Stone of Destiny (The Danaan Trilogy) (22 page)

My knees hit something hard and I fell forward onto my hands. When I raised my head, the light had faded and I was no longer on the Hill of Tara. I blinked and turned my head. Ethan was on his back a few feet from me. To his left, Liam still had his hand wrapped around Aoife’s wrist where they lay on their sides.

One minute we were capturing Aoife and the next we were on the floor of a cave.

Aoife staggered to her feet, and Liam shot toward her. She waved a hand and he fell back as though he’d hit a stone wall.

Her eyes darted to where Ethan and I were starting to get to our feet. I met her gaze and our eyes locked.

“You again,” she said with a sneer. Her gaze traveled over to Ethan and I felt my pulse spike as her lips formed a wicked smile. “And you brought your friend.”

Liam was on his feet again. “Aoife, what is going on?”

She froze and looked to the side. “I guess you met our daughter, hmm Liam?”

“Yes, Aoife. I have met
my
daughter. The one you’ve kept from me all this time.”

She waved her hand. “Oh, now. It’s not uncommon for my kind to foster their children with another family.”

“But you never told me about her. How could you do that?”

“Would that have made you want to stay?” she asked, spinning around to face him.

“That’s not the point. I had a right to know I had a child.”

Aoife’s lips curved up. “None of that matters anymore, don’t you see?”

I snapped out of my fog of disbelief. “What in the world are you talking about?”

She turned her sinister smile to me. Her eyes were the brightest blue, the color of the azure sky. “You’re so quick to trust, aren’t you little human girl?”

Liam gritted his teeth and charged forward again only to be thrown back once more.

I tried to run to him, but Ethan pulled me back with a warning look.

“Getting you to come after me was far too easy, really,” Aoife said, shaking her head. “Speaking of the binding within Samantha’s earshot started the chain of events exactly as my mother predicted. Samantha would go running to find her daddy, you’d come rushing in to save the day, with no idea how implausible the idea of you outsmarting me might be.”

A wave of understanding rolled over me. Saoirse let Aoife out of the fey globe. She saw everything, planned every move like we were all life-size chess pieces. But why?

I struggled against the vice grip Ethan had on my arm. I wanted to hurt Aoife. Whether or not I was just a foolish human, I wanted to make her pay for all she’d done to Liam and my mother. And me.

“There’s just one little detail that didn’t go according to plan,” Aoife said, tapping her lip. “You two weren’t supposed to make it through.” She looked at Ethan and me as if we were a terrible nuisance.

“Through what?” I asked through gritted teeth.

“The veil between our worlds,” she said, like she was talking to an idiot. “The binding ceremony needs far more fháillan than just the Stone of Destiny.”

“What is this place, Aoife?” Liam said, his hands curled into fists. “Why are we here?”

“This is the last of the fháillan mines,” Aoife said, looking around. “The power in this place will allow us to forget about your human attachments. Permanently.”

I managed to get out of Ethan’s grip and charged toward Aoife. She held her hand up and I just
stopped
. I couldn’t move my arms, my legs...I couldn’t even blink. Over her shoulder, I saw two figures approaching, but I couldn’t make out who they were in the dim cave.

Aoife laughed, dark and melodious. She picked the dagger up off the stone floor and walked toward me. Liam was frozen where he stood, a murderous glint in his eyes.

“No,” Ethan said behind me. “Please, no.”

Aoife’s gaze darted over my shoulder to where Ethan stood, but she continued toward me, holding the dagger out.

One of the figures behind Aoife came into view.
Ciarán
. He held one finger up to his lips and threw out his other hand. Samantha came to his side, eyes wide and panicked.

Aoife pulled back the dagger, just five paces from me. Ciarán brought his hand down and a shower of stalactites from the ceiling of the cave came raining down between me and Aoife.

“Run!” Ciarán shouted, loud enough to be heard over the rocks and rubble cascading to the cave floor.

