Happy Halloween!  Please enjoy this excerpt from my upcoming new novel, The Dullahan’s Delight.

Play audio version below or keep scrolling to read the digital version.

The earth beneath me is soft… as if the ground itself is unsure whether to hold me or let me fall. My blood mixes with the soil, and I wonder: if I become part of it, will it remember me? Or will I simply be another whisper lost to the forest, the way leaves fall unnoticed, forgotten in the undergrowth?

Life is strange, how it clings to you like a lover refusing to let go, even when you’re certain you should already be dead. My body has failed me. The boar’s tusks pierced deep into my chest, leaving ruin in their wake. And yet, for all the pain, it’s the betrayal that cuts the deepest. It’s the kind of wound no tusk can match because it’s a betrayal of more than just flesh. It’s a betrayal of the soul.

This was no accident. I was placed into the path of the boar. And the person who put me there?

The pain of that is worse than this other taking my life.

I once thought duty was everything. That we are born with a purpose, and we should die with that purpose fulfilled. But lying here, I wonder: what if duty is nothing more than a story we tell ourselves, a way to give meaning to the slow decay? And what if, in the end, all that’s left is the sting of what we failed to do?

As I struggle to breathe around the blood filling my lungs, the forest closes in around me…

And something else stirs.

A figure–she–emerges from the fog of my vision, gliding like mist over the earth. Her presence chills the marrow of my bones and flexes an icy grip around my heart. She is not exactly death, but she’s close enough.

She’s the Cailleach.

I know her by the weight of her gaze. It’s the press of something ancient, something older than our courts or our wars, older even than Faery. Her eyes, dark as the void between stars, lock onto mine, watching me with the same cold detachment I might give a leaf before crushing it underfoot.

Yet, she appears to me now as something unexpected. As twilight breaks, she shows herself as a maiden, radiant in a way that steals precious breath from my lungs. Her youth is striking, unsettling even, her skin like freshly fallen snow, perfect and unmarred.

Beneath that pristine, youthful surface–beneath the illusion–there’s something far more complex. The space that barely contains her hums with the song of centuries, her flowing, silver hair whispering like the wind that sweeps through dead forests in the heart of winter. Her lips, though full and red, seem chapped with the bitterness of endless frost. And her eyes… her eyes betray the truth outright. These are the eyes of a creature that has seen the rise and fall of worlds, of empires, of gods. The eyes that stared into the abyss and found it wanting.

Then, made us.

She is beauty and death entwined, a winter’s kiss given physical form.

For all her beauty, I know the truth. She is not alive in any sense that I understand. She is the cold of forgotten things, of seasons that have passed and will pass again.

A circle.

And she has come for me.

***

“You called for me.” Her voice is soft, like winter’s breath through a dead forest.

I struggle to form words, my chest heaving, my breath failing. But I manage to gasp, “Not yet… not like this…”

She tilts her head, her silver hair moving like water. “Not yet?” she echoes, her eyes tired but with an amused smile curving her lips. “And so, you wish to bargain with Death incarnate?”

I cough, blood staining my lips, but I force myself to meet her gaze. “I… I’m not ready. I have unfinished business. Things that must need doing. And I… I–”

Her laughter is soft, almost pitying. “Ah, the proud Guardian who wished to protect it all. And now, dying in the mud, it isn’t love that causes you to linger? You still believe in duty?”

I swallow hard, my hands clawing weakly at the earth. “I will do anything… anything. I can’t die… not like this. Not while there’s so much to do….”

She steps closer, her voice lowering as though sharing a secret.

“The Cauldron is broken. Your court, your titles… gone. Your service as a Guardian finished. You know this. It falls away from you as each drop of blood falls away from your body.” Her dark eyes emit a feeling of something ancient–fear, perhaps, though I cannot be sure. “This world crumbles beneath the weight of its own magic,” she says, a whisper of dread in her voice. “I do not meddle for sport. I prepare for what comes next. So, what can you offer me for this unnatural boon you seek, to live beyond the edge of life?”

I close my eyes, fighting the cruel weight pressing down on my chest.

“Service,” I choke out. “Bind me to you, and I will help in your preparations.”

Silence descends as she considers the trade, weighing if I’m worth the trouble. If I can do what I’ve promised to help her.

Then, she crouches beside me, her face so close I can see the dark stars reflected in her eyes.

“You wish to continue because you believe there is still something left for you in this world. Unfinished business, you call it.” She speaks the words softly, as if amused by the very idea. “But to strike this bargain with me… to walk the path you seek… you will be made to abandon the very purpose you cling to.” Her smile fades, but not entirely. It lingers, ghostlike, in the corners of her mouth.

