The Dark Divide (49 page)

Rónán was lying about why Aoi had sworn the oath, though. She’d done it because the Ikushima wanted this
Youkai
male to father a potential member of the
Konketsu
on one of their daughters to gain influence at court. They certainly hadn’t been planning to hand him over to the Empresses, without gaining some advantage from the lucky accident that had placed him in their custody.

‘Lady Delphine said she would send someone to aid us,’ one of the girls pointed out, sounding a little petulant. ‘Your oath to the
Matrarchaí
should mean more than some silly girl’s oath to her social-climbing brother.’

Trása smiled, and then remembered that these girls had shared a
Comhroinn
with the mysterious Lady Delphine. Perhaps that’s why they weren’t falling for Rónán’s flimsy web of lies. They knew more than they appeared to know. Trása wished there was a way to warn Rónán of that. Or maybe he’d worked it out for himself. He wasn’t stupid.

‘And I will help you,’ Rónán promised. ‘I just need to go back to my own realm first, and get a few things I —’

‘He wants us to open a rift,’ the twin on the left said to her
sister. ‘If it’s so important to go back and get something, why can’t he open his own rift? Or bring it with him when he came here?’

Yeah, Rónán
, Trása added silently.
Explain that one
. She could see what he was doing. The girls had been expecting someone from the
Matrarchaí
and he was playing along with the idea he was the one they were waiting for. He wasn’t being very subtle about it though, and he was running out of time. The servants were already starting to place lighted candles on each diner’s
honzen
, in preparation for the fast-approaching sunset.

‘Lady Delphine promised us a guardian. How can you be our guardian if the first thing you do when you get here, is to leave again?’

Rónán opened his mouth to answer, but the words never came. Without warning, his eyes rolled back into his head and he stiffened and then fell backwards, sending the
honzen
, the
ni-no-zen
, the rice, soup and
san-sai
flying.

The
akunoya
erupted in choas. The Empresses started screaming. Everyone jumped to their feet. There was food strewn everywhere, staining the tatami matting. Masuyo was yelling at Chishihero, as if she had done something to cause this. Someone was yelling something about poison. Aoi and Kazusa were trying to back away from what might well turn into a bloodbath. Hyato and Namito even drew their weapons, looking about for the invisible assailant that had taken down one of the dinner guests.

It was Wakiko, though, who reacted calmly to Rónán’s apparent seizure. With the stoic calm that allowed her to care and nurture two monstrously powerful, spoiled brats, she pushed everyone out of the way, rolled Rónán onto his back and checked his pulse with her fingers, just under his ear.

Trása found herself unable to move. Through the forest of legs surrounding him, she could see Rónán was having trouble
breathing. He was rigid and in obvious pain. She could only see the whites of his eyes.

It’s happened
, she thought, fighting the need to return to her true form so she could run to him.
Orlagh has transferred the power to the new Undivided.

Somewhere out there, in a realm she couldn’t reach, Darragh would be going through the same withdrawal, the same agony.

Trása wished cats could cry, because all she wanted to do was weep for Darragh. And for Rónán.

She forced herself to move, wending her way through the panicked legs of the dinner guests, until she reached Rónán’s side. Wakiko shooed her away, but she refused to be deterred. Trása rubbed her face against Rónán’s shoulder, as if she could will him to fight the effects of the devastating loss of magic that was going to kill him sure as darkness followed the sunset.

Wakiko pushed her away again, but she was determined. Ignoring the shouting and the accusations going on above her, as the Ikushima and the Tanabe tried to blame each other, she rubbed against his arm, pushing her face into his hand — as if that would revive him — as if he would realise that she wanted to be petted when he felt her soft fur against his fingers — as if that would be enough to counter the death sentence Orlagh had unwittingly carried out on this young man who had not, until a few weeks ago, even known what magic was.

It was a waste of time, of course. Rónán didn’t respond. He was hardly breathing, although she could feel his racing pulse.

Trása pushed against his hand.
Don’t die, Rónán
, she pleaded silently.
Don’t die. Please,
Danú
, don’t let him die.

It was a wasted prayer, she realised as his open palm fell lifelessly on the straw matting beside her.
Danú
had abandoned this young man.

The triskalion tattoo that marked him as
Danú’s
chosen was gone.

CHAPTER 50

It shouldn’t be so easy to take a life.
The killer pondered that thought as he approached the cradle rocking gently in the centre of the warm, candle-lit chamber. Their mother would have set the cradle in motion, he supposed, to soothe the twins before she left the room, trusting their visitor so profoundly it would never occur to her the children might be in danger.

He reached the cradle and stopped to study it for a moment. The oak crib was carved with elaborate Celtic knot-work, inlaid with softly glowing mother-of-pearl. It looked antique, expensive. Probably a gift from their grandmother. Perhaps it had been in her family for generations.

Generations that would end now. Tonight. By his hand.

He glanced down at the blade he carried. The polished silver caught the candlelight in odd places, illuminating the engraving on the blade. He hefted the razor-sharp weapon in his hand. Faerie silver was useless in battle, he’d been told, but for this task, nothing else would suffice.

Warmed by the fire crackling in the fire pit in the centre of the large round chamber, the twins slept peacefully, blissfully ignorant of their approaching death. Even if they had been awake, it was unlikely they would recognise the danger that hovered over them. The man wielding the blade above their cradle — the man who had come to take their lives — was a dependable presence they trusted to keep them safe.

‘You can’t seriously mean to do this.’

He glanced over his shoulder. His brother had appeared in the shadows by the door like a corporeal manifestation of his own conscience.

‘It has to be done. You know what will happen, otherwise.’

