Eoin had occasional letters from the southeast, warning of skirmishes with the invaders from over the narrow sea, but the conquest didn’t hurt us greatly in those early years. While the invading Normans settled down and built up Sligo, the surrounding farmers tilled the soil and protected their flocks, fishermen went to sea and sometimes never returned, and the faithful trooped into Eoin’s church on a regular basis, leaving him gifts of food. The local lordling, a pinched-faced third son of little account whose name I’ve long since forgotten, demanded a more substantial share of his people’s harvest, but even he contributed to Eoin in his turn.
“The Lord asks for a tithe,” Eoin explained as I helped him carry vegetables to the root cellar. “He gives us all we have—surely we can give that little back.”
The theology that flowed so readily from the old priest was unfamiliar and perplexing to me, but Eoin insisted that I learn it. “If you’re to pass as my novice, or even a lay brother,” he said, “you must know these things by heart. Even the unlearned know the stories,” he added with a hint of reproach. “How do you propose to walk among them if you don’t even know the Blessed Mother’s name?”
“Margarita?” I guessed.
“Maria. Muire.” He sighed, and shook his head.
The key to all of this knowledge was Eoin’s prized possession, a large book filled with tiny, neat, indecipherable black characters. It was a Bible, he told me, and I must learn to read it. “I won’t ask you to profess the faith,” he said, “but I’ll ask you to render a fair impression.”
And so, every night, once the chores were completed and the prayers were said, I hunched over the massive tome and squinted at the letters in the firelight, trying to make slow sense of their meaning. There was no need for the exercise—though I had come to Eoin without a word of Latin, I could have pulled it from him, just as Mother had given me his tongue—but Eoin seemed to enjoy teaching, and so I plodded on as a child might. The priest proved a patient and apt tutor, explaining the characters and their sounds, turning sounds into concepts, and weaving those concepts into the fuller story he so fervently believed. Sometimes, in his excitement for us to relate passages to each other, he would forgo the Latin lesson entirely for a moment and translate the text himself, looking up periodically to make sure I understood.
Within the year, I had committed the basics of Eoin’s faith to memory, and I could hold my own when he tested me with questions. Knowledge didn’t equate to belief, however—at least not in my case—but I kept my thoughts to myself; faith gave Eoin comfort, especially as he saw his life beginning to draw to its close, and I didn’t want to grieve him. “I’ll be sixty-two this summer,” he told me one afternoon as we tended his garden. He rested with his foot on his spade and grimaced as he unkinked his back. “I don’t know how many more years the Lord will see fit to give me.”
Even after spending months among Eoin’s people, I found it almost inconceivable that he could be a mere eleven years my senior. His body was already failing him. Eoin had seen nothing more than blurs in the distance since childhood, but his near vision had begun to dim, too, making his reading all the more challenging. His joints ached with every change in the weather, and his hands often rested on his lower back, as if he were attempting to buttress his weak scaffolding. A few of his teeth had fallen out; the rest were yellowed and crooked. “I’ll be deaf and blind before they bury me, if I’m lucky,” he joked, and I heard the resignation he tried to mask with laughter.
But Eoin showed me a rough sort of kindness, and I did what I could to ease his burden. I cleaned and polished, taking precautions with his few iron and silver things, and kept his fire going. On his orders, I avoided the village girls, even the plump young woman who flashed come-hither looks at me during Mass. Eoin didn’t need to tell me to avoid the village boys; a quick mental scan of the Sunday crowd had made it clear to me that such advances wouldn’t be welcomed. And so I labored on in unplanned celibacy, wondering to myself what sort of deity would demand that life of his faithful.
I had been surprised at first when Mother didn’t trouble herself with bringing me back to Faerie. True, she had other matters to address and children she liked better than me, but surely, I reasoned, she would miss me eventually. Christmas came and went with no sign of her, however, and then Easter and the summer warmth, and I ceased worrying about the matter. I still hated her for what she had done to Étaín, but with time and thought, my rage had cooled from suicidal to merely simmering. Simply put, I couldn’t beat her, and so I turned my energy to Eoin’s garden and tried to forget her. And aside from the occasional birth, death, storm, or escaped horse, each day rolled on like the one before in pleasant monotony.
