Umbra, p.6
Umbra, page 6
Jess’s surprise fired through Rune as his own understanding clicked into place.
It was Jess who got there first. “That’s why you rode the pucca in the Silvan Mountains. When you said you were hunting a story—you meant, just like you had for getting locked up in the Triodia Prison—you were, literally, chasing the stories in the winds on horseback. Pucca-back, I mean.”
Rune pictured those wild pucca in the Heights: their huge equine bodies sometimes possessed feline-like features, others canine. Some possessed horns while others talons. They flew between the jagged peaks of the mountain, their flickering forms altering like the changing clouds and breezes they flocked among.
Astra nodded. “By riding the pucca, the Seelie are able to herd the winds into the caverns in the peaks, where the voices of the faded are audible. The Seelie have always known of these stories, but they only allow the riding of the pucca at certain times, such as when the constellations of Silva and Alba align. Circumstances that rise but once a generation.” Astra paused before adding, “When I found out about these tales from Skiron, I had to see if they contained something that could help against Queen Mara.
“So the first time we went up at the beginning of monsoon season, we did so illegally.” Her expression darkened. “It’s no easy task, catching these stories. The storms are unpredictable and the pucca, well, wild. On top of that, we were interrupted and set upon by hostile Seelie. I was separated from Skiron as we fled on the pucca. I used a Heights portal to get to Earth, but I was followed by the Seelie chasing us. That’s how I ended up in the Triodia.”
A charged silence hung over them as they digested Astra’s revelation. Rune felt Jess’s prickling curiosity about her friend, no doubt marveling at how Astra had kept this secret to herself all that time they’d been in the penitentiary. Was Jess as curious as he was to know how Astra, an Unseelie, had become friends with her natural enemy, a Seelie?
“These last few weeks, when Skiron and I returned to the mountains, we heard more,” Astra continued. “We were able to capture some of the storms and heard why Silva and Alba went to Earth. For iron. It being the only weapon capable of defeating their enemy.”
As Astra drew breath, it felt as if they were waiting for the violent storms she’d spoken of to strike.
She continued, “The faded named the ancient enemy—the Fomors.”
Sunny translated the Umbran, “The Ones Below.”
“Skiron and I wondered whether the name might mean that the enemy, the Ones Below, referred to the Depths portals. They could be referring to the Unseelie. What if in the distant past, they favored magic that their kin didn’t agree with? Just like the stories about the Enodians breaking away from the Triodians in the past. Maybe it was a similar kind of division within the fae court to the one in the coven on Earth.”
Jess’s gaze fastened on Rune. “You told me that the faction of witches and mages, who worshipped the Night and Netherworld more than the Earth, broke away when they conjured the dark gods themselves…” She trailed off as a blush spread across her cheeks. Rune was instantly transported back to the moment they’d first discussed the Great Divide: in the Necromancer tavern, in his room. Judging by Jess’s heightened color she was, likewise, remembering that talk that had led to their first kiss. Rune’s gaze dipped to her lips, the memory of their softness and hunger tormenting him afresh. How had those same sweet lips uttered a command and stolen his free will?
Jess pushed past her discomfort, meeting his eye. “Do you think whatever magic these fae were doing in the court could have affected the gods…could have altered them?”
Rune, barely heard her serious question as his own thoughts blared, but was spared answering as Astra interjected.
“You mean that the Ones Below were responsible for scattering the gods’ power?” The fae said.
Jess nodded but looked troubled as if more than she’d spoken occupied her.
“It does seem as if there are parallels to what was happening here as on Earth at the time,” Sunny assented.
Rune brooded, that same torment worming its way in that had plagued him for so much of his long life. What had happened in that deepest, darkest past to divide the courts and covens? Was it as Astra suggested that this ancient enemy, the Fomors, had come from within the fae court itself? And could Jess be right, that it was the fae within the court that had fractured their own gods? Rune dwelled on the way that this iron weapon had been brought from Earth back to Umbra and used by the fae to fight their kin. Thoughts of the fae felled on the plain nearby by the iron in their bloodstream preyed on him. As well as the more distant battles that had taken place, century upon century between the Unseelie and Seelie, firmly entrenching discord between the two courts. Could it be that the Umbran gods had gone to Earth to attain a weapon to destroy those practicing dark magic within the fae court?
