Selena crept up the stairs of the palace, allowing her fingers to brush against the warm stone walls as she headed toward Badb’s room. The palace was eerily quiet as the gods within slept and her footsteps echoed on the hard floor. She reached Badb’s door and took a deep breath, wondering what the goddess would even tell her now that she was standing in the hallway prepared to beg for answers she already knew Badb wouldn’t provide.
Selena rubbed her palms against her pink flannel pajamas as she deliberated whether she should knock or just go back to her room, but the door opened anyway and Badb stood on the other side, sporting her blonde hair again and trying to stifle a yawn.
“Selena, it’s the middle of the night,” Badb complained.
“Is it?” Selena asked. “What does night mean when we live in a world that doesn’t actually rotate around the sun?”
Badb turned around and gestured toward her window. “It means it’s dark outside. And I want to be sleeping.”
“Then let me in and answer my questions about Morgan,” Selena demanded.
Badb stifled another yawn and waved her off. “I gave her the Sword. She’s in her room. Asleep.”
“You know that’s not what I mean, Badb,” Selena responded angrily. She pushed past the war goddess and entered her room, collapsing grumpily on the edge of her bed. But Badb wasn’t the only one who was tired. Selena hadn’t been able to fall asleep at all.
Badb groaned and closed her door. “Morgan is harmless,” she insisted. “As Nuada’s heir, she’s our new queen, and you should get over your jealousy, which is completely unfounded anyway.”
Selena shook her head quickly and folded her arms defiantly. “I trust Cameron. I don’t trust her. She’s going to do something… I don’t know. I can’t explain it, but she’s going to do something to pull us apart. That’s the way it’s always been and always will be!”
Selena gasped and blinked at her friend. Sometimes, like now, when she allowed her emotions to overrule her, these thoughts and words just tumbled through her and surprised her with their truth.
Badb sat beside her and put a hand over hers. “I have to admit,” she said quietly, “I was a bit surprised to find traces of… something unnerving in Morgan. But she’s not even aware of it, and I refuse to believe that Fate would have intervened to…”
Badb bit her lip and lowered her pale gray eyes. Selena wanted to beg her to finish her sentence, but it wouldn’t work. Badb had given her word to someone and that promise obviously involved her and Cameron.
“What does Cameron think about her?” Badb finally asked.
“Once I calmed down and explained why she upset me so much, he admitted he’d felt something he didn’t particularly like about her, but that’s all he’d say. He was too worried I’d get worked up again,” Selena answered.
Badb nodded and kept her eyes on the floor. Selena had always liked the rug in her room, the pretty Kelly green and gold fibers woven together in what Badb had once told her was her symbol – the mark of the Mórrígna. Selena had asked her if it ever bothered her to be virtually indistinguishable from her sisters in legends, part of a triune that couldn’t exist without the others and Badb had only hugged her and told her it was the truth: none of the sisters could exist without the others.
There was a love and bond between them that could have only been born from millennia of sisterhood, and at times, Selena envied them.
“Cameron isn’t psychic but he’s so powerful,” Badb said. “He knew he’d found Nuada’s heir as soon as she opened the door, and he sensed something about her that made him want to grab you and disappear. He hid it behind jokes about coming back to the palace for… well, you know, and I’m sure he would have made good on it, but that wasn’t why Cameron started joking about sex in the first place. He wanted you both away from her.”
“Why?” Selena whispered. “Badb, you have to tell me. It will kill us… you know it will.”
Badb nodded again and picked nervously at her own pajamas, not pink but a soft, baby blue that made her gray eyes seem darker. “I wish I could, Selena. But if I break my promise now, it will have disastrous consequences for you both, not just me. You and Cameron have to do this on your own. I can only help you once you’ve uncovered the truth.”
“Badb,” Selena groaned softly, letting her forehead fall on her friend’s shoulder. She didn’t know how to beg for help because she didn’t know what she needed help with.
A light tapping at Badb’s door surprised her and she lifted her head. Badb sighed and called out, “Aonghus, why are you awake, too?”
