer. “I’d rather lay it at hers.Shedoesn’t kiss the arse of the devil who locked us in those cages.”
Alys yowled and advanced to attack, but Dando barred her, tsking, “Not yet, you harridan.” He swiped a healthy sweat off the back of his reddening neck. The tropics weren’t Dando’s climate. “We don’t yet know where he hid the royal twit.”
“Have you found the blasted moth yet?” Lugh harrumphed at Domhnall, the youngest and least hateful of their troupe. The lad angrily scoured the ground for Pete’s message without success, nursing a split lip, an inflamed throat, and a bloody nose—the only Leprechaun foolish enough to let Pete get his hands on him before they’d voided his prowess to its nib.
Pete snickered, deliberately mocking—a distraction from the pronedealan-dhèmere paces from Dando. If Pete could keep the Leprechauns’ danders aflutter, then they mightn’t think to canvass the ground. Why their snuffs weren’t there doing just that mystified Pete.
Were they off trying to sniff out Shorty?Praise Jesus for elemental shields and their scent blockades, he thought.
“I’m curious, Dando.” Pete fought a wince, testing his legs. His lower left flank objected. With gusto. “How long was it before you kent that that zephyrist you couldn’t be bothered with and that royal twit you needed were one and the same?”
Dando’s mouth bunched. “See now, McKenna, I’ve had a wonder myself these many years.”
Pete licked more blood from his lip. If not thirst quenching, at least the bitter taste distracted from his wounds. Exhaustion worsened his pain. The combination could cripple him if he dwelt on it. “Have you now?”
“Did you never question why none of us has ever betrayed you to Gentian?” Dando smacked the canteen back into Lugh’s burly chest. “Why none of us has ever let it slip that the death poppy had lost its grip on you?”
Pete cringed as he lifted his head again. The many blows his face had taken throbbed. Especially the knot at his temple. “No, I kent your reasoning. I’d have been too bloody good a harbinger without a soul to hold me back. The lot of you’d have never measured up.”
Dando’s smile could cut iron. “Aye, well—you’re right about your soul, at least. It’s always been your greatest foible. But it’s more than that, aye? See, we never finked on you, so that one day we’d have your fear of a demonic recurrence at our disposal, to hang over your fecking head.”
