“This is Meara, my friend, and yours. She is one of our cir
cle. Tell me, cousin, how long has it been for you since you saw me?”
“Three years. But I knew I would see you again. The gypsy told me, and I saw she had the gift. She came to trade one spring morning, and told me she’d followed the magicks and the omens to our door. So she said I had kin from another time, and we would meet again, in and out of dreams.”
“In and out,” Connor considered.
“She said we would go home again, and meet our destiny. You have her face, my lady, and her bearing. You come from her, she who called herself Aine. So I’ll thank you as I did her for giving me hope when I needed it.”
He looked at Connor. “It was after our first winter here, and the dark seemed never to lift. I pined for home, despaired of seeing it again.”
He’d grown tall, Connor observed, and confident. “You’ve made a home here.”
“We live, and we learn. It’s good land here, and the wild of it calls. But we, the three, must see home again before we can make our own, and keep it.”
“But it’s not time yet, is it? I’ll trust you’ll know when it is. Your sisters are well?”
“They are, and thank you. I hope your sister is the same.”
“She is. We’re six. The three and three more, and we learn as well. He has something new. A shadow spell, a way to balance between worlds and forms. Your mother wrote something of shadows, and my Branna studies her book.”
“As does my sister. I’ll tell her of this. Or will you come in. I’ll wake her and Teagan as they’d be happy to meet you both.”
Eamon started to turn to the cottage door.
For Meara it all happened at once.
Connor whirled and Eamon with him as if they were one form. The big gray—and it gave her a jolt to see Alastar, the same as the stallion she knew—charged from the lean-to. Almost as one, Roibeard dived, Kathel leaped.
Before she could fully turn, Connor yanked her back and behind him just as the wolf sprang.
It came from nowhere, silent as a ghost, quick as a snake.
In a blur, it dodged Alastar’s flashing hooves and charged. Straight at the boy, she realized, and without thought, shoved Eamon to the side, swung her sword.
She struck air, but even that sang up her arms to her shoulders. Then the full force of the wolf struck her, sent her flying. Pain, the shock of it, the bitter, bitter cold of it ripped through her side. Instinct—survival—had her clamping her hands around its throat to hold back the snap of its jaws.
And again, it happened at once.
The hound attacked, and light burst so bright it burned the air to red. Shouts and snarls tore through that searing curtain while her muscles quivered at the strain of holding back those snapping jaws. She heard herself scream, felt no shame in it as the wolf screamed as well.
She saw rage in its eyes, murderous and crazed, before it wavered, faded, vanished as it had come. Out of nowhere.
Her name, Connor saying it over and over and over. She couldn’t get her breath, simply couldn’t draw in the air—air that stank like brimstone.
Warm hands on her side, warm lips on her lips. “Let me see now, let me see. Ah, God, God. Not to worry, aghra, I’ll fix it. Lie quiet.”
“I can help you.”
She heard the voice, saw the face. Branna’s face, but younger. She remembered that face, Meara thought through the pain, the liquid daze of it all. Remembered it from her own youth.
“You’ll look like her in a few years. Our Branna’s a rare beauty.”
“Lie quiet, lady. Teagan, fetch—ah well, she already is. My sister’s getting the rest I need. I’m skilled, cousin,” she said to Connor. “You’ll trust me to this?”
“I will.” But he took Meara’s hand. “Here now, darling, here, mo chroi, look at me. At me, into me.”
So she went dreaming, dreaming into those green eyes, outside of pain, outside of all but him. And him murmuring sweet things to her as he did when they loved.