Page 162 of Ulune's Daughter

She pauses dramatically. The silence lets me hear soft sounds of movement as the crowd draws away from whoever is speaking. They shuffle toward me and Caileán, making a crescent around the ruins instead of a circle.

Between the moving bodies, I see the low, black shapes of barghests. The goblin dogs are generally considered pests. The Aedis Astrum sometimes asks justiciars to clear out packs of them when they threaten humans. But I’ve never seen them in such numbers. There are hundreds slinking toward the ruins, their eyes and mouths dripping flame that singes the grass and sizzles on the stones.

“You said our world’s being pushed further into chaos,” the woman continues. I can barely see her, just thickly coiled with black hair and a proud face. “That’s true. But chaos isn’t always a bad thing. Chaos is a witch’s friend. It’s the forces of law and order that have terrorized us for millennia. Man’s law.” She scoffs. “The judge. The jury. The priest. The inquisitor. The pressing stones. The ducking stool. The burning stake. The padded room. The prison cell. The doctor’s scalpel. Men’s laws have always been turned against women. They take away our property. Our children. Even our bodies. You ask us to be complicit in our own enslavement. ButIsay I have had enough of laws. Of rules.Ichoose chaos.” She throws up her arms. The many rings on her hands glitter in the day’s cold, gray light, so different from the golden light of Faery we left behind. “Who is with me, sisters? Who chooses a little chaos?”

Only shuffling answers her, but the silence isn’t resistant. It feels ... uncertain. Wavering.

Another woman answers her. The woman in white armor standing next to the man in the green cloak.

“I love a little chaos,” the warrior-woman says, her voice clear and sure. “I love your shirt, too.” Small chuckles break out in the crowd. I crane around the bodies in front of us to see the woman’s shirt, but I’m at a bad angle. “I love villains and darkness and mixing it up on a Saturday night. But I also love my best friend.” The warrior-woman turns her helmeted head to meet the eyes of a very pregnant, black-haired woman standing with three men. “I love her husbands and her terror twins. I love the homes she’s built and shared with me. I love that at the end of day, I have our home to go back to. Our hearth. Our place of safety and peace.”

The warrior-woman clears her throat and speaks on, “I want everyone to have what we have. That place they can go at the end of the day. Where they can be surrounded by the people they love. Where they can raise their families. I don’t want them to fear the darkness. I want them to know it’s just the absence of light. I want them to enjoy the occasional moments of chaos because they’re part of the natural order of things, not because chaos is taking over our world. I’m sorry, Lady E. I think you’re really cool, and I would love to party with you some time. But I don’t like where your Path leads. I stand with Evan. With my daddy. Tell your buddy to go back where he came from. To leave our world alone. We have enough troubles without him.”

The proud-faced woman smiles. It’s not a nice smile. “Well said.”

“Yes, well said,” a man behind her echoes. He’s wearing a green cloak like Lords. He folds his hood back and the twenty-fourth glyph on my chest erupts in a flare that burns through my coat and shirt. I clap my hand over my mouth to keep from screaming. Caileán turns to look at me. Her burning blue eyes widen. She blows an icy breath across my chest that douses the fire and numbs the burn. The cessation of pain gives me a second to pull myself together and heal my blistering skin.

“I am sorry you choose to stand against us,” Bromios continues. “It is not a good place to be. I have to question yourdaddy’swisdom in bringing you here. In bringing youallhere. To such an unsafe place. To a confrontation withgods. Lady E is thousands of years old. She hasn’t just read about the cruelties of men and their laws. She’s lived them. She’s suffered intolerance, persecution, and loss alongside you. And I? I am even older. How do you think I fared in Egypt? Among the Goths? Among the Crusaders? I have had the same injustices visited on me as women have suffered. I know themintimately. And I say enough. Enough of the laws of men. Enough of intolerance and persecution.Enough. Haven’t you all had enough?”