The door opened and the handsome love god entered, closing the door quietly behind him. His gaze immediately settled on Selena and there was an expression there she didn’t often see from the self-assured, and at times, cocky god. She thought it looked an awful lot like sympathy.
“I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone outside of our pantheon who knows our legends and stories as well as you, Selena,” he said. “I am just as bound as the others, but…”
“Aonghus,” Badb warned. “Go back to your room.”
Aonghus shook his head slowly. “We can’t let Morgan remember. It won’t happen again, Badb.”
“And if you keep talking, it could be construed as interfering, so get out!” Badb hissed.
Aonghus kept his focus on Selena. “Just remember, Selena. Our myths are often just that: stories that contain pieces of our lives, but they are stories written by men. If you search your own history to unravel your present, don’t expect these stories to represent reality. They contain only hints of our truths.”
“Thank you, Aonghus,” Badb snapped. “Now go.”
Aonghus waved her off and told her she was being overprotective as usual. Badb answered him in a language Selena couldn’t speak. She assumed it was ancient Gaelic, and if Badb was foregoing English to argue with the love god, she was either really pissed off or just really cranky when awakened in the middle of the night. Selena thought it was probably a combination of the two.
Not being able to follow the argument, she quickly lost interest and went back to her own room where Cameron was waiting for her. He sat in their bed with only a nearby lamp turned on, looking worried but she didn’t think it was because she hadn’t been in bed when he’d awakened. He probably knew she’d gone to Badb’s room, and she suspected he was troubled by the same thoughts that concerned her now.
Selena sat beside him and put her arms around him, her soul stirring restlessly because Morgan Honeywell slept in a room above them, and for some reason no one could explain, the heir they’d been searching for, the woman who was supposed to help save the Otherworld and the future of the Tuatha Dé was an enemy far more sinister than any god who’d attempted to kill her or abduct her.
Cameron kissed the top of her head and pulled her closer. “Let’s leave,” he whispered. “Tonight. I can hide you, Selena. I can protect you. I will.”
Selena swallowed and closed her eyes. The temptation to run away with him was overwhelming. “I’m not a goddess yet,” she whispered back. “If you hide me on Earth, I’ll keep aging, and I’ll be dead in sixty years while you remain the same.”
“Then I’ll find Mithra and let him kill me,” Cameron said seriously.
Selena sighed and looked up at him. “I don’t think you’d end up in Findias if you let Mithra subsume your power. You’d cease to exist. And I’d be alone.”
“Good point,” Cameron acknowledged. “Then I’ll let Thor kill me.”
“He won’t kill you just because you ask him to.”
Cameron shrugged at her. “They’ll defend their new Asgard. Even if they move, I’ll find it and invade.”
“Would you stop plotting ways to die?” Selena snapped.
“What else are we supposed to do?” Cameron asked helplessly. “We can’t stay here. Not now. Not with her.”
“How is she connected to us? Can you tell?”
Cameron loosened one arm from around her and ran his fingers through his hair. “I don’t know. She’s… there’s something in her that’s just evil, Selena. We found the Sword. We can find the Cauldron on our own. You don’t need Badb and the others to become the next Dian Cécht, just the Cauldron. And come on: who do I have to off to get that thing? Perun? This should be easy.”
“First of all, you should know better than to say something like that,” Selena scolded. “And secondly, the Norse have probably taken it from the Slavs after losing the Sword.”
“I burned Asgard once,” Cameron said. “I’ll do it again. I’ll make sure we’re together forever, Selena. You won’t be taken away from me again.”
Cameron blinked at her then bit his lip, that sense of familiarity returning with these unfamiliar words and feelings that came so naturally. But Selena understood him perfectly well. She didn’t need any god to tell her what secrets lay hidden within them. Cameron belonged to her and she belonged to him and no one would separate them again.
“Ok,” Selena whispered. “Let’s find my Cauldron and let them fight their own war without us.”
Cameron kissed her and grabbed her hands as she said a silent farewell to the Otherworld. From now on, she and Cameron were destined to roam only the Earth. They would become gods without a home.