Rituals (Cainsville 5)

I pushed her hair gently aside and said, "Tell me what I can do."

"There's nothing to be done. She was right. This is the price." Ida lifted her eyes to mine, bright, impossibly violet eyes. "Thank you."

I choked on a half laugh, half sob. "I didn't do anything except get my ass rescued."

Her hand closed around mine, that energy still pulsing. "You did everything," she said. "You pissed it off."

"That's not exactly--"

"You weakened it. I'd never have been able to kill it otherwise. You won. You just needed a fae to make the killing blow. Before I pass, though, I need to ask you for something."

"What?"

She gripped my hand tighter. "Don't turn your back on the fae."

I smiled, my eyes welling up. "Can't stop lobbying for them even now."

"Especially now."

I leaned down and whispered in her ear, and she smiled as her light faded. Then she fell to the floor.

Something struck the floor beside me. I jumped to see a melltithiwyd drop. Another and another, and as they fell, I heard their voices, the trapped souls whispering as they winged past, invisible now, invisible and free, their bodies littering the floor, where I knew they would finally stay, rising no more.

I was crouched there, gripping Ida's hand, blinking back tears, when claws sounded on the steps. I jumped up, thinking, Shit, it's not over.

Lloergan burst through the doorway with another cwn behind her, both of them bloodied from battle. Brenin and Ioan followed, other Huntsmen behind them, rushing in and stopping short as they saw Ida on the floor, atop that pile of ashes, surrounded by the dead melltithiwyd.

"Is that...the sluagh?" Ioan said, gaze on the ash.

"It was," I said. "Now we need to find Gabriel and Ricky."

"Done," said a whispery voice, so weak it was barely audible.

Helia appeared in the doorway, supported by Alexios. Her skin was bark, fingers tapering to twigs.

"We found them," Alexios said. "She insisted."

He lifted Helia in his arms, ignoring her weak protests and Meic's insistence that the Huntsmen could carry his mate. "She's mine. I have her. Now let's get the others. We don't have much time, and we have a favor to ask, before it's too late."

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

Helia's favor.

We were home, at my house in Cainsville. Gabriel was with me in the yard, bundled up against the cold dawn. Ricky hung back with Lloergan at the pond, both giving us space as he treated the hound's injuries. Lloergan had fled when the throng of minor sluagh attacked--she'd remembered the first time she'd met its kind, the attack that took so much from her. But she hadn't run far before she circled back and fought, saving her pack sister and making the minor sluagh decide they had better things to do than battle a couple of cwn.

As for Helia...

When Helia and Alexios asked me for a favor, I'd waited for something momentous, like Ida's request. They deserved it, after all, for everything they'd done. But what they asked for...

Gabriel and I stood in the back corner of my yard, in a particularly untended patch, one that had been empty of everything but brambles and weeds. Now there was a tree, a strong young linden. Alexios crouched at its base, his hands against it, whispering to it. Then he rose and turned to us.

"That was Helia's request," he said. "To root here in her death. Now I'll make mine. I'm asking for the same. To root here, with her."

"Absolutely," I said. "Whenever you think the end is close--"

"I'm not waiting for the end. I'm bringing it to me." A faint smile. "Which is why I didn't dare ask while she lived. We'd have argued. We hated it when we argued. But if she's done, so am I. There's no place in this world that won't remind me of her, and I don't want to be anyplace that she isn't. May I go now? Here?"

I opened my mouth to protest. I had to protest, had to try to talk him out of it, but Gabriel said, "Of course," and Alexios nodded, and he stood, one hand on the linden tree, leaning toward it and whispering as we walked away to give him privacy.