“Do you understand?” she continues, her voice a low murmur like wind through dead branches. “You will give up everything. Your life is already forfeit, though you refuse to accept it. To live again, you will forsake your name, your body, your titles. You will walk as Death itself. You will be my Dullahan. My Harbinger and Warden. My will.”

For a moment, I think I see something in her eyes–pity, perhaps? But no, it’s gone as quickly as it appeared, replaced by something colder, something far more calculating.

“You will not speak of what you know. You will not remember who you were,” she says, her voice cold as the frost that fills my veins. And in that moment, I understand. This is no second life. This is not a return to what was. This is obliteration of self—a rebirth into something darker, something bound to her will.

I am too far gone, too desperate to care. The world slips from me. All but for one jagged thing rising up.

The memory of his face. The one who betrayed me, taunting me, as if his final act of betrayal is a game he’s already won. I was always too trusting. Too loyal. And now, that loyalty has left me broken and dying in the dirt.

But it wasn’t just loyalty, was it? No. It was more than that. I loved him—once. Like a brother, perhaps even more. I would have followed him into the depths, trusted him with everything, because we were bound by something deeper than blood. And I thought he felt the same.

It’s that love that makes this unbearable. The love that now curdles inside me, twisting into something darker, something that demands retribution.

I trusted him. I loved him. And in return, he tore my heart from my chest and cast it into the dirt. For what? Status? Titles? Or was it for her, the one I was to marry?

This is why I will not die. I cannot die—not yet. Not while he still walks free, believing he has won.

“With one stipulation,” I rasp, clinging to the last shred of my will, my voice broken but filled with purpose.

“What?” Cailleach flatly demands.

“I will cede all but… this.”

She waits, cold black eyes trained on me as the moment stutters, halting. But I see cunning in those vast depths of inky black, as if she already knows what I’m about to verbalize.

The words spill from me, flat, dark, insistent. “I will have my revenge.”

The Cailleach’s eyes narrow, gleaming with something that has nothing to do with power or vengeance. “Revenge…” she murmurs, her breath like frost creeping over my skin. “It rarely yields what one desires, but the consequences—” she pauses, letting the word settle, “—the consequences linger long after the fire fades.”

Slowly, her fingers dip into the blood pooling beside me. The dark crimson ripples around her fingertips, and I realize–too late–this is not just a random gesture. Her movements are deliberate, and her eyes, though fixed on me, see far beyond this moment. The blood begins to shimmer beneath her touch, holding secrets that she teases out for herself from the depths.

I watch in silence as her gaze deepens. She’s scrying through the blood, divining my future. The threads of fate unravel before her like a tapestry unspooled. She sees it all, the choices, the fractures, the betrayals. The battles yet to come… unless it all ends here. I wonder if she is looking at this story, at all the events set into motion by this very moment, or if she glimpses even further, to the end of time itself. Her smile tightens, and I feel a tremor of unease.

She knows every beat of my life in addition to holding it all in her hands.

Her agreement comes too easily, too smoothly, as if the end of this tale has already been written, signed, and delivered. “You see only today’s wound,” she continues, almost gently, “but the thread of fate runs far longer than you imagine, binding tighter with each step you take. It will come for you, in ways you have yet to comprehend.”

She allows her gaze to loiter on the blood, her fingers swirling through it like a witch stirring the cauldron of time. But the future is an impatient observer, waiting to become part of the story.

“I accept your terms,” I say.

The Cailleach’s smile is lupine. “Very well,” she whispers, her voice as unforgiving as the frost that clings to her hair.

She extends one pale, delicate hand. Her fingers, though they seem so fragile, carry the unremitting strength of death. They hover above my chest for a moment, as if savoring the power she holds. Then, she presses her fingers into the gaping, bloody wound. Her touch pierces me deeper than the boar’s tusks ever could, cutting through flesh and bone into something far more intangible–my soul.

Her magic flows into me like a frozen river, sharp and biting. It floods every inch of my being, pressing out the last remnants of warmth until I am nothing but ice. It burrows into my being, an ancient rime settling into the core of who I am. I can feel it freezing the pieces of myself I’ve clung to–my name, my memories, my humanity–encasing them in ice until they are numb and distant, unreachable. As the cold settles in, I feel something else, something being torn from me. I watch her other hand move gracefully over my chest. With it, she summons… something… though there is nothing visible to my eyes. Even so, I feel it. A spark—a tiny ember of me—fighting against her, a single point of heat buried in a sea of cold.

She pulls, and with that simple motion, I break. The fragment of my old self is wrenched from me. There, it burns in her hand, a small orb of light and fire, flickering faintly against the cold like the flame of a solitary candle. I try to reach for it, some primal part of me desperate to hold on to it, but I am powerless now.