“There’s more,” Astra said, causing Rune’s heart to charge into life again. She continued, “The faded said, too, that this enemy wanted to tether the wild pucca.”
Coldness prickled through Rune. Queen Mara had introduced tethering pucca during her rule. In fact, part of the very resources that the Unseelie plundered from the Seelie lands were the pucca, tethering them and taking them back to their lands as steeds for their units. When the Unseelie tethered the pucca they became fixed in their equine shape.
Over the centuries of alliance that Rune, Sunny, and Cuill had had with Mara and the right to roam Umbra, they’d been gifted pucca. Ever forward-thinking, Sunny had honed alliances with a few Unseelie, ensuring that they had access to the pucca they tethered every few decades. Meaning that even with the broken alliance with Mara, they still had Unseelie they could call on to use their pucca.
“You think that Mara has something to do with this old enemy?” Sunny asked, his purposeful tone drawing Rune’s attention again.
Astra nodded. “The changes she’s introduced match what’s happened with the tethering of pucca in Umbra’s deepest past. Then there’s the other twisted ways Mara’s encouraged over the last few centuries: the torture of humans and creation of the iron-tinged sluagh, along with the introduction of the Changeling Program, ensuring the stream of humans required to create them. Besides that, there’s her unnaturally long life that history says the fae of the past possessed.”
Astra’s implication hung in the air over them. It wasn’t coincidence that Mara bore similarities to Umbra’s old enemy. They needed to discover all they could about this enemy before they went up against her. A flicker of the Unseelie queen in her iron-scalloped dress as she’d burst into Cuill’s shack skittered through Rune’s thoughts. He knew that both Sunny and Jess had been anxious to find Astra so that they might discover some clue as to what could weaken the queen. Because, judging from her choice in attire and her creation of the iron-tinged, unlike other fae, the queen seemed to have become immune to iron.
Astra’s determined stare held Jess’s. “I believe it’s the stories in the Heights that we can arm ourselves with. There are more in the strongest currents: in the maelstrom. A place where all the currents converge. If we were to capture it in its entirety, we could hear everything that the faded hold about the Great Divide and this old enemy. It’ll be dangerous, but with more riders, with all of you, it’ll be possible to herd the winds into the caverns and hear the full story.”
As the weighted silence rang out, the shock of everything that had come to light skittered through Rune. To think that he, Sunny, and Cuill, and even other Alban heirs over the centuries, albeit intermittently, had searched Umbra for answers about the rupture that had fractured the gods and two worlds. Astra’s words from earlier haunted him, “…even gods overlook the humbler places.” Disquiet swept through Rune as he realized how little he or any of the Alban heirs had gleaned about the Shadowlands. To think that these truths had been written in the winds that they’d always seen as empty and ephemeral.
Until now, it had seemed as if all they’d done was lose things to Umbra. Cuill had lost his sanity to the Between; Sunny had given up hope of finding answers about Umbra and lost himself in the political machinations of Earth; while Rune had lost what little goodness he felt he had by making an alliance with Queen Mara centuries ago for no material gain. To think how he’d carried out Mara’s instructions on Earth of snatching babes from their homes to keep access to Umbra and preserve the alliance was abhorrent. Yes, at the time he’d felt nothing except Alba’s yearning to find the seed magic. But now, if Rune let himself, felt acutely all the evil he’d done over the centuries. All in the belief that Umbra held answers. And Astra really was saying that those answers did exist in the Shadowlands.
“Is there a safe way into Seelie territory for us?” Jess asked Astra.
The fae nodded. “Skiron will meet us on the other side of a Depths portal. We can leave at eventide by the portal you entered earlier.”
Jess frowned. “Eventide?”
“Dusk, to you, Earthling.” Astra’s lips twitched. “Eventide is when the tide of time and space between both Umbra and Earth is most balanced, enabling travel.”
