Suzanne McLeod - The Bitter Seed of Magic

‘No, my lady,’ Tavish called, running over to stand between me and the Morrígan, the gold chain uncoiling behind him.

Yes, definitely no, even if I had an idea which fertility fae had made the donation.

‘No?’ The Morrígan turned her acid-yellow gaze to Tavish, her voice soft with menace.

‘Dinna use the horn, my lady,’ Tavish said, just as softly. ‘Just the glass. Please.’

Okay, what was he playing at now?

‘It is but a drinking horn, kelpie,’ she said, in a deliberately casual tone.

‘Dinna fool yourself that I havenae recognised it, my lady.’ The beads on his dreads flashed from silver to an accusing red. ‘For ’tis one of the MacCúailnge’s horns.’

The bull ’ s horn belonged to the MacCúailnge, her son? No wonder she’d been fascinated by it. Except he was supposed to have been executed. So was his horn just a grisly memento from the execution—and if so, how was that possible?—or had someone, oh, let’s say, like the Lady Meriel been economical with the truth?

‘Aye, ’tis one of the MacCúailnge’s horns,’ she repeated, mimicking his rough burr, ‘but tell me, kelpie, how would you be in a position to recognise it?’

His gills flared, then snapped back against his throat as he spread his arms and bowed. ‘’Twas I who removed it from his head, my lady.’

Um, probably not such a good idea to go for the whole truth thing here, Tavish.

Her expression turned predatory. ‘You confess to me that you were the one to kill him, then?’

‘Nae, I willnae offer you such.’ His bead-tipped dreads clicked, the sound suddenly nervous. ‘But I will declare I had a part in … taking the Old Donn’s horns.’

She backhanded him and he grunted in pain as he stumbled. He caught himself, and she hit him again, a casual uppercut to the chin that sent him bouncing off the inside of the magical dome and back down, landing heavily at her feet. I flinched as he groaned, and struggled to his knees. She gave the gold chain clamped to his ankle a vicious yank and upended him. ‘Stay there,’ she ordered. He slumped back, staring defiantly up at her as blood dripped down his pointed chin.

‘Now, little sidhe—’

Her voice startled me and I turned back in time to see her tip the contents of the glass into the hollowed-out end of the horn and then spit in it herself. She held it out to me. ‘Drink this, and I will grant you the boon you wish …’

Okay, even without the spit, eew ! With it? Double eew!

‘… and the answer to that which you seek,’ she finished with a crafty smile.

I narrowed my eyes. ‘The answer to what?’

‘You seek the answer to the fertility curse, do you not?’

‘Yes.’ Cautious hope flared inside me.

Her smile widened, her one tooth protruding with triumph. ‘Drink then, little sidhe.’

I stared at the bull’s horn. All I had to do was drink, and she’d give me the answer. The deal was … persuasive . After all, it wasn’t like I hadn’t before; it wasn’t poison, and no doubt it was as organic as the milk had been. And what was a bit of spit between—two people not friends, one of whom was a goddess of fertility, among other things? And there it was: the problem. It was one of those magic/symbolic things, and drinking it was going to somehow end up with me up the duff. Not only did I not want that, but if Tavish’s objection was a clue, drinking from the bull’s horn instead of the glass meant Finn might be the donor, but it wasn’t his kid I’d end up with, but the Morrígan’s— What? Son? Grandson?

My hand shook as I reached out and took the bull’s horn from her. It felt heavier, or maybe that was just my imagination.

‘Dinna drink it, doll,’ Tavish said, his voice low.

I shot him an incredulous look. ‘First, I’m not supposed to trust you, and now I am?’

‘Remember the vision, the one she’—he jutted his head at the Morrígan—‘showed you—’

‘How could I forget?’ I snorted. The memory of the horn and hooves that had poked out of my pregnant belly when she’d treated me to her alien baby show was burned into my mind. ‘But it can’t happen, can it, not since you sicced me with a Chastity spell. So why should it matter whether I drink it or not?’

‘The Chastity spell was her idea,’ he murmured. ‘I hadnae choice, doll.’

Okay, so definitely going with ‘ not drinking ’ here, since his words confirmed one of my suspicions: she’d been the one who’d decided to keep me chaste, probably for just this reason. But I still wanted her boon, and the answer to the curse. Somehow I needed to come up with a way to get both—without drinking—and try and free Tavish at the same time.

I glared at him. ‘What about adding cinnamon to the spell; was that her idea too?’ I shouted angrily.

His eyes flashed black in shock.

‘You have made her barren!’ The Morrígan’s shout eclipsed mine for anger. She pulled on the gold chain until Tavish was pressed up against the eel part of her body, then coiled herself round him like a boa constrictor and started squeezing. ‘You have attempted to block me at every turn, kelpie, interfering and meddling in matters which are beyond your ken, and I will tolerate it no more!’

‘Which is sort of what I was thinking,’ I said loudly to attract her attention over Tavish’s muffled yells of pain. Tavish might be wylde fae, and like all fae he might be hard to kill, but ‘hard to kill’ doesn’t count for much when a goddess decides to end your existence.

I repeated my shout. And this time her head swung up and she fixed me with a venomous stare.

‘Squeezing the life out of him is really too quick an end for him, Morrígan,’ I said, putting disdain into my voice. ‘He did de-horn your son, after all. How do you feel about a counteroffer?’

She regarded me with curiosity. ‘What would this counteroffer be?’

‘An extension of his pain, both mental and physical,’ I stated, ‘as due recompense for his interference in your business and mine.’

She swayed down towards me, relaxing her grip on Tavish. ‘Tell me.’

‘Agree to grant me my boon first, and I’ll do better than tell you, I’ll show you. If my actions give you pleasure, you’ll tell me how to break the fertility curse; if not I’ll drink whatever is contained in this’—I held up the bull’s horn—‘either now, or at sunset tomorrow.’ It was win/win for her, and might just buy me—and Tavish—some time.

Tavish’s shout of denial cut off sharply as a loop of the eel’s body tightened around his neck.

‘Done, little sidhe.’ She opened her mouth and gave a loud croaking caw. The dome filled with the sound of wings flapping and a huge raven appeared. He landed on her shoulder, his long talons digging into her flesh for purchase.

Was it Jack? It was difficult to tell— No, this bird’s eyes were black; Jack’s were blue. So if Jack wasn’t working for the Morrígan, why had he been stalking me?

The Morrígan turned and made a low crooning noise to the raven. He rubbed his head affectionately against her cheek, and two of his glossy black feathers floated to the ground, then he flapped his wings, took off and vanished.

She indicated the feathers. ‘Your boon, little sidhe.’

I picked them up. They felt like ordinary feathers; there was nothing magical about them that I could discern. ‘How do they work?’

‘You will know when the time comes,’ she said dismissively. ‘But remember, the boon will only work for this one night. Now’—she squeezed Tavish more in excitement than anything else, eliciting another muffled groan from him—‘show me.’