A second set of eyes opened behind mine. Burning into my soul.“You might have stolen the Dagda’s magic from the throne, whelk, but I can feel it, and I can feelyou.”
Balor’s voice was a hammer. Whatever internal protections I had cracked and fell away, as I lost consciousness.
I awoke with a scream in my throat. My entire body spasmed as Balor’s words trailed off, still ringing in my ears.
My legs kicked out, fighting an unknown enemy as I thrashed.
Cormac placed his hand over my heart. “You’re safe.” He cooed. “We’re safe. No one can hurt you right now.”
He repeated the words until my heartbeat stopped pounding in my skull, and my body slumped back onto the cave floor, exhausted despite losing consciousness.
I looked down, finding two legs, each marked with the same scales I’d always had.
“Your tail dissolved a while ago,” Cormac told me, with a sad smile. “Though I think you could call it if you wished.”
I pondered his words, certain that they were true. “Where are we?”
“I found a cave at the bottom of the coral field. The Whispering Pass is a stone’s throw west. We’re near the shore.”
I clasped my chest. “I tried to look forward. The way I used to do when I sat on the High Throne.”
Cormac eyed the staff, still clenched in my fist; the contours of the wood were etched in my palm, but I daren’t let go. “The High Throne, the Kraken’s eye, and the staff are all Dagda’s magic.” He agreed, his expression neutral.
“Balor caught me.” Fear turned my words breathy.
He didn’t tell me I was foolish, or call me an eejit, though I saw the thought form. “Did she say anything?”
I repeated Balor’s words.
Cormac nodded to himself. “So she knows you defaced the High Throne.”
“I’d say so.”
Cormac glanced over his shoulder. “You should see this.”
Before I could ask what he meant, the Mer ushered me to the cave's entrance, a single slit big enough for a body but not much more. Bleached coral hugged the entrance like dead tree branches. No longer vibrant and full of fish. I craned my neck, but Cormac nudged my shoulder, urging me to stay out of sight.
Before I could ask any questions, I felt the lake ebb and flow with numerous bodies. An army, moving through the water, crawling through a fissure larger than the Kraken’s lair had been.
Black water seeped into the lake from below, like a bleeding wound. Sluggish, but unending. The Fae crawling from the fissure did not move as they should have done. The Mer did not use their tails, but instead crawled along the lakebed, fingers clawing the sand. The Undine moved on all fours, like beasts, their eyes black as night.
I clasped my hands over my mouth, stilling the scream on my tongue as I watched in horror.
They formed regiments, though from their mindless gaze, I could tell they had no thought as to why. They were dead. I felt their empty bodies in the water the same way the lake rushed through a cave or Hag stone. Propelled forward, with a plan they had no part in making.
I’d spent so much time trying to find answers, asking the Tuatha Dé Danann about Balor and the Domhain, but it took me longer than I would have admitted to realize what I was seeing.
Fomorians.
Creatures from the Domhain brought to the Aos Sí.
The fissure in the lake bed was a tear between our world and theirs. Balor had done it. We had been too late.
All the soldiers faced in one direction.
The Nymph Village.
Chapter Thirty
