Page 67 of Keldori By Daybreak

I was too far away to hear the Herald’s response, but my aunt’s heartbroken cry echoed over ice.

The world swayed. I slumped against Daithi as my head turned light, but he kept me standing.

Because there was only one reason for the Saergrim’s Herald to be in our village and only one thing she could’ve said to my aunt to make her scream in such a terrible way.

The sky closed in around me.

“Mother?” I whispered. “Father?”

The Herald’s serious face found mine in the growing crowd. My knees buckled as she strode past my aunt where she cried on the ground in my uncle’s arms. The woman was coming towards me, but I already knew what she was here to say, and I didn’t want to hear it.

“I’ve got you. Ciarán, I’m here.” Daithi’s arms were around me. My aunt screamed my mother’s name. The dread in my stomach turned into something worse, but I couldn’t quite name it.

We were sitting on the frozen ground. I wasn’t sure we’d gotten here. My aunt was still sobbing, but I couldn’t see anything through the haze of orange my Skal cast through my tears. Someone else was sobbing too, their cries coming out in shuddering, haggard breaths that ripped at my throat and threatened to suffocate me.

The Herald crouched in front of me. I hadn’t expected her to look so angry.

Her mouth moved, and I couldn’t hear what she was saying, but it didn’t matter. I already knew.

Mother. Father.

Mother. Father.

My mother and father were dead.

I was alone.

16. Fencing I

Ciarán had cleaned and removed his parents’ remains from the main chamber by the time we all sat on the flagstone together the next morning. Or maybe it was evening? Time had become amorphous at some point in the last few days.

Whatever the time was, I avoided looking at the floor in the center of the chamber. The thought of Ciarán’s dead parents was all the more haunting after accidentally slipping into his head, and my brief time spent as Liam had left me shaken.

If Ciarán remembered his dreams from the night before and the memory of Liam I’d recovered, he made no indication of it. Granted, he’d always been hard to read. He stared at Iseult with the rest of us, waiting for her to organize her thoughts and hopefully agree to help us find the secret back way into Keldori.

The slippery sliding of Skal as it cascaded down the walls around us echoed through the room, filling the silence. Iseult stared at the copper gate, and I wished I could hear what she was thinking. Instead, I was left with the continued buzzing Ciarán’s thoughts just out of reach.

We’d laid out everything for her—the truth of how Galahad had died, Ferrin’s secret life as a Lucid Nightmare in Keldori, the true identity of the Saergrim, the real purpose of the Grimguards, and the unwitting role I played in all of it.

“You need me,” Iseult finally said, still looking at the copper with a careful expression. “Because I’m a Lyrian.”

“The Saergrim said any Lyrian would do, but you’re the one we’ve got,” Ciarán explained. “So is it true? Do the Lyrians know how to pass into Keldori without the Rift?”

Iseult’s brow furrowed over her silver eyes, and she exhaled heavily through her nose before straightening up to look around the circle at us. Despite the baths the others had taken and the sleep we’d all gotten, I knew we still looked beleaguered.

“My grandfather died trying to keep Magicians from ever setting foot in Keldori. Why would I tarnish his memory by helping you achieve something that went against his life’s work?” Iseult asked.

“We’re trying to reseal the Rift,” I said. “I think Galahad would understand.”

“I think I would understand my grandfather better than you, Nightmare.”

“Nightmare?” I raised an eyebrow at her.

“Sorry. I meant Wren.” She cleared her throat. “Still, Galahad may have been your nocturmancer, but he was my family.”

“He abandoned you,” Ciarán taunted.

“Excuse you?” Iseult bristled, and Ciarán’s coy grin widened, so different from that scared boy I’d found in his memories.