A Heart So Green

Book 3: Fair Folk

by Lyra Selene

Genres: Fantasy Romance

Synopsis

Once in a land of swan princesses and star-touched changelings two sisters were on opposite sides of a war. The cost will be high but balance must be struck in this heart-pounding and enchanting conclusion to this internationally bestselling romantasy trilogy. 

After the explosive finale of the Tournament of Kings, Fia and Irian manage to escape to the wildlands, dodging pursuit by her cunning sister Eala. With Fia locked in her own mind, battling a powerful celestial entity; Irian must form new alliances to come up with a plan to defeat Eala’s terrifying magic.

With both the human and fae realm under threat, Eala's rampage must be stopped, no matter the cost. On Bealtain Eve, when the veil between worlds is at its thinnest, Fia and Irian will finally face off against the swan princess and forge the ending to their love story that was written in the stars.

Release date: January 20, 2026

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 448

Sample

I had been here before.

A mountain stream slashed down the cliff face and carved out a deep pool in a broad clearing. Spears of moonlight sliced the misty spray into silver prisms. Translucent shallows deepened to midnight near the center of the pond. Glittering flowers spangled sloping banks.

A tall man undressed slowly at the water’s edge. His hair was the lustrous, gleaming black of a feather; his powerful body was carved from hard muscle and sinew. And oh, his face—sculpted from moonlight and shadow, with plush lips parted faintly in amusement. Silver eyes simmered with desire beneath dark winging brows.

He plunged into the pool. The water swallowed him without a splash as he dived—deep enough for his form to be a star of white in the dark. I inhaled, filling my lungs with humid summer air. And even as I stood transfixed on the bluebell-strewn knoll… I, too, dived into the pool. My hands—clasped as if in prayer—split the dark water. My body knifed down, the cold pond a shock against my sweat-sticky skin. I clawed at the water, pulling myself deeper.

You cannot hide here.

The voice was the whisper of silver ripples lapping rush-lined banks; the susurrus of eager trees bending heavy heads; the sudden pinch of a molten ring wrapped too tightly around my finger; the blinding scream of a collar latched around my throat—

Let me in.

I knew by now not to grab for it. The collar’s faint sizzle at my throat was nothing more than sense memory. I could tug until my fingernails shredded. Tear with all my strength. The metal would not give way. Because it was not really there.

Instead, I dived deeper. The man arose in counterpoint, and I watched him as he passed. His sharp jaw was tilted toward the light; his silver eyes were open, fixed on the shadow of a girl standing on the bank.

Me.

Not me. Not anymore.

Part of me longed to turn—to buoy to the surface alongside Irian and let this moment play out the way it was supposed to. To latch my legs around his waist and tangle my fingertips in his damp black hair and press my yearning lips to his. But the rest of me knew—this moment was long gone. It was a dream, a memory. And if I lingered here—if I stayed—then she might catch me.

Let me in.

I swam deeper. My breath bulged in my lungs, yearning for escape. The moonlight bled away, a last gasp fading into nothing. If this had been real, I would have long ago reached the bottom of the pool.

It was not real.

I thrust myself deeper still, my senses furling away from me like petals from a dying flower. My sight, gone. My breath, stolen. My skin, chilled. I did not know which way was up, down. Whether this was still water, or something colder. Darker. Emptier.

I only knew I had to keep moving.

You cannot hide here.

As if summoned by the words, light appeared—a warm glow green as ivy and gentle as jasmine. Surprise forced my gaze to my chest, where a river stone suddenly hung above my breastbone, pulsing a deep blue-green in the endless dark. A slender sapling of hope grew inside me. I grabbed for the stone, and it hummed between my fingers. Vines clambered up my wrists with tiny sharp thorns.

A forest grew before me. Diamond-barked trunks arched tangled limbs. Branches exploded with serrated leaves scaled green as lizards’ bellies. Ferns embroidered lace through teeming underbrush. Vibrant flowers trembled, iridescent as butterflies’ wings.

A familiar figure stood amid dappled shafts of moonlight. They wore a crown of silver antlers lofting toward a star-strewn sky. Their muscular limbs were slicked over with russet fur. They had a face like the forest path.

You are mine, they intoned, slow as the seasons and patient as the dusk. Long fingers tipped with claws beckoned me, and I followed without thought. Without fear. Even as the figure turned, disappearing into the darkest part of the wood, I heedlessly ran after them.

Let me in!

