took her hand, pressed it to her cheek. “I should’ve expected, prepared.”
“It’s not your fault. You’ve been preparing me. Keegan’s been preparing me. I hate that he’s right. I have to work harder. I was weak, and stupid. I was,” she insisted when Marg protested. “I won’t be next time.”
“You’ll have some food,” Aisling declared. “And you’ll tell us, from start to end. And we’ll see what needs doing. She’s your blood, Marg, and neither weak nor stupid. But Yseult’s a wily one, and potent with her bloody snakes. So we’ll hear it, then we’ll see what’s needed.”
When she’d finished, and felt herself again, Harken stepped away from the window where he’d kept an eye on the children. He cupped Breen’s face in his hands and kissed her lightly on the lips.
“Trapped in a bespelled fog with a powerful black witch, branded by her, and bitten by a sleep snake, and still there was enough light and fight in you to guide Keegan to you. You’re your father’s daughter.”
She hadn’t thought of it that way, but only of failure.
“I hope so. I don’t understand the Sleep thing. Keegan said they didn’t want me dead.”
“’Tisn’t death,” Aisling told her, “but it mirrors it.”
“You know the tale of the Sleeping Beauty?” Harken asked. “Well, it wouldn’t be a kiss to bring you back. One bitten by a creature such as that will fall into a dark, deep sleep, wakened only by the will of the one who commands the snake.”
“We’d have broken the spell.” Marg reached out and took Breen’s hand. “But it’s difficult and it’s dangerous for all. It’s good you and Keegan killed the poison before it reached your heart and your head.”
“She was going to take me through the portal in the waterfall. How would she get me through?”
“I haven’t heard of her back in Talamh since we shuttered it. It must have taken her years to work a spell. She’s from here,” Marg added. “So that would help her. There are other portals, of course, all closely guarded. Still scouts slip through, as did the one Keegan killed when we visited Eian’s grave.”
“She came alone,” Harken pointed out. “If she went through the waterfall, she couldn’t bring soldiers with her, that tells me. I’ll be taking myself off there, seeing if I can shore up whatever chink she managed.”
“Don’t go alone. Don’t,” Aisling insisted.
“What little faith you have in me.”
“I’d say the same to any, you blockhead. Go with two others to make three.”
“The witch rides with a faerie and a were,” Breen said. “An elf and a troll will come through the green wood. And with wood, stone, light, and magicks, the five close the door again.”
Breen slumped back, stared at the faces around her. “What was that! I could see it. You and Morena and a man who becomes a bear. A woman who comes out of a tree, a troll with a stone axe.”
“A vision.” And Marg smiled at her.
“I don’t have visions. I mean, I have dreams, and they can be lucid. And I get flashes like anyone, but—”
“Not like anyone at all.”
“Likely it is when you joined power with Keegan it gave you a bit of a boost. Would you like more tea?” Aisling added.
“No, no, I’m fine. It was like being there, watching, but through a curtain, a thin curtain.”
“The curtain will lift with time,” Marg told her. “Now I think you need some rest. You’ve had a trying time of it.”
“Not rest. Practice. I need to learn more, and get better at what I learn.”
“All right then.” With a nod, Marg rose. “We’ll practice.”
When they’d gone, Aisling put a hand on Harken’s arm. “What does she feel? You looked, I’m sure, out of concern, to be sure—as I needed to be about her body—that her mind was clean and clear. But you saw what you saw.”
“I did.” He strapped on the sword he rarely wore. “And while clean and clear it was, she’s caught between fear and fascination just as she’s caught between Talamh and the world she’s known. Her loves, her loyalties, her needs, her doubts, they tangle inside her like vines.”
He put on his cap, his jacket. “There’s naught for us to do about it, Aisling. She’ll make her choices when she makes them.”
“I could bash your head for your patience alone.”
“And it would still be what it will be.” He kissed her cheek. “Now I need to saddle a horse and go fetch Morena, and I think it