Hooked [Complete]

75. Soul Sharing

Author's Note: Anybody feeling a wedding? Hmmm...I am. Check out Dru's dress, above.

Wedding Song: Bella Donna by the Avett Brothers. It's their song, of course.

Noon and Ceryn intercepted Cernunnos long before he reached home. He could tell from their expressions they sorely wanted to tell him something, but they were uncharacteristically silent.

"We're supposed to bring Faerie home. Mother says a Witch has need of her Lord." Ceryn inclined her head with formality. She pointed a dramatic finger in a direction diagonal from when he'd come and reached silently for her baby sister. Cernunnos smiled at his daughter's emerging grace. What a Witch Goddess she would be one day. But as his children disappeared toward home, Cernunnos turned his thoughts to another witch—the one in need.

He tracked Dru in a matter of minutes to a small spring where Cerridwen kept a domestic altar. Dru was kneeling in prayer. Her back was to him, and he paused silently to admire the transformation that she and his wife had wielded with some very ancient, very powerful, and very fortuitous spell.

They had transformed Dru's modern clothes and woven magic into the garment. Dru was dressed in a formal gray gown that cascaded from a fitted bodice into hundreds of curling bits of cloth—a bloom of smoky gray scraps that smelled like magic and moved like shadows. The bodice of Dru's dress glittered with jewels like the black diamond Dru had chosen for her covenant ring—they must have used the ring to replicate those. Dru's hair was pulled up off her bare shoulders, but it was long, like Druantia's had been, and it cascaded in loose ringlets from the clips that held it up.

Sensing her Lord, Dru rose and turned toward him with a face full of surety. Her eyes glittered dark like Druantia's, and her dark aura curled around her like a cloak. She flashed a witchy smile, flouncing her smoky gray gown.

"An Ancient Witch asks a Blessing from her Lord on her death day," she murmured, curtsying to him.

He studied her aura carefully. Dangerous, but not despairing. The Dove was flickering just beneath the surface. Afraid, but hopeful. "You've decided to exorcise Druantia, then?"

"I can not. But I am hoping for a priest to help me." She smoothed the curling fabric of her gown, and the skirt came alive. Images—Stag, no, memories—flowed like shadowscapes across the wide swath of cloth. Cernunnos blinked. It took godly composure not to react to the hazy shapes he saw flickering in her skirts. It was a bold spell Dru had wrought with Cerridwen's help—a kind of reverse glamour.

Dru shook her skirts and the images skittered away. Cernunnos found himself taking an involuntary sigh of relief, and not at all envying Faraday the next few hours. It would a trial by fire, for the two mortals trying to forge an immortal love.

Cernunnos crossed to Dru and tucked her arm in his. "I know a Priest. And a Sacred Space."

He led Dru in silence. Sensing an unusually strong energy and knowing they must be near the Sacred Space, she stopped.

"Cernunnos—thank you. For everything. I could not be this...brave, if you had not recalled me to my power."

He took Dru by both hands and smiled benevolently down upon her. "You have a rare and beautiful magic, and an even rarer strength. I bless you, Witch. My love resides in you. Go now, and claim your peace." He kissed her lips.

Dru felt the brush of Cernunnos lips, and tasted courage. Then he was gone, and she was alone in the twilight. She waited, not sure what for. She cared not whether immortality or death awaited her. She was braver than she had been with Angus Og. She would follow Sean into the dark, if she must, but somewhere in the magic of Cerridwen's cauldron she had found her truth: she couldn't stand apart from Sean any longer.