The best things always end too soon, however, and this end came with a pounding on the door in the middle of the night.
I rose first from my bed by the hearth—even at midsummer, I appreciated the warmth—and, wrapping my hand in my sleeve for protection, drew back the bolt. A young man stood outside, waiting a few feet away from a tethered horse, which nervously stamped as soon as I appeared in the doorway. “What’s wrong?” I asked, trying to discern the time from the position of the setting moon.
His face was drawn, and he tripped over his tongue in his rush to get the words out. “Something’s attacking my lady, something invisible. Could Father—”
Eoin shuffled up beside me and held his candle aloft. “Niall? What troubles you, my son?”
The man cast his glance back at the horse, obviously eager to be off. “It’s my lady, Father—she’s under attack by something unseen—”
That was enough for the priest. “I’ll gather my things and join you shortly,” he interrupted, and pushed me toward the door. “Coileán will accompany you now.”
I turned back to Eoin, wide-eyed. “Me?”
“Get the others away from her,” he muttered. “If she’s under attack by the Evil One, they’re all in danger.”
I nodded and followed Niall toward his gelding. “He’s not usually like this,” he said, puzzled by the horse’s fear.
“Let me try something,” I offered, then grabbed the leather reins and pulled the horse’s face level with mine. I’d had ample opportunity to practice the enchantment that forced the beasts into submission, but it grew no easier, and this horse in particular wanted to murder me. Still, even he faltered after a moment, and I swung up onto his bare back behind the servant. “Just a trick I learned to calm them,” I lied, anticipating the question. Niall was too worried to press me further, and we rode off toward the small stone tower near the shore where the lordling had brought his young lady wife, a particularly beautiful redhead named Ita. The girl couldn’t be more than sixteen, at least half her husband’s age, but she carried herself well, smiled demurely, and always had a kind word for Eoin. I couldn’t imagine what the trouble was.
We rode up to the gate, and I slid off the horse and headed inside, cringing as the freed beast sprinted for the fields with Niall still clinging to his back. A servant half dragged me to the bedchamber, which rang with muffled cries even through the stone walls and heavy wooden door. As her terrified husband and household watched from the safety of the hall, I cursed under my breath, pushed up my sleeves, and let the servant fling the door open so I could face the alleged demon head-on.
What I saw in the firelit bedchamber threw me for an instant. The room was a disaster, strewn with bits of clothing and items evidently tossed from the dressing table. Ita herself was pinned to the bed by an unseen force, which held her arms above her head and spread her legs wide. Her nightgown was torn and hiked up to her hips, and she sobbed and begged her assailant to stop.
The room stank of magic, and when I applied it properly, I found the source.
“Get off her!” I shouted in Fae, throwing myself at the bed.
My older half brother, who was still invisible to the mortals around us, fell to the floor with the force of my blow. He rose slowly, clutching his head where it had struck the wooden bed, and glared at me. “Coileán?”
“Áedán,” I growled. “Leave her be.”
His forehead wrinkled. “You weren’t using her—”
“She’s not to be used!” I slid over the bed as Ita curled against the headboard, sobbing, and stood between them. “You can’t just . . . just rape her!”
“Why not?” he asked, perplexed and annoyed at the interruption, and clutched at his trousers. “What does it matter to you?”
“It just does,” I said, stepping toward him. “Go home.”
He sighed, then tossed me into the wall with a burst of energy. “I’m not finished yet, stupid,” he replied, and began to crawl back onto Ita, who shrieked when his fingers grabbed her ankles.
I picked myself up and closed my eyes until the room ceased spinning, then looked about for a weapon. The girl’s cries crescendoed, and distantly, I heard her plead with me for help.
And then I saw the lordling’s dagger on the dressing table.