The soundless scream chased me, rattling the boughs of the trees until their glass leaves shattered on the path. My bare feet crunched through the litter, pain lancing my calves as blood fletched my steps. Still I ran—as skeleton birds pecked at my eyes and metal trees unfurled into starbursts of violence and my silver crown slipped down over one eye. I jerked it away from my head, and some of my white-blond hair came away with it, silvery strands twining my fingers like wire.

“No,” I moaned as my steps slowed. I threw the silver tiara to the ground, but that was no better—gray-fleshed arms punched from the dirt, clawing toward the shining metal with broken fingernails and palms crusted with grave dirt.

You cannot hide here.

I forced myself forward, even as the forest charred to dust at my passing. The ring around my finger burned molten. The scent of scorched metal and bog tar chased me. I swallowed, the sickly sweetness of apple nectar coating my tongue until my teeth began to rot in my mouth.

Still, I ran. Because I was not trying to hide.

I was trying to escape.

Every person had a limit to their strength. Irian was approaching his.

This was not the first time in his life his strength had flagged. Though he had been forced from an early age to make himself a fortress, he knew hardness and resilience were not the same things. Endurance was a muscle that weakened as readily as an arm or a leg. There had been countless times over the years when Irian had longed to give up. To surrender.

More times than he readily cared to admit.

When he had been a little boy rowing himself across a raucous ocean and climbing clamorous cliffs, only to find his own beloved mother did not remember him.

When he had been a young man, cast out from the only home he knew by the only father he’d ever wanted.

When he had been a man grown, and his wife of three minutes had taken her own life instead of his, leaving him devastated in the wake of her sacrifice.

Irian looked at Fia now. She lay quiescent in his arms, rocking gently to the motion of the aughisky plodding heavily beneath them. Irian could almost ignore the shifting patterns of metal tracing like lace beneath her skin, the slick scales bulging at her temples before smoothing away, the sharp black pinions spiking her dark hair before softening to sable waves. He could pretend Fia was sleeping in his arms. He could pretend nothing had changed.

But everything had changed. And Irian, yet again, had been powerless to prevent it.

How long since Emain Ablach collapsed? He had lost count. Three weeks—perhaps more.

After the fateful Longest Night, their group had washed up past midnight on a black-sand beach beneath towering crimson cliffs. Irian had been consumed by Fia’s transformations—her form rapidly shifting between woman and wolf, girl and goshawk. She had scratched and clawed and beat at him. He had barely spared an ear for the hurried war council carried out by his half-drowned compatriots.

“There will be innocents caught in the destruction,” Wayland had ground out when Laoise first suggested retreating to the home she referred to only as the Cnoc. “With my father dead, I am king of the Silver Isle. They will look to me—”

“You are king of nothing, Prionsa.” Wayland had flinched at the unvarnished truth of Laoise’s words. But they had all witnessed the Silver Isle shear away into the hungry waves, had all watched it devoured by silver flames and cold ocean. “There will be some who found currachs or barges or lengths of driftwood. But unless you can command the tide to carry them safely to shore, then I am not sure how you believe you can help.”

“If we cannot help them,” Sinéad had said, “then we must help those who may be yet caught in the war the bardaí will wage, with Eala dead.”

“She is not.” Those were the only words Irian had been able to manage as he had wrestled the transforming figure of his magic-warped wife upon the blackened beach.

They had all turned toward him, surprise mingling with denial. Only Wayland had dared approach, reaching to help Irian with Fia. Irian had batted him away, brusque. “Eala lives.”

“But I killed her,” Sinéad said, with little intonation.

Irian had indeed watched the human girl plunge her twin daggers into Eala’s chest a half dozen times before Laoise dragged Sinéad off her swan sister’s broken, bleeding body. But he knew too much of the terrible magic of the Treasures to believe it so easy to kill the human princess. Perhaps he might have convinced himself, as the others had done. But he had seen her, in the moments before Emain Ablach disappeared beneath the sea. Her gilded head, crowned by a sparkling silver tiara. Her fluttering dress, white as the cliffs at her back. Her sharp smile, ready to carve up destiny and swallow it whole.

“She lives,” he had reiterated roughly. Even if he had not seen Eala, smiling like mayhem on that beach, he could feel her magic. Just as he could feel Fia’s, the atonal thrum of it singing in counterpoint to his own. Just as he could feel the two ugly points of corrupted wild magic threading darkly over the distant landscape.

The Treasures were all linked. It was as it had ever been. He would know if Eala were dead—if the wild magic of her Treasure had been released.

No—they were not yet finished with the swan princess.

