Curse of the Celts Clara O'Connor (new reading txt) 📖

Devyn grabbed him. “What are you doing, you fool? You’ll get us all killed.”

Marcus pushed him away, every instinct – familial and medical – screaming at him to rush to the site of the fire. “That’s my father. I have to help him.”

“Marcus, Marcus.” I stood in front of him, trying to get his attention as Devyn continued to hold him back. I grabbed his face so he would look down at me. “He’s gone. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. There is no way he could have survived. He’s gone.”

Marcus stilled, his stricken face ghostly in the night.

“You don’t know that.”

“Nobody could have lived through that.”

Marcus slumped to the floor, all fight gone out of him.

Chapter Five

Marcus sat unmoving in his wet clothes, blankly staring at the night sky still lit up by after-effects of the explosion that had most likely killed his father.

“We need to move,” Devyn urged. “We need to get through the borderlands as quickly as possible.”

I looked over at Marcus. We had prevented him from going to his father, the father who showed him so little love in his lifetime but who ultimately gave his life to save his only son. Would the father whom I had always been so sure adored me have done the same? I had grown up showered with whatever my heart desired, but when it mattered, when everything I believed turned out to be a lie and I was sentenced to death, my parents had been noticeably absent. Meanwhile, the conniving power-hungry Matthias had risked and lost all to save Marcus. I couldn’t even begin to imagine Marcus’s pain at the loss, made so much worse by the twisted relationship he had with his father.

The sentinels’ boats passed by us, making no attempt to scan the banks – a sure sign that they presumed all passengers had died in the explosion. One of the boats was towing the other, most likely because the power had failed this close to the border ley line. Once they had gone, the darkness once again was lit only by the fire further upstream.

Marcus continued to stare with unseeing eyes across the water. We had been here for hours, stuck in the immobility of his grief.

“We have to leave,” Devyn whispered to me.

I nodded. I knew we needed to be on our way – the further away from the city we were the better. I had no desire to return there anytime soon. Honestly, it was past time that one of these attempts to escape just stuck.

I went over to Marcus and put my hand on his arm.

“Marcus…” No response. I repeated his name in the hope of getting some flicker of answer. Nothing. I turned back to Devyn. “Maybe we could give him another moment or two.”

“We can’t. It will be morning soon. We need to go north but the new day is Samhain – not a good time to be crossing the borderlands. Once the sun rises, it won’t be safe to be here.” Devyn shook his head, correcting himself. “While the sun is up, the borderlands will be perilous, but to be caught in them after dark will be suicidal.”

I frowned. Admittedly, I knew very little about the world outside the walls, but I wasn’t aware that the borderlands were dangerous to travellers. Not that there was much traffic; it’s not like we had a trade agreement with the Britons. As far as I knew, the only people who ever crossed the borderlands were the Britons who came to the city every four years to renew the treaty that merely kept the peace. But surely meeting Britons would be a good thing.

“Are there sentinel patrols?” I asked. I was reminded of the one I had seen in my vision, the one that had cut down my mother when I was a baby.

“Not patrols; the borderlands are wide, and both sides monitor live movement,” Devyn explained further at my frown. “If any sizeable force were to try to cross the borderlands, it would trigger magical alarms. Conversely, if a Briton force were to approach the city, there is no doubt it would set off a warning inside the walls. So it was during wartime, and so it is in peacetime too.”

“How did you get into the city, then?” How did a sixteen-year-old intent on finding a lost child cross mile after mile of land rigged with alarms? No matter how determined or canny he was.

“On my own, I could likely have made it through the borderlands undetected, but it was easier to slip in on a boat that was coming from Calais,” he explained.

“You’ve been to Gallia?” I was envious. This was the furthest I had ever been from Londinium – that I remembered anyway. But now, I was finally going home. An empty space within me fizzed in anticipation.

“Never mind Gallia, or how I got to Londinium.” He halted me, his lips thin. “Worry about how we’re going to get away from Londinium. The alarms and warnings will be the least of our concerns on Samhain.”

“What does Samhain have to do with it?” I knew little more than that Samhain was one of the major festivals in the Briton calendar, a harvest festival held before the winter.

Devyn huffed, unimpressed with the know-nothing citizen. “Samhain is the day when the veil between this world and the next is at its thinnest, when those on the other side walk amongst us, and nowhere is more dangerous than the land where generations have drenched the ground with their blood.”

I couldn’t help myself. I smirked. “Ghosts, Devyn? Really?”

He half laughed in reply. “Hocus-pocus, Cass.”

Was it really only this spring that I had scoffed at the existence of magic? It seemed a lifetime ago.

He waggled his fingers in the air before walking behind me. “And things that go boo!” he whispered in my ear.

I looked at Marcus, hoping Devyn’s antics weren’t registering. “Shh, his father just died.”

“And we will die too