“That’s not my meaning.”
“It’s how it feels.” Meara turned to Connor. “And you?”
“The six of us,” he said without hesitation, “or none at all.”
“All or none,” Boyle agreed.
“Yes.” Nodding, Iona took his hand. “If anyone can work out how it can be done, Branna, it’s you.”
“Ah, Jesus, bloody hell, let me think.” She shoved the teacup aside, poured whiskey—more generously than Fin had.
She tossed it back like water.
“I’ve always admired your head for whiskey,” Fin said as she shoved to her feet to pace.
“Be quiet. Just be quiet. Six at once,” she repeated as she paced, “in the name of Morrigan, it’s madness. And two of them armed with nothing but wit and fist and sword for all that. And one of them bearing Cabhan’s mark. Just shut up about it,” she snapped at Fin, who’d said nothing at all, “it’s fact.”
“They’re armed with more than wit and fist and sword, and have more than a mark unearned.” Connor spoke quietly. “They have heart.”
“Do you think I don’t know it? Do you think I don’t value it, above all?” She stopped, closed her eyes a moment. Sighed. “You’ve turned this upside down on me, Connor. I need to work my way through it. It’s not like one of us going into a magickal dream and taking along the one lying with us, the one we’ve been intimate with. And that has its own risks, as both Boyle and Iona know well.”
“It’s not, no. This would be a deliberate and conscious thing, a planned thing, a casting of our own.” Connor lifted his hands, spread them, palms up. “With as many protections as we can build into the spell. But there’ll be risks, yes, but risks however we go about it. And on Samhain, when the Veil thins, is the perfect time for this.”
He rose, went to he
r, took her hands. “You’d leave them behind if you could—and I would as well. That’s for love and friendship—and because this is a burden and duty that came to us. To you, to me, to Iona. Not to them.”
He kissed her hands lightly. “But that would be wrong for so many reasons. We’re a circle, three by three. It was always meant to be the six of us, Branna. I believe that.”
“I know it. It’s clear to me as well.”
“You fear you’ll fail them. You won’t. You won’t, and the burden of it isn’t yours alone.”
“We’ve never done it before.”
“I’d never floated so much as a feather before I came here,” Iona reminded her. “And now?”
She lifted her hands, palms up. The sofa where she sat beside Boyle rose smoothly, soundlessly, did a slow circle, then lowered back to the ground.
“Fair play to you,” Fin said, amused.
“You taught me, you and Connor. You opened me to what I have and what I am. We’ll figure out how to do it, and do it.”
“All right. All right. I can’t stand one against five. And it is a bloody brilliant idea. Reckless and frightening and brilliant. I know a potion I could tinker with that should work, and we’ll write the spell—and I’ll need every hour of that fortnight.”
“And you have us to help you tinker,” Connor pointed out.
“I’ll need you all as well. Still, I’d be easier if we have what would be a kind of control outside the dream net.”
“Would they have to be right here—with us, I mean?” Meara asked.
“Physically you’re meaning?” Connor glanced over at her, considered. “I don’t see why.”
“Then you have your father, the two of you. And there’s Iona’s grandmother. That’s blood and purpose shared, isn’t it? And love as well.”
“And more bloody brilliance!” On a laugh, Connor turned to Meara, plucked her straight out of her chair to spin her around. “That would do, and do very well. Branna?”
“It could—no, it would. And if I’d cleared the buzzing out of my head, I’d have seen it. Iona’s Nan, our da, and . . .”