and when