Prologue

1500 A.E. (After Exodus)

The sound of metal scraping on concrete jarred Morrigan awake. Above her head, close to the low stone ceiling, a thin ray of sunshine fell through a small window. She rested her eyes on it, trying to orientate herself. Her body was heavy, desiccated. It was like the hunger one felt after being deprived of food for days, only it went deeper. Moving her head, she noted the bars blocking her point of exit: she was in a small cell. Was she in a prison, or in the bowels of a castle? How had she come to be there? 

With no ready answers at her disposal, the goddess reached out to her power, trying to amass the awen into her bones so that she might rise and turn the bars of her cage into sand, but nothing happened. She tried once more and was again rewarded by hollow nothingness.

Panic flooded her, waves of it crashing over her as she searched deep within, urging the core of her being to purport the magic that was her birthright. Again, nothing answered her back. Nothing at all. It was as though where before there had been a glowing hearth, now there was only a blackened hollow. How could this be?

Then her eyes caught on how the light through the window refracted off the back wall of her cell. Within what she had at first seen as nothing but quarried stone, she now registered a subtle twinkle…Black Quartz. They had built the whole back wall of the prison cells with the magic syphoning stone.

Morrigan shook her head, wincing as pain radiated down her neck, into her spine. Coming to terms with her surroundings meant she could feel the Quarts leaching the magic from her body. A slow pull making itself known, like blood draining out. It made her lightheaded, and she leaned it back against the wall again, the weight too much for her neck to hold upright. 

Without her magic, her black hair had reverted to its original auburn, crossing over her vision in a silken sheet. She was sure if she were to look in a mirror, her deep brown eyes would be their usual hazel in the absence of her normal glamor.  

“Well, that took longer than usual,” a male voice purred from somewhere beyond the bars.

Morrigan’s eyes snapped open, turning to the voice. In a cell across from hers, a man looked back at her, a smirk pulling at one corner of his lips. He had a sheet of dirty white hair that fell over his broad shoulders. The fabric of his shirt had once been a soft white muslin, but the dirt clinging to what was left of the thread bare material had long sense turned brown. It hung limply on his frame. His blood-red eyes were disconcerting in the dimness of the cells as he watched her. Even disheveled, Morrigan blinked blankly at his beautiful face.  

She ran her eyes over his strong chiseled jaw and smirking soft lips, his features as perfect as if they’d been carved from stone.

“Who in the underworld—?” she started.

The man held up a hand, cutting her off. He rolled his eyes, underlining of his exacerbation. “They have to stop messing with your brain up there. It’s making this so fucking tedious,” he declared. “I’m Arawn, brother to the Fomorian king, Balor.”

Morrigan eyed the man, her nose scrunching. 

At the expression Arawn sighed, saying, “Yes, yes, you didn’t know the great warrior king had a brother. I was a weakling, my mummy didn’t love me, and the grand stories will never remember me. Blah, blah, blah. Seriously, they are scrambling your brain with all the mind games. And given you are the only other being down here to talk to until Lilith gets back, you need to hold it together better.”

“By the gods, what are you talking about?” 

Arawn cocked his head, his red eyes considering her for a moment. “You don’t remember anything do you?”

Morrigan furrowed her brows, impatience flaring dangerously in her chest. She wasn’t in the habit of being spoken to as though she were a child.

“Just speak plainly,” she said. The words were slow and flat, the growing fatigue weighing her body down.

 “Well, love, since you asked so sweetly.” He swept his arms in a grand gesture. “These luxurious accommodations are the prison we’ve been relegated to ever since Nero attacked the barbarian tribes of the Naydrao, and waged war on all forms of magic in the cursed world of those damned mortals.”

Morrigan’s eyes narrowed at the term Naydrao. Her mind reached for it, tried to capture the memory she could sense it should invoke, but her past was shrouded in fog and all her memories with it. Each was still there, but just beyond her grasp; taunting her with their impermanence. Shadows, sounds, and sensations dancing over her skin, but like smoke disappearing as soon as Morrigan tried to seize them. 