In the end, Laoise’s plan had prevailed. The Gentry maiden had surprised them all with the truth of her anam cló. Irian had heard legends of the mythic dragain of the Sept of Scales—from his mother, from Deirdre, even from Wayland when they were boys. But those flying, flaming serpents had been but stories, as believable as the colossal eagles or the sea leviathans or the giant elks of the other Septs. To see Laoise transform into a scaled dragan glowing red-gold as she winged toward the clouds had been… impressive.

She was also the only one of them who had a home to retreat to.

Wayland’s home was flotsam on the fathomless sea. Irian’s a crumbling fort in the heart of bardaí territory. Sinéad had none; if Balor had one, he seemed unattached to the idea of returning to it. Fia was not in a position to weigh in.

So it had been decided. A few of the aughiskies had abandoned them to dive into the frothing dark sea. Irian’s tall black steed, Abyss, had stayed on, if reticently; he thought the stallion’s willingness to help had more to do with Fia’s mare, Linn, relentlessly harrying him than any genuine desire to help. Sinéad’s white mare had also stayed, as had an energetic cobalt yearling whom Wayland had readily taken for a mount. Balor needed no steed; Laoise either flew high above them, scouting the terrain, or rode occasionally upon Linn, though neither Gentry maiden nor murderous horse enjoyed the other’s company.

Their strange entourage had trudged over frosted moors, traversed desolate plains where the wind screamed, climbed craggy tors burnished by fleeting sunlight.

And always the sickly thrum of Eala’s new-forged Treasure dogged Irian—taunting him, goading him. Surely they had left Fia’s sister far behind. But not far enough.

Never far enough.

For the first few days, Irian had barely rested. He did not need much sleep, and what little he had tried to snatch had been plagued by nightmares—so he had stopped trying. Even when they camped and one of the others kept watch, he held Fia. The times he had dared drift off, he awakened to a wolf howling, its fangs in his face; venomous vines climbing his throat; a serpent twining around him with muscular coils. He always managed to fight back his instincts, assiduously kept the Sky-Sword in its scabbard, though it hummed a complaint. Whatever she became, he held her—deer, swan, rock, tree.

Even in the hour before dawn, when Fia transformed into something worse, Irian held her.

This battle he could not fight with weapons; this war he could not win with wrath. He could only pray to gods he had reason to believe were not listening that Fia was still in there. Fighting, as he fought. Raging, as he raged.

To think he had already lost her, without even knowing—that was a weight too heavy to hold.

So he held her.

It had taken Abyss stumbling and nearly falling to his knees beneath Irian and Fia’s joint weight for anyone to challenge this arrangement.

Wayland had watched with worried eyes as Abyss shook his dark mane in frustration. “Any change?”

It had been the same question for three days. The words abraded Irian’s bones and made him clench his teeth, although surely his erstwhile foster brother meant nothing but care by them. “Change, I fear, is the only constant. She has not woken, if that is what you ask.”

“I think only of you. And of her.” Wayland’s indigo eyes had been dismayed. His mouth had worked in the moment before he said, “You have held her too long, Brother. Neither you—nor your mount—will survive to keep holding her, unless you rest. Perhaps you will allow me—”

“No.” The word had punched out of Irian. He had done many wrong things, had made many wrong choices. Since the Longest Night, he had felt as if he had but one purpose—one vow to uphold. He was not invincible. He was not even as strong as he wished. But he was strong enough to do this one thing. Even if it cost him the last of his strength. “I promised her. I cannot let her go.”

“Then she will die,” Balor had boomed at him from a great height. “And we with her. Lord.”

“Irian.” Wayland had kept his tone easy. “Whatever promise she asked of you, surely she did not mean it literally. Fia would never want this for you. In fact, I think she’d be the first to scold you for this madness.”

With distant, winged dread, Irian had silently conceded this point. He had not had time to ask his wife, in those last moments before Talah overtook her, whether her request had been literal. Still, he clung to it. For three days and nights, he had carried Fia without respite. Every transformation a new trial, each changing embrace a new way for him to prove how endlessly he loved her.

Was it truly madness, as Wayland said? Or was it valor?

His love might be endless. But he was not. Nor was his mount.

“But who?” His voice had sounded despicably forlorn. He had looked from Wayland to Sinéad to Balor. Up to Laoise’s form, streaking like a comet through the dim. “Who?”

“No one of us alone can keep the promise you have made her,” Wayland said. “But perhaps all of us together… can help.”

Still Irian had held her. The distant foothills had been darker than bruises upon the horizon.

