The second I followed Daire through the last door, the floor wobbled under us. I fell back on my butt, barely keeping a hold of the comatose woman riding me. Daire pushed away the cloth covering the exit.

A literal fissure had opened the floor and split the room down the middle. At the front of the crack was Daire’s dad. Midir glowed bright and his brown cape billowed behind him like Superman. He waved his hands at the chunks of floor the impromptu earthquake had stirred loose and they swirled in the air. Daire’s aunt, Brigid, bolted around the room as she used a little hammer like a flamethrower and spewed fire at Midir’s rock tornado.

At the middle of the molten slabs was Bodb, wrapped in a cocoon of black clay. He stuck out of the top from the shoulders up. His beard furiously twitched as he jerked around. The sides of the mold fractured until another layer of rocks covered it up and Brigid’s blaze melted them on.

A young skinny guy with curly blonde hair dressed in all sky blues and lavenders stood off to the side. He drew glowing circles of Celtic knots and lines of weird symbols in the air faster than I could follow. The sequence he finished flashed and reappeared on the heap trapping Bodb.

“Aengus, I know you’re more capable than this!” Brigid shouted as she zipped around to seal the next gap.

“He’s our High King and our brother,” the young guy said, another one of Daire’s relatives. He drew a new pattern in the air and put it on top of Brigid’s latest patch job to Bodb’s container. “Why is this even necessary?”

“He refuses to listen to reason,” Brigid said.

“And he refuses to explain why he would use one of my men to steal my wife,” Midir added, flinging more rocks into the mess.

Etain shrank into Daire at the sound of her husband’s voice. Daire rubbed her back with his good arm as he watched his family’s melodrama play out with a frustrated scowl. I couldn’t spot an opening for us to run to the mirrors clear across the room. Between the overturned tables, toppled chairs, and elements wheeling around, we’d have to be Olympic sprinters to get through without anyone noticing.

Rio moaned from my shoulder. The gray particles around me thinned some.

“Sit tight, hun,” I whispered, tilting back for her to hear better. I leaned against the inside of the door frame. The boost Daire gave me had already started to fade. “We’ll be out soon.”

“It hurts,” Rio rasped. She squinted her eyes open. “Everything hurts.”

“You’ll be okay.” If only speaking my wishful thinking into that fantasy world would make it come true. But we had to get through her relatives first before I passed out again. Then came convincing her ex to take his sleep spell off her. Anything after steps one and two depended on if I lived through them.

“Our youngest knows where his loyalties should lie.” Bodb’s arguing bellowed like he had a loud speaker wired to his vocal cords. He’d need it for someone to hear him over all the racket from the ground shaking and fire roaring around him. “He doesn’t side with some tainted outcast against me!”

“I came to make you see reason and abandon this folly before you shame yourself past repair.” Brigid’s volume rose to match her brother’s. “Do you want to be recorded with the likes of my late husband, branded as a failure? Do you remember what lengths I went to in order to repair my own good name after he passed?”

“She has been mine for centuries and my legacy has held.” Bodb broke through a part of the hardened sediment and spells holding him down. “It can be so again.”

Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation.

“I have no idea the reason the two of you are even arguing. I only desire an explanation for where my wife is.” Midir’s scooped his hand through the empty air and an enormous load of rocks floated over him. “Stay still and stop spitting vague accusations.”

“I second Midir.” Aengus made twisted light trails with all ten fingers and sent them weaving around the boulders like a maniacal orchestra conductor. “Let’s discuss this in a more civilized manner.”

“First, brothers, we must calm his paranoid ravings in the only way that will make him listen.” Brigid tucked her hammer back into her belt and took in a deep breath. When she blew out, an inferno engulfed the room, aiming for the hovering stones, and sending them straight at Bodb’s head.

Daire hugged Etain to his chest and barricaded her against the wall we hid behind. I hunched as close as I could beside him with Rio. The heat from the blaze radiated over us in waves. Sticky, fresh sweat poured down my neck and soaked through my shirt. I had to cover my mouth and muffle my coughs so I didn’t breath in the stifling air.

When the world around us felt more dry than crispy, Daire and I peeked around the curtain. Every earthy hunk had molded into a Bodb-sized coffin: an oblong black dome with wavy layers like volcanic rock.

Midir sighed as he bent his knees and supported himself on them. Brigid fluttered back down with her brothers, her shoulders bunched and anxious.

“Will you talk now?” Aengus asked into the ominous stillness.

The dome rumbled and a gigantic club crashed through it like a bat through a car window.

All three of the High King’s siblings groaned together.

“This lull may be our only opportunity. Wait here for my signal.” Daire propped the door open more and ushered Etain on the other side of it.

“What’s happening, dear one?” Rio bent so close her lips brushed against my ear as she whispered. Neither Daire or Etain looked over.

“A lot,” I said, lowering my voice. The figures fighting beyond the curtain turned to blotchy smudges as they went in and out of focus. Not again. “Brigid teamed up with your dad and other uncle, and the three of them are trying to trap you-know-who in the throne room. He just broke out of their latest try.”

“So I’m still at Tara.” She groaned and hugged my shoulders. While she sounded sharp and alert, her elbows quivered worse than my knees as she clung on. “Last I remember, Bodb put a sleep on me. I feel it still, tugging at my mind, a weight. This aches too much to be a dream…”

“Daire thinks you’re using me to refuel and wake up.” My fingers slipped and I lost my grip on one of her legs. Her weight became too much and I had to take a knee to stay upright. “I don’t know how.”

“And you’ve carried me all this way from the prison? That must be why I’m conscious.” Rio’s soft tone got an edge of panic. “If that’s the case, so long as Bodb’s sleep is on me, my power will leech from you.”

“I’ll try to keep this up as long as I can, at least until we get you out of here.”

“No. Your energy is waning. We must resolve this now before either of us slips away.”

“How?” I asked.

“That depends on what I have to work with. There is you. Daire is still with us, but he has too many protections.” Rio’s eyes got big and she purred in the back of her throat. She only made that Queenie noise when she had an idea. “And is that his mother I spy?”

“Yeah, but she helped me. Both of them did.” I kept talking in a rush. I wasn’t an idiot, and knew how much Rio hated them. But Etain had thrashed against that giant snake trying to bust me out. Daire had held onto me, recharging me, even though his arm had got third to fourth degree burns. “Etain got caught while trying to protect me. Daire found you and his arm’s a mess because he’s been keeping me awake.”

“You sound worried about my intentions, dear one.” Rio nuzzled her cheek against my hair. “Do you trust me?”

All sorts of red lights and alarms went off. I’d gotten plenty of warnings against doing that. Daire lectured me that I shouldn’t get in that deep with Rio. My own practical logic said I had to resist the Stockholm Syndrome that had already set in. Past experience told me she’d stolen me away from everyone I’d ever loved and that she was an ancient immortal being who’d deceived me plenty before. Should it matter that she’d shown me a vulnerability she hadn’t show anyone else, that she was worth so much more than the way other people treated her? I’d always rooted for her when she wanted to take on the world. Even while I worked to escape her world, I knew deep down I’d miss her if I made it back home.

“Yeah,” I answered, the truth coming out. “I trust you.”

“Then let me take care of this.” Rio smiled into my neck, sweet and warm. “I’ll need to borrow control of your body for a moment.”

“Go for it.” I braced myself for the inevitable numbing, and the sensation of being absolutely helpless. Even though I should have asked a million qualifying questions, I took a leap of faith instead.