“I don’t. I don’t think to find such a thing for myself. Perhaps one day you will. So pretty you are, and bright.”
“Oh, I will.” Teagan nodded wisely. “As you will, as Eamon will. And we will pass what we are, what we have, to those who come from us. Our mother wanted this. She wanted us to live.”
“We would live, and well, if I wed Fial. I am the oldest,” Brannaugh reminded them. “It is for me to decide.”
“She charged me to protect you.” Eamon folded his arms across his chest. “I forbid it.”
“We will not quarrel.” Teagan snatched their hands, gripped hard. Flame shimmered through their joined fingers. “And I will not be tended to. I am not a babe, Brannaugh, but the same age as you when we left our home. You will not marry to give me a home. You will not deny what you are, ignore your power. You are not Ailish, but Brannaugh, daughter of Sorcha and Daithi. You are a dark witch, and ever will be.”
“One day we will destroy him,” Eamon vowed. “One day we will avenge our father, our mother, and we will destroy even the ash we burn him into. Our mother has told me we will, or those who come from us will, if it takes a thousand years.”
“She told you?”
“This morning. She came to me while I was on the river, in the mists and the quiet. I find her there when I need her.”
“She comes to me only in dreams.” Tears Brannaugh wouldn’t shed clogged her throat.
“You hold what you are so tight.” To soothe, Teagan stroked her sister’s hair. “So not to upset Ailish, so to protect us. Perhaps you only allow her to come in dreams.”
“She comes to you?” Brannaugh murmured. “Not only in dreams?”
“Sometimes when I ride Alastar, when we go deep into the woods, and I hold myself quiet, so quiet, she comes. She sings to me as she used to when I was little. And it was our mother who told me we will have love, we will have children. And we will, by our blood, defeat Cabhan.”
“Am I to marry Fial then, bear him the child, the blood, who will finish it?”
“No!” Tiny flames flickered at Teagan’s fingertips before she remembered control. “There is no love. The love comes, then the child. This is the way.”
“It is not the only way.”
“It is our way.” Eamon took Brannaugh’s hand again. “It will be our way. We will be what we are meant, do what we must do. If we don’t try, what they sacrificed for us is for nothing. They would have died for nothing. Do you want it so?”
“No. No. I want to kill him. I want his blood, his death.” Struggling, Brannaugh pressed her face to Kathel’s neck, soothed herself with his warmth. “I think part of me would die if I turned away from what I am. But I know all of me would if a choice I make brings harm to either of you.”
“We choose, all of us,” Eamon said. “One by three. We needed this time. Our mother sent us here so we could have this time. We are not children now. I think we were no longer children when we rode from home that morning, knowing we would never see her again.”
“We had power.” Brannaugh breathed deep, straightened. Though he was younger, and a boy for all that, her brother spoke true. “She gave us more. I asked you both to let it lie still.”
“You were right to ask it—even if we woke it now and then,” Eamon added with a smile. “We needed the time here, but this time is coming to a close. I feel it.”
“As I do,” Brannaugh murmured. “So I wondered if it meant Fial. But no, you’re right, both of you. I am not for the farm. Not for kitchen magicks and parlor games. We will look, here within the circle. We will look, and see. And know.”
“Together?” Teagan’s face glowed with joy as she asked, and Brannaugh knew she’d held back herself, her sister and brother too long.
“Together.” Brannaugh cupped her hands, brought the power up, out. And dropping her hands down like water falling, she made the fire.
And the making of it, that first skill learned, the purity of the magick coursed through her. It felt as if she’d taken her first full breath in five years.
“You have more now,” Teagan stated.
“Aye. It’s waited. I’ve waited. We’ve waited. We wait no more. Through the flame and the smoke, we’ll seek him out, see where he lurks. You see deeper,” she told Eamon, “but have a care. If he knows we look at him, he will look at us.”
“I know what I’m about. We can go through the fire, fly through the air, over water and earth, to where he is.” He laid a hand on the small sword at his side. “We can kill him.”
“It will take more than your sword. For all her power, our mother couldn’t destroy him. It will take more, and we will find more. In time. For now, we look only.”
“We can fly. Alastar and I. We . . .” Teagan trailed off at Brannaugh’s sharp look. “It just . . . happened one day.”
“We are what we are.” Brannaugh shook her head. “I should never have forgotten it. Now we look. Through fire, through smoke, with shielded sight as we invoke. To seek, to find, his eyes we blind, he who shed our blood. Now our power rises in a flood. We are the three. As we will, so mote it be.”