Prologue
The Queen of the Tuatha Dé Danann was now both predator and prey.
Her breath was heavy with rage and fear. The drive to keep ahead and also to gain ground sustained her when her heart did not. Even as her muscles seized her and her mind froze with indecision, she kept chasing, kept running.
She hunted her human lover. Her People hunted her.
They hunted her like the bird whose form she took – a raven, a crow. Those below her shot arrows she herself had crafted. They could not know it was her – they would take aim at any blackbird over the battlefield – but the thought that men whom she had once lead in glory would attack her in shame pierced her more mortally than any arrow.
She had not always been such a disgrace – once she had been a warrior, a woman. She had been the highest of the high, he less than a fae slave. But, was it not the slave who is so well placed to put the knife in his master's heart? And her own People … they had encouraged her to seduce him. The humans had been slow to act at first, and the Council had tried to gain their alliance. But humans adapted quickly … that was what she had always thought … yet it hadn't occurred to her …
She came across him.
Under the moon, blackened by the souls of the dead, he lay dying. There was nothing beautiful about him now – cursed by her own magic, he rotted as a corpse while he lived. She shifted shape, and armed herself from his own belt. His lifeless eyes flickered in neither malice nor guilt but surprise – he had not known it was her. Morgiana did not know whether to use the knife in her hand to cut away his decaying skin or make a new wound.
She still loved him.
She laid the blade flat on his neck, slipping it under his necklace. Turning it so the edge balanced on his skin, she pulled the knife back on herself until the chain snapped and the Stone attached fell free. She took it up, and in the same hand, unclasped her own necklace and Stone.
For all they looked, the jewels might have been lovers' trinkets. Morgiana had certainly treated them as such – gifting one to her human lover and keeping her own around her neck always, not because of it's power, but largely because it had been her link to him.
Although the Omnipresent allowed the wearer to cross vast distances in a heartbeat, no one had suspected him. He was human – surely he did not have the expertise needed to manipulate on of the archaic Stones? Morgiana had taught him petty sorcery, but never talisman magic. She hardly had the magery to be able to control the immense power required to focus the Stones …
But he had Betrayed them. He had spoken with the Fomorian Warlord moments before the attack on the People's stronghold. Xaen – a fortress guarded by seven armies, each seven legions strong – had been stormed at midnight under a full moon. Insanity, for this was when the fairies had their fullest power. Genius, for Xaen in truth was a bluff – a trick, an illusion.
La Xaen's defeat, their slaughter, had meant the same for all the People. Without La Xaen's presence, the south was invaded and the north under threat from their own lands. And all the while, as People cried and died, her own lover had orchestrated their mourning music.
He then Betrayed not only her People but the whole of the Earth.
Morgiana held in her hand two of three Stones – the Omnipresent and the Omnifarious. One more existed. The Omniscient. Once, it had been hers. Then, her lover's. Now, the Fomorian Warlord held it in his claw.
But nevertheless, it had once been in her hands – she could end this.
Morgiana transformed her Sight, and immediately the Spirit Realm descended in a supernatural fog over the mortal one.
The Omnipresent had given her the knowledge to bring it to existence. The Omnifarious gave her the power to change it. The Omnipresent would, very soon, allow her to ascend to it.
She bent her head and pressed her lips to his, as she pressed the Stone into his palm. Both gave their last mortal breath as a gasp.
-
Death would have been a release.
-
The Stone were each in the hands of a different People.
The Powers That Were had been balanced.
Morgiana drained almost all the Power from all the Stones, into one.
The Dé Danann Protector.
To protect the world from this ever occurring again.
-
The Fomorians, devoid of sorcery, were defeated by the fairies' inherent magic.
But as this magic waned, without the protection of the Stones, they were also defeated.
Humans ruled the surface, and the fairies named it Betrayal.
-
Morgiana watched as what remained of the Fae Folk built a city. They named it Haven. She watched as they wrote a Book which – among many laws – decreed that no fairy was to love a human. She watched human memories of the fairies grow into fanciful myths. She watched as her own People's memories grew into ones that were just as delusive.
But it was not enough.
If another was destine to Morgiana's fate, they would also be drawn into the Protector by the very nature of its creation.
If a fairy and human were to fall in love, to bring the Stones together, to kiss while one of them lay dying … they would open the void inside the Protector into which the destructive power of the Stones was contained. All the past would return. History would be repeated and begin a war not only to end all wars, but life itself.
Morgiana used the power of the Stones to search the future for ones with such a fate. In the many threads of lives and deaths, she came close to entangling herself like a youngling spider in its first web.
For a long time she searched and segued. For a long time, she watched and waited. For a long time, she influenced and interfered.
Then, on the first day of Spring, the catalyst occurred.
I can do nothing more, Morgiana thought. Perhaps I will not have to intervene.
But she already had.
And she knew better than to doubt destiny.
A/N: Thank you for taking the time to read this! Reviews are welcomed, of course. If you do, tell me what you think of Morgiana -- I quite like her as a character, I wish I could have written more of her. Unfortunately, you won't get to see her again until the end. Yes, this is fully-written! Happy Easter!