Blair climbed up on a shelf of rock. “We’ll need light, that’s essential.”

“We can’t count on the moon.”

“Glenna conjured some sort of light the night we went head-to-head with Lora in that skirmish back at Cian’s place. They’ll slaughter us like flies if we fight in the dark. That’s their turf. We can’t lay traps here,” she added with a thoughtful frown. “Can’t risk our own men stumbling over or falling into one.”

Larkin held up a hand for her as she prepared to jump down. “She’ll come here as well, at night, to study, to work out her strategy. She may have been here before, before we were born. Before those who birthed us were born. Spinning out her web and dreaming of that single night to come.”

“Yeah, she’ll have been here. But…”

“What?”

“So have I. I’ve seen this place in my head as long as I can remember. From up there, from down here. In sunlight and silence, in the dark with the screams of battle. I know this place,” she whispered. “I’ve been afraid of it all my life.”

“Yet you come to it. You stand on it.”

“Feels like I’ve been pushed here, closer and closer, every day. I don’t want to die here, Larkin.”

“Blair—”

“No, I’m not afraid to die. Or not obsessed with the idea of it. But, oh God, I don’t want to end here, in this hard, lonely place. Drowning in my own blood.”

“Stop.” He took her shoulders. “Stop this.”

Her eyes were huge now, and deep, deep blue. “You see, I don’t know if I’ve seen it, or just imagined it because of the fear. I don’t know if I’ve watched myself die here. Damn gods, anyway, for their mixed messages and unreasonable demands.”

She patted her hands on his chest to ease him back, give herself a little space. “It’s okay, I’m okay. Just a little panic attack.”

“It’s this place, this evil place. Slides under the skin and freezes the blood.”

“So, advantage them. But you know what? You know something that tips onto our side? The people who’ll come here, who’ll take this ground and fight on this place, they’ll have something inside them. Whatever it is, it’ll already have given evil the finger.”

“What finger?”

She hadn’t thought it possible, not in this awful silence, not in this nightmare place, but she laughed until her sides ached.

She explained as they walked the broken ground. And it seemed easier then, to cross it, study it, to think clearly. When they climbed back up she felt more steady, more sure.

She brushed off her hands, started to speak. Then simply froze.

The goddess stood in a stream of light. It seemed to pulse from her white robe, and still it was dim compared to her luminous beauty.

I’m awake, Blair thought, so this is new. Wide awake, and there she is.

“Larkin, do you see—”

But he was going down on one knee, bowing his head. “My lady.”

“My son, you would kneel before what you have never truly believed?”

“I have come to believe in many things.”

“Then believe this,” Morrigan said. “You are precious to me. Each of you. All of you. I’ve watched you travel here, through the light and the dark. And you, daughter of my daughters, will you not kneel?”

“Is that what you need?”

“No.” And she smiled. “I only wondered. Rise up, Larkin. You have my gratitude, and my pride.”

“Would either of those come with an army of gods?” Blair asked her, and earned a shocked hushing sound from Larkin.

“You are my army, you and what you both carry inside you for tomorrow and tomorrow. Would I ask this thing of you if it were not possible?”

“I don’t know,” Blair answered. “I don’t know if gods only ask the possible.”

“And yet you come, you prepare, you battle. So you have my gratitude, my pride, and my admiration. This, the second month, the time of learning is nearly done. So will come the time of knowing. You must know if you are to win this thing.”

“What, my lady, must we know?”

“You will know when you know.”

“See.” Blair spread her hands. “Cryptic. Why does it always have to be cryptic?”

“It frustrates you, I know.” There might have been a laugh in Morrigan’s eyes as she stepped closer. But there was no doubt of the affection in the brush of her fingers—warm and real—over Blair’s cheek. “Mortals may see the path the gods have carved, but it’s up to them to chose a direction and follow it. I will tell you that you are my hope, you and the four with you who forged the circle. You are my hope, the hope of mankind. You are my joy, and the future.”

She touched Larkin’s cheek now. “And you are blessed.”

She stepped back, the laughter gone. In its place was a sorrow and a kind of steely strength. “What is coming must come. There will be pain, and blood and loss. There is no life without its price. The shadows will fall, dark upon dark, and demons rise from it. A sword flames through it, and a crown shines. Magic beats like a heart, and what was lost can be regained if that heart is willing. Give these words to all the circle, and remember them. For it is not the will of gods that will win the day, but the will of humankind.”

She vanished with the light so Blair stood with Larkin on the edge of the cursed ground.

“Remember it?” Blair lifted her hands, let them fall. “How are we supposed to remember all that? Did you get it?”

“I’ll remember it. It’s my first conversation with a goddess, so I can promise you I won’t be forgetting the details of it.”

T hey flew again, away from the valley to the first of the three points Blair had devised for traps. They set down in a green glade with a pretty river winding through it.

Standing beside the river, she took out the map the six of them had worked on. “Okay, if we go by the fact that our portal stands in nearly the same spot here as it does in Ireland, then we make the big leap of faith that the same would hold true for Lilith’s way in, the cliffs are roughly twenty miles west.”

“They are, as you see here.” He traced his finger on the map, along the coastline. “And caves as well, which she could use for her base.”