Page 134 of Ulune's Daughter

I flutter down onto the beach and walk along it, wet sand crunching between my toes. I stretch my senses toward the wooded hills and the caves beneath them where a sea nymph once made her lair. I don’t feel any lingering magic there. Instead, the surrounding water tugs and tugs at me, hungry.

Angry.

There’s a curdled, bitter fury here that the passing centuries have not quenched. It spits and snarls beneath the waves, rising in unpredictable, unexplainable currents and whirlpools. It’s a fury I both fear and understand. It’s a woman’s fury.

An answering rage rises in my own breast. I have known wrongs at the hands of men. My mind remembers; my body remembers; my blood remembers. The youngest didn’t disappear. I died in an orgy of blood and screams. I died cursing the bright fae who rose against me and the dark fae who didn’t come to my aid. I died spitting and clawing and fighting.

I remember.

I remember their faces. Pale skin and high cheekbones and lips thinned in hatred. Eyes flashing oak brown and holly red and the silver of Nimue’s children. Flowing hair in black and red and blond.

I focus on the blond and silver. Darwin.

My stomach clenches and I spew an unlovely stream of wine and chocolate and extremely good seafood stew across the sand.

No, not Darwin. Darwin’s younger than my mortal form. These faces bear the unmistakable marks of centuries. My awakened mind struggles to piece together the passage of time, but this was long ago. Names rise in my mind like bile in my throat. Dáithi, Darwin’s ancestor. Ferran, who lusted after my crown as much as my body. Odhrán the Traitor, who unleashed a sleeping curse on my lands. Vile Ruadhán, who cut my consorts’ throats as they slept. Dominik Iron Hand, the last to violate me as his poisonous hand dug through my ribs to tear out my heart.

And the name of the man, the monster, who ordered it all: Gwyn ap Nudd. The White King who so hated Faery’s darkness that when he couldn’t destroy it, he found a way to make it suffer for eternity. Even if it meant breaking his oath of peace with the Badbh. Even if it meant his own slow doom: hardening year by year into one of the Great Oaks whose branches crown his brow.

I dig my claws into the sand. It’s not enough. The Mother is not the only one who judges. She is not the only one entitled to vengeance. She has given me her weapon.

I will use him well.

With a scream that could be raven or woman, I launch into the night sky.

I do not need Didrane’s rune to lead me into Faery. My blood remembers the way. The Mists my sisters have drawn around their lands after my rape and murder cannot hide their courts from me.

Brangwy and Kathu meet me at the border of my lands and Cyfnos Glas: Kathu’s Twilight Court. The river that runs through Ceòfuar ends in a moss-fringed pool where the pine forests of my court give way to the larch and cypress of hers. Brangwy and Kathu sit on the moss, their feather cloaks pooled around them, their bare feet dangling in the pool. Three obsidian cups sit on the moss between them. A huge black creature lies against Brangwy’s side, its head down and its legs drawn under its barrel body. Brangwy’s red claws stroke over its shaggy fur as I approach. Its eyes are closed; blood-stained tusks poke out on either side of its muzzle. The Black Boar of Lleuad Gwaed. Brangwy’s consort.

“Sister,” Kathu says. “In war or peace, you’re welcome on my lands.”

“Sister,” I say, returning her greeting. “I thank you for your hospitality. In war or peace, you’re welcome on my lands.”

Brangwy kicks her feet in the water. “You want me to say it, too. Don’t you?”

Kathu’s eyes, deeper blue than the pool, shift to Brangwy. “You said you’d help instead of hinder. I’m happy to meet with Caileán alone.”

“Oh, oookay. In war or peace, you’re welcome in my lands.”

I’m not sure I believe her. Although I recognize my sisters, I have few memories of them. I was close to Didrane and Hraena. As much as she’s offering me the olive branch now, Kathu disputed my borders. There was always some deeper, barely-remembered antagonism between her court and mine, too. Brangwy, the south to my north, coveted my Cait. She was often a rival and never a friend. Her boar, in skin or fur, was a brute who lived up to his name.

I nod at her.

The red-tipped, black feathers along Brangwy’s shoulders ruffle, then settle. “It’s like that, is it?” she asks, sounding more grumpy than angry.

“My memories are returning,” I say. “The good and the bad.”

Brangwy clucks her tongue with a flash of white teeth and red tongue in the darkness of her cloak’s cowl. “You never were any fun, Caileán.”

“Mmm. The freshest memories are those of my rape and murder. Definitely not fun.”

Kathu sits up straighter. She pats the moss at her side. “Come and sit. Drink the Mother’s waters with us. Tell us what you seek. Your crown? Vengeance? Whatever divides us, we’re your sisters.”

Since that’s true, I join them on the soft moss, which smells faintly of lilies when I sit down. Kathu dips all three cups into the pool and holds them out to me. I take one and draw the runedebnah, purity, on the top of the water with my claws.

“So suspicious,” Brangwy says.

“Murdered,” I remind her.

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