“How long?” she asked. 

Arawn made a show of ticking off time with his fingers before giving her a sheepish grin. “At my last count, roughly fifteen hundred years.” 

The time-span made a name surface from the recesses of her mind. It tasted like burned logs, like fields on fire, like war and death.

“Is this Nero’s doing?” she asked.

Arawn laughed coldly. “That fat sod? No. He just helped acquire the magical sidhe still left behind.”

Her agitation was spiking. The awen coursing through her blood was being leached out by the Quartz, making her eyes heavy and her skin burn. She scooted away from the walls, positioning herself in the middle of the floor to limit the purchase that the crystals had on her. It did little good. Whoever her captors were, they had not designed the cells with her comfort in mind. 

“Are we still in Naydrao?” she asked.

“Not likely. This place feels different from the mortal realms. There’s magic outside of these walls.”

Morrigan thought of something and fell quiet for a moment, studying Arawn while she chewed on her musings.

“How is it you still have your memories, and I don’t? Why do they keep ‘playing mind games’ with me, as you so delicately put it?” 

He smirked again. A dark-looking thing, more menacing than comforting. “Because I agreed to help them and didn’t give them a hard time. You, on the other hand, have given them nothing but trouble from the moment you got here.” He moved his legs, bending them to rest his arms on his knees, those red eyes observing her keenly. “You know how they train aggressive dogs?”

Morrigan glared at him and said nothing. This seemed to please him. As though he had hoped he would get to elaborate. “They blindfold it,” he said. “Keep it disoriented. They isolate it from all its senses. Keeps it from biting most of the time. That way, when they let the hood off and let it go, they simply have to point it in the right direction.” 

Morrigan let out an involuntary snarl, and this made Arawn laugh. 

“I’m not a dog,” she said.

“No, you certainly aren’t. But you would definitely bite off their heads if given the opportunity.”

The cells fell silent for a time.

“Are they like us? Magic wielders, I mean?” she finally asked.

“Well, they certainly aren’t mortal, that I know for sure. But otherwise, I don’t know what they are or aren’t,” he said.

Again, silence fell as Morrigan digested this information. In the silence, one memory slipped through the fog. It came to her out of focus, but with a swirling flame at its center. The red hair of her daughter. 

“I had a child. She had children. What happened to them?” Her voice was barely audible.

“I do not know their fate while they lived, but seeing as how they were mortal, you know as well as I that their bones will be dust by now.” He had the grace to look regretful as he said the words.

It did not surprise her, given what he was, that he would phrase it so cruelly. And yet she wished that there had been some morsel of compassion in him, something to stave off his honesty. Perhaps she should be grateful to him. She wondered how many times she must had asked him these same questions. The relentlessness of tedious repetition would bring out the cruelty in anyone. Still, for her this was the first, and her head fell forward into her hands to cut off the pained mewling sound rising in her throat.

“But I know how to bring them back,” Arawn said.

His tone was so casual it took a moment for the words to break through her grief. When they did, her head snapped up.

“Surely you of all people know souls aren’t lost, they just… go onto other plains. Of course, if someone like myself doesn’t eat them, that is. Theoretically, I can bring them back.” He shrugged. “I mean yes, it would require a great deal of awen, but it can be done.”

His words caught her, and she glared at him, growing suspicious. “Why would you tell me this when we’re stuck in a place stealing our awen right out of us? I cannot connect with the source. Can you?”

“No,” he admitted. “But…”

He leaned forward, spying through the bars of his cell for someone, listening for any sound. When all remained still, he rose to his feet, walking to the back of his cell to dig something out from beneath a loose stone in the floor. When he turned around, she could see it was a small vial of glowing blue liquid. He approached the bars again, glowing red eyes competing with the blue stirring within its confinement. It was moving. 

She knew what it was. Of course, she knew. 

Awen.

Clean and undiluted life force. The root of all magic. Somehow extracted straight from the river source that flowed between all things and all realms. 

