Page 135 of Ulune's Daughter

“By whom?” Kathu asks as she passes a cup to Brangwy and sips from the one she retains.

I take a mouthful of the Mother’s cool, clear waters before I answer. “A cabal of fae lords, most of whom are passed into memory. But the one who broke his oath to me and gave his oath to them still lives, rooted in his hall, slowly turning into his namesake.”

Kathu turns her head and spits into the moss. “Gwyn.”

“The Oak King?” Brangwy’s laugh is a harsh caw.

“He owes me a life.”

Kathu nods. “He owes us a thousand years of haunted dreaming.”

“Haunted dreaming? What do you mean?”

“Three weeks ago, I was lying on a beach in California having finished my shift at Mackies,” Brangwy says. “I fell asleep listening to the seagulls. I woke up in a pile of dust and bones in my tower. A thousand years of wandering the mortal world scrambled my brain. Good thing Gear woke up at the same time.” She digs her claws into the boar’s fur. It doesn’t flinch even as blood bubbles around her claws. “Well, maybe it wasn’t a good thing at first, but we’ve come to an understanding since then.”

She smooths her palm over the boar’s fur and the blood stops, caking and crusting instantly. She laughs, a metallic cackle, and flicks blood off her fingers into the moss.

“I can’t complain,” she continues. “Lots of girls dream of being Beauty. Not many of them get to live the dream, complete with their own castle and their own Beast.”

I never dreamed of being Beauty. I dreamed of being Anne Bonny and Joanna of Flanders and Artemisia of Caria.

Dreams and memories flicker and merge. A bronze-skinned woman with lustrous black hair and a proud nose throwing her head back and laughing. I met one of them in that long ago when the gore crow sought battlefields to gather the dead.

“And you, Kathu?” I ask, shaking off that confusing jumble of myth and memory.

“When you died, the Mists rose. Higher and higher, thicker and thicker, until there was nothing but the bed I lay down on and the Mists. I closed my eyes and dreamed. Strange, cold dreams. When I woke, the Mists had retreated. Faery and the mortal world beyond them were even stranger than my dreams. I’d been forgotten by fae and magi alike.” She turns her head to the right and smiles. I follow her gaze to the edge of the woods that surround the pool. Three huge wolves lie in the underbrush, heads on their paws, balefire eyes shuttered. As Kathu looks to them, the biggest lifts his shaggy head and gives a soft whine, his tail thumping in a crackle of twigs. “Nod, Now, and Nuz were waiting for me. They haven’t found their skins yet, but unlike you and Brangwy, I never forgot myself.”

My sisters didn’t withdraw from Faery and wrap the Mists around their courts. My death cut them off from their worlds and their selves.

I start to apologize but stop myself. “My memory is still holey. Did I anger Gwyn directly?”

Brangwy scoffs but Kathu shushes her. “Our existence angered him. Our courts which provided sanctuary for our wild kin angered him. Our rejection of his foul Tylwyth Teg lords for our own consorts angered him.” Kathu’s voice softens. “You paid the price but we all bore the brunt of his anger.”

“Didrane and Hraena, what happened to them after I died?”

Kathu’s cowl turns to Brangwy, seeking answers. Brangwy shrugs. “Didrane came the day after I woke in Lleuad Gwaed. Gear and I were still ... working things out. He ran her off. I don’t know about Hraena.”

“I haven’t seen either of them since the Mists receded. Didrane and I had, well, sharp words before I slept,” Kathu admits.

No wonder Didrane warned me away from both of them.

More than ready to return to my consort, I hand my cup back to Kathu and rise from the moss. “Thank you for your hospitality, sister. I know what became of four of my killers. When I find Ruadhàn, I will call for you. Then I will move against the oath-breaker. I will not ask you to leave your courts, but if you wish to stand with me, I will welcome you.”

Kathu sets the cups on the moss and stands, holding her clawed hands out to me. I clasp them. “When you call, thegwyllgiand I will come.”

A vague memory of rank upon rank of black wolves, their eyes burning blue, standing shoulder to shoulder with my Cait, stirs in my mind. Dogs and cats, no wonder Kathu and I were uneasy neighbors.

Kathu turns her head to level her balefire glare on our sister.

Brangwy waves her bloody hand. “We’ll be there.”

“Thank you, sisters.”

Kathu returns to her seat on the moss. Her consorts slink out of the shadows to crowd around her.

“Good to see you, Caileán,” Brangwy says, wiggling her red fingers at me. “Next time, bring your consorts.”

I don’t think so.

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