Aoife fell to her knees and the hold she had on me shattered. I didn’t need to be told twice. Spinning around, I searched for a way out of the cave. Liam hollered something, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. Ethan grabbed my elbow and we sprinted toward a tunnel in one of the far corners.

It grew darker as we ran, but we didn’t slow down. Adrenaline coursed through my veins and my only thought was to keep moving forward, as far away from Aoife as possible.

The tunnel opened into a narrow passageway that crossed a deep canyon. We skidded to a stop just before we came to the passage.

“We have to make sure it’s safe,” Ethan said.

“There’s no time,” I said, glancing back over my shoulder. Liam hadn’t come up behind us.

“We’ll make time,” he said, searching the cave floor. “I just want to throw a rock out there to see if it holds.”

He found a rock the size of a basketball and hefted it out onto the passage. The rock broke apart, but the passage held strong.

“Come on,” Ethan said, holding out his hand to me.

We moved across the narrow walkway, one tiny step at a time. I kept my eyes trained on Ethan’s back. If I looked down, I’d lose my balance and I couldn’t see the bottom of the canyon.

“Easy,” he whispered and I realized how hard my grip on his hand was.

I swallowed. “Sorry.”

“Almost there. Just a few more steps now.”

I placed one foot in front of the other until we got to the small landing on the other side.

I crumpled in relief once we made it. Ethan wrapped his arms around me, keeping me upright.

“We aren’t safe yet,” he said into my neck. “We have to keep going.”

Footsteps from across the passageway stopped us. I turned to see Liam come to a halt outside the tunnel.

“It’s safe,” Ethan called over.

Liam nodded and started running across when the walls over his head came crumbling down. He was propelled forward, hanging by one hand to the stone passageway.

“Liam,” I said, starting toward him. Once again, Ethan’s hands gripped my arm, holding me in place. “What are you doing? We have to help him.”

He nodded toward the avalanche spreading down to the passageway. A fissure cracked straight through the center and Liam’s eyes widened in panic.

I screamed in horror as the stone gave way under his fingers, plunging him into the depths of the canyon below.

Liam would catch something to break his fall. He had to. Because no one could survive a fall like that. No amount of magic could undo those injuries.

I looked back at Ethan and the expression in his eyes shattered my heart into a thousand pieces. “No. No, no, no,” I said.

He swallowed, and the pity I saw in his expression undid me. “We have to go back, he’ll make it.”

“We need to get out of here, Al. You know that. Come on,” he said, holding out a hand for me.

I ignored it, but started moving forward. Away from the still crumbling passage. My whole body was going numb. If I could just get out of this cave, I could collapse and just let my emotions pull me under.

The sounds of destruction grew louder and we ran faster. The ground was quaking and shifting under our feet. I didn’t know what direction we were heading, but I just kept pushing forward blindly.

“Up there,” Ethan said, pointing to a spot of light at the end of the tunnel, high above the ground. Rocks were piled on top of one another, forming a hill.

We started climbing up, but the rocks were unstable and we slid down faster than we could climb. My foot caught on a wobbly stone, sending me tumbling back toward the cave. The rocks sliced into my skin where I crashed into them, until I finally rolled to a stop, landing so that my ankle was bent backward. Pain flared up my leg and I cried out. Ethan came sliding down the rocks until he was at my side.

His eyes scanned over my body, taking in my injuries. He froze when he saw how I held my ankle. “Is it broken?” he asked.

I sucked in a harsh breath. “I’m not sure. But we have to keep going.”

“Hold on to me,” he said and I grabbed his bicep as he helped me to my knees. The pain spasmed through me when I tried to put pressure on my right foot. I climbed on, favoring my left side while Ethan helped pull me up.

Once we made it to the top of the hill, I could see the blue sky of Tír na n’Óg through the opening. We climbed out, Ethan half carrying me, and stopped on the ridge to rest.

He pulled off my shoe and sock to examine my ankle, and let out a string of curses. I looked down. My foot had already turned a sickening blackish blue all the way to my pinky toe and was grotesquely swollen.