“Let me.” Sinéad had spoken but a handful of words since she had plunged her ready daggers into Eala’s chest. Now she held out her arms. “Together Fia and I weigh less than you and she. My mount is strong. Ride Linn. Let your stallion rest.”

Irian had hesitated one last moment before bundling Fia in his cloak and nestling her in front of Sinéad. The other girl had sheathed her daggers, then wrapped her arms around Fia’s limp frame. Irian had tensed, every instinct he possessed screaming at him to haul his wife back into his grasp. His time on Emain Ablach had taught him that he could not control everything. Yet if he could not control this, what could he control? If he could not hold her, was he not letting her go? “If she transforms—”

“For days we have all watched you care for Fia alone.” Sinéad’s tone had held exhaustion and dogged determination. “We have all been kept awake by her screams; we have all wept when you wept. This pain does not belong solely to you. Trust us to bear some of it. Please.”

So he had, though he feared it had not lessened the pain to share it. His body had found much needed rest. Abyss had regained the strength of his long, elegant limbs. But every moment Fia did not rest in Irian’s arms was a moment fletched with fear and sharpened with regret. He might not be able to control the world around him. But nor could he bear to be away from Fia for long.

“Ho!” Now Wayland cantered up beside Irian, sympathy and regret passing over his features as he glanced down at Fia clutched once more in Irian’s arms. “Laoise wishes to camp here—where the ground is flat.”

Irian’s eyes sharpened toward their surroundings. Sunset teased a pale blue sky with bloody fingers; night was not far behind. The broad, flat plain before them stretched toward foothills purpling with dusk. Beyond, rocky ridges cast looming shadows. Nothing grew here but ragged brush and pitiful clumps of grass.

With a flare of fear, Irian recognized this place. A premonition of danger ghosted over his skin and whipped his head back the way they had come. His arms tightened around Fia’s motionless form, his fingertips pressing divots into her boiling skin.

Surely Eala could not have followed them all this way.

Then why could he still feel her? The same searing power that had blistered from Eala’s frame when Gavida’s cursed crown touched her golden head rippled toward him across the landscape, raising the hairs on the nape of his neck.

“Laoise.” His voice was harsher than he meant it to be. “Why have you brought us here?”

“What, tánaiste?” Laoise—riding now upon Linn—grinned, showing off her fetching dimples. “Do you not wish at last for a flat place to camp? We are only a day’s ride from Cnoc Féigleann. But we will not reach it tonight.”

“We must not stay here.” Irian wheeled Abyss, even as the Sky-Sword began to hum an eerie, atonal tune at his hip. His breath rose haphazardly in his lungs as danger winnowed through him. “Wayland… Laoise—be on your guard. Balor, make ready to run. Sinéad, make ready to ride. We must cross this plain as fast as we can.”

Balor seemed unflappable as ever, stomping indomitably forward. Sinéad looked up at her name, her expression hopeless and haggard. Only Laoise’s expression betrayed surprise.

“Why, Irian?”

“Because these are the old killing grounds of Mag Tuired,” Irian ground out, even as he kicked Abyss into a lurching canter. “This marks the edge of Tír na nÓg, before the Barrens begin. Here the Tuatha Dé Danann defeated the Fomorians in the battle that would decide their sovereignty. And here every man, woman, and giant is buried where they fell. We have just walked onto an army for Eala to use.”

“Surely she could not have followed us this far?” Wayland’s question echoed Irian’s own concerns.

“We have no idea where she is, nor what she is capable of. Do you wish to risk it?”

Perhaps it was his words that spurred them on; perhaps it was night’s sinister promise scraping blood over the slate sky. The aughiskies stretched their sleek legs into a gallop. Balor broke into a thunderous run, his tree-trunk legs propelling him at a surprising clip.

Irian felt the buzzing thrum of magic upon his skin, tasted the sweet-sour sizzle of petrichor on his tongue, heard the mournful discordance of Eala’s Treasure entwine with his sword’s song.

How?

It did not matter. It only mattered that she was close. Too close.

The first bone-flanged hand burst from the cold, damp earth.

“Ride!” Irian roared. Grotesque shapes birthed themselves in the long, dark shadows cast by the mountains. “If you want to live, ride.”

They rode. Irian tallied the distance to the mountains. In the murky dusk, the plain could have stretched half a league. Or seven.

He only knew it was too far.