With Jess’s agreement, relief trickled through Rune. He’d known that both Sunny and Jess sought to arm themselves with more knowledge about Queen Mara. Yet he’d known too how single-minded Jess was in her quest to reach the Sidhe. He hadn’t dared to hope that she’d hold back from attacking Lares, no matter what information Astra held.
Not that that wasn’t what Jess still intended. Rune felt the set of her determination down their bond like steel. She’d trek up those steep mountain passes to find whatever she needed to allow her to get past Mara to the Sidhe. Ultimately, this news didn’t change the fact that Jess was hell-bent on her own destruction. Yet… a journey into the Silvan Mountains would take time. Not to mention this quest Astra spoke of: to catch and herd stories written in the strongest winds. Who knew how long such a task might take? This journey into the Heights gave Rune something he’d been running out of. Time. Time to dig Silva’s hooks out of Jess.
Astra interrupted Rune’s reflections, her tone hesitant. “There’s something else… Something I realize now, I should have told Sunny.” Her eyes swung to Jess, full of apology. “I was so preoccupied in guarding what I knew, making sure that it didn’t fall into the wrong hands…” She looked at Sunny mistrustfully as if she still didn’t wholly trust him being privy to all that she’d shared.
A stab of satisfaction shot through Rune.
The fae continued hesitantly, “The thing is, I thought you’d sneak in stealthily. I didn’t think you’d bring a unit of shifters through the portal this morning. Not until I heard the battle…” Astra’s teal and purple skin paled. “I said that this old enemy sought to tether the pucca just as Queen Mara has for centuries. The thing is, in ancient times, the pucca was a shape-shifting race called the Storm-born. The faded told us that it was during the Great Divide that they became stuck in their animal form and have been for generations. But they possess humanoid forms just like us fae or you humans. They are a shape-shifter race similar to you wolf shifters.”
Shock somersaulted through Rune. He’d seen the changing forms of the wild pucca in the mountains before but only ever in small ways, such as their hooves transforming into talons. But their ability to metamorphose went so much further. Somewhere, locked within them, they possessed humanoid forms.
Sickness roiled down the tether from Jess. Her revulsion consumed their bond. Within seconds, Jess darted out the cave.
6
DARKSIDE
Jess puked her guts out. Her legs shook as she leaned over and expelled the early breakfast she’d had.
The memory of those slain beasts upon the plain burbled up…
No, not beasts… People.
Nausea rose again. The guilt she’d swallowed down over the Rems and faes’ deaths now grew. Strangely, the pucca’s equine shapes distorted in her head, becoming transposed with hair and scalps. She realized it was the grim vision she’d had in the Netherworld when she’d descended there in search of her deepest truths.
Disquiet flipped through her as she remembered the thought that had burned through her mind after seeing that internal scape: those hanging pieces of scalp and hair were like tokens to the ruthless creature she wanted to become. Like offerings to the raw and wild wolf that she wanted to let loose.
Jess had never felt ashamed of the wildness she unleashed in her wolf form before, but that’s exactly what she felt now. Something tainted by blood and death. She and her wolves had massacred twenty shape-shifters. Shifters who had been imprisoned in their animal forms for centuries, generation upon generation. She retched again.
As guilt crashed through her, the tide of darkness engulfed her. This new shame clotted with her other crimes: her concealment of Theo’s secret and the one that caused her the most excruciating heartbreak, the twisting of Rune’s will.
A light tread sounded behind her. Her skin prickled with awareness. Jess knew it was Rune. Dread knotted through her. She stayed where she was. She couldn’t take the emptiness in his eyes. The look he’d worn all morning. The one that was testament of all the wrongs she’d committed and…was continuing to commit.
“Sunny and I have used pucca tethered by Unseelie for centuries,” Rune shared. “We’re guilty of viewing them as nothing more than resources—only there to travel in and out of Umbra whenever we wanted.”
His gentle tone gave her the strength to stand.
