dreams the night before, Eirik was not certain he could trust her with the Éan’s safety like he trusted her adopted father.
Ciara nodded, her green eyes glittering with worry. “I’ve been having dreams.”
“I am aware.” The laird frowned. “If I could stop the nightmares, I would.”
“They’re not all nightmares.” She flicked an unreadable glance toward Eirik.
Though he could guess what she was thinking. Her visions of the Faolchú Chridhe were naught to do with him, but her dream self had as good as told him that her dreams were sometimes about Eirik.
He got the impression she blamed him for the dreams, though they were hardly his fault. Still, that look had not been one of censure. He’d received plenty of those from her and knew intimately their expression.
He frowned in thought and caught a glimmer of fear in her green gaze before she adroitly masked it. Her Chrechte talents were well developed, but he could still smell traces of her apprehension. It did not appear anyone else did, however.
’Twas odd, that, and why the fear?
Because she was not an Éan and had learned somewhere along the way to fear her Chrechte strengths as much as she relied on them. She did not want him to know about the nature of her dreams about him, which meant they were no doubt of a nature to interest him.
She would learn she could hide little from him, and nothing he set his mind to learn.
“She has the sight,” Mairi interjected softly, innocently unaware of the sub currents between Eirik and Ciara.
The Sinclair stared at his daughter, the clan chief clearly nonplussed. “Like when you dreamed about Abigail with the bairn?”
Abigail reached out and touched Ciara’s shoulder. “I thought that was the result of your Chrechte senses becoming aware of something and making it known through your dreams. Are you certain that is not the case?”
“Yes.” Ciara’s hands twisted together in her lap. “It is not the first time. And they aren’t all happy like that one.”
“Have you seen something that concerns us?” Talorc sounded more curious than convinced.
Were the Faol of the Chrechte so far removed from the ancient ways that they did not know about the seers among them?
Perhaps the Éan joining the clans would save more than their race.
When Ciara bit a lip obviously already swollen from such abuse, Eirik wanted to pull her into his arms and promise all would be well. “I believe so, yes.”
“Tell me about the dreams,” Talorc instructed far more gently than was the irascible laird’s wont.
She flicked a glance up to Eirik and then over to Abigail, before settling her attention back on the laird, her discomfort with the topic obvious. “I’ve had them since I was a small girl.”
The laird nodded encouragingly.
“I saw members of my old clan in their Chrechte forms, but not always the ones they showed to the rest of Donegal pack.”
“What do you mean?”
Ciara turned a concerned gaze on Eirik.
Certain he knew what she worried about revealing, he nodded. “He knows already.”
The shoulder under his hand relaxed infinitesimally. “In my dreams, I saw Circin and his sister as ravens, flying in the sky.”
Talorc’s shock could not have been greater. “How?” He shook his head. “You must have seen them when awake at some point.”
“No. I knew Lais was an eagle, though he denied it to the whole clan.”
“Not even Wirp knew,” Lais said in a voice soft with awe.
“You are not convinced,” Ciara accused her adopted father.
The Sinclair winced. “I want to be, but ’tis so fantastic.”
Ciara drooped, but then squared her shoulders and looked directly at the laird. “There is a secret you hold, one that your father died for.”
“Others in our pack know as much,” Talorc said almost apologetically.
“But they cannot tell you the details of that secret. I can.”
She lifted her right hand and examined it as if her delicate fingers might hold the answers of the universe. “Were my hand that of a saint, I would not have made the many mistakes I have, I think.”
Color drained from the Sinclair’s face. “How did you…”
“She’s told you how and now you need to stop your doubting,” Abigail said with such an expression of angry exasperation, Eirik didn’t like his friend’s chances of finding joy in his marital bed that night.
“Aye. I am sorry for doubting you, Ciara.”
“I have never lied to you, but you know I have hidden much. It makes you distrustful, I understand.”
Talorc looked pained and Abigail on the verge of tears.
“Enough of this,” Niall