Another skeletal arm ringed in ancient armor burst from the hard-packed clay and caught Abyss by the foreleg. A glancing blow—the stallion only stumbled. A larger arm reached for the water horse’s other leg. Abyss danced out of reach. Yet another rose in turn, pushing mounds of pebbled dirt to one side as it latched around the aughisky’s foreleg and wrenched it sideways. Abyss missed a step. The stallion went down.

A precarious tilt, cold winter air streaking sideways. Irian hung weightless above the stallion’s back, Fia’s limp body lolling against his chest.

The water horse struck the dirt sideways, jolting both riders over his withers. Irian ducked his head and curled himself around Fia, but the impact jarred them apart. He hit hard-packed earth with juddering force, his breath bursting from his lungs as he landed painfully on one shoulder. Lines of black and silver striated his vision. Sharp stones tore his mantle and abraded his cheek as he skidded to a halt on the twisting, heaving earth. He forced himself sideways, rolling onto all fours. He reached for Fia. His hands met only air.

No.

Irian staggered to his feet. There—Fia had rolled ten paces beyond him. She lay with arms and legs tangled between matted clumps of weathered grass, her hair a dark corona around her bruised face. Irian’s vision tunneled as he lunged for her, the Sky-Sword already singing free of its scabbard. But the restless earth shifted beneath his feet. Clods of dirt and gobbets of clay rattled his legs as fists of bone punched upward. Skeletal fingers latched around his ankles. He slashed down, his battle metal darkening as sunset kissed rouge along the foothills. The Treasure made easy work of the ancient, brittle bones, but whenever one hand burst into shards, another was rising to take its place.

And another.

Irian lifted his gaze from Fia’s prone form, alarm beating dark wings against the back of his head.

All across the plain, the dead were rising. The earth spat them up and belched them out as if it was glad to be rid of them. These were not fresh corpses; the legendary battle of Mag Tuired had been fought in the time of legends, before humans had banished the Folk from Fódla and before the Treasures had been forged. The earth should have long ago reclaimed them. Instead, the boggy plain had mummified the ancient carcasses, rendering them nightmarish in resurrection.

Sword-hacked arms were strung with frayed ligaments and rotted armor. Caved-in skulls sneered with shattered teeth, stared with hollow, empty eyes. Lumbering Fomorians reared to the height of ten men; legless destriers churned in the muck; long-dead warriors reached for maces and axes and swords.

All of them turned toward him.

No. Not him.

Her.

Fia lay so still Irian feared she had died. As if his unrelenting hold on her had been the only thing keeping her alive, and with his promise broken, her soul had simply fled her body. But the blue-green stone fastened above her breast—her Treasure, the Heart of the Forest—still hummed a harmonic counterpoint to his wailing sword. And below that constant murmur, a still-unfamiliar vibration droned in counterpoint too—like molten metal over wet rock, or hot blood kissing iron bones.

The unwelcome melody of the entity to whom Fia had accidentally bound herself on the Longest Night. The deity the islanders of Emain Ablach had called the Year… the Bright One who had named herself Talah.

A circle of space formed between Fia and the rumbling horde of the risen dead. The ancient warriors slammed against a barrier they did not seem able to cross. It occurred to Irian that Talah’s terrible power—though he hated what it had taken from Fia—might be the only force keeping the sliding, slithering hiss of Eala’s Treasure at bay.

Talah, like the Heart of the Forest, was not eager to let her host die.

Fia’s life was threatened by two unknowable Solasóirí of near-limitless power. So, too, was her life protected.

The sight of the restless dead’s mindless shambling galvanized Irian. He hacked with renewed vigor at the arms clutching at his legs, scattering petrified bones and long-desiccated flesh to crunch beneath his boots. He thrust through the ungainly horde, reaching for Fia—

“Down!” The word shattered his eardrum.

He did not turn in time to identify the tall, heavy figure barreling toward him. Only felt the impact as someone tackled him around the chest and bore him bodily to the ground.

Irian’s already jarred shoulder struck packed dirt a moment before his skull cracked down. He instinctively struggled beneath his attacker’s weight, jerking his arms as he fought to free his sword.

“Gods alive, man!” Wayland’s voice, ragged with alarm, carved through Irian’s aggression like a serrated knife. “Stay down.”

A surge of flame blasted mere inches from where both men grappled. Blistering heat raked Irian’s face; he heaved himself away, and Wayland rolled with him, putting as much distance as possible between themselves and the blaze carving a path through the army of Eala’s dead. The conflagration ignited ossified corpses and liquefied time-pitted metal. Irian elbowed Wayland away from him and glanced up.

