For some reason, Sorcha had thought she would be better able to handle the bank than she had the other mortal buildings she’d been in. But she hadn’t figured on having to deal with Harry’s city.
“It’s not my city,” he protested calmly as they walked hand-in-hand down the impossibly narrow street that seemed to wind in around itself like a snake. “I just use it on occasion.”
“It’s all stone,” she protested, looking down at the strange lumpy variety that made up the streets. “How can anyone breathe?”
“They’re not fairies.”
“Obviously.”
Finally, though, they stood before another huge box constructed of stone and fronted with pillars nobody really needed. It would be such an easy thing to go in. Grab the Stone and run away back to where the grass stretched away to the horizon without a building in sight.
For a very long moment they couldn’t move. Sorcha found that her breath had left her again, and she thought even Harry should have been able to hear her heart.
“It really is in there?” she asked, wondering why all the people who walked past them like river water over boulders didn’t realize the import of what was about to happen. All those rocks, she thought miserably. How could a person feel a thing?
“It’s really in there,” Harry said. “And if we don’t go in and get it soon, they’ll be closing on us, and we’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”
And yes, didn’t Sorcha have the brief cowardly impulse to nod and turn away, and hide back in that pillow-strewn room? Sure, we’ll be after getting it tomorrow, when the omens will be better. The sun will shine, the air will warm….
Somewhere over her shoulder, a building let out another of those slow bonging noises. Harry turned, then checked the timepiece he wore around his wrist.
“Time’s up,” he said and pulled her to him for one last kiss before they walked inside.
She was a muddle of emotions: terror, anger, grief, anxiety. She was about to hold one of the great Stones of Creation in her hand, the one lost to them for so long, the harbinger of spring and renewal. She it would be who would welcome it home.
She was about to change the course of not only faerie history but mortal history. She, Sorcha, who sought only to sit with the little ones and teach them the cycles of the earth. Her heart was stumbling about, and she swore someone had stolen the air. She was almost finished here.
She was almost finished. The thought all but killed her.
The inside of the place echoed. People moved about impatiently, and there was a constant clicking of machines. Sorcha didn’t want to be here. Electricity was bad enough for fairies, but there were other energies altogether shuddering through this high, cold place. She couldn’t imagine what the Dearann Stone had suffered, being caught in this place for so long. Suddenly she couldn’t wait to get it out.
“I’m sorry,” Harry said, as if he’d heard her. “I really had no idea what I was dealing with.”
“Ah, sure, she knows that, Harry. How could the goddess punish you for what you couldn’t understand? Even so, it might be a good idea to think about apologizing when you hold the Dearann Stone again.”
“That’ll be fine,” he said, leading them through a grilled door. “I’d just appreciate it if we could wait for the apologies until we’re alone again.”
Sorcha looked around to see how blank the faces around her were. “Oh, aye, I see. They wouldn’t be after understanding, would they?”
“Not if you’re thinking of singing to it or falling to your knees.”
She actually managed a smile. “Sure, fairies aren’t that dramatic, Harry. You must be thinking of some mortal ritual.”
He led her to a group of chairs and motioned her toward one. “You’ll need to wait here,” he said. “Only I can go in.”
Sorcha sat. She took a deep breath. She wrapped her hands around each other and set them on her lap to keep still. Moments. They had only moments left to be together. And only moments remained until she could see the Stone. The air clogged in her chest and refused to soothe her.
She watched as Harry approached one of the people who seemed to work here and spoke to her. The woman barely noticed him. He signed a book of some kind and waited for her to finish some business. Sorcha held perfectly still, terrified and excited at once. Please, Goddess, let this be the Stone. Let there not be another of those awful surprises, the likes of which she’d suffered when Theo had handed her a silent stone of quartz.
The woman unlocked another door and walked through, and Harry followed her. Sorcha held her breath. She tried desperately to look as if the fate of two worlds wasn’t at stake. Truly, she did her best to notice the world around her. But it seemed as if she were sitting under water, the light filtered badly from the high windows and the air thickened by the odd energy that seemed to reside in those clacking machines. She waited. She tried to breathe. She prayed.
And then she knew.
It was as if a shaft of sunlight had spilled into the room. She didn’t see Harry or the other woman. She heard nothing. But she knew the instant the Stone had been released.
Harry had been right to warn her. She did want to drop to her knees. She wanted to laugh and sing and dance. She wanted to grab the nearest person to her and swing them around with the unspeakable, unbearable joy of it.