Wrapping my hand in my sleeve, I pulled the steel hilt free of its ornate leather sheath. The blade caught the firelight, reflecting red flashes into my eyes, and I seized the opening.
Before Áedán knew what hit him, I leapt onto the bed, flipped him onto his back, and plunged the dagger into his throat. He gasped and gurgled, staring at me in shock, and I pulled the blade free. “I told you to leave her alone,” I said, waiting for the healing to begin.
I was still waiting five minutes later when Eoin arrived and closed the door behind him. “What happened here?” he asked, bending over Áedán’s now visible body.
Ita’s husband had carried her off some moments before, but I had barely noticed her leave. I stood by the bed, the dripping dagger in my hand. “It wasn’t supposed to kill him,” I mumbled, staring at the corpse. “Just hurt him. It . . . he should have healed . . .”
Eoin pried the dagger from my fist and peered at his prize. “Steel,” he said softly. “You know how long it takes you, son.” He put the blade on the bed and gently pulled me away. “What happened?”
“He raped her. Ita. I . . . he hid himself, but I . . . I saw . . .”
At that moment, the touch of Eoin’s hand on my shoulder was the only thing tethering me to reality. “You know him?” he asked.
I nodded. “Áedán. My brother.”
The priest sighed and tightened his grip on me. “Be strong, Coileán. I’ll take care of this,” he murmured, and led me out of the room, past the staring throng.
They burned Áedán’s body that night and scattered the ashes on the sea. The next morning, Niall brought me the bloody dagger. “My lord wanted you to have it,” he explained. “He sends his thanks.”
I carefully took it from him, and Eoin moved between us so Niall wouldn’t see my reaction. “And your lady?” he asked.
“Resting,” the servant replied, then hesitated before asking, “Father . . . why would a demon take such a . . . a form?”
Eoin covered the young man’s hands with his own and stared into his eyes. “Never underestimate the Evil One, my son. Not for a moment.”
When the door closed, he turned back to find me with my bare hand wrapped around the hilt, my teeth gritted against the pain, my flesh smoking.
I bore those deep scars for many years. In the right light, I can still see them.
Ita returned to her husband’s bed, but it was obvious that the first son she bore him wasn’t his. The baby was beautiful, fat and red-cheeked and topped with his mother’s red hair, but his eyes were Titania’s in a smaller face, dark against his parents’ blue. Though unaware of his father’s name, they called him Áed. The villagers whispered about the demon child, but Eoin chided them, baptized the boy, and then quietly asked me what was to be done with him.
“He’s half fae,” I told Eoin. “Like me. Áedán was full-blooded.”
Eoin’s brows knit in thought. “So, the boy will be like you in . . . all respects?”
“Probably. And he’s my nephew, after all . . . I should look after him, shouldn’t I?”
“That would be wise,” he said, but lowered his voice. “Coileán, for his sake—”
“I know, I know,” I interrupted. “I won’t tell him the truth. Not now.”
Eoin frowned. “Not ever. The boy’s future depends upon him carrying his father’s name.”
I pointed to my ever youthful face. “He’s going to know something’s wrong eventually,” I reminded him, and the priest slowly shook his head.
Ita’s husband may have been nothing more than an ignorant Norman, but she was a local girl, well versed in the land’s lore. More important, she was clever beyond her years, and so I wasn’t surprised when I realized that she knew there was something odd about me. I was initially surprised that she kept the matter quiet, but then there was the matter of her baby.
When Áed was a few months old, Ita came to me in the middle of the night with him bundled against her chest. “Strange things happen around him,” she whispered in the stillness of the empty church. “Objects move. Things appear, disappear. I . . . I don’t know what to do,” she said, rocking the sleeping child. “Please, Brother, is there anything . . .”
