Free The Dark Thorn by Shawn Speakman

ground. They could not harm her, not unless she disengaged from the pool or stepped within its boundaries to enter their world.
    Deirdre took a deep breath.
    “I refuse to believe I will be with Plantagenet,” she said. “That is not my destiny.”
    —A destiny is dark until the present sheds light on it—
    “Mother, what am I to do?”
    —Nothing you desire will come to be. Only what you fear will come to pass—
    “You are saying I cannot prevent what comes?”
    —Look here. Death—
    In her mind’s eye, she saw a vision. Smoke blew across a battlefield littered with bodies of the dead and dying. The scene possessed no sound, but Deirdre imagined wailing on the air. Bloodied twisted creatures milled among bodies of men and Tuatha de Dannan alike, their limbs unnaturally angled by savage intention. She was in the battle, being pulled away from a fire that was being swallowed by darkness. Then an unknown man cradled her, but his attention was drawn to the sky where a brilliant fire burned the heavens.
    —Death—
    The vision changed.
    Darkness surrounded her, suffocating her, until she realized she was in the depths of a great mountain honeycombed with labyrinthine passageways. She was not alone, though. A creature stalked her, its baleful red eyes fixed on her but also not fixed on her, its body as insubstantial as smoke but deadlier than any beast Deirdre had encountered or read about. She ran but it chased, impossibly fast, until the very stone walls collapsed and true night suffocated her scream.
    —Death—
    It changed again.
    In warrens beneath a domed castle filled with art more ornate than any she had ever seen, caskets in walls housed the dead. The dank smell of ages mixed with the sweet odor of nearby water, where magic coated the air. Two old men wearing priestly robes wielded swords to defend all they knew. Whether they survived the Templar Knights attempting to kill them or if they failed, she knew it did not matter; the other world burned, and it spread into Annwn, consuming Mochdrev Reach, her people, and all she loved.
    Unbidden tears stung Deirdre’s eyes.
    The vision blackened to nothing. Deirdre opened her eyes and looked at her mother as she peered back. Her gray orbs seemed to be mirrors into Deirdre’s soul.
    “What does this all mean?” she asked, trembling.
    —My time has come. Follow your heart. No matter your choice, Child—
    “No, Mother. Don’t go.”
    Deirdre wanted to reach out. The apparition instead slipped back into the Rosemere, her figure disintegrating like ash in water. The pool stopped churning. The smell of decaying life dissipated. As the day brightened about her, the buzzing of bees and the songs of birds in the Merthyr Garden returned with stunning clarity.
    With sunshine warming her, Deirdre stood staring where the shade of her mother had vanished. It happened just that quickly. She already missed her. She also knew little from the meeting. The riddles her mother spoke rarely came to fruition the way Deirdre expected, even if there was a bit of truth in them. More questions swirled inside her than when she had called the shade. With whom would Deirdre fall in love? How did the false king play into the future of her life? And how would the visions she had been shown come—or not come—to pass?
    She had no answers.
    The one thing she did know was that the life she knew was drastically changing, and there was nothing she could do about it.
    “I thought you would be talking to her forever !”
    Deirdre spun.
    Sitting on the soft blossom petals of a nearby rose bush, Snedeker stared at her, stick arms crossed, a frown tugging at his wood and moss features, his gossamer wings irritably fluttering.
    “You should not be here!” Deirdre hissed, angry all over again. “I told you to stay out of sight until the sun set. If John Lewis Hugo caught you here—”
    “Yes, yes, your father would feed me to the cat,” Snedeker opined. “What he doesn’t know is I’d kill