I closed my eyes and called out to Samantha in my mind. She didn’t answer. I just sat there, cold and stunned.

Ethan moved up to sit by my side and wrapped an arm around my shoulders. I buried my face into his side, breathing in his familiar scent and letting it surround me.

“I don’t know what to do,” he whispered into my hair.

I shook my head and sighed. “It was all a sham. Saoirse knew what Aoife was up to. She even helped her. How could I have been so stupid?”

Ethan’s hand tightened on my shoulder. “You weren’t stupid. They had us both fooled.”

“I wonder if they all knew, even Niamh. And were all laughing at the stupid humans trying to go up against their kind.”

“It doesn’t matter,” he said, kissing my head.

“My mother,” I said with a sob. “If Liam’s gone, what’s going to happen to my mother?”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry, Al. I just don’t know.”

I sucked in a sharp breath and pulled back, searching his eyes. Tears built in mine and I squeezed them shut. “Oh God. She’ll die of a broken heart. I’ll lose them both,” I said, a sob tearing through me.

“Shh,” he said, pulling my head down and cradling me to his chest.

Once I’d cried myself out, I lifted my head and sniffed. “We need to get away from here,” I said, wiping tears away.

Below the cave’s entrance, the gravel made way to a grassy hill. Ethan stood and helped me up. He draped my right arm over his shoulder and supported my weight as we walked down, away from the cave.

Two figures appeared in front of us. They moved so fast, all I could see was a blur. I was lifted off my good foot and when I blinked I was looking up into Aodhan’s concerned face.

“What’s happened?” he asked, eyes wide.

I turned my head and Ethan was staring at where I had been just a second ago. Niamh came to a stop beside where Aodhan held me in a cradle hold.

“How are you here?” I said to Niamh.

“My mother came and told us about a vision she’d had. She said we needed to come right away,” Niamh said and looked back up to Aodhan.

“Saoirse had you come to help us?” I asked. “That makes no sense.”

Niamh nodded. “She said Aoife had changed her plan at the last minute and you were in danger. Where is she? Where’s Liam?”

“There’s a fháillan mine deep within that cave,” I said, pointing back the way we’d come. “She was about to kill me and Ethan and do the binding, but Ciarán showed up and stopped her. He caused a rockslide and we just barely made it out. Liam...Liam didn’t make it.”

“Come, let’s get you back to my house,” Niamh said, her face pinched. “It’s not far from here.”

“Wait, what if Liam somehow makes it out?” I said, seeing Aoife in my mind somehow rescuing him and continuing with the binding.

Aodhan’s jaw hardened. Niamh looked away.

“Liam knows his way, right?” Ethan said, glancing between them.

“Of course,” Niamh said, but she didn’t meet my eyes.

Aodhan carried me to Niamh’s house and Ethan stayed by my side as he walked. When we arrived, Aodhan sat me in one of the chairs in Niamh’s dining room. I laid my head on the table. My lids felt way too heavy and my thoughts were hazy. It wasn’t until then that I realized how much I hurt, inside and out.

The last thing I remember was Ethan standing in front of me. “Is she going to be okay?” he asked, but everything slipped away before I heard the answer.

I opened my eyes to darkness. It took a few minutes before everything that happened came back to me.

I bolted upright and realized I was in a bed. The blankets moved and I felt Ethan sitting up next to me.

“Hey,” he said, reaching out a hand and touching my cheek.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“We’re in one of Niamh’s guest rooms. You were in shock and Eithne said your body needed to shut down so you could rest. You’ve been sleeping for a few hours.”

“Eithne was here? But what about…” Ethan put his finger over my lips

“Shh,” he said. “Niamh went to get her after you passed out. She healed your ankle. You had a very nasty break.”

I tried moving my foot. There was no pain.

Liam’s look of panic flashed in my memory. “Liam. Oh God, Liam.”

“Come here,” Ethan said, pulling me into his lap and smoothing his hand over my hair.