Awakened

rounded on Sgiach’s Guardian.
    “What makes you think we’re not fighting evil here?” It was Sgiach who answered me. “You’ve been touched by the old magick since you’ve been here. Tell me honestly, before then had you ever felt anything like it out there in your world?”
    “No, I hadn’t.” I shook my head slowly.
    “It’s fighting to keep the old ways alive we’ve been doing,” Seoras said. “And that cannae been done in Tulsa.”
    “How can you be so sure?” I asked.
    “Because there is no old magick left there!” Sgiach said, almost shouting in frustration. She turned her back and paced over to the huge picture window that looked out on the sun setting into the gray-blue water that surrounded Skye. Her back was stiff with tension, her voice thick with sadness. “Out there in that world of yours, the mystical, wonderful magick of old, where the black bull was revered along with the Goddess, where the balance of male and female was respected, and where even the rocks and trees had souls, had names, has been destroyed by civilization and intolerance and forgetfulness. People today, vampyres and humans alike, believe the earth is just a dead thing that they live on—that it is somehow wrong or evil or barbaric to listen to the voices of the souls of the world, and so the heart and the nobility of an entire way of life dried up and withered away…”
    “And found sanctuary here,” Seoras continued when Sgiach’s voice faded. He’d moved to her side. Her back was turned to me, but he faced me. Lightly, Seoras touched her shoulder and then let his fingers trail down her arm to take his queen’s hand. I could see her body react to his touch. It was like through him she’d found her center. Before she turned to me, I saw her squeeze and then release his hand, and when our eyes met again she was, once more, noble and strong and calm.
    “We are the last bastion of the old ways. It has been my charge for centuries to protect the ancient magicks. The land here is still sacred. By revering the black bull, and respecting his counterpart, the white bull, the old balance is maintained and there is one small place left in this world that remembers.”
    “Remembers?”
    “Aye, remembers a time when honor meant more than self, and loyalty wasnae an option or an afterthought,” Seoras said solemnly.
    “But I see some of that in Tulsa. There’s honor and loyalty there, too, and many of my grandma’s people, the Cherokee, still respect the land.”
    “To some extent that might be true, but think of the grove—how you felt within it. Think of how this land speaks to you,” Sgiach said. “I know you hear it. I see it in you. Have you felt anything truly like that outside my isle?”
    “Yes,” I said before actually thinking. “The grove in the Otherworld feels a lot like the grove across the street from the castle.” Then I realized what I was saying, and Sgiach all of a sudden made sense. “That’s it, isn’t it? You literally have a piece of Nyx’s magick here.”
    “In a way. What I really have is even older than the Goddess. You see, Zoey, Nyx hasn’t been lost to the world. Yet. Her masculine balance has, and I’m afraid because of that the balance between good and evil, Light and Darkness, has been lost, too.”
    “Aye, we know it has been,” Seoras corrected her gently.
    “Kalona. He’s part of this out-of-balance thing,” I said. “It’s true that he used to be Nyx’s Warrior. Somehow that got out of whack, along with a bunch of other stuff when he turned up in our world, ’cause that’s not where he belongs.” Knowing it didn’t make me feel sorry for him, or bad for him, but it did make me begin to understand the air of desperation I’d sensed so many times around him. And it was knowledge. With knowledge came power.
    “So you see why it’s important that I not leave my isle,” Sgiach said.
    “I do,” I said reluctantly. “But I still think you could be wrong about there being no old magick left in the outside world. The black bull did materialize in Tulsa, remember?”
    “Aye, but not until after the white bull appeared first,” Seoras said.
    “Zoey, I would very much like to believe that the outside world hasn’t entirely destroyed the magick of old, and because of that there’s something I want you to have.”
    Sgiach reached up and untwined a long length of silver from the mass of twinkling necklaces that dangled from around her neck. She lifted