Arawn reached through the bars of his cell, tossing the glass bottle toward Morrigan.

“Catch,” he said.

She did. Moving like a sand cat, her stiff fingers snatching the vial from the air before it could hit the bars of the cell or the hard stone floor. The force of the movement sent a whisper of her former self rushing through her limbs, reminding her of the power that for millennia had been but a breath away. The blessing of gods that had always flowed freely in her blood. Her captors had found out her weakness, had pressed on it, imprisoned her in it. Oh, how she wished to tear the walls down with her bare hands and crush every last crystal into oblivion! 

“Drink it, then we will talk,” Arawn encouraged. “And fair warning, you better swallow fast—it likes to fight back.”

She narrowed her eyes. That did not sound natural.

“How was it extracted?” she asked.

Arawn raised his eyebrows. “Do you truly wish to know, goddess? Or would you rather view it as a mere means to an end?”

If she swallowed corrupted awen, there was no telling what it might do to her. 

If she did not, she would be stuck in this cell. There was no telling for how many more thousands of years. Nor had she any way of knowing what her continuously drained power was being used for. And if she did not cooperate with the soul-eater, she would never see her daughter again. She knew he would hold sway over the realms where the souls rested. If anyone could rouse her Boudica, it was he. 

Could she trust him?

It seemed she had no choice.

“Has it been extracted from the dead?” she asked.

“No,” he replied, a little surprised that she had still chosen insight over willful ignorance. “But against the will of the soul.”

That was hardly better, but desecrating the dead was something even the gods did not do. Awen, stolen from an unwilling soul, was something she could contend with. As a means to an end, at least.

She tilted her head back, doing as he instructed. She had to fight the overwhelming urge to vomit as the awen continued to fight against its new host all the way down into her chest. It settled there, making her queasy. Then, in an instant, her whole body grabbed onto it, starved of it, and warmth shot through her. She pitched forward when the warmth intensified to a burning fire raging over every nerve ending. It was ecstasy and torture all at once. Memories blasted through her brain and with them came pain like the blow of an ax trying to rip her skull apart.

She closed her eyes, let the memories claim her.

The blue sky waned into night, the sunset painting a bright, burning tapestry of reds and oranges so deep it looked like the gods themselves had brushed over it with blood, leaving a scorched banner of bloodshed to glisten over the hills. An announcement of what had befallen the day. 

Her knees gave way as all her strength sapped from her body, all warmth draining out of her as though she were slipping, inch by inch, into a bath of ice water. She should have fallen to the ground, but did not. Instead, she was kept on her feet by an invisible cord wrapping itself around her ribs. It kept her standing, kept her from moving, and it tightened its grip as a figure loomed over her, a wicked smile tugging at the corners of his lips. 

Holding the gate open so her people could escape this world had drained her awen, but thanks to her, they had fled the magical cleansing that was coming.

Only her heroics had left her defenseless. 

And Nero knew it.

He was a slight man, with more chin than neck. His rusty blonde beard crawled down his throat in a patchwork of fur, reminding Morrigan of a mange-riddled lion. His blue-gray eyes were lifeless as his gaze bore into her. 

She noted that he’d woven extra padding into his armor to make himself look bigger and wondered how a man so slight and shapeless had ever commanded the respect of a military so vast as the Roman army. 

Nepotism is a bitch, she thought, disgust rolling over her tongue like the thick bitter dregs of skunk weed tea. It coated her mouth, making bile rise in her throat.  

“You were on our side,” she ground out, her lungs assailed by the pressure on her ribcage. “You executed the disciple.” 

The shapeless face broke out in a rueful smile. The emperor threw his head back and laughed. The veracity and volume should have signaled great joy, but underneath the guffaw, the sound was as hollow as Nero’s soul. Gooseflesh crawled over Morrigan’s skin at the unease settling over her. He leaned down, his pale face close to hers, reaching out clammy fingers to bring one of her curling black locks behind her ear. Morrigan shuddered as his skin brushed over hers, torrents of revulsion running over every nerve ending, tightening her stomach. 