I tried to concoct a reassuring lie, but something told me the girl was strong enough for a form of the truth. “Strange things will always happen around him,” I murmured, stroking his fine hair as he slept in her arms. “He can’t help it right now. When he’s older, when he . . . well, when he understands what he’s doing,” I said, struggling for just enough of an explanation, “be kind with him, but be firm. And if that fails, bring him to me, and I . . . I’ll see what I can do.”
She nodded in the darkness. “Is he a danger to us?”
“Yes,” I admitted, “but he’ll be less so if he knows you love him.”
“I do,” she softly replied, glancing down at his face, then met my eyes. “Brother Coileán,” she began, but hesitated.
I could hear the unspoken thought: The thing that did this to me, the thing that fathered my Áed—you knew it, didn’t you? How? What was it? And what are you?
I shook my head. “You don’t want to ask me those things.”
Ita nodded again, resigned. “If something should go wrong . . . will you promise to take care of my son?”
I did, and she slipped back into the night, carrying her uncanny child with her.
As the years passed, I took it upon myself to look after the boy. When he reached the age of four, Ita sent him to Eoin once a week under the guise of improving his religious education. In truth, the priest passed him to me, and I tried to stress to him the importance of keeping his talents secret. Poor Áed was young and impulsive, but he meant well, and he dearly loved his parents and his baby brother. Still, I found myself explaining to him that he shouldn’t make the unsavory parts of his dinner vanish, that toys shouldn’t move of their own accord, and that even though his mother missed the summer flowers, the climbing roses weren’t meant to bloom in the snow.
Sligo burned, the skirmishes came and went, and Áed continued his weekly visits. “You’re very special,” I told him one day when he was a solemn nine-year-old, his baby face beginning to sharpen into contours I recognized all too well. His mother had caught him eating fresh apples long out of season. “Not everyone will think that’s a good thing. You must be cautious.”
He sat beside me on the stone altar steps that morning with his chin in his palms, frowning at the distant door, and I studied him in silence for a moment. “What’s troubling you, Áed?”
When he faced me, his eyes threatened to brim over. “I heard the cook talking yesterday when she didn’t know I was there. She said I wasn’t my father’s son.”
I kept my face still. “Is that so?”
Áed nodded miserably. “And I looked later, like you told me, and the other servants think so, too. And . . .” He sniffed, fighting back tears. “I didn’t want to ask Father, but . . . but I . . .”
I glanced away, giving him his privacy while he wiped his face dry, and wished for his sake that he’d been born with wisdom enough to override his curiosity. “Áed,” I said quietly when the worst of the sniffing had subsided, “if I tell you a secret, will you swear to me that you’ll never repeat it?”
“I swear,” he mumbled, watching me with red eyes.
I took a moment to choose my words, then murmured, “Your father—your true father—did a very bad thing to your mother. You were born from that. Do you understand?” He nodded, though his lip quivered. “That doesn’t make you bad,” I continued, lifting his chin. “But you should know that your father was . . . special, and that’s why you are, too.”
“Do you know him?” he whispered.
“I did.”
Áed’s brow began to wrinkle. “He’s dead, then?”
“Yes,” I replied after a moment’s pause, trying not to upset the boy. “He was hurting your mother. I tried to help her.” I released him and waited for the inevitable next question, but then I felt the faint sensation of Áed clumsily searching my thoughts for the answer. His eyes widened, and I looked away. “I didn’t mean to kill him,” I said. “But in truth, Áed, the man you call your father is a far better father than Áedán would ever have been.”
“Áedán,” he mumbled, and my gut wrenched.
“He was my brother,” I said, and Áed looked up in surprise. “I promised your mother I’d keep you safe, and I will. But Áed,” I added, reaching over to muss his hair, “for the love of all that’s holy, think before you act! Ripe apples, boy? With the fields just now blooming? What were you thinking?”
He flashed a mischievous half smile. “That I was hungry?”
