The Heartbreak Show (Bound By Ravens #3)

5. CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER FIVE

Cian Merrick

I slowed my steps, my chest heaving. Dying stars, I couldn’t breathe.

Clenching my teeth, I dropped the boots and unclasped the corset partway. My head was oscillating between swimming and pounding. I flopped against a tree and ran a hand through my messy strands.

George had drugged the dandy.

Drugged .

Or hypnotized him.

I couldn’t figure out exactly which it was. The only time Raccoon was clear to whatever magic tethered us together was when I was drunk. Sober, though? My translation was spotty. I rolled to my shoulder, to better scan the underbrush for that banded thief, when the forest began spinning around me.

Feck.

I dug my nails into the tree.

A discordant noise suddenly buzzed in my head. Trees whipped by my vision, growing faster and faster. I sucked in a sharp breath and grit my teeth.

Feck.

Feck.

Feck.

I hadn’t felt so intensely tipsy on magic since The Wild Hunt. The moment I looked into the constable’s eyes, I knew Bram had him in a bargain. Frantic, I had run off the trail through Caledona Wood to escape the authorities and find Rhylen, but the ground had rolled beneath my feet and slowed my steps.

Like now.

The world was flipping upside down all around me. But to my reveling chaos, it had never looked more level and balanced despite the many thought threads intersecting all at once. Voices were speaking—gods, the voices—each one growing louder. I grimaced back the slowly building pain.

To focus my spiraling cognitive control, I peered up through the carouseling canopy of bare, clawing limbs to the faint whisper of stars flecking the twilight sky. My gaze sharpened and settled onto one star.

One star.

One star.

Only think of one star.

. . . just one star . . .

“Not all heroes wear armor, Cillian.”

I winced at the warbly echo of Mam’s words.

Did George possibly mean . . . coerce ?

“It’s time to chase after yer birthright, my wee Cian.”

We couldn’t herd deer to milk. That was absurd. We needed a cow.

I don’t speak of that type of crodh sìdh.

Yer birthright . . .

If coercion, hopefully George glamoured the man’s mind to forget he had been robbed.

Did anyone ask Filena if she wanted to have many childr—

—The Donnely mam was secretly hoarding herbs used to relieve the spreading sickness at ca—

What if I had accidentally married Owen last night?

“He met and married his true love in a dress.”

No legal authority would believe that a raccoon could take down a grown man and thieve the boots right off his feet.

One star.

Just one star.

Cían, Ancient One . . .

My eyes shot to the woods.

Shadows swayed around me. Dead leaves lifted in a breeze and churned in the air.

Cían, Enduring One . . .

I pushed off the tree, the boots nearly forgotten, and took a few wobbly steps forward. Keeping my body grounded, despite the spinning world, I hunted the forest with a slow sweep of my gaze.

Magic crawled across my skin and continued to swirl in my head.

“Great Niece-Nephew.”

I whirled toward the sound, my heart in my throat.

A shaft of rosy sunlight illuminated an elven female with long, silky auburn hair and moon pale skin beneath a flowering hawthorn tree.

In autumn—a hawthorn was flowering in autumn . I blinked.

Niece-Nephew?

I blinked again.

My mind, it was suddenly, unsettlingly calm. The chaos had silenced and . . . my eyes rounded.

Holy fecking stars in a falling sky, I was standing before the Maiden.

The.

Maiden.

My great aunt.

And while wearing only a corset and drawers and nothing else. I dug my bare toes into the forest substrate and grit my teeth.

“Cían of the Tuatha Dé Danann,” the Maiden greeted, “it is time.”

Tuatha Dé Danann , the fae gods.

I continued to stare wide-eyed like an eejit. She appeared so much like Filena, it was hard not to gape.

“Your magic has been born many times, Cían,” the Maiden mused softly, a kind smile on her Otherworldly beautiful face. “This is my favorite re-souling of you, though.”

That snapped me out of my daze and tossed me into a completely new one.

I held up a hand. I needed a moment. Maybe a hundre—

Re-souling?

Was she suggesting I was actually Cian, the legendary warrior god?

A scowl pinched between my brows.

I blinked yet again.

Then it hit me.

Mam knew.

She bloody knew .

The story she had shared the day before Filena and I fled to West Tribe wasn’t just to piece back together my personhood, but to confirm this future moment.

There were so many questions slamming into me at once. So, so many. But my bewildered, eejit brain fixated on the most ridiculous one of them all. “How old is George?”

I cringed.

I didn’t mean to speak that aloud. I was thinking about if I were re-souled, then . . . I loosed a tight breath. Had I spoken the other questions blurring past my mind aloud too? I sounded like a wee bairn.

My great aunt laughed and the airy sound was like a frolicking breeze in a meadow of wildflowers. “He, too, is ancient.”

Ancient faerie raccoons. The horror.

“All familiars gifted to the Children of the Gods are immortal.”

Immortal?

Starless skies, Barry wasn’t even twelve years old and already he was a grumpy, old ancient.

I drew in a breath and exhaled slowly. “Why am I reborn?”

“You, Great Niece-Nephew—”

“Nephew is fine.”

She paused. “Is it, truly?”

I shrugged. “Call me a she or him. I like both. But”—my lips twisted into a wry smile—"Niece-Nephew is a wee bit of a mouthful, aye?” The Maiden tilted her head and studied me with a keenness I recognized. “I always feel like a lad, even in a corset and dress,” I added with a wink. “But sometimes also a lass. The intensity of my female gender fluctuates.”

“Great Nephew,” she said with a dip of her head. Then, “It is time for you to claim your birthright.”

My heart lodged firmly in my throat.

How many times had I claimed this birthright?

Or had I never and was this why I was reborn?

And how many times had I been reborn?

Was Filena reborn too—

“The cow Glas Gaibhnenn.”

My wildly galloping thoughts skidded to a complete stop.

“A cow ?”

"Aye, Enduring One.”

The Maiden lifted a hand toward me and made a show of curling her fingers into a fist. I bit the inside of my cheek. Dramatics clearly ran in the family.

Trying not to laugh or weep—maybe both simultaneously—I repeated, "My birthright is a fecking cow?”

The Maiden turned her wrist toward the sky. “A Cow of Plenty."

“Is this a real cow or a metaphorical cow?”

Instead of answering, she unfurled her hand. My brows shot up. On her palm lay a dudeen—an ornate clay tobacco pipe.

Did I trip and fall and accidentally ingest blue mushrooms? Nothing was making sense and everything always made sense to me. It was more disorienting than a spinning forest.

My aunt placed the strange pipe into my hands. I turned the dudeen in my fingers, then met her piercing emerald stare. "And,” I began, wary, “where do I find this magical faerie cow?"

"By following a trail of broken hearts."