Total pages in book: 194
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 187021 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 935(@200wpm)___ 748(@250wpm)___ 623(@300wpm)
Since then, Oisín had been helping her and Gen learn more about Fae. She’d trudged through massive tomes, reading everything she could get her hands on. The scant knowledge of wisps was particularly disturbing. In most of the tales, will-o’-the-wisps were nothing more than faerie lights, especially around swamps, which led travelers off of their path. In other iterations, they were jack-o’-lanterns, or a will-of-the-torch that helped luckier travelers through the night. Sometimes wisps judged whether to help a stranger or not based on their actions. So much of it was a mix of urban legend and faerie mischief. For a few centuries, mortal scientists had claimed they were just bioluminescence in the marsh due to decay. Boy, did she have a story for that hypothesis.
It was only with Oisín’s help that she had reconstructed an index of all powers the wisps had historically wielded to compare them to her own. Absorption, time manipulation, glamour, and finding treasure—check. Pixie light, persuasion, magic intuition, and possibly portaling—negative. No matter how she worked at the latter powers, they stayed squarely out of her grasp. She was happy enough with what she’d had, but Oisín feared that the spell had horribly altered her magic.
“I feel something has changed,” Oisín said, looking between them.
“She’s going into Nying, Oisín,” Niamh said. “We were hoping you’d talk her out of it.”
Oisín sighed. “You’ve been seduced by Nying as well? There won’t be answers about the Fae in there.”
“Or if there are, you can’t pay for them,” Niamh insisted.
Kierse hadn’t even considered that, but now that she was…
“Don’t even think about it,” Graves growled as if reading her mind.
“She’s not going for that,” Gen said. “It’s for her nightmares.”
“They’re not nightmares. They’re memories.” She swallowed, deciding that she might as well lay it all out now. “Memories of my past, my father. And they’re all jumbled up from the broken spell. So I need something to fix them.”
Niamh looked to Graves. “That sounds like your area.”
“I’ve been working on it,” he said roughly.
“Can’t you just read her mind and…”
“He can’t get through my absorption,” Kierse clarified.
“And she already turned down my offer. Anything you can do, oh High Priestess?”
Niamh shook her head. “I’ve been sending Gen all the books I have on nightmares. Memory is even harder to deal with. There might be a spell, but it wouldn’t be ready for another full moon, and it requires more energy than I can channel alone. Maybe if we brought in other Druids…”
“No,” Graves said at once.
“Well, tell us your great idea then, warlock,” Niamh said.
“If she won’t work with me,” he said carefully, “and it isn’t safe for her to work with Druids…then we should take her to the Covenant.”
“The witch doctors?” Niamh said, her eyes wide.
Kierse’s jaw fell open. “You’d work with Dr. Mafi again?”
Dr. Mafi had turned on them and given Kierse’s blood to the vampire King Louis. She’d only done it because she was indebted to him, but Kierse didn’t think Graves would ever forgive something like that.
“I would do whatever it takes to help you,” he told her, his eyes earnest. “Including aiding this asinine quest into the market.”
“Science isn’t going to fix a magical problem,” Niamh said. “Even witch doctor science.”
“You can’t know that,” Gen argued. “We don’t even know if what happened to Kierse’s memories is entirely because of the spell. That’s just one hypothesis. And to be fair, none of your potions were working, either. So why not try the medical side?”
“Because the Covenant is back home,” Kierse said. “And I’m going into the market tonight.”
“Is there any way to talk her out of this?” Oisín inquired.
“Probably not,” Gen said. “Not when she’s set her mind on it.”
“I can’t stop. Not when I’m this close to finding out what happened to my parents.”
“My dear, my deepest condolences on the loss of your parents and people. I feel the pain acutely,” Oisín said. “It does not, however, change the fact that that place is a monstrosity.”
“Surely, it can’t be that bad. Your shop is the entrance, isn’t it?” Gen said softly.
“Indeed, the market has resided in this location far longer than I have had this shop. It is the home to goblins, true. They run their goblin fruit operations out of the market entrance, which is its primary purpose, but it is an illicit den of iniquity, the likes of which I have never seen elsewhere on this earth.”
She needed to recover her memories. For her magic, her parents, and for herself, it was worth it, even if she had to walk into a monstrosity to get them back.
“I’m going,” she said decisively.
“Kierse…” Gen whispered. “It sounds like this place is really dangerous.”
She nearly laughed. “Yeah. What else is new?”
“Stubborn,” Graves grumbled.
“It’s a bad idea,” Niamh said.
“I’m prepared to pay the cost,” Kierse said, turning around. “There’s a reason the spell was put on me and why my memories were taken from me. My parents are dead. There are no more Fae. I am the last of my entire race. I need answers. If this is how I get them, then so be it.”