I couldn’t stay cross with Áed for long, but his father’s patience was growing thin, and Ita knew it. She had given him three more sons and a daughter since Áed’s birth, but the fact remained that he was her first child and the lordling’s presumptive heir, despite his dubious origins. To make matters worse, Áed shared few of his father’s interests. His brothers, like their father, were the martial type—budding swordsmen from a young age, trained on horseback from earliest childhood—but Áed had a queerly painful reaction to iron, and no horse in his father’s stable would suffer him for more than a moment. He read and studied voraciously and had a pleasant enough voice, and his mother dropped hints that perhaps the boy should be trained for the priesthood. But her husband, who grew more concerned by the season for the well-being of his true sons, feared even then that Áed might find a way to return and steal an inheritance.
Ita told me all of this through tears. As she had done ten years before, she and Áed rode to me one night after the moon was down, but this time, the boy’s arm was in a sling, and his face bore fading traces of bruises. “He tried to make it look like an accident,” she said, holding her son close. “The old well in the courtyard . . . Áed caught himself halfway down, but if he had landed . . .”
I took the shaken boy from her and rested my hand on his broken arm, dulling his pain. “He will heal,” I began, but Ita cut me off.
“Can you take him somewhere safe?” she begged. “Please? He’s in danger if he stays here, and I can’t . . . I can’t . . . just until—”
Until my husband dies, she tried to say, but I saved her the effort. “Yes, of course.”
By then, Eoin had joined us, and he watched Ita weep with a grave face. “What do we tell your husband?” he asked. “That the boy ran away?”
She wrung her hands. “If he thinks Áed is still alive, he’ll come after him, I know it, he’ll hunt him down . . .”
I gripped her cloaked shoulders to calm her hysterics. “I’ll give you a body,” I murmured, holding on to her until her breathing calmed. “Bury it. He’ll never know the difference.”
Her eyes were wide and wet, but she nodded her assent.
There was a rotten piece of timber in Eoin’s field, the remains of a lightning-blasted stump of about Áed’s weight. I threw a glamour over it, giving it the boy’s face and form, and added deep gashes to his body. “He ran away, and a wild animal found him,” I told Ita, presenting her with the double. She paled and backed away, but I said, “It’s harmless, and no one will ever know the lie.”
“I’ll conduct the service on the morrow,” Eoin assured her. “Your boy will be safe.” He turned to me and asked, “You’ll go with him, Coileán?”
“Yes, of course.” Áed looked up at me with frightened eyes, and I patted his uninjured shoulder.
The old priest grunted. “Then I’ve sent you down south with a message, and I’ll look for your return.” He pointed to Ita’s horse and added, “Time’s wasting. Let’s get it lashed on.”
I did as he asked, holding the horse in check one last time, then waited while Ita embraced her son. “Be good,” she whispered, pushing his unruly hair from his eyes. “Do as Brother Coileán says. I love you, my Áed.”
I waited until she had ridden out of sight before taking the boy in hand. “I’ll come back when I can and see if it’s safe,” I told Eoin.
He nodded curtly and said, “Don’t be away too long, now.” With that, he squeezed my shoulder, then stepped into his house and closed the door.
I looked down at Áed and tried to smile. “We’ll have to see your grandmother, I’m afraid,” I explained, “but after that, there’s a lovely little house by a lake. You’ll be safe there. And here,” I said, placing a hand on his temple until he looked up in bewilderment. “You’ll need the tongue,” I said in Fae. “Understand?” Áed nodded and smiled back at me, and with that, I opened a gate to Faerie in the middle of the road and pulled my nephew through.
I had aimed for an area slightly outside Mother’s throne room, but to my dismay, we stepped out into the middle of the cavernous space—which had become a pink crystal construction in my absence, I noted—and found her holding court. She paused mid-sentence, rose, and marched off the rose-colored dais toward us. “Coileán,” she snarled, and the hair on my arms stood on end with the force of the magic building around her.
I quickly pushed Áed behind my back. “Mother. It’s been a time.”
She stood on tiptoe and grabbed the front of my tunic, pulling my face to a level with her flashing dark eyes. “What have you done?” she murmured, her voice soft but frigid.
