Read Chapter 19: Where the Whistle Leads

The rain had stopped by the time Ciarán led her to the edge of the mortal glen, but the air still smelled of wet stone and something older—something that made Maeve's skin prickle as they slipped between two moss-eaten standing stones that leaned toward each other like conspirators.

He stopped beneath a yew tree whose roots had cracked the flagstone path, and when he turned to face her, the silver light in his eyes was banked low. His jaw was set in a way she had come to recognize—the look he wore when he was about to give her something he'd rather keep.

"You asked me once," he said quietly, "where the fairy child was taken."

Maeve's breath caught. "You know?"

"I know where he is now." Ciarán reached inside his coat and withdrew a folded square of parchment so old that the edges crumbled like ash at his touch. "The queen's war march follows a path designed to retrieve him. But the child isn't where she thinks he is. He was moved twice. She doesn't know about the second move."

"Then how do you?"

He didn't answer. Instead he held out the map, and when Maeve didn't take it, his eyes flicked up to meet hers. "I've spent a hundred years making enemies in places she doesn't look. One of them owed me a debt." A pause. "Now I'm calling it in."

Maeve took the parchment. The ink was a deep rust color that might have been iron gall—or something else entirely—and the lines shifted slightly under her gaze before settling into a pattern she almost recognized. A coastline. A river. A name scratched in a script so old that her eyes ached trying to read it.

"Kilmacrennan," she breathed.

"The child is three fields east of the ruin, in a hollow oak beneath a standing stone that remembers the old prayers." Ciarán's voice was steady, but his hands were not. They flexed at his sides, once, twice. "I would go myself. But I cannot."

"Why not?"

"Because the border is closed to me now. The queen's warding has teeth, and my name is still in her pot." He said it without bitterness, but Maeve saw the muscle jump in his jaw. "You can cross. You're mortal enough, and you're still bound to the old covenant—she can't stop you from walking her lands until the year turns."

Maeve looked down at the map, at the tiny mark that represented a child she had never met. A child Ciarán had lost. A child the queen had stolen for reasons Maeve still didn't fully understand.

"Take the whistle," she said, reaching for it.

Ciarán caught her wrist before her fingers touched the silver. "No."

"I need you to get through the border."

"You need me to get you to the edge. After that, the whistle will do more harm than good." His grip tightened, then released. "When you cross, any fairy-made object you carry will leave a trace. The queen can follow it. She can follow *you*."

Maeve stared at him. "You want me to cross into fairy without the only thing that can call you to me?"

"I want you to cross with a map that leads to my son." His voice cracked on the word, just slightly. "And I want you to come back. Both of you."

The whistle was warm in her pocket, a familiar weight. She'd worn it so long she'd forgotten what it felt like to *not* have it against her ribs.

"There's a condition," Ciarán said. "When you return—when the child is safe—you give me the whistle back. All of it."

"You gave it to me."

"I gave it to you to keep you alive. Now I need it to keep my son alive. The queen's magic works on blood and name. The whistle was forged in the old fires. It can cut through her warding if I use it right." He paused. "But I can't use it if it's in pieces. It has to be whole."

Maeve frowned. "It *is* whole."

"Look at it."

She pulled the whistle from her pocket, holding it up to the watery light. And then she saw it—a thin seam running along the barrel, almost invisible against the silver scrollwork. She'd held this whistle for seven years. She'd polished it, kissed it, blown it until her lungs burned. She'd never once noticed the seam.

"It's been cut," she said slowly. "Someone split it lengthwise and rejoined it."

"Not someone. *Something*." Ciarán's voice was flat. "The old magic can't be unmade by hand. It has to be divided by intent. Whoever did this meant to separate what the whistle binds."

"Binds?"

"The whistle is a key. The other half is in the mortal realm."

Maeve felt the ground shift beneath her feet. "What do you mean, the other half is in the mortal realm?"

"I mean that when you crossed back into your world, I felt it pull." He gestured to the whistle. "There's something in that churchyard—or near it—that calls to it. It has been calling for years. I thought it was the queen's trap, at first. But it's not her magic. It's older. Mortal."

Maeve's mind was racing. The churchyard. Kilmacrennan. Her father had taken her there when she was a girl, to lay flowers on her grandmother's grave. He'd knelt by the old yew tree and whispered something she'd never been able to hear.

Her father.

The man who'd lied about her mother leaving. The man who'd hidden the truth about the fairies for twenty years.

"This other half," she said slowly, "what does it look like?"

"I don't know. I only know it exists." Ciarán met her eyes. "The whistle was made to be whole. When I gave it to you, I didn't know it was broken. Whoever split it did so before I ever held it."

Maeve turned the whistle over in her hands, tracing the seam with her thumb. The silver was warm, almost alive against her skin.

"Kilmacrennan," she said. "The churchyard. The steward's path leads there."

"It does."

"And the child is near the same ruin."

"He is."

Maeve looked up at him, and something cold settled in her chest. "You gave me a map to your son, but the other half of the key I need to save my brother is in the same place. That's not a coincidence."

Ciarán's expression didn't change.

"Is it?" she pressed.

"The queen moved her pieces years ago." He said it quietly. "I'm only moving mine now."

Maeve looked down at the whistle one more time. The seam caught the light, and for a moment she could have sworn she saw something moving behind the silver—a shadow, like a fish beneath ice.

Then she closed her fingers around it and tucked it back into her pocket.

"Then let's go find out what my father buried."