sending the snakes streaking toward him as she whirled into the fog.
“She’ll be your death, Taoiseach,” she called out. “And take her place in the black tower while Odran rules for all time.”
“I will be yours.”
The snakes screamed as he shot them with light. When they turned to ash, the fog swirled away. Yseult was gone.
Keegan sheathed his sword. “I will be yours,” he repeated, and turned to Breen. He signaled his dragon to uncurl his tail, then shook his head.
“And how do you expect to fight sitting on your arse?”
He took one step toward her, then his expression changed from temper to shock.
He rushed to kneel beside her. “Did they strike? Are you bitten?”
“My arm.”
Roughly, he shoved up her sleeve, cursed. Helpless, mired in the searing pain, she screamed.
“I’m sorry, truly. No, no, stay awake!” As her head lolled, he gripped her chin hard enough to bruise. “You have to stay awake. We need to burn the poison out before it takes you into the Sleep, and there’s no time to get you to Aisling. We do this together.”
“I don’t know how. I’m so tired.”
“Look at me. Join with me. Light with me, fire with me, power with me, two into one. See the dark moving in your blood, cleanse with white fire until there is none. Say this with me.”
Everything blurred, her eyes, her mind, her ears. “What?”
“Stay awake, gods damn it. Look at me. My eyes are your eyes, my mind is your mind, my will is your will. Speak the words with me and call the fire.
“Join with me,” he repeated, and she mumbled with him.
When they finished the first incantation, the pain leaped back, sent her into gasping moans.
“I know there’s pain. Use it. You’re already stronger. We say it again now. We hold together now. Three times, it takes. So twice more.”
Not pain, she thought. This was beyond pain. She’d been lit on fire from the inside out. When she screamed, when she sobbed, he waited.
“Once more, just once more, and it’s done. I promise you.” His grip on her hand tightened. “I’m here with you. Once more.”
She had to catch her breath, had to bear down knowing that unspeakable pain would rip through her a third time.
She kept her eyes fixed on his, gold lights swimming in the green. “Join with me,” she said, and wept, unashamed, through the rest.
“There now, there, brave one, let me have a look. Don’t close your eyes, don’t sleep, not yet.”
Gently, so gently, he brushed her hair back from her damp face. “Ah, she burned you for good measure, the whore bitch. This I can fix for you, and it won’t hurt so much. Look here, do you see where the bites were, the red heat, the swelling? It’s gone. The poison’s burned away. There’s only the brand she put on you. Leave that to me.”
She let her head fall back, didn’t even have the strength to wonder that it rested against a dragon’s leg.
“Where are we? This isn’t the road by the farm, by the cottage.”
“She lured you away.”
“I hear . . . the waterfall.”
“Aye. Odran can’t come through, but she comes and goes as she pleases it seems. She meant to take you through the portal here with her dark magicks.”
“I . . .” She sighed, beyond relief as her arm cooled, as the pain, even the hint of it vanished.
“There now, that’s done.” He brushed his hand lightly over her cheek. “You did well. You did the hard and you did it well.” Then he sat back on his haunches. “Now what the bloody hell were you thinking, going off with such as Yseult?”
“I didn’t know who she was, and I was just walking to Nan’s. She asked if she could walk with me to visit Nan. She said they were friends—or implied it—then everything changed. She took the light. I had a ball of light, and she took it, crushed it.”
He held her hand still, and she wouldn’t forget that. He held her hand because hers trembled.
“Why would you have a ball of light on a clear afternoon?”
“There was fog, and it was raining and foggy, and—”
“As it was here, when I came?”
“Yes, like that.”
“Her witchery is all it was.”
“There wasn’t fog?”
“An illusion, for you.”
“But . . . how did she get me here? We only walked for a few minutes. And how did you find me? How did you know?”
“She entranced you. You were singing. I could hear you sing, but you