Iona’s Nan? You and Boyle and the stables, you and Connor with the falconry school. Land you owned where Boyle and Iona will live their life. You’ve spent more time away than here these past years, and still you’re so tightly linked. Some may say it’s just the way of things, but I don’t believe that. Not anymore.”
“What do you believe?”
“I can’t know for certain.” Poking at the eggs on her plate, she stared off out the window. “I know there are connections again, the three now, the three then. And each of us more closely linked to one of them. And didn’t Eamon mistake our Meara for a gypsy he knew—name of Aine as you named the white filly you brought back to breed with Alastar? I feel Boyle has some connection there as well, some piece of it, and if we needed we’d find that connection to Teagan of the first three.”
“It’s no mystery.” He rubbed his shoulder. “It’s Cabhan for me.”
“I think it’s more, somewhere. You’re from him, of his blood, but not connected in the way I am with Sorcha’s Brannaugh, or Connor with Eamon and so on. If you were, I can’t see how you’d have known to bring Alastar back for Iona, and Aine back for Alastar.”
“I didn’t bring Aine back for Alastar, not altogether, or not only. I brought her back for you.”
The mug she’d lifted stilled in midair. “I . . . I don’t understand you.”
“When I saw her, I saw you. You used to love to ride, to fly astride a horse. I saw you on her, flying through the night with the moon bursting full in the sky. And you, lit like a candle with . . .”
“What?”
“As you are in the window upstairs, just as I saw you years before when I had it done. A wand in one hand, fire in the other. It came and went like a fingersnap, but was clear as day. So I brought her back for you, when you’re ready for her.”
She said nothing, could say nothing for a moment. Then she rose, went to the door, and let in the little dog she’d sensed waiting.
Bugs wagged around her feet, then dashed to Fin.
“Don’t feed him from the table,” she said absently as she sat again. “It’s poor manners for both of you.”
Fin, who’d been about to do just that, looked down at the hopeful dog.
You know where the food is, little man. Let’s not ruffle the lady’s feathers.
Happy enough, Bugs raced off to the laundry, and his bowls.
“I’ll ride her when we next face Cabhan, and be the stronger for it. You brought us weapons, for both Alastar and Aine are weapons against him. You’ve bled with us, conjured with us, plotted with us, to end him. If your connection was with him, strongest with him, how could you do these things?”
“Hate for him, and all he is.”
Branna shook her head. Hate didn’t make courage or loyalty. And what Fin had done took both.
“I was wrong to try to block you out in the beginning of this, and it was selfishly done. I wanted to believe that connection, you to Cabhan, but it’s not there. Not in the way he’d want, not in the way he needs. Your connection is with us. I don’t understand the why of it, but it’s truth.”
“I love you.”
Oh, her heart warmed and ached at the words. She could only touch his hand. “Love is powerful, but it doesn’t explain, in a logical way, why your feelings for me link you so tight with the others.”
She leaned forward now, her breakfast forgotten. “Between the first three and us, I’ve found no others who’ve been so tightly woven together. No others who’ve gone back dreaming to them, or had them come. Others have tried and failed, but none have come so close as we to ending him. I’ve read no tales in the books of one of the three riding on Alastar into battle, with Kathel and Roibeard with them. And none that speak of a fourth, of one who bears the mark, joining them. It’s our destiny, Fin, but you’re the change in it. I believe that now. It’s you who make our best chance to finish it, you who bear his mark and come from his blood. And still, I can’t see the why of it.”
“There are choices, you know well, to be made with power, and with blood.”