Song of the Sidhe · Book I
Flameborn
Some legends aren't written — they're born
For readers of Circe, The Bear and the Nightingale,
and Strange the Dreamer.
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Song of the Sidhe · Book I
Some legends aren't written — they're born
For readers of Circe, The Bear and the Nightingale,
and Strange the Dreamer.
Since her grandfather's death, Maeve O'Neil has carried a grief that goes beneath tears, beneath words. She is fifteen, sharp-eyed, and utterly alone in a family that performs togetherness while falling apart beneath the surface.
But when the stars above her grandmother's house in Cork begin to move, deliberately and impossibly, a road called Carrack Row leads her to a place where the Veil thins and breaks. Maeve falls through into Tír na nÓg, a world her grandfather spent his life trying to prepare her for.
There she meets Mac Tíre, an ancient wolf who changes form to remain concealed and whose voice arrives only in the mind. He tells her what she is. Flameborn. A fragment of the goddess Éiru's essence, reborn in human form, carrying an emerald fire that bridges the mortal world and the realm of the Sidhe. With Odhrán, a young bard of Falias whose charm conceals deeper wounds, Maeve journeys toward the city of Gorias, where the great Song of existence is fracturing, and where the disappearance of Lugh, Master of All Arts, has left a silence that something ancient and patient is rushing to fill.
Book One of a planned series.
Power without compassion is just destruction. The emerald flame requires both.Lady Tara of Gorias
Three stars in particular drew her attention. She recognised the pattern: Orion's belt, that familiar slash across the winter sky that Grandad had taught her to find when she was five years old. But Orion's belt wasn't where it should be. And as she watched, it moved again.
The three stars began to turn. Slowly at first, as if stirred by some vast cosmic breath. From the centre of the spiral, a shimmer began to form. Not light exactly, but the memory of light. It was green, a deep vital green like new leaves or deep forest pools or the heart of an emerald held up to sunlight.
Fifteen. Tall and narrow-shouldered, with dark red hair that curls stubbornly and eyes the deep blue of a winter sea. She carries Éiru's emerald flame, though she doesn't yet understand what that means. Her grief is a locked room. Her power lives behind the same door.
Tall and broader than most Sidhe, with skin like burnished copper and eyes that burn with steady blue flame. He wears armour that seems grown rather than forged, red-gold metal that moves with his body like a second skin. Across his back, a spear whose obsidian tip drinks light rather than reflecting it. His honour will tear him between duty to his city and his commitment to the Flameborn.
Seventeen or eighteen, older than Maeve but not by much. Tall and lean, with skin that holds a faint luminescence. His hair is dark as river stone, his eyes amber: not brown but true amber, like resin containing trapped sunlight. Callused fingertips from years at the harp. Fully Sidhe, born of the oldest of the Four Cities, apprentice to the Ard Ollamh of Falias, sent to Gorias to balance the elements of earth and fire. Theatrical and charming, he performs confidence to cover a nervousness that runs deep.
Beautiful in a way that makes the eyes ache. Her skin is translucent as crystal, and through it light moves. Not blood but liquid fire, flowing through impossible channels, illuminating her from within. Her hair is white as moonlight and drifts as if underwater. Her eyes are prisms, multifaceted, catching light and breaking it into infinite fragments. To be seen by her is to be seen from a thousand angles at once. She cannot see which future will crystallise into truth.
Everything that exists, stone, tree, living being, sings its own note within a greater harmony called the Song. When the Song is whole, reality holds. When it fractures, the Void seeps through the cracks. The Song has been failing. No one knows why.
Where the connections break, the Void seeps in. Not as an invader but as a consequence. The Void is what exists where Song should be but isn't.Odhrán of Falias
Flameborn is built on the oldest mythological tradition in Western Europe: the Tuatha Dé Danann, the Fomorians, the four treasures, and the goddess Éiru who gave Ireland its name.
The god-like race who came to Ireland wrapped in mist, bringing four treasures from four cities. They defeated the Fomorians at the Battle of Moytura and shaped the land with their magic.
When the Sons of Míl arrived in Ireland, the Tuatha Dé Danann withdrew beneath the hollow hills and into the Otherworld. The poet Amergin divided Ireland between the seen and the unseen. The Sidhe have dwelt beyond the Veil ever since.
The goddess who gave Ireland its name. She met the Milesians at the Hill of Uisneach and asked that the island bear her name forever. In Flameborn, her legacy runs deeper still.