Page 82 of Her Irish Treasures
He lifted one mountainous shoulder in a careless shrug. “We’ve forced him from the mortal plane before, though not in the last several hundred years.”
“Even then, he comes back, though. Right? So what’s the point?”
“It’s a mythical, legendary cycle. A villain rises. Heroes answer the call. Battles rage. Sometimes we live to fight another day. Most times, we don’t, and the world slips deeper into darkness.”
“What happens then?”
“I suppose we won’t return to this plane any longer. There won’t be any need. The spark of magic that we bring with us will die out, and the only magic left in your world will be Evil Eye’s.”
“So man-eating monsters will overrun the world?”
“Eventually. Though even Evil Eye doesn’t want all of mankind dead.”
My stomach pitched on a queasy roll but I managed to force out a laugh. “He’s got to feed his imps somehow.”
“Exactly.”
That didn’t make me feel any better.
“It’s curious to me that Bres would be so invested in defeating Balor,” Doran said. “At one time, they were allies.”
“They’re at war in Faerie?”
“Not that I’m aware of, though Evil Eye has been spreading his dark influence through the realms.”
My mind felt muddled with too much information. Like a giant ball of yarn had unraveled and tangled up in my head. Everything I needed to know so that I could understand what we needed to do was here. But I couldn’t begin to find the end of the string. Worse, if I did manage to find the end so I could pull on it…
I had a feeling I’d end up with a knot the size of Texas. Everything was supposedly gigantic in Texas.
“There’s still so much about Faerie that I don’t understand,” I finally admitted. “Warwick mentioned High Court fae before. Are the courts like separate countries? With alliances or ongoing wars?”
Doran let out a low hum that vibrated through my ribcage. “Not exactly. I could try to explain what I’ve come to understand, but I think it’ll be best explained by fae himself.”
A light chime sounded in my head. It took me a second to realize that it wasn’t an actual doorbell and that Doran hadn’t heard it. I opened the metaphorical door to Warwick.:Are you free to—:
Materializing in a puff of green, he plopped down beside us on the bed. “How can I help?”
As I rolled over and sat up so I could talk, I had to bite back a groan. I’d definitely been sleeping too long. I was stiff and sore. Again. Whatever healing agent that had been in the elixir had definitely worn off.
Doran fluffed up the pillow for me. “Mo stórhas questions about Faerie.”
“Of course. I’ll tell you anything that I’m not directly forbidden to share under a geas.”
I sat back against Doran’s side, his arm around my shoulders. Taking a deep breath, I held it a moment, letting all my thoughts churn, hoping they might naturally fall into some kind of categorization or natural order. “You said before that Aidan is the King of the Fallen Dells. He said his kingdom was called that because it fell to Balor thousands of years ago. Is that a realm in Faerie?”
“It was, yes. When the four treasures were first incarnated into mortal bodies, they were honored with their own Faerie realms and titles.”
“He’s a king and you’re princes. Why?”
Doran gave me a wry grin. “I couldn’t care less about titles and such. But in one of his human lifetimes, he was known as King Áedán. The name has been modified over his many lifetimes, but the title stuck.”
“Do you actually have land somewhere in Faerie called the Windswept Moors?”
“No, not any longer. Once, yes, but it was so long ago that I can barely remember a rocky cliff with a grim-looking castle. Waves crashing against the rocks. The wind blowing in my face as I perched on the parapet.”
“What happened to your home?”
“It faded back into the forgotten mists.”
