“Where is she?” he demanded.
“Who?” Aelfraed asked.
“I don’t know,” Maddox answered. “He was alone.” Their strange accents weren’t so strange. If anything, they had become familiar. “I saw him leave the fire, and then he slipped away on his magic. I damn near lost his track the way he kept porting. If not for the poison, I think he’d be halfway around the world.”
“We can try to drain it,” Rogue said. “But his pulse is already weak and thready, and he can barely move. Whatever the poison is…”
“Nightshade and death goddess,” Fionnbharr said. “There is no saving me. It’s already trying to lock up my magic. Where is she?”
“Who?” Aelfraed asked him again.
“The goddess of flame and spring, she was here. I saw her. She talked of you, but she was here for me. I want to see her again…”
“Is he making any sense to you?”
“My lord,” Fionnbharr tried, but he could find no strength in his limbs. “She wanted me to drink.”
“He doesn’t know what he’s asking for,” Rogue argued.
“Maybe not,” Maddox said. “But he hears the spirits and the gods. If she wants him to drink, who are we to argue?”
Aelfraed said nothing, but he held Fionnbharr much as she had. His body was so cold. The fever leached away too swiftly.
“If I do this, Fionnbharr,” Aelfraed said, his tone seeming to encompass all of his being, “there is no turning back. You will be one of us. A brother.”
“I will be the best of you, but I have to drink from her.” He wanted it.
“She is not here,” Aelfraed told him. “Do you wish to live?”
Did he?
“You don’t get to die, Fin. You promised me.”
“I have to live,” he choked out, but his eyes were falling closed. “I promised her.”
The world blurred, pain filtered through his body, and it was as though the magic in him tried to pull him apart and bring him back together again. She was there, the whole time, her fingers tight in his and her eyes filled with a canny intelligence and deep, almost soul sucking sadness.
“I’ll live for you,” he promised over and over as he waged his war against death. The lord, Aelfraed, waged the battle alongside him, and it was days before he woke properly, his body drenched in sweat and everything different.
The silent room he woke in boasted a single bed, a fireplace large enough for three grown men to stand in, and a heavy thatched rug in front of it. Light filtered through a single window, but it was gray and wintry.
He was alive.
Standing, he groaned at the pain in his limbs and the protest in his muscles. A beard coated his face, and his hair had grown longer. The tattoos on his hands had changed, melted away as though they’d never been.
The creak of a door had him turning, and when the chill in the room registered against his bare flesh, he called for fire and it whooshed to life in the hearth. The explosion of light and heat was intense.
Rogue stared at him for a moment and then the flames. “Good, you have not lost that talent with your transition.”
“My transition?”
“We have a lot to talk about, Fionnbharr. Maddox is bringing food, and I will bring the wine. Then we will sit and tell you everything before you meet with Aelfraed.”
“Fin,” he said abruptly, and Rogue paused at the door.
“What?”
“My name is Fin. Our goddess of flame and spring called me Fin and said that was the name I had when she came on my cock. She spoke of all of you. So whatever it is…I’ll understand. But call me Fin.”
He would live for his goddess. Just as she demanded.
Hopefully, she would come to him again.
Not so fucking long ago…
“I’m honored to meet you, Fiona MacRieve, I don’t know if I said that earlier.” Even casting himself across the prison, weaving his shadow against the prison’s own magic couldn’t diminish the simple joy in him at seeing her again. Finally, after so many years.
His goddess of flame and spring.
“No,” she challenged in that delightfully husky voice. “Not really. But I’ll bite, why are you honored?”
“You’re the—”
“Fin.” Maddox’s snarl cut him off. “Later. For now, find us a route out of here preferably before Rogue arrives. This is an extraction, not a war.” The grumpy dragon had never been any fun when it came to this vision of Fin’s. No matter how many times he’d seen her or how the vision altered subtly year after year, she’d never spoken to him again as she had that first time.
When she’d saved his life.
“Eh,” Fin said. “It’s kind of both. Even you have to admit that. With the lovely Fiona here the prize at the center of the maze. We just have to get through all the mini-bosses to the big boss, and boom, we get the girl.”
Now he had her name.
“Okay,” she said, removing his shadowy hand off her thigh with two fingers. “Bored now.”
“Ha.” Maddox sounded far too self-satisfied.
“First, no one asked for rescue. Second, I’m not some helpless damsel. Third, I’m nobody’s fucking prize.”
“I can’t wait to lay my real eyes on you when we rescue you,” Fin said. “You’re delightful.”
She wasn’t ready for him to declare himself to her. Not yet. They were at two different places in this journey, but she had always been his destination. Even as he snapped himself back to his own body and readied himself to move, the single glimpse of her could sustain him for another thousand years.
But his goddess was within reach, and he would steal her from this place if it was the last thing he ever did.
More like super recently, a.k.a. now…
Pain raked over his back, and Fin grunted. The fae doctor, Brina, with her blood-red hair and too pale skin marred by a scar that bisected her left eye, paced in front of him. “You’re distracted today, druid,” she commented, studying him. “What holds your attention so firmly?”
“Definitely not you,” Fin told her cheerfully enough. His goddess was there to save them, and that meant it was time to stop playing games inside the prison. They’d let themselves be taken in part to learn what arrangement the other originals had with the shadow demon running the place.
The demon’s continued interest in Fiona was unacceptable. As was the blood bounty being placed on her head. Their goddess was not anyone’s to touch. But she was here without Alfred or Rogue. Her fierce, impetuous nature and damn stubbornness put her in danger, but at the same time, a fierce pride filled Fin.
Fiona was strong. She’d always been stronger than even she realized. It was time to let her embrace that strength, but with the shadow demon trying to kiss her and Maddox about to beat the stones down, it was time for the games to end.
Fin snapped the chains holding him and straightened. Brina opened her mouth to cast, but he flung a hand out and her hair wrapped against her mouth like a gag, even as she tumbled across the room. She crunched into the wall and then slid down into a heap. Rolling his head from side to side, Fin grimaced at the stinging welts.