Resistance seemed like a bad idea at that moment. “I brought you your grandson,” I replied, trying to keep my voice steady. “Áedán’s boy. Áed,” I said, gently pulling him forward, “this is your grandmother.”
There was terror in his eyes, but he bowed clumsily and held his tongue.
Mother released me for the moment and turned her attention to the boy. “He has Áedán’s look,” she said, taking Áed’s face in her delicate hands. “Not his hair, not at all, but the look . . . yes, I see it.” She pulled back slightly and stooped to look into Áed’s eyes. “Are you a good boy?” she asked.
He nodded after a moment’s pause. “Yes, my lady,” he whispered, “I . . . I try.”
“Hmm. And this?” she inquired, touching his sling.
“I fell and broke my arm, my lady.”
Mother smiled again, then looked back at me, all pretense gone. “I know you killed Áedán.”
“I won’t deny it,” I told her, “but it was an accident. He was raping the boy’s mother, and I tried—”
She held up her hand to silence me. “Rape, you say?”
The room continued to hold its breath, watching our reunion play out. “He came at her invisibly and took her against her will,” I replied. “She was frightened and in pain. I tried to stop him.”
“You did, obviously.” Mother smiled down at Áed again and stroked his hair. “So, Coileán, you think what Áedán did was . . . wrong?”
“Yes, Mother.”
She weighed this for a moment, then patted Áed’s cheek. “Well, it’s said that sons are like their fathers, and we can’t take the chance of displeasing you again, can we?”
She snapped, and little Áed fell lifeless at her feet.
Before I could lunge at her, Mother’s guards were on me, and she took my chin in her hand. “Oh, Coileán,” she sighed, “I have so much planned for you.”
I should have known better than to return to Faerie. I should have grabbed Áed and fled with him to the ends of the earth, and we could have passed the years in relative peace. I should have known that Mother would know of Áedán’s death and my hand in it, and that she wouldn’t forgive me for killing a child she preferred. I should have anticipated that she had been planning my punishment for the best part of a decade.
For fifty years, I sat in a gray-walled room with only a skylight to let me mark the days. I could produce food and water, but the bind Mother placed around my prison kept me from escaping. I saw no one, spoke to no one, and heard nothing but my own thoughts and the voices of the dead. To stave off madness, I produced vellum, ink, and a quill, and I began to write down what I remembered of Eoin’s precious book, over and over and over again.
When she finally released me from my hell, the piles of vellum reached the ceiling, and she incinerated them all with the flick of a finger. “Go where you will, I have no use for you,” was all she said, and then I was left to my own devices.
I made my way back to the meadow of my youth, hoping to find solace in the familiar, but all I found was a fire-charred shell where my home had been. The lake was choked with weeds, the birds had vanished, and a cold wind blew through the high grass. I wrapped my cloak around me against the chill and surveyed the ruins of my childhood one last time, then changed my clothing and turned my back on my homeland.
Eoin’s church remained, but I knew without asking that Eoin was long gone.
I wandered through the little village, which had grown larger in my absence, then made the hike to a new monastery a few miles away to seek information about the priest’s end. My father’s monastery, an old farmer told me through suspicious eyes, had burned years ago.
The abbot, old, bald, and rust-bearded, welcomed me into his cell and listened to the story I invented about living in the village as a boy and coming home for the first time in years. He nodded along, and when I ceased talking, he smiled and said, “Father Eoin died when I was a boy, my son. You would never have known him.” One thin eyebrow rose fractionally. “Unless, that is, you’re the man who took my brother away.”
I kept my expression neutral. “Your brother?”
“My eldest brother, Áed,” the abbot replied, and I traced Ita’s features in his lined face. “I was five when we buried him,” he said quietly, “but Mother told us the truth when Father died. Are you the man?”
I nodded silently, seeing Áed’s open, unseeing eyes.
The abbot’s face creased into a warm smile. “And my brother, how does he fare abroad?”
“He fares well,” I heard myself say in a passing impression of the truth. “He fares well, and he sends his love.”
The lie was, I decided, a kindness.
The abbot—Kevin was his name—was gracious enough to show me to a cell for the night. The room was drafty, and the bedding stank, but after my imprisonment, hearing voices in the corridor and rats in the walls was heavenly. “If you need help, we might be in need of an assistant,” the abbot offered. “We’ve produced several beautiful Bibles—do you write, by chance?”
I thanked him and told him I would consider the matter, then settled down to sleep.
For three months, I shared the brothers’ food, ground their inks, and sharpened their quills. I prepared vellum—in truth, I’d take a hide over a horse any day—and tended the garden, and I sat quietly in the back of their chapel at prayers, contemplating the candlelight and remembering Eoin’s voice as it rose and fell when he read. Eventually, I was given some practice pages and instructed to copy, and when the brothers were satisfied with my hand, I joined them at their painstaking labor, copying thick books one cramped letter at a time. The work was largely mindless, but I craved companionship after so many years of solitude.
Half a year passed before the bishop sent a messenger requesting my presence. “His Grace wishes to meet you outside the town tonight,” the abbot told me, frowning as he rolled the note in his hands. “He didn’t state the cause, but he knew your name.”
I didn’t like the summons, but one did not simply ignore a bishop, and so I found myself standing in a field east of Sligo that night, watching warily as a man in a dark hooded robe walked up the path to join me.
“Your Grace?” I asked when he drew within hailing distance, puzzled at his appearance. I had anticipated more ornate apparel befitting his station, but the man I presumed to be the bishop had dressed like the poorest monk.
He paused a few feet away from me and pushed back his hood, revealing a well-lined face in the moonlight. I could make out pale, bushy eyebrows and a fat nose, but his eyes were deep pits of shadow, and his voice was unfamiliar. “Are you the one called Coileán?” he asked.
“I am.”
“Of the king’s court or the queen’s?”
I froze, considering my options, then settled for the truth. “The queen’s, though she and I aren’t speaking for the foreseeable future. How did you know—” I began, but before I could finish the thought, the old bishop pulled a long stick from within his sleeve and pointed it at my face.
“Die, devil,” he whispered to the night, and I smelled the unmistakable odor of magic.
I dodged the lightning that exploded from the stick, then ducked and appeared behind him. Wrapping my arm around his throat, I pulled the bishop to the ground and set fire to the stick in his hand, which fell into the wet grass and began to smolder. “Who are you?” I hissed, tightening my chokehold. “What do you want? Did she send you?”
“Arcanum,” he gasped. “To protect—”
I saw his hand reaching for a backup stick in his other sleeve, and I snapped his neck before he could pull it free. When he was dead, I burned his body and let the wind take the leavings, and then I made my way back to my cell.
The abbot must have seen my face the next morning, as he was wise enough not to ask.
About a week later, I was heading into the garden when I heard a weak cry for help. Rounding the corner of the barn, I found a wizened old man huddled against the stone, dew soaked and shaking. “What’s wrong?” I asked, crouching beside him. “Are you hurt? Wait here, I’ll get the abbot . . .”
The man feebly pulled on my robe until I ceased my attempt to rise. “She sent me away,” he croaked, panting as if exhausted by the declaration. “Told me to . . .”—he gasped, straining for air—“to seek Coileán for help. Please . . . please, I don’t want to die . . .”
I took the changeling’s ancient face in my hands and smiled sadly. “You don’t want to live like this,” I murmured, and stopped his heart.
The next morning, four of the bishop’s associates arrived, reporting him missing and seeking his last known whereabouts. They asked the abbot if they might speak with me.
I smelled the faint odor of their hidden wands, calculated the odds, and slipped out the back of the chapel.
For the next three centuries, I ran from wizards and changelings alike, but somehow, they continued to catch up with me. Some nights, I see their faces when I close my eyes, the ones I killed in self-preservation and the ones I killed in mercy.
Sometimes, I forget which are which.