The Dearann Stone was free. It was here. It was whole and beautiful and strong, and soon she, Sorcha, daughter of Mab, would have the privilege of holding it in her hand.
Pictures tumbled through her mind: fairy woods, so deep and green and dark that the sun failed to find them; endless, arching skies of blue and white and gray; mountains, great, harsh mountains, with white shoulders and wooded skirts.
Sounds rushed past: the soughing of the wind through the trees; brooks chattering along their courses; lambs searching for their mothers; birdsong and moon-song and the sweet music of unfurling leaves. And scents, ah, sweet eternity, the scents that assailed her: fresh mown hay and wild iris; oceans and bonfires; birth and growth and spring, sweet, sweet spring.
Tears welled in her eyes: tears of joy, of anguish, of awe. And when she saw Harry walk back out of that metal room with the velvet-wrapped stone in his hands like an offering, she saw that there were tears in his eyes, too. She heard in his mind the awe of discovery as he finally allowed himself to appreciate the miracle he alone had seen for so long a time.
Reverently, she got to her feet, her head bowed in obeisance to the great power in Harry’s hands.
“I guess I really am glad you found me,” he said with a rather silly smile as he approached. “If you hadn’t, I never would have had the chance to enjoy what this thing makes me see.”
She reached out a tentative hand to greet the great Stone, and she laughed. “Isn’t it brilliant, Harry? Didn’t I tell you?”
“Yes, Sorcha,” he said, carrying the Stone in one hand and guiding her with the other. “It’s brilliant.”
It was one of the most difficult things Sorcha had ever done, but she kept her promise. It wasn’t until they’d locked themselves into the car and driven it out of the narrow streets that she slipped the Dearann Stone from its home. Harry pulled over to the side of the road in a place where the clouds skated over endlessly undulating earth, and they took a moment to greet the Dearann Stone as she deserved.
“You do have my apologies for imprisoning you,” Harry said to it, and it sounded as if he meant it. “I wouldn’t have, if I’d had even one person around me who could have explained things.”
“To your satisfaction,” Sorcha said, smiling at him. “A much more difficult accomplishment altogether.”
He smiled back. “I guess so.”
Sorcha sat in humble joy and, whether it was a good idea or not, sang a song of spring to the harbinger of it. She bathed in the glittering white warmth the Stone exuded and reached over to hold Harry’s hand, so they could experience it as one.
“Ah, to think I’d actually see this day,” she sighed. “For so long the Dearann Stone has been lost to the mists of legend. Who would think such as I would be granted the privilege of carrying it home?”
“Why would it be such a surprise?” Harry asked. “Didn’t you think you’d succeed?”
She knew her eyebrows had risen. “Me? Of course not, Harry. After all, I’m only—”
“If you say you’re only a teacher one more time, I’ll toss the car keys into the river and let you walk back. Don’t you understand? Your mother didn’t send you here because she thought you’d fail. She sent you because she knew you’d succeed.”
His words lodged in her chest like stars. “Ah, sure I’d like to think so, Harry.”
“Then do.” He started the car. “Now, what’s the plan?”
She shrugged. “Darragh should have been keeping an eye on the gatesite. Among us, we have to make sure the Stone gets through and the Dubhlainn Sidhe does not.”
Harry looked over at her. “But I thought the whole point was to take him with you.”
“Sure, we’re hoping he gets caught in the antechamber, if you’d like. The space between the worlds of mortal and fairy. If we can keep him locked up for a bit, the queen will have time to decide how to deal with him. And you’ll be safe here.”
“So you’re not just the courier, you’re the bait?”
“Pardon?”
“I won’t let him hurt you.”
“You’ll not cross him, Harry. You don’t know what he can do.”
“I know what I can do. He hurt Lilly. He’s not going home without a memento of his visit.”
She clutched his hand tightly, suddenly fearful of letting him go at all. “No. You mustn’t. Please, Harry. Promise me.”
This time, when he turned to her, his eyes were hard. “I’m afraid I can’t.”
She closed her eyes, fresh fear washing over her. What was she to do? How could she keep him safe, when her goal must be safe passage home for the Dearann Stone? Yet how could she bear to desert him if he were in danger?
“How about if I call Gwyneth?” Harry asked. “Let them know we’re coming.”
