“Something you’re meant to drink slowly, but leave it to you.”
“I feel I could sprint all the way to Dublin. Thank you.”
“You’re welcome. We’ll just leave this for later.” Cautious now, Branna moved the tea out of reach.
“I could eat a cow and still have room for pudding.” But she reached for Branna’s hand. “I’m sorry. Truly.”
“I know it. Truly.”
“Tell me, will you, what he did to me? Was it poison, like Connor?”
“It wasn’t, no. You were open and defenseless, and he would know it. He used his shadows, and I think it blocked it all for a time. But they cleared enough, for he can’t keep that box, as Connor called it, shut tight for long. The lot of us were coming. He’d have known that as well, so he acted quickly and with cruelty. The spell he cast, you could call it a kind of Sleeping Beauty, but it’s not so pretty as a fairy tale. It’s a kind of death.”
“I . . . He killed me.”
“No, it’s not so clean. He took your breath; he stopped your heart. It’s a kind of paralysis that anyone who didn’t know would take for death. Without intervention, it could last for days or weeks. Even years. Then you would wake.”
“Like, what, a zombie?”
“You would wake, Meara, and you would be mad. You would claw or dig your way out if you could, or die raving. Or . . . he would come for you, at a time of his own choosing, and make you his creature.”
“Then I would be dead,” Meara declared. “All that I am would be gone. He couldn’t have done this to me if I’d worn the protection Connor gave me.”
“No. He could hurt you, he could try to draw you to him, but he couldn’t cast such a spell on you when you’re protected.” She paused a moment. “It was Connor who breathed life back into you. He reached you first. He brought you back—your breath, your heart. Then the rest of us came together as he pulled you out of the sleep. Even in those few minutes, Meara, you’d been drawn deep. You could only sob and sob, and shake. He had to slide you into sleep again, healing sleep, so you could be calm while we worked.”
“The candles, the stones, the herbs. The words. I heard you—you and Connor and Iona.”
“Fin as well for a bit.”
Five people who loved her, Meara thought, all sick and afraid because she’d been foolish.
“He could’ve broken us, because I was childish.”
“That’s true enough.”
“I’m shamed and sorry, Branna, and so I’ll say to all. But if I could speak with Connor first.”
“Of course you should.”
“Could you help me clean up a bit?” She managed a wobbly smile. “I’ve been a bit dead, and probably look it.”
* * *
BECAUSE IT CONTINUED TO RAIN, CONNOR SAT IN BRANNA’S workshop, drinking his second beer and brooding at the fire.
When Fin walked in, he scowled. “You?
?d be wise to feck off. I’m not fit company.”
“That’s a pity.” Fin dropped into a chair with a beer of his own. “You said she’d waked and was better—but little else. Branna’s yet to come back down, and as Iona and Boyle just came in with cases of her things, I’d like to know just what the bloody hell better might be.”
“Awake, aware. She drank the potion, and her color was good when I left her.”
“All right then.” Fin took a sip of beer, waiting for the rest. When it didn’t come, he prepared to pry the lid off, then Boyle came in.
And better yet.
“I hauled clothes and boots and Christ knows, enough for a month or more that Iona swears is all essential. Then I was dismissed, which is just fine with me.”