“Darling,” he purred, “I thought you would have understood by now. I’m only ever on my side.” 

A string of curses flew from Morrigan as Nero’s betrayal settled over her. 

A hand fell hard across her cheek, stars swimming in her vision. She fell silent, but when she looked up at him, her seething anger didn’t need words put to it—the mounting fury turned the hazel depths of her eyes into pools of liquefied metal. 

He scowled back, his pudgy lips pulling up in disgust, his brows drawing down over the protruding ridge of his forehead as he looked at her with naked disapproval. 

“Civility,” Nero said.

He turned away from her and called out the name of his general, “Take the girl and her daughters to the exchange point. Our generous patron has agreed to house them for the time being.” As he spoke, he rolled his hand in a dismissive motion, drawing Morrigan’s eyes towards a pile of tangled hair and limbs lying limply in the grass. 

It took only moments for her to understand, and the moment she did a sound was ripped from her. The sound of a wounded animal, wild and desperate. She fought against her restraints, rage burning over her skin, set alight by shame, watching as Boudica and her two young girls were hauled to their feet. 

“You will BURN! I will make sure of it!” Morrigan spat at Nero, but choked as the invisible restraints tightened ever more, making breathing impossible.

She groaned, feeling like the pressure would cleave her in half as Nero drew closer, his lips placing butterfly kisses on her ear before he softly said, “We will all burn. But not you. Not yet, my pet. Not yet.”

Power ripped through Morrigan’s blood, setting it alight. Arms spread wide, she greeted it like a long-lost lover. Where before she had been disconnected, now she could sense the air stir around Arawn’s face with each exhale, make out every speck of dust beneath the soles of her feet, embraced by every pulse of awen through her blood. 

And she could hear. 

Every last sound.

She was the granddaughter of the goddess Danu and her body remembered its power as though it had awakened from a thousand-year slumber.

She settled within herself and opened her eyes to rest them on Arawn’s. Darkest brown meeting glowing red.

“Where do we go?” Morrigan asked, eyeing him shrewdly. Whatever cleverness it was that had brought him the opportunity to steal that vial. Whatever plan he had made while she was in her slumber, she was ready to play her part in setting it into motion.

“To Daearen. To your people. They need you.”

“What do you mean?” Morrigan asked. 

Images of children clutching their mothers in terror as the Roman army pressed in on them swam in her memory. A baby clasped to its mother’s breast, their older siblings hanging onto her skirts, their knuckles white from terror as Morrigan ushered them through the gate to Daearen. 

“It would seem like the darkness that was killing them in the mortal realm followed them through that gate,” Arawn said in a hushed voice. “I hear it’s destroying Daearen and stealing their magic.”

Morrigan growled, a sound low and fierce. She did not lose her freedom and her family to have the dark shadows of her enemies follow her people. 

The Black Quarts was tugging again, searching for those tendrils of awen that it could pull on, but she would not remain idle. Not this time.

I am the fecking goddess of war and battle. The granddaughter of the mother goddess, her mind hissed. I’ll be damned if I’m going to rot in this shit hole and let my people die while I still draw breath. 

She turned to face the wall opposite her, reaching out to the source river. Morrigan could hear it now. She looked at Arawn; the power pumping through her veins, making her feel high. When he offered her a small, knowing smile, she returned it. 

He would have her gratitude for this.

With a flick of her mind, she made the wall crack in two. She focused on the crystals and, with little effort, she began the work of shattering them into nothingness. Their power over her was contingent on a continued depletion within her. With each that was destroyed, the intrusive tugging eased, and with each one, she rose off the floor. The air was responding to her again, the elements at her fingertips. 

She turned her focus on the bars as the final crystals shattered around her; the iron crumbling, silently sifting onto the floor. The bars on Arawn’s cell had done the same.

“Which direction?” she asked.

He nodded down a corridor to their right and followed her when she took the lead.