She nodded. “Sure, it’ll give Darragh time to work a bit of weather to our aid. It would also help him to know we’ve succeeded. Won’t he be surprised altogether?”
Harry pulled that little box out of his pocket again. “You’re sure now that you can trust him not to steal it for himself?”
She actually smiled. “Ah, no, I believe he’s much too interested in stealing Gwyneth for himself.”
He gave a little “humph” and punched buttons on his box. “I can’t wait to see him at his first restaurant…. Gwyn? Success.”
Sorcha waited patiently as Harry informed his onetime fiancée of the completion of their mission. She basked in the warmth of the Stone she held and noticed that even in November, the skies had grown soft and the shadows less harsh. Where there had been emptiness, a few birds now flew. How could she regret her success? How could she resent her part in bringing harmony to her people? Yet how could she walk away from the only man she would ever love?
“Are you ready, lass?” Harry asked.
She drew a breath. “Aye. Have they had any trouble?”
Harry looked into the mirror and then back before pulling out onto the long, lonely road into the moors. “Evidently Darragh knows just where our friend is and is keeping a close eye on him. The good news is that you were right. He’s biding his time on the moor. The bad news is that Darragh says he’s powerful.”
Sorcha nodded. “Sure, and how can that be a surprise, when you think of what he did to Lilly?”
“Yes,” he said, his eyes on the road. “What he did to Lilly.”
Sorcha swung around to him. “It’s not your job to punish him, Harry. Let it be up to the queen, please. I’m not sure there’s another who can contain him.”
Harry didn’t argue. But he didn’t agree, either.
“We’ll call Darragh again when we’re close,” Sorcha said, as if closing the argument. “The Dubhlainn Sidhe will feel the approach of the Stone, but if Darragh works fast, he’ll have a mist formed to confuse him. We’ll hide inside, so, and not let him see us till I walk through.”
“We hope.”
She tried to smile. “Sure, don’t you mortals thrive on a positive attitude, Harry?”
“Only when we know what we’re facing.”
Sorcha couldn’t think of a thing to say to that. She slipped the Stone back into its bag and watched the miles slide by out the window of the car. Time passed, and the hills gathered and multiplied as they traveled west toward Waverly Close. She once again heard the air rush by and thought she saw a hawk testing the air currents far above the hills. She didn’t know how to break Harry’s silence or change his mind. She didn’t know how to salvage these last few minutes they had together.
Then, without a word, he reached over and wrapped his fingers around hers and held on. And Sorcha closed her eyes and bathed in his light for as long as she would be given.
The warning came almost imperceptibly. At first Sorcha thought it might just be a change of weather, a darkness creeping across the afternoon sky. The Dearann Stone sat in her lap singing of rebirth and the cycle of life, but Sorcha began to grow afraid. Not just that she would have to leave Harry, but that she would somehow lose her way before she got the Stone across. She felt anger latch on to that fear, its tentacles sly and tenacious.
“What’s going on?” Harry demanded all of a sudden. “I’m seeing things in my head again.”
Sorcha looked down at the Stone that glittered in her hands. “Different things.”
He nodded. “Oh, yes. But at a distance, if you understand. It’s as if I’m watching it on a screen. Violence. Disaster. It’s as if I’m being visited by portents of doom, and it’s making me afraid.”
Sorcha snapped to attention. “Faith. I should have anticipated this. He’s there.”
“The Dubhlainn Sidhe?”
“This is his advance attack, Harry. Doubt and frustration and fear. Ambiguous, amorphous, too uncertain to name.”
For a long moment Harry seemed to think about that. Then, abruptly, he nodded. “All right, then. As long as I know what it is, I can deal with it.”
“I just hope Darragh can.”
He looked over at her, and she saw the weight of what they were about to do in his eyes. “He’ll have to, won’t he?”
The clouds gathered, real and imagined, the closer they drew. Could Darragh be gathering a storm to protect them? Was it he who sent the wind skirling along the moors like an advancing army? The car rocked about a bit with it, and the clouds shredded and tumbled over the higher elevations. Sorcha shivered in her seat and curled her hand more tightly around the Dearann Stone, as if that would keep it safe.
She wondered if the Dubhlainn Sidhe could feel its approach. If it gave him joy or satisfaction or annoyance. After all, the Dubhlainn Sidhe had suffered the most from its loss. Would they be glad at its return or resentful? Anymore, Sorcha simply didn’t know the mind of the Dubhlainn Sidhe, especially now that they carried the Coilin Stone with them.
