Day 13 of Midwinter, Sunrise

The Deep Realm

Annwn

“Where is he?” I raged. My voice rebounded several times off the stone walls of the throne room.

Cai flinched at my shout. “Who?”

“Show me where Tadg is being held!” My face was hot with anger.

Everything was coming together in my mind. I traced back each interaction I'd had with Tadg, from being detained at the Heart-shaped Pool to being tracked by him to The Stern Beauty. I thought about his obvious annoyance at hearing Brigid referred to as the “Fiery Queen,” and his clipped answer when I asked how his trip to Falias had been.

Cai looked to Neit for approval. At Neit's nod, he motioned for me to follow him out of the Túr Crochta. We didn't have to go far. Apparently, they liked to keep their political prisoners close to the King, maybe in case any spontaneous interrogation needed to go down. The prison cells were carved and sculpted out of stone, like any other section of the city, but the walls here seemed thicker, and any crafted items, like the doors, were reinforced.

The cells took the form of separate rooms, with walls instead of bars. There didn’t appear to be a general holding area, at least not where I was. I was led to the first cell inside of the prison block, and I got the feeling that Tadg might actually be the only prisoner.

The guards had given us a wide birth, leaving Cai and I to approach the cell alone. Cai unlocked the heavy door, and I stepped inside to find Tadg sitting proudly, despite his bruised and bloodied face.

Tadg jumped to his feet when he saw me, rushing forward. His relief turned to wariness when he saw the look in my eyes. Without thinking, I blasted him back against the wall. The blue light seemed brighter than usual in the small, dark space. I heard a crack when Tadg’s body smashed into the back wall. He slid to the ground and attempted to raise his head.

“I trusted you!” I shouted, seeing saliva fly out of my mouth as I screamed. I had never felt anger so consuming. “You took Brigid into the lion's den and you left her there. Why?”

He spoke quietly. “Because I am a lion.” His words came out with a wheeze, likely from a punctured lung.

I charged another blast of energy in my hands, holding it so he could see it. He held up a shaking hand. “She wished to go to Falias…knowing…how father felt about her.”

“But you knew what would happen, didn't you!”

He struggled onto one knee, gasping. “Yes. I did.”

“Morias believed in you. He told us that you were different than your brothers…that you just needed time to figure things out on your own.”

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Tadg's head slumped. He painfully pushed himself into a seated position on his bed. His head continued to hang.

“I thought you were my friend. I snuck aboard that ship for YOU. Now I’m here." My voice cracked. "And I don’t know what to do anymore.”

I felt a hand on my shoulder and turned to see Cai standing behind me. I had been so consumed by my anger I had forgotten my brother was here. He gave my shoulder a supportive squeeze.

I looked down at the broken man before me. His head was still down so I couldn’t see his expression. I took a deep breath. “What should I do, Tadg? Were you going to let me break you out of this place and take you back to the mainland? What would you have done then?”

The man said nothing, his head still hung low. His body was still, but I could see that he was still breathing, still listening to my words.

“Will your father lock me up, too? After all, I’m a child of the Cold Moon. Doesn’t that make me an enemy of Falias?”

The more that I spewed forth, the angrier I felt. Tadg just sat there. I still couldn’t see his face. “Look at me, Tadg.”

He lifted his head then and I could see his tear-filled eyes. I could see the pain my words were causing, and that deflated me a bit.

“I thought we were the good guys. Good guys don’t lie to their friends. Good guys don’t lock up their cousins because they have a disagreement. She wasn’t there, Tadg. She wasn’t in Gorias to defend her home when it was invaded. And do you know why?”

Tadg’s eyes flicked to Cai behind me. I could see the question forming inside his mind and I shook my head. “No, I’m not with them. But there are more than just two sides.”

I knelt in front of Tadg so he could see my face and judge my words. “They are just as broken as the Tuatha. There isn’t one Fomorian front. Cai hasn’t been invading your camps. Neit hasn’t sanctioned Balor's actions.”

I could see Tadg’s pride slowly being broken down. It wasn’t my words doing it. Instead, it was his own realization of what I was saying. For the first time, he was connecting the pieces in a new way.

“But they broke the rules,” Tadg said weakly.

“Can you blame them?” Cai chimed in. “They were told that they couldn’t go home and that they couldn’t raise a family. What would you do in their place?”

“I would listen to my king.”

“I believe you would,” Cai said, his words both an insult and a compliment. "But what if your king was a murderer? What then?”

Shocked, I turned my head to look at my brother. “What are you talking about?”

Cai's gaze was steady. “I was on the beach with Bres the day he died. We had watched the waves for hours, talking about his life in Gorias and mine in Murias. Ruadan would sometimes come with us as we walked and talked, but thankfully not on that day.”

He paused, looking far away for a moment. “Did you know the Sword of Light never misses its target?”

I suddenly knew where Cai was going with this. King Nuada possessed that particular relic. The sword was a symbol of power in his kingdom. I had seen its likeness on the golden tabards of the Falias soldiers.

“Do you know what else relics do? They kill gods.” Cai’s words cut through the air, landing heavily on both Tadg and me. “I was able to fight off Nuada that day, but only because he struck at me second. Bres never saw him coming.”

Tadg dropped his head again. As Cai and I left, I heard the sounds of my former friend sobbing quietly through labored breaths. I walked beside my brother, wandering the passageways of the grand underground lair without any sense of where I was being led. I felt like I was in shock.

I tried to process everything that I had seen and heard that day. I knew the factions in Annwn were dysfunctional, but was I now to believe that the Overking Nuada killed his own nephew for some unseen reason? Tadg had clearly known what would happen to Brigid once they arrived in Falias. But why hadn’t they just killed her as they had apparently done to Bres?

For the time being, I let all of the facts percolate in my mind. I turned my attention to the seemingly identical hallways that I walked with Cai. In a lot of ways, it reminded me of my time in Annwn. I was always following someone without knowing exactly where I was going or whether I should, in fact, be following that person.