I’ve had enough of him. I don’t understand everything he’s saying, but I do understand he’s playing the crowd. There are murmurs of agreement from a few of the women.

“Go,” Bromios says. “Leave this place. Take your family. Hide in your vault.” His eyes shift to the pregnant woman. “Your cave. Wherever you wish. I will not come for you. There’s no need for you to stand against me. Live out your days in peace. The spinning of this world, its ultimate Path, need not concern you. If things worsen in your short lives, you need only turn your faces away. You need not look. I give you this one chance to save yourselves. All of you. Go.”

A few women melt away. But most stay, their eyes intent on the conflict between the green cloaked men.

“I get it, mate,” the pregnant woman says, her English accent thick. “It’s the easy path, innit? Looking away. Pretending not to see. Saving ourselves. But it’s not the right one. It’s not the one over the mountain. Your Path requires sacrificing my children, my husband, his father. My family?—”

Bromios takes a step forward, baring his teeth at the pregnant woman. “You will have other children, including the one in your belly now. You have other husbands. You are a bad mother, to bring your unborn and her fathers into a conflict that has nothing to do with you.”

The warrior-woman steps in front of her pregnant friend. “No one calls my best friend a bad mother. She’s doing the right thing. The best she can in a bad situation. Asking her to give up, to walk away, to abandon her twins and their father, that’s inhuman. That’s the kind of call a god makes. Or a fucking politician. The needs of the many and all that bullshit? That’s not the decision a mother makes. A mother stands and fights for her babies. Even when she knows she’s outgunned and outnumbered.”

A ripple runs through the crowd. Caileán takes my hand and draws me close to her. “Now,” she whispers. “Be ready.”

I don’t know what I need to be ready for, only that I’mnotready. Not if this is going to be the last day I live, the last thing I do.

“She is not outnumbered,” a white-haired woman says. “Youare not outnumbered. I will not run and hide. I will not look away. My children and my children’s children will live with the consequences of what happens here today. I won’t abandon them to chaos. I will stand with you.” She walks through the crowd and puts her hand on Lords’ shoulder. “If that means trusting a man, so be it. I trust your daddy. Take my power, son. Take whatever you need.”

A black-haired woman I vaguely recognize from Bevington pushes through the crowd to stand next to the white-haired woman. She puts her hand on the white-haired woman’s shoulder. “And mine. Take what you need, Primus.”

Caileán draws me forward. She joins the women shifting and shuffling, their hands on one another’s shoulders. I put my hand on Caileán’s shoulder. A hand lands on mine. A snaking chain of power. With a seismic shift, the glyphs on my chest stir and align, spreading the power of the names I bear through the chain.

The woman standing beside Bromios—I can see her shirt now; it saysvillain—says, “Not today. There’s no need to fight this fight today. There will be other chances.”

Bromios grabs her by her throat and lifts her onto the toes of her stilettos. “Today is the day. I’ve completed the ritual. The World Tree’s branch is ready to snap. Are you so weak that you run from mortals? From these little short-lives? You are not fit to stand beside me. Go. I have no need of you.”

She staggers away from him when he releases her. She shoots him a glare that’s pure venom, then turns and walks away, dragging another green-cloaked figure with her.

Bromios turns back to face Lords. He rips the green cloak off his shoulders, tearing the skin of his mortal guise away with it. What explodes out of the tatters of cloak and skin is nothing I’ve seen before, nothing I’ve even imagined. My eye takes it in but my mind can’t wrap around it. A hundred eyes spinning within wheels and wings and claws. Even the goblin dogs draw back from whatever it is.

A swarm of iridescent butterflies bursts out of the warrior-woman, throwing prisms in every direction off their wings. As the monster opens its mouth and spits a narrow line of flame at Lords, the butterflies dive between them, dispersing the flame to flickers and ash.

The warrior-woman pulls a crystal sword out of thin air and holds it between the monster and Lords. More flame bounces off the sword, setting a handful of barghests standing near the monster on fire.

Chapter49

The Capricorn

LAW

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