It would all be over soon, though. She would bring the Dearann Stone back to the land of faerie, and Orla would return it to its true home.
Another thought that brought grief: she would lose Harry. She had done her best to come to grips with that.
And she’d just met the Stone. And like her love for Harry, the joy of the Stone had swept through her like a sweet wind. Now she would lose that, as well. The Dearann Stone would return to her place among the Dubhlainn Sidhe, and Sorcha would be left behind.
Thank the goddess she would have her child or she might think her chance for renewal had been forfeited in this cold land where mortals spent their lives oblivious to the miracle of life.
She saw Darragh’s plan from all the way up the valley. Thin fingers of fog shrouded the hill that held the gate. Farther down, a shaft of sunlight swept over the valley like a spotlight searching for prey. She didn’t see anything, which meant the Dubhlainn Sidhe wouldn’t be seen until he struck. Hopefully his vision would be no better than hers.
Harry brought the car to a halt well before the place where they had to begin their climb and pulled out his communication box. After punching some buttons and greeting Gwyneth, he handed the thing to her.
“I’m not sure I can hold him,” were Darragh’s first words.
“Where is he?” Sorcha asked, her hand instinctively clutching the Stone more tightly.
“I’m not sure. He’s a master at subterfuge, my girl. I may have mist and fog, but he has nightmares.”
“Ah, sure, and don’t I know it,” she agreed, her focus on the fog that was slowly eating up the hill she sought. “We don’t have time, Darragh. If he thinks we’ve skirted him, he’ll go back for the children. Hold them hostage.”
“I know. Can you see the trees on the south flank?”
“Trees. Oh, aye, I can.”
“Use those as camouflage as far as you can. As you draw him, I’ll try to track him.”
“Is Gwyneth safe?”
“I’ve sent her on. She thinks she’s bringing help.”
Sorcha dragged in a thready breath. “Help Harry, then.”
There was a pause. “I will.”
She closed the little box and set it on her lap.
“Are we ready?” Harry asked.
Sorcha clutched the Stone in one hand and took Harry’s hand in the other. “No,” she admitted, the moment clotting up in her chest. “Faith, I’ll never be ready.”
“Yes, you will and you are, Sorcha. You’re a princess of the blood. No one else could get the Stone through but you.”
She locked her gaze with his then, reinforcing her will with his belief in her. Taking this last moment to be most important to him.
There was no time, but they made time anyway, spending their last moments memorizing each other for all the years they wouldn’t have. Harry curled his hand around her neck and pulled her gently toward him. He kissed her, his eyes open, his heart there for her to see. Sorcha let her tears fall, her gift to him, and she saw his tears gleam in his eyes before he willed them away. And when she broke the kiss, he let her.
“I have to go now,” she said.
He nodded. Ah, how could her heart hold against the grief in his eyes? “I’ll help hold him till you’re safely through.”
“Trust Darragh to know when to let him go.”
“I will.”
She bent her head to focus once again on the Stone as Harry restarted the car and finished their journey to the bottom of the hill. Sorcha washed herself in the white light of the Dearann Stone. She asked the goddess to keep Harry and his family safe, no matter what happened. And she said goodbye to this mortal world she would never see again.
As Sorcha finished, Harry pulled to a stop at the edge of the trees. Already Darragh’s mist curled in among the tree trunks and muted the lines of the bare branches. The rest of the long hill was hidden in soft gray. Sorcha looked up, hoping for inspiration. Instead, the first tendrils of terror seeped past Darragh’s magic to embed themselves in her heart. The Dubhlainn Sidhe was waiting, and he was fully armed.
Sorcha turned away from Harry before she couldn’t and opened the door. The wind Darragh had gathered slapped at her. Icy fingers of fog slithered across her face. She stepped from the car and almost collapsed.
“Sorcha?” Harry asked, sounding anxious.
“Fine,” she managed, even as the Dubhlainn Sidhe struck her again, his poison like a spear to her heart.
Hot, sick terror poured over her like hot oil from a battlement. It was only a psychic attack, but the pain shuddered through her.
