sharp wind swept in from the ocean, rushing past them to race across the countryside, sending villagers searching for their hearths. In the distance, heavy dark clouds gathered as if amassing their forces for an invasion.
Torin was oblivious to everything but Shea. His focus was locked on her, his sharp eyes watching every inflection of expression cross her face. She looked both pleased and worried about being where they were and he could see the glint of recognition shining in her brilliant green eyes.
As he watched, she walked closer to a burial mound that had been perched on the high cliff above Manorbier Bay for eons. A heavy, long capstone sat balanced atop two short, thick side stones. Centuries of wind and rain had pitted the stones deeply, but magic sang in the air around the mound.
“King’s Quoit,” Shea whispered, resting the tips of her fingers against the damp, heavy stone. She closed her eyes and he could almost see magic pouring from the stones into her small, fragile hand.
“You remember,” he said, his words nearly lost in the rush of the wind. He could see her not only as she was now, tall and proud, yet still hesitating over her own powers—but as she had been then, on that long-ago night. The coven had gathered here, at the edge of the cliff. Here, where the capstone sang with ancient power.
There were other, more well-known standing stones. Circles of power, of magic, that stretched across the countryside. Today, they drew tourists and would-be scientists, looking to explain the unexplainable. But here, on this quiet cliff in an almost forgotten slice of Wales, stood one of the most powerful of all the stones.
“I do remember,” she said, lifting her gaze to his. She turned her face into the wind, staring out at the sea, opening her arms wide, to welcome the gale that seemed to rush toward her. “My blood recognizes this place,” she said, as if she could hardly believe what she was saying. “This was where we came to call down the moon. This is where we stood to open the door, the night we doomed ourselves. The night we broke faith with everything we were.”
“Yes.”
She glanced down at the capstone, and reached out to touch it again. “The magic here is thick, and ancient.”
“It is,” he said, moving around King’s Quoit to take her in his arms. “But it is not Haven.”
“No.”
“Can you find it?”
She swallowed hard. His witch was worried, Torin reminded himself. Even if he hadn’t been able to see her expression, he would have felt her distress. She was wound up, her emotions tangled together into a knot of expectation, dread and excitement. The anxieties of the last few weeks were taking their toll.
“I know where it is,” she said and lifted one arm to point. “It’s there. At Manorbier castle.”
He frowned. “The castle itself?”
“Yes.”
He looked off in the direction of the twelfth-century castle. The Welsh countryside spilled out in front of them like a dark green quilt, dotted with sheep and hedges and the bright blues and pinks and whites of late-blooming wildflowers. Torin’s soul embraced being back in the land where all of this had started. Yet at the same time, he worried, not only for his witch but for the other witches and Eternals awaiting their turn at this journey.
The Norman castle Manorbier had once been the center of their lives. There had been livestock roaming free in the land surrounding the castle and within the outer and inner yards a veritable village had thrived. Now, he knew, it all lay quiet but for the echoes of the past and the ghosts and shades that clung to the brown, bracken-covered stones.
“I need to look at the castle, Torin,” she told him and he turned. “There’s a darkness down there.”
“What do you sense?” His eyes were hard and his expression grim.
“I’m not sure. I can feel something. I’m going to use the magic in King’s Quoit to help me with some astral projection and I could use an anchor.”
“You have one,” he assured her.
She clambered up onto the capstone and sighed heavily as the magic trapped within the stone seeped into her bones. “God, it feels good to be here. To feel this and know what it means to me.”
Torin smiled, took her hand in his and held it tightly. “I’m here to guard your body as your spirit flies. Do what you must.”
Shea stilled her mind, kept her breathing slow and measured