His brother shook his head and took a step further into the room. The assassin found himself staring at a mirror image of himself, except the face of his reflection was filled with doubt and anguish, while his own was calm and resigned to what must be done.

‘They are innocent.’

‘They are death.’

‘If preventing our death requires the death of innocent children, then perhaps we deserve to die.’

He didn’t answer, turning back to stare down at the twin girls he had come to murder. It wasn’t who they were, but what, that made their deaths so necessary.

Why am I the only one who sees that clearly?

His brother took another step closer. ‘I won’t let you do it.’

‘How will you stop me?’ he asked as he raised the blade, bracing himself for the fatal blow. One of the girls was stirring. She opened her eyes to smile up at him, her face framed by soft dark curls. Her sister remained asleep, still peacefully sucking her thumb.

‘I’ll kill you if I have to, to stop this.’

The assassin smiled down at the twins, dismissing the empty threat. ‘Even if you could get across this room before the deed is done, turns out, you can’t kill me without killing yourself, which would achieve precisely what I am here to prevent.’

He moved the blade a little, repositioning his grip. The candlelight danced across its engraved surface, mesmerising the baby. He was happy to entertain her with the pretty lights for a few moments. His mission was to kill her and her sister, after all, not to make her suffer.

There was a drawn-out silence, as he played the light across the blade. Behind him, the presence that was both his conscience and his other half remained motionless. There was no point in his brother trying to attack him. They were two sides of the same coin. Since coming to this strange and terrible place, neither could so much as form the intent to attack without the other knowing about it.

The girls would be dead before his brother could reach the cradle to stop him.

‘There must be another way to stop this.’ There was a note of defeat in the statement, a glimmer of acceptance. And he wasn’t talking about killing the girls. He was talking about mass murder. Genocide on a scale neither of them could have comprehended before stepping through the rift.

‘I wouldn’t be here if there was,’ the assassin replied, still staring down at the baby he had come to kill. ‘You know that,’ he added, glancing over his shoulder. ‘You’ve seen what I’ve seen.’

His brother held out his hand, as if he expected the blade to be handed over, and for this night to be somehow forgotten. Put behind them like a foolish disagreement they’d been wise enough to settle like men. ‘They’re just babies …’

‘They are our death and the death of much more besides.’

‘But they’re innocents …’

The assassin shook his head. ‘Only because they lack the capacity yet to act on what they were bred to manifest. It’s nature over nurture, brother. Once they become adults …’

‘Dammit … they’re your own flesh and blood!’

He gripped the blade tighter and turned back to the cradle, steeling his resolve with a conscious act of will. It didn’t matter who they were. It’s what they were. That was the important thing.

It was the reason they had to die.

‘They are abominations, bred to cause chaos and strife.’

‘What the Faerie showed us in other realities may not happen in this one.’

‘Of course it will,’ he said, growing impatient with an argument he considered long resolved. He reached into the cradle with his left hand to pull back the blankets covering the children. The twin who was awake grabbed his finger. Her blue eyes smiling, she squeezed it gently. Behind him, his other half watched, too appalled to allow this, too afraid to stop it.

‘Help me, or leave,’ he said, feeling his brother’s accusing eyes boring into his back. ‘Just don’t stand there feigning disgust. It was your carelessness that brought us here.’

His brother wasn’t ready to give up just yet. ‘Perhaps what the
djinni
showed us won’t happen in this reality …’

‘I’m not prepared to take that risk.’

‘But you’re prepared to have the blood of two innocent children on your hands?’

‘Better the blood of two children than the blood of the thousands who don’t deserve to die.’

He was still a little amazed he felt so calm. It was as if all the anguish, all the guilt, all the fear and remorse, all the normal human emotions a man should be battling at a time like this were a burden carried by someone else, leaving him free to act, unhindered by doubt.

If that wasn’t a sign of the rightness of this deed, he couldn’t think of anything else that might be.

He extracted his finger from the soft, determined grip of the baby girl, her skin so supple and warm, her gaze so trusting and serene, it was heart-breaking.

But not heart-breaking enough to stay his hand. He raised the blade, transfixed by the guileless blue eyes staring up at him. And then he brought it down sharply, slicing through the swaddling and her fragile ribs into her tiny heart without remorse or regret.

He was quick and, he hoped, merciful, but the link between the sisters was quicker.

Before he could extract the blade from one tiny heart and plunge it into another, her twin sister jerked with pain and began to scream …

Pete sat bolt upright in bed, bathed in a cold sweat, jerked awake by the horror of his nightmare. He was panting, trying to calm his racing heart. The clarity of his dream was terrifying, but not quite so terrifying as the underlying reason for it.

He glanced at the clock on the bedside table. It was just past three in the morning. Swinging his legs around so he was sitting on the edge of the bed, Pete put his head in his hands, trying to dispel the nightmare which was burned into his brain like a true memory, not the fading wisps of a soon-to-be-forgotten dream.

The nightmare shook Pete to his core, and not just because of the graphic nature of it, or even that he had it in him to imagine such a thing — he’d seen plenty of things in his job that would give a man nightmares. But Pete had studied dreams. He knew more than the average person about the pathology of what made them happen and the current thinking on what fuelled them and what they revealed about the dreamer. But if dreams were supposed to metaphorically act out one’s unresolved expectations, what the hell did a nightmare where he murdered Logan’s unborn babies mean?

Pete had never in his life been jealous of his brother. He would admit to some irritation at the way Logan always seemed to land the better job, the prettier girl, and now even be the first of them to father a child. To have such a nightmare, such a clear and unequivocal expression of such underlying — and until this
moment unsuspected — rage toward his brother, so intense that he could imagine himself killing his brother’s children made Pete question everything he knew about himself and his relationship with his twin.