She heard Harry scramble from the car and wanted to tell him to run. Goddess, how could a person walk with such fear on her shoulders? How could she manage this task? Images sprouted full-blown, not sweet images brought by the Stone she carried, but violent, vile scenes that played in her head until she cringed before them. Her own fairy family, tortured and bleeding, scattered across a sere, dry earth. The fairy children, oh, the children, twisted and keening like Lilly, vacant-eyed, their souls defiled with the Dubhlainn Sidhe’s rage, their bodies shattered from his venom.
She couldn’t hide from such an attack. The Dubhlainn Sidhe didn’t have to see her to batter at her will. But he did have to see her to keep her from the gates. Her only hope was that the trees would hide her movements until the last moment. She stumbled again, her stomach heaving with the poison he unleashed.
“Steady on, girl,” Harry whispered to her, and took her by the elbow to help her up the hill.
She knew she was shaking. She could barely set one foot before the other. It was worse than the violence offered on the plains of faerie by armed hordes of Dubhlainn Sidhe warriors. There was no death here, only madness. It crept in on her, foul fingers of despair that ate away the light.
The trees rose abruptly through the fog, an army that stood in uneven ranks. She slipped through them, wishing she were as insubstantial as the fog. Wishing she could hide here forever, though she knew she would have to step out to face her enemy.
“Darragh,” she whispered, wondering where he was. How he was faring against this attack.
She heard nothing in return, only the sly laughter of a madman on the breeze. She sucked in great lungfuls of air and struggled to walk faster. She clutched the Dearann Stone and prayed it would protect her. But even the Dearann Stone, so far away from its rightful place, seemed to dim before this defilement.
She had to send Harry away. She had to protect him, or his family would be lost. He would be lost, and it would destroy her more surely than any injury the Dubhlainn Sidhe could inflict.
The mortal children. She could hear them now, terrible, soul-emptying cries of loss, of pain, of anguish. She had to get that beast through the gate before he could get back to them. Before he had the chance to make his threat a reality.
“Harry,” she begged, giving him an ineffectual push. “Go. Please.”
The ground was so cold beneath her feet. The shoes they’d forced on her hurt. From one step to the next, she kicked them off, needing the mother earth to fortify her.
“He knows we’re here,” Harry said.
She wanted to warn him again. She couldn’t manage it. The attack was so fierce that her senses were beginning to fail.
Grass beneath her feet. The wind snarling through her hair. The fog slipping down to cover her, to protect her from fairy eyes. Harry walking alongside, his strength unbowed, his hand so gentle it hurt her as he guided her to the end of the trees.
“If I don’t get through…” she rasped.
She felt him startle. “What do you mean?”
Somewhere in that fog, the Dubhlainn Sidhe was focused on her. He was pulling at her soul, as surely as a leech drew blood. He was battering at every defense she had. She was afraid; she was furious; she was weakening.
“Carry it through, Harry,” she begged, never taking her eyes from where the top of the hill should be. “Promise me.”
“Of course,” he said, wrapping an arm around her shoulders.
She wanted to smile. She wanted to thank him. To tell him how she loved him. It was becoming difficult to hold herself together enough to remember how to speak.
Lilly, little Lilly, there in her head, writhing in agony, keening away what was left of her special light, lost to the darkness, sacrificed to the greed of one fairy. Sorcha shuddered with the image. It surrounded her, consumed her, took away the sight of the hill. There was only Lilly, crying out to her with the last, gasping cries of sanity.
“Tell me he’s not really doing that,” Harry begged.
So he’d seen. He’d felt it, even protected as he was.
“Not yet.” One foot in front of the other. Another breath. A prayer to the earth and the goddess and the great Creator Stone to give her the strength to go on. To step out onto the bare rise of the hill, where she could be seen. “We have to find the gate.”
Another searing breath. “Cease, Dubhlainn Sidhe!” she cried in her mind, where he couldn’t locate her. “You befoul the grace of faerie with your attack on the innocent. Run, for fear of your very soul!”
He heard her. He laughed. He crept closer.
“Run, Sorcha!” She heard Darragh’s voice, and knew that he was already on his knees. “I can’t…I can’t hold him….”
It was time, then. She’d run out of protection, run out of time. Separating herself from Harry, she stumbled into a run. He followed her. She closed her eyes and saw the gate before her. All she had to do was lift the Stone before her to have it open. She could barely get her legs to move, couldn’t lift her arm even to save her life. She felt Harry stumble next to her and knew that the herbs had reached their limit. If she didn’t succeed in the next few moments, he would be lost, his mind and heart shattered beneath the power of the fairy evil. And by the goddess, she would not allow that.