The red-gold silhouette of Laoise’s anam cló was an ardent pennant against the flaming dusk. Sunset kindled scarlet along her sleek scales and silhouetted her wings in ocher and plum. Her sinuous neck curved, molten fury burning from the depths of her gorge to incinerate the wall of shambling skeletons threatening Fia’s prone figure. Grudging awe rose in Irian.

From the moment Irian had intuited Laoise’s true nature, he had guessed she was formidable. She had proved herself indomitable.

“Up.” Wayland’s hands propelled Irian to standing. The wall of fire guttered as Laoise moved onward, leaving a trail of smoking skeletons and flaking ash in her wake. Beyond, Fia sprawled, insensate to the chaos. “Laoise is buying us time. Let us not waste it.”

Irian kicked through cinders to scoop his wife into his arms. She was whole and breathing, albeit slightly scorched—the right side of her body blackened with ash and a few of her long tresses singed away to nothing. The scent of hot skin and burnt hair withered Irian’s nostrils. He fought automatic fury, even as he sheathed his still-humming sword and cradled Fia’s head against his shoulder.

“Laoise couldn’t have given her a wider berth?” he growled at Wayland. “At this rate, my wife will be bald.”

“Scold Laoise later.” Wayland’s glance was barbed with agitation. “Much as it pains me, we must now heed your advice. Run.”

The other man set a brisk pace, following the path of Laoise’s incendiary carnage. Half-burnt bones caught at Irian’s boots; red embers flared up to die on his clothes. Black smoke scrawled over the darkening sky and seared his eyes. It was slow going. And beyond the blackened path, the dead shambled, drawing ever closer.

Irian set his jaw, nestled Fia closer, and drove forward.

At last Wayland burst through the wall of smoke, Irian a half step behind. Beyond, figures writhed. He tensed. But they coalesced into a handful of wheeling aughiskies, Abyss among them—limping but alive. A tall, lithe girl wielding twin daggers. A vast Fomorian blotting out the burn of new stars against the charcoal of dusk.

Irian strode toward Abyss, but Linn moved brusquely in front of him, sliding her slender head beneath Fia’s mass of scorched hair and snapping her shark’s teeth at him. The picture she burned into his mind was unmistakable: Abyss faltering once more beneath Irian and Fia’s joined weight, before being parceled up and dined upon by the ravening dead.

“But I swore—” The promise Irian had made Fia felt as ancient as this battlefield in his mind, as scorched and desiccated as the corpses marching mindlessly toward their point of dwindling escape. He had relinquished her before. Why did it never get any easier?

Linn shoved her muzzle into his solar plexus.

He took the hint. Lifted Fia in front of Sinéad, who anchored the other woman’s frame with her cloak. Grasped Linn’s black-oil mane, levered himself onto her back. A conflagration of red flame exploded behind the group, startling them all into a gallop.

They rode for the hills.

Night swallowed them in its toothless mouth. Eventually, Laoise’s anam cló swooped in a glittering arc to collapse upon the dirt. She staggered upward in her Gentry form, her limbs trembling and her face gaunt, as if she had aged a century in the span of hours.

Irian had spent a great deal of time in his anam cló, both warped by wild magic and not. Even the simplest shapeshifting took its toll. He could not fathom what it must have cost Laoise to fight off the undead horde, to summon those incredible swaths of fire from her deepest self.

He dismounted. Supported Laoise by her scalding forearms. Interrupted her before she could protest.

“I will walk,” he said. “You will rest.”

Not even Linn protested the arrangement. Laoise mounted with difficulty, then laid herself over the water horse’s withers, twined fingers in her mane, and promptly fell unconscious.

They struggled upward over uneven shale and jagged foothills. At last, the moon rose, bright enough to ease their path.

As it laddered above them, Fia began to change.

She transformed without warning into a wildcat. Pale skin sprouted dense layers of striped fur; vicious claws sharpened on batting paws; her face exploded into a hissing whiskered maw studded with sharp white teeth. Sinéad cried out—Irian thought she must have begun to doze. She struggled to hold on as claws caught her across the temple, raising livid lines of red upon her skin.

Irian lunged for the women. Balor beat him to it, neatly scooping the yowling, scratching creature Fia had become into his massive fist.

“I can take her,” Irian growled, relief and worry pounding through him. “Please. Let me have my wife.”

“She is perfectly well, lord,” rumbled the giant cheerfully as the wildcat continued to strain and shriek in his implacable grasp. “Besides, I love cats.”

They trundled onward. When the moon passed its zenith, Irian sent a f