He moved forward to join the others, shifting his shoulders so the tips of his wings didn’t drag the ground. He was getting bloody tired of having to clean them. Although he threw a constant glamour to conceal them from the sight of others, unless making a show of power, he still had to look at them himself, and he preferred not to walk around with pine needles and bits of gorse stuck to his fucking feathers.
Feathers. Bloody hell, he hadn’t seen that one coming when he’d considered his future. Like a goddamn chicken.
The clan surrounded the pyre somberly. He hadn’t expected to attend tonight, much less be involved, but Drustan had insisted. You’re Keltar, lad, first and foremost. You belong here. He seemed to have forgotten Christian was a walking lie detector who knew the truth was that Drustan didn’t want to be anywhere near him. But then, he didn’t want to be near anyone, not even his wife, Gwen. He wanted to disappear into the mountains and grieve for his brother alone.
Once, Christian would have argued. Now he said little, only when necessary. It was easier that way.
As the chanting began and the sacred oil, water, metal, and wood were distributed east, west, north, and south, the wind whipped up violently, howling through rocky canyons and crevices. Thunder rolled and the sky rushed with ominous clouds. Grass rippled as if trod by an unseen army.
Look, listen, feel, the storm-lashed grass seemed to be whispering to him.
In the distance, the rain across the valley turned to a deluge and began moving rapidly toward them in an enormous gray sheet. Lightning exploded directly above the pyre and everyone jerked as it cracked and spread across the night sky in a web of crimson. The pungent odor of brimstone laced the air.
Something was off.
Something wasn’t right.
The powerful words of the high druid burial ceremony seemed to be inflaming the elements. They should have been softening the environment, preparing the earth to welcome a high druid’s body, not chafing it.
Could it be the Highlands rejected an Unseelie prince’s presence at a druid ceremony? Didn’t his Keltar blood still define him as one of Scotia’s own?
As Christian continued chanting, restraining his voice so he wouldn’t drown out the others, the sky grew more violent, the night darker. He studied his gathered clan. Man, woman, and child, they all had the right to be here. The elements had been chosen with precision and care. They were what had been used for generations untold. The pyre was properly constructed, the runes etched, the wood old, dried rowan and oak. The timing was correct.
There was only one other variable to consider.
He narrowed his eyes, studying Dageus’s remains. He was still pondering them a few minutes later when at last the chanting was done.
“You must set him free, Chloe-lass,” Drustan said, “before the storm prevents it.”
He always believed he was the rotten egg of the two of us, Christian had overheard Drustan saying to Chloe earlier that evening. When the truth of it is he gave his life to save others not once but twice. He was the best of men, lass. The best of all of us.
Chloe jerked forward, carrying a torch of mistletoe-draped rowan that flickered wildly in the wind.
“Wait,” Christian growled.
“What is it, lad?” Drustan said.
Chloe stopped, torch trembling in her hands, not bothering to glance at either of them. All life seemed to have been stripped out of her, leaving a shell of a body that had no desire to continue breathing. She looked as if she might join her husband in the flames. Christ, didn’t anyone else see that? Why were they letting her anywhere near fire? He could taste Death on the air, feel it beckoning Chloe with a lover’s kiss, wearing the mask of her dead husband.
He pushed between his aunt and the pyre to touch the wood upon which the bits of his uncle were spread. Wood that once had lived but now was dead, and in death spoke to him as nothing alive ever would again. This was his new native tongue, the utterances of the dead and dying. Closing his eyes, he went inward to that alien, unwanted landscape inside him. He knew what he was. He’d known it for a long time. He had a special bond to the events occurring tonight.
The Unseelie princes were four, and each had their specialty: War, Pestilence, Famine, Death. He was Death. And Fae. Which meant more attuned, more deeply connected to the elements than a druid could ever be. His moods affected the environment if he wasn’t careful to keep tight rein on them. But he wasn’t the cause of the night’s distress. Something else was.
There was only one other thing present whose provenance might be questioned.
None but a Keltar directly descended from the first could be given a high druid burial in hallowed ground. The cemetery was heavily protected, from the wood of sacred, carefully mutated trees that grew there to ancient artifacts, blood, and wards buried in the soil. The ground would expel an intruder. Perhaps Nature herself would resist the interment.
Was it possible what remained of the Draghar within Dageus marked him as something foreign?
Christian had heard the truth in his uncle’s lie at a young age. At first, Dageus told Chloe and the rest of the clan that the Seelie queen had removed the souls of the Draghar and erased their memories from his mind. Sometime later, to aid Adam Black, Dageus had come clean with the truth…at least part of it, admitting he still retained their memories and could use their spells, though he maintained he was no longer inhabited by the living consciousness of thirteen ancient sorcerers.
Christian had never been able to get a solid feel for just how much of those power-hungry druids still lived within him. His uncle was a proud, intensely private man. Sometimes he’d believed Dageus. Other times—watching him while he thought himself unobserved—he’d been certain Dageus had never stopped being haunted by them. The few times he’d tried to question him, Dageus walked away without a word, giving him no opportunity to read him. Typical of his clan. Those aware of Christian’s unique “gift” were closed-mouthed around him, even his own parents. It had made for a solitary childhood, a boyhood of secrets no one wanted to hear, a lad unable to reconcile the bizarreness of other’s actions with the truths staring him in the face.
He eyed Dageus’s remains, casting a net for possibilities, considering all, discarding nothing.
It was possible, he mused, that they had the wrong body. He couldn’t fathom why Ryodan might give them the savaged pieces of someone else’s corpse. Still, it was Ryodan, which meant anything was possible.