From one step to the next, she realized that they’d been wrong. It wouldn’t be enough to capture the Dubhlainn Sidhe. He had to be stopped. He couldn’t have the chance to do what he threatened. They couldn’t allow him to visit his revenge on those children. Because he would. She knew he would, no matter what, as punishment for her challenge.
Taking the life of one of the fair folk was the ultimate crime. Sorcha no longer cared. Her mother the queen would have to understand. And if she did not, Sorcha would gladly pay the price to protect those she loved.
She stumbled, forcing her legs up that hill, pulling air into her tortured lungs, dragging the last bits of light into her mind before madness took her completely. She held on to the Stone, and she held on to Harry, and she ran through the fog, already knowing that her enemy would materialize inside long before she reached the haven of her home.
She felt him nearby, her enemy. She knew it was time. She set the Stone into Harry’s hand and reached down to draw her knife. That sharp, elf-crafted knife that had to protect her.
“Get it through, Harry,” she panted.
“Sorcha, no….”
And then she saw him, the Dubhlainn Sidhe, a shadow in the mist, not more than ten steps away, barring them from the gate, taunting them with the gate. A beautiful fairy with black, black hair that gleamed like a seal’s pelt, and eyes the color of midnight. Milk-pale skin and a lithe, elegant body. One of her own who had given himself over to corruption. He smiled, and that smile sent a shudder through her.
“I will destroy you, Tuatha!” he called out into the twilight of the swirling mist. “Let it go, or I destroy all that you love.”
“You will not stop me!” Sorcha cried out. “And you will, by the goddess, not destroy another living being. So I swear, Dubhlainn Sidhe.”
She saw him lift his hand and felt the strike of it like a bolt of lightning against her head. She staggered and almost fell. She was sweating now, cold and hot, and so weak that her muscles couldn’t remember how to function. Her head shrieked in anguish, in a cacophony of terror and pain. Harry put his hand against her back, and it was the only thing that kept her upright.
Harry. His love. His belief in her, a teacher of small children.
Harry believed she could do it. And so she would do it.
She had no strength left, but somehow she pulled herself upright. She donned the mantle of her rank and faced her enemy.
“Stand aside, Dubhlainn Sidhe,” she commanded, not even recognizing her own voice, hearing the voice of her mother, of her sister Nuala, when she’d led the cavalry in a charge. The voice of power, of command. “The Dearann Stone will return of her own accord, and you will not stop her.”
“Oh, but I will,” he said, his voice slithering through the dimness like a viper.
He began to lift his arm again, attempting to throw his poison directly at Harry. Harry stumbled, but he didn’t fall. He didn’t speak. He just supported her.
“Ah, so you wasted your protection on a mortal,” the fairy drawled. “Precipitate of you, Tuatha. You have none left for yourself, then, do you?”
He actually blew on his fingers, as if cooling them. Sorcha refused to notice. She collected the strength Harry gave her. She gathered her fury, the might born of her ancestors. She curled her fingers tight around the jeweled hilt of her dagger.
“Sorcha, watch out!” Darragh cried, and she saw him at the edge of the mist, stumbling toward her.
The Dubhlainn Sidhe lifted his hand. Sorcha charged him.
He began to laugh. He laughed as he flung another lightning bolt that all but brought her down. He laughed until she ran right into him. Until she lifted her own arm and plunged that sharp knife right into his throat. Until she met him face-to-face, eye to eye, so she could see the surprise, the disbelief, the dawning rage, as his fairy blood pumped out over her wrist and her throat and her chest.
“You will…not…stop…me,” Sorcha gasped with the last of her strength.
She almost made it. She heard Darragh running toward her from the other side of the hill, his gait erratic and slow. She felt Harry approach from behind her, obviously ready to hand the Stone back to her. But she would never see the Stone through the gate.
As he died, the Dubhlainn Sidhe clamped his hand around hers. He clawed at her face. Sorcha struggled, but he’d already taken her energy. She bucked back, kicked, fought, but he had an unbreakable hold on her.
“Do it, Harry,” she begged. “Get it through.”
And then, caught in the embrace of the dying Dubhlainn Sidhe, she suffered his final assault. He died, and in his dying, took Sorcha with him.
The last thing she heard as she began the long fall into darkness was Harry’s voice, so far off.
He would see the world of fairy after all. He would have to bring the Stone home.