Her lips curl into a cruel smile as she holds the orb aloft, her eyes alight with satisfaction. “You will not need this,” she murmurs, her voice like ice cracking on a frozen lake. “But we will keep it—for now.”

She turns the orb slowly in her hand, and as she does, her voice lowers, becoming almost a whisper. “After all, time is a river,” she says, her words laced with countless centuries. “And I am its keeper. What seems lost now may yet return… or it may vanish entirely beneath the current. We shall see.”

With that, she wraps the fiery orb in her fingers and pulls a silver chain from the folds of her cloak. A small crystal egg hangs at the end of it, a delicate but unbreakable cage, forged from the same ancient magic that binds me to her. She places the spark of me inside. The tiny spark flares and gutters, wobbling for a moment before settling into a steady, subdued glow.

“This,” she says, fastening the chain around my neck, “is what remains of you. It will be a small reminder of who you once were. Or perhaps… who you might yet become. If the time ever calls for it.”

The orb of fire now rests against my chest, and I feel its heat—faint, but there. A small, defiant warmth, even in the face of the overwhelming cold. The last flicker of me, trapped inside the glass, bound to me, yet forever out of my reach. A part of me is relieved—it’s still there, still burning. But another part of me wonders if this is just another chain, binding me to a fate I can never escape.

“You are mine now, Dullahan,” she says, her voice echoing in the hollow emptiness of my chest. “But this flame… it is yours. And one day, it may burn again. But now, the suffering of its flesh is done.”

***

For a moment, there is… nothing. No pain. No sound. No feeling at all. It’s as if the world has vanished, as though I have fallen out of it. The silence stretches on, vast and unending, swallowing even the memory of sensation.

But then it comes. Slow at first. A creeping cold that starts at the edges of my being, crawling inward. It’s not just the absence of warmth—it’s the presence of something else. It seeps into my veins, filling the hollow places where blood once flowed, where a heartbeat once echoed. I wait for that beat. One slow thump, then another. But it does not come.

For a brief, fractured second, I cling to hope. Maybe the heartbeat is there, waiting to return once the cold passes. Maybe the pain will come back, and with it, my life. But then the truth settles in. My chest is a hollow cavern, an empty vessel where life used to dwell.

No more. A quiet horror unfurls in me as I finally understand…

I am no longer alive.

I raise my hands, but they are not mine. Pale. They are too pale. The skin is not flesh, not truly—it’s too smooth, too cold, like the touch of something long dead. I want to feel something—heat, pain, anything—but there is only the cold. It spreads, deeper and deeper, until even the memory of warmth is a distant dream, and with it, the last vestiges of who I was. All… except for that tiny spark.

My memories slide from me—Deirdre’s face, this hunt, the feel of the sun on my skin—each one undone, consumed by the dark, ancient presence that now fills me. I reach for them, desperate, but they slip through my fingers, insubstantial as smoke.

No. I want to scream it, but my mouth won’t move the way it should. I try to cling to one last fragment of who I was, but that’s gone too before I can even name it.

And then… I awaken.

Different.

The earth still sips my pooling blood, and on its crimson surface, I catch a reflection of myself. The figure staring back is warped—distorted like a shadow stretching in the wrong direction. It’s not me. Not anymore.

I stand, but it’s not my body that rises. For one thing, I’m slightly taller. Heavier. But lighter too, as though I no longer belong entirely to this world. My skin glows faintly in the moonlight, pale and cold, like the ghost of a life long lost. When I move, it’s not flesh that moves, and not shadow either. It’s the empty husk I animate through the power and the dominance of her will.

The wound in my chest… gone. But something else pulses beneath my skin. It’s a new animus unlike what I had before, not a heartbeat, but a rhythm that functions. It’s an existence that isn’t life, but something else. The shadows shift, drawn to the Cailleach’s presence… but not to me. They do not call me or offer themselves as they once did. She doesn’t touch them, either. The power she wields is different, separate. It flows through me now, cold and ancient, bending the world to her will.

And soon, it will bend to mine.

The Cailleach watches me rise, her satisfaction evident, her smile a thin, cold line. “Now you are mine,” she says, her voice echoing in the hollow emptiness where my heart once beat.

I glance down at my hands—no longer mine, not really. The pale skin feels too smooth, too cold, as if it belongs to something long dead. These are the hands of a creature who serves only death.

I’ve been torn from myself. Like a shard of glass, I’ve been left to cut through the world—doing only the will of the one who plucked the jagged piece from the place where I fell, broken.

And yet… even as the cold buries me, that flicker burns. It’s small, fragile, but it’s there. A defiant warmth buried beneath layers of ice.

It will keep me tethered to this world. It will keep me… myself.

For now.