Page 27 of Shadow Weaver
He let out a bark of laughter. “Well, that’s a first.”
I frowned. “Seriously? No one’s ever told you that?”
“You don’t call an ogre-tainted beautiful and walk away on your own steam.”
Crap, had I said something offensive. “Oh.”
He smiled. “But coming from you … I’ll take it.”
Silence stretched between us, during which his lips were suddenly a most interesting feature. My hand was on his jaw again, fingers tracing the curve of his bottom lip, body tightening unexpectedly with a need that surprised me.
He took a shuddering breath and pressed his forehead to mine. “Cocoa and the sunrise?”
I breathed in his cedar scent. “Sounds perfect.”
Nine
Heat blasted against my face as we entered the forge. It was a huge stone-walled area beyond the courtyard, housing several kilns, anvils, and a shedload of tools. A barrel-chested, stocky man with a beard plaited like a Viking’s greeted us.
“This is Gunthar,” Venerick said. “He’s the master blacksmith at the fortress. He’ll be teaching you all you need to know about forging your own weapon. I’ll leave you in his care.”
Venerick walked off, leaving us standing in the intense heat, staring at the master blacksmith who studied us all with his beady, deep-set eyes.
“Three days,” he said finally. “You got three days. Axe, sword, spear tip—whatever you decide, you get three days. You’ll be using fomori steel taken directly from Dagda’s cauldron. You know about the cauldron?”
There was silence.
He hawked and spat on the ground. “Figures. Got to teach you to forge and educate you in the way of the world too.” He was grinning good-naturedly, though, and it softened his words. “Fomorians can only be killed by fomorian steel. Where did we get fomorian steel, you ask?” He held a hand to his ear in an I-can’t-hear-you gesture. “You got to ask.”
“Where did we get the steel?” Thomas asked.
“Thank you, young man,” Gunthar said. “Many o’ you don’t know this, but fomorian and Tuatha history is entwined. Lots of interbreeding going on. Lots of warring and whoring. Fomorians living on Tuatha lands and vice versa. And one such fomorian was Dagda. Famous in the annals of Fae history, even made it into a couple of human texts along with a few of the other big names. Anyway, this Dagda had a magical cauldron that would never run empty. One of the four treasures of Eirean, it is.”
“Who has the other three?” Harmon asked.
“Good question. I assume the Tuatha have them. They parted with the cauldron because it was regenerative and would help us in this war. We were also given a fragment of the sword of light, the only element that can cut into the cauldron. Then they sealed their doors and left us to our fate. Nice of them.” He didn’t sound impressed. “We slice metal we need for forging from the cauldron, and the cauldron regenerates.”
“What about the fir bolg?” The question was out before I could stop myself.
“The what?” He squinted at me. “The fir what?”
“The other occupants from beyond the mist.”
“Never heard o’ them.”
“It’s a name for the raiders that come into the mist,” Henrich said, appearing as if out of nowhere. He looked at me through speculative eyes. “I understand it was you that came across a fomorian in the mist and that he marked you so that he could communicate with you.”
My hand went to my forearm where the strange symbol the violet-eyed fomorian had marked me with still marred my skin. I’d known that Hyde had passed on the information of the attack, but to have the shadow master himself address me about it had panic swirling in my stomach.
I nodded. “He told me the fir bolg were trying to take out the AM posts, and he was there to find salvation.”
“A religious zealot of some description, no doubt,” Henrich said. “And this fir bolg must be the name they give their warriors. The fomorian army.”
It sounded logical except the fomorian had said the formori didn’t hurt women, but the fir bolg did, insinuating that the fir bolg were a different breed. I opened my mouth to explain this, but Henrich cut me off.
“We have been keeping the world safe from the fomorian threat for long enough to know what we’re dealing with, cadet. I understand that all this can seem overwhelming, and Master Venerick will be covering the history of shadow knights with you later this week. The information we pass down isn’t fiction. We’ve seen the damage the fomorians have done. Of course, there may be small sects who have a different view, who may cross over out of curiosity, but the majority of the fomorians want nothing more than to end us. To take over the human world.”
What I didn’t understand was why? “Why do they want this world?”
