A small shadow fluttered across that light, interrupting it.
I frowned and padded across the floor. I yanked the drapes over the door open, and saw no one. My mind was playing tricks on me tonight. I should just give up and go to bed.
I looked down on the balcony floor, and my breath hitched in my throat. Something shiny glittered there.
I opened the door and stepped out onto the cool balcony, my toes curling against the chill. I bent down to pick up a golden earring. The post was broken, and a stone had fallen out of the setting. But it was still pretty and glittery.
Fluttering sounded above me. I looked up, peering into the dark, but saw nothing.
I gripped the earring in my fist and came inside, closing the door behind me. My hand shook. The appearance of mysterious gifts hadn’t happened to me for a very long time. Not since I was a teenager.
Throughout my childhood, crows had brought me gifts. They brought me bits of tin foil and bottle caps and bits of jewelry. They would leave them on my windowsill. I was delighted at this, but my father insisted that I was lying about where the items came from. He said that I was having a delusion, that I was lying for attention. It took just one visit with the school psychologist, who wanted to know where I stole the findings, to convince me to stay quiet about what was happening. I kept the gifts in a shoebox under my bed. The gifts continued, sporadically, until I moved away for college. I told no one else.
But I never forgot. I reached under my bed for my battered shoebox, where I’d kept the crows’ treasures all this time. It was the only thing I’d taken from my childhood home with me to college, the only thing that I’d carried forth into my adult life. I opened the lid. A dirty red ribbon snaked around a broken gold chain. Coins mixed with bent nails, keys, rings, dice, and crystals. I put the earring with the rest of the cache and closed the lid.
I didn’t know what to make of this. I was too tired to process everything now. I flopped face-down into bed, arms wide.
I was asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
I DREAMED I WALKED through a forest. Night seeped through the woods with long shadowy fingers, drawing the overcast sky close. I wrapped my cloak around my shoulders, and breeze disturbed my long red hair.
I smelled blood, and was drawn by it.
I continued, my steps soundless. The wildlife knew to avoid this place; a doe ran past me, and bats took wing far south of where I walked. The rabbits fled at my approach, knowing that I brought chaos and disaster. Only my crows followed me, flitting through the trees like black leaves. They weren’t by nature nocturnal, but they would follow me anywhere. Even here, a place of death in the dead of night.
I paused before a well, a stone ring in a clearing. The limestone was black with blood, and bodies were scattered around in the leaves like cast-off dolls. I approached it, peering down. It was full, and I could see my reflection in it, my face a pale moon bobbing on the surface. But I knew that smell, unmistakable. My fingertips lingered on the edge of the stone. The well wasn’t full of water; it was full of blood.
I bent forward, reached down with my cupped hand, and drew the fluid into my palm. It wasn’t warm, though not quite clotted. I brought it to my lips and drank while my crows paced the edge of the well. It was a mixture of blood from many people, sharp with notes of fear and dissolving power, softening with invisible decay.
When my thirst was slaked, I called into the darkness: “Who summons me here?”
A cloaked figure approached me from the edge of the forest. “I do.”
My eyes narrowed. I didn’t like games. I liked offerings, but not games. “Show yourself.”
He lowered his hood, and I recognized him—the blue eyes, the blond hair, and the broach in the shape of a flame that held his cloak pinned to his shoulder.
“You’re one of Uaithne’s children.”
“I’m Merrel, heir to his throne.”
“Usually, it’s Uaithne who summons me.” I sat on the edge of the well with my arms crossed. “He summons me before every battle, every war...” I gazed at my bloody palm. “He asks for a prophecy. He asks for my patronage.”
“Uaithne is ill. I don’t expect him to make it.”
I gave a small shrug. Kings came and went. “I told him that he would be poisoned.”
Merrel blinked, and his right hand came to rest on the hilt of his sword. “Poisoned?” he echoed.
“I told him that one of his sons would poison him.” I looked at him directly. “Was it you?”
He met my gaze with fearlessness. Only wealthy young men managed that kind of foolhardiness. “It wasn’t me. But I suspect that it may have been my younger brother. I think I might be next.”
“And you come to me, rather than your father’s allies, to protect you?” A smile curved my lips.
“My father has no allies.” He stared into the dark in consternation. “He has mercenaries.”
“Well. You have his wealth. They could become your mercenaries. With mercenaries, you don’t even need to spout an inspirational speech.”
“That’s an ephemeral power. They could turn on me.”
“Anyone can turn on you at any time. I certainly could.” Though I didn’t know yet what to make of him. He was the first of his brothers to approach me, so that caused me to look favorably on him. And he was a handsome young man. I liked men, and he was very pleasant to look at, with his blonde hair, sharp jaw, and straight shoulders. I wonder what he looked like beneath that cloak.
“You could.”
I gazed out at the scene of dead scattered before me. “Did you do all this yourself, Merrel? Or did you hire it done?”
His cheeks reddened, and the insult I’d lobbed at him stung. “I did. These men were to be hanged for burning a village and assaulting the remaining women. I thought that a better use of them would be offering them to you.”
I nodded and nudged a body on the ground with the toe of my slipper. “That pleases me.” I did not brook violence upon the helpless. I had standards, after all. Not many, but a couple.
“I hoped it would.”
I gazed upon him. “What is it you want of me, Merrel? Your father’s crown?”
He swallowed and said: “Yes. I want my birthright. I want to be king.”
I leaned forward and stared at him hard. A crow paced along the perimeter of the well, gazing at its reflection in the blood.
“Are you sure that you want this? If I become your patron, you will answer to me.”
“I’ve never had a problem with answering to a woman.” His chest puffed out. “My mother was the warrior queen Fiona.”
“I knew her.” And he looked a bit like her, in the eyes, and with the hair. I could see it now. “But can you fight like her?”
His eye twinkled, and he smiled. “Come see.” His fingers darted beneath his cloak and drew a sword that glimmered in the darkness.
I laughed in delight at his cheekiness. A mortal challenging me? I reached at my belt for my own sword, wrought from the iron of the broken cauldron of Cerridwen. The black blade swung out, and I lunged toward him.
He blocked my first parry, and steel rang on iron with the sound of a bell in a chapel. I grinned and danced with him. He slashed at me, not holding back. I respected that, and I matched him, measure for measure. I feinted left, he parried right, and I let him drive me back to the well.