take to the sky on black wings glinting an iridescent blue under the sun. Myths did not live as ghosts in the forest, but breathing air just as any other man or animal. The Éan were no myth; they were ravens with abilities beyond that of merely changing their shape.
And they trusted the Faol of the Chrechte less than the wolves ever trusted humans. But just as the Faol before them, the time had come for the Éan to learn to deal with their mistrust and join the human clans.
Their future as a race depended on it.
Prologue
Today I have seen the Dragon.
—CONFUCIUS
Donegal Holding, Highlands of Scotland
1142 AD, Reign of Dabíd mac Maíl Choluim, King of Scots
“I had another dream about the wolves’ sacred stone.” Ciara had waited until their mother had eaten her porridge and returned to her tiny bedroom to once again stare at the wall as if it held the very meaning of life to share this bit of information with her brother.
His head snapped up and his hands stilled in their sharpening of his broadsword. Wolf’s eyes the same deep green as her own focused on Ciara, silently demanding she continue.
It used to be a game. Or at least she’d been convinced it was. Before. Before Da’s death and Mum’s decline.
Now, Ciara knew that for whatever reason, her brother believed her dreams the salvation of their people.
Galen said the old stories were true, that the wolves once had a magic stone used in the coming of age ceremony to make them stronger. To even turn some into conriocht…werewolves—not merely a person who could shift into a wolf, if that gift were not amazing enough for her people. No, the old stories claimed that some would shift into conriocht, half man–half wolf and larger than either. Giants that could not be bested in battle, even by other wolves.
Certainly not by the Éan.
She didn’t know if she believed it. And if she did, if she wanted to help such a thing come about. But Ciara loved her brother and spending the day searching for the stone with clues from her dream was yet a joy.
Despite how Galen had changed these last two years.
“The Faolchú Chridhe.” He whispered the ancient name given to the stone by their people in stories older than the wolves’ history with the clans in a voice laced with awe.
The wolf’s heart…how could they have lost it as a people, if indeed it did exist?
“What did you dream?” he demanded, his emerald eyes glowing with the shine of a zealot.
Fear she did not understand skittered down her spine, making her hands shake as she put away their morning dishes. For one thing she never doubted was that her brother loved her.
“It was like the others,” Ciara forced from between suddenly dry lips, her throat tight with that inexplicable fear. “I saw a stone that could have been an emerald, but for the fact it was as big as a laird’s fist.” Surely no emerald of that size existed anywhere in the world. “’Twas on a dark stone altar in a cavern that glowed with a pale green light like I’ve never seen before.”
“The glowing, that’s new.”
It wasn’t, but she’d thought it too fanciful to mention before. Galen’s recent press for more and more information led her to admit to it now though.
“Where was the cavern?” He asked it every time, as if by doing so would make her know.
It never did. Though she tried to tell him all she could remember that might help. “I felt as if I was deep in the earth.”
“You felt?” he asked with doubt that bothered her, though she never said so.
“Yes.”
“Could you see the entrance to the cavern?”
“No, I felt as if it was behind me, but I could not turn away from the Faolchú Chridhe in my dream.”
“So no proof you were deep in the earth?”
“No,” she had to admit.
“’Tis more likely in the hills. Birds would not bury our stone deep in the earth. ’Tis not in their nature.”
Galen’s belief the Éan had stolen the Faolchú Chridhe had been birthed two winters past, after Da’s death and her brother started spending more time with Wirp. Their da had never had a good word to say about the other Chrechte the old stories claimed had once existed, either.
But Wirp was worse; he’d acted as if the Faol were better than everyone and male wolves the most superior of all. The old man had made her that uncomfortable. No one