Turning around, she took in the openness of his black gaze. For the first time today, it wasn’t devoid of emotion. There was a definite note of empathy in his eyes. But the guilt swallowing her left no room for Jess to savor his milder expression. Using the pucca as a mode of transport in and out of the Between was hardly the same as slaughtering them. She’d barely argued when Dearbhla had shared that the most effective strategy to eliminate the unit would be to take out the Unseelie steeds. Jess couldn’t subdue her guilt over how unfeeling she’d been. Even if she hadn’t known then that they were shape-shifters, she’d known they were innocent animals. Astra’s hesitant tone lanced through her, “I thought you’d sneak in stealthily. I didn’t think you’d bring a unit of shifters through the portal…” Her friend hadn’t thought she’d kill the pucca unit. Guilt pierced her afresh. Astra’s parents were part of a pucca unit. What must Astra think of her?
What am I becoming?
“I killed them,” Jess said, her voice strangled with self-loathing.
Rune stepped closer. “Believe me when I say that I’m intimately acquainted with the shame you’re feeling.” He exhaled heavily. “The way I’ve used the pucca over the centuries is the mildest of my offenses. You know what I’m guilty of doing to maintain my alliance with Mara.”
Awareness of his nearness prickled over Jess. And for the first time, she not only heard and saw the feeling in his tone and expression but felt it down their bond. A deep upwelling of shame. He was referring to how he’d served the queen by taking babies from their parents and bringing them to Umbra to be tortured and tethered to become iron-tinged sluagh.
Jess blinked, taking in his words. It felt surreal to have him comfort her. He was sharing his guilt with her in an attempt to make her feel better. How undeserving she felt of his sympathy. The urge to plead for his forgiveness swam through her. She was sorry, so sorry for what she’d done to him. Of how she’d compelled him. Of how she’d ordered him away and forbade him of speaking about the Sidhe to anyone but Sunny. There was a lump in her throat. She felt how dangerously close she was to tears. She’d felt starved of any support of late. How tempting it was to take one step nearer. To lean into him and hope that the magic of touch might undo all the wrong that marred their love.
“Don’t you see what your guilt shows?” Rune said, moving yet closer as if he felt Jess’s ache for affection. “This isn’t you. Everything you’ve wanted since the Cathedral isn’t really what you want. That’s why you feel this guilt. Deep down, you know what you’re doing is wrong.”
Fragility shuddered through her as Rune’s nearness swallowed her. But instead of making her doubt herself, his words had the opposite effect. The ravages of war had threatened to snatch away her purpose. But now she locked onto that sense that had been with her ever since the Cathedral: to get to the Sidhe.
I’m meant to be here.
Didn’t all that Astra had told them—of this old enemy that had cleaved Umbra in two, who had first imprisoned this shape-shifter race in their animal forms—give more onus to the cold and lonely road Jess had to tread? The pucca were yet another casualty of the Great Divide, another casualty of the rupture this enemy, who Mara was likely connected to, had caused. Along with the Umbran court and the clan and coven of Earth. And the pucca were key to discovering the full history about the enemy. Once they discovered that, Jess hoped they would be able to help this shape-shifting race, who were so similar to the shifters of Earth. It was natural to mourn the loss of life, of course, but Jess realized it mustn’t be allowed to overcome her purpose.
Rune intruded on her reflections, mistaking her silence for a sign that he was reaching her. “I know your conscience was troubled working with Theo and you must see, too, allying with Sunny is–”
“Sunny’s helping me,” Jess snapped. She ignored the comfort of Rune’s closeness and instead stepped back. “The pucca are another reason the gods must be restored. Don’t you see that only Silva and Alba’s restoration can undo whatever was done to them in the Great Divide, along with all the other para races?”
As the empathy in Rune’s eyes dissolved, Jess felt the personal price that this road was costing her. She had the sense they were going backward. That the Rune before her was the one she’d first known in prison. Because every feeling seemed to drain from him. But it wasn’t Alba’s shadow that was leaching the life from him. It was her. How could she make him understand that the path she was walking was right? The urge to tell him how sorry she was for the wrong she’d done to him rang through her again.
