Page 15 of What Sleeps Within the Cove

“I have to assume it’s a consequence of her unorthodox upbringing. Her body isn’t really hers, is it?” Badb asked, the three of them shifting to stand before me and staring at me like I was a curiosity.

As if they hadn’t just plunged my hand into a fire. “You didn’t know it wouldn’t burn me, did you?” I asked, my horror rising as Nemain turned on her heel and continued on.

“No one can know anything for certain when it comes to you. No one like you has ever existed before,” she said, glancing over her shoulder at me finally. “So I made an educated guess.”

“An educated guess,” I repeated, blinking at the back of her head as she turned once again. “And if I’d burned?”

She shrugged, her shoulders moving with the motion of it to reveal the slender play of feather tattoos peeking out from beneath her armor. “Then I suppose you would have burned, and we likely would have known the trials to be a futile effort for us all.”

“Your nonchalance is touching,” I snapped, my anger rising at the casual ease of her dismissal. As if I was something to toy with, to pick apart and understand. Her lack of care regarding my life or limb… I was truly alone.

Fenrir growled as if he’d heard the thought.

I couldn’t focus on that, not when there were far more serious insinuations to unearth.

“Why didn’t I burn?” I asked.

“Because you, dear Tempest, were first born in the Cradle of Creation,” she said, stealing the wind from my lungs.

TEN

ESTRELLA

My shock rippled through me at the revelation that I couldn’t quite wrap my head around. Even as the implications of it sank deep into me, it didn’t quite strike in the way I’d expected it to now that I knew.

My parents were from Tartarus.

That was the extent of what I could pry from the Morrigan. Nemain had immediately clamped her lips shut like she was physically unable to say more, leaving me to stare at her sisters in the hopes that they would pick up where she’d left off. Neither muttered a single word, not even when I’d probed for answers.

The beast inside of me had vanished the moment the gate stripped away my magic, but it would make sense that she was the consequence of that birthright. If my body wasn’t really my body, was she what I was truly meant to be?

I swallowed, thinking of the horrific beasts I’d heard in the night. How many more nights would I need to spend in Tartarus in the endeavor to complete these trials and confront Medusa before I could return home and save Caldris?

The thought that I might have been one of them, something of this world and not my own…

Gods.

A very different kind of sound traveled through the ruins of what seemed to have been a village, emerging out the other side as we approached. The flames consuming the buildings disguised it, making it blend in with the surroundings until we were nearly upon it. The Morrigan and Cwn Annwn guided me through the center of the street, leading the way toward the sound.

It wasn’t the strangled moan I associated with pain, but the kind that came from pure, undiluted pleasure. I swallowed back my nerves, holding my chin high and shoving down those delicate human sensibilities that had once seemed so crippling compared to Caelum’s assertion and willingness to partake in more creative endeavors.

“What is that?” I asked, glancing toward Nemain. The woman smiled, her white teeth gleaming with a red tint thanks to the flames that surrounded us. Her red eyes seemed to match the fire.

“I should think you know exactly what that is,” she said with a chuckle.

I paused, my feet stopping in the middle of what remained of the road. The dirt beneath my feet was all that remained, but I couldn’t help but envision cobblestones having been there before.

The portrait it painted of a picturesque town vanished from my mind as soon as it had come, leaving me to scramble after the Morrigan. I couldn’t afford to get left behind in a place that was just as likely to eat me as it was to make me one with it.

The flames receded as we approached a newer part of the village, the darkness settling along with a white, filmy mist that descended over the red earth. There were trees here, plants and fresh signs of life that weren’t consumed by fire.

There was also a writhing mass of flesh, bodies upon bodies gathered in the center of the village. From what I could tell, the homes themselves were empty of life, as if every single soul was in the village center. Daybeds surrounded the single bonfire at the center, where my own village would have congregated around a well for drinking water.

Immediately surrounding that fire, there were strange, almost tentlike structures. But the canvas was transparent, allowing eachand every person to see the activities that occurred within and offering no privacy whatsoever. But there were cushions and pillows, blankets and furs for comfort within them.

The people who hadn’t found their way to the comfort of one of the tents lingered outside, already lost to the throes of passion with a partner or two or three.

Clothing was minimal if present at all, tiny scraps that covered private parts and nothing else. They were tossed out of the way to give their partners access, a forgotten and irrelevant inconvenience.

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