Or unless such a thing could be reversed.
“We are one.” Effie spoke aloud the steward’s words. “It is a simple truth not much thought on these days. Our blood and history are shared. And so are our auras. It is the basis of all Fey Craft.”
The Barrow Witch’s eyes widened. Effie saw a hint of doubt creep into them as the world around her burst into flame. The hooded crows took wing, a whirlwind of black and brown feathering against the flicker of purple and blue fire. Their flapping beat back the crackling blaze and buffeted Effie with a cool breeze.
Shoots of gnarled bramble sprang up around the stanes. Their barbs were sharp as steel. They dripped with a sickly yellow ichor. The bramble wove together, forming a thick web overhead. The crows squawked and fluttered in its wake. Where the shoots closed in a tangled mesh, scores of the birds disappeared.
The light of the sun followed. The web of bramble became an oppressive weight that hung down like the ceiling of a cave. Dripping yellow ichor kissed the ground. The grass sizzled and died.
Effie barely noticed. She had lost sight of the Barrow Witch, but whatever Fey Craft the Sidhe Bhreige used to present herself in this dream state mattered little. Effie had to focus on the pain of her wounds, the real wounds she had suffered from the burst of stardust. She had to wake herself, as the sharp scent of Salt of Hartshorn had in Aberdeen.
The ground at her feet turned to water. She plunged into its depths. The shock of it made her gasp, and she gulped in a mouthful and choked. Her arms flailed. Her legs kicked. The water tasted putrid. It was thick with peat and decaying root and weed.
She scolded herself. The pain, focus on it. She stopped struggling and let herself sink. She had no need to breathe. Not anymore.
A dull ache spread along her back. Its throbbing seemed a distant figment of her imagination. She pulled at the sensation, and it started to burn.
Vines lashed onto her arms and legs. They slid around her like eels. She let them yank her limbs and slice through her flesh. That pain meant nothing. It wasn’t real, only the effects of the Barrow Witch’s dream-like glamour.
Underwater, the world turned pitch black. The darkness helped her concentrate. She pulled at the burning that ran along her arms and across her chest, stoking it like she would a hearth fire. Its bite grew sharper, but still she did not wake.
She knew the young orphaned lass she had once been, cold and frail and lost in the world, would have panicked. The woman she had grown to be these past years yearned to rail against the Barrow Witch’s tricks, to rage alone even as friends surrounded her. But she was no longer either of those past selves. They had been born of mistrust, and she had finally learned a simple truth. Better yet, she had come to believe in it. She was not alone and never had been.
Her blood had given her that gift since the moment of her birth.
A new thought came to her. Straining, she listened. The sound came from a great distance at first. But as she focused on its rhythm, it neared. An inhale. An exhale. Other sounds joined the breathing—the creak of leather harnesses, the stomp of boots trying to warm cold feet, and the quiet murmur of concerned voices.
Effie focused on them all. Her bodily pain returned with a fierce intensity. It made her cringe and cry out. A gentle hand found her leg, the pressure meant to keep her still. The touch, warm and caring, yanked her from the dream. Her eyes snapped open.
“Effie.” Gaelyph’s voice drifted to her as her vision focused.
She wheezed through a raw throat. The hand belonged to the warden. He pulled it back and studied her with a concerned gaze. She ignored him. She didn’t have time to be thankful. She hadn’t time to debate her intentions. Caledon lay next to her, and if she had any chance to save him, she dared not focus on anything else.
Delving into the steward, she sought through the mire of his aura, peeling back the sense of him layer by layer until she found a spark of life. The steward himself had taught her how to accomplish such a feat. He had guided her to do the same with Jack Canonbie. Her grandfather had also done the same, all those years ago. Blood Craft, she had assumed the trick to be—something foul and wicked. But she understood now what it meant to be of a people, one with shared blood and gifts of great power born of community.
What power that could lend.
“Wh…what are you doing?” The warden stammered the question. His eyes widened. “You cannot!”
Effie barely heard the words. She had been right. She had surmised the Barrow Witch’s fears correctly. The steward’s life force glowed like an ember, but something shrouded it, dampening its vigor. The taint of the Unseily Court.
She plucked at the shroud. But it was like plucking threads from a scrap of cloth—pluck too many strands, and nothing would remain. The steward’s life force dimmed as she worked, coming ever closer to winking out.
She had been right about that as well. Clara Bowman had said the Fey Craft of creating Unseily involved consuming the blood of innocent fey. It made a perverse sense that its reversal would likewise require as great a cost. Oddly, the knowledge did not upset her. She no longer mistrusted. She would place faith in her friends and welcome the faith they placed in her. She was ready. All it would take was her life.
Reaching within, she delved to the core of her own being. An ember flickered there, similar to the steward’s. Its pulse was not as great as it had once been; its heat would barely rival that of a candle. It had shrunk to nothing more than a speck and seemed as if the slightest puff of wind would snuff it out.
She hoped it would be enough. Jack Canonbie’s ember had been as faint, and it had proven sufficient. Her body trembled at the memory. It came to her in a sadness of what might have been.
Bracing herself, she ripped at the steward’s shrouded ember, snuffing out all that was tainted, pulling loose the final threads. At the same time, she plucked free her own ember and shoved it into the steward.
28
Effie did not expect to ever wake again. She had nothing left to sustain her. She had given up her life force, her ember, to save Caledon. The choice had been easily made, and her certainty unflinching. She had not allowed herself any hope of rescue or revival. There was no need. She was content. She had done, in a sense, the same that her grandfather, Arnwyrd, had done so many years before. She had made a choice to save one life over another. That he had chosen to take a steward’s life, and she to save one, brought on her a small amount of irony.
She would never learn how the Seily Court would judge her, nor the empire. She only hoped both survived long enough for there to be such a judgement.
Water babbled over stone. She cocked her ear to it, noticing for the first time that the earth felt damp and soft beneath her. Thin muck sluiced through her fingers as she clutched her hands into fists. Her head pounded. Her throat was parched. She wondered at both and blinked, startled, as if the memory of such sensations were a foreign thing.
A stone wall lay near her feet. Its height was slight and ran in a broken line before ending in a jagged gap. The breach allowed her sight of the river where the water lapped along a reedy bank.
Leather and wool rustled. A figure dropped to a knee beside her. The man’s face was shadowed, but she would recognize its shape anywhere. He no longer wore his arm in a sling but kept the limb loosely pressed against his side.
“Conall!” She sprang up and buried her face into his dark curls. She ignored the pounding in her head and ache of her shoulders, though neither felt as sharp as she thought they should. Running her arms around his coat, she clung to his warmth. Tears blossomed in her eyes. A part of her refused to believe him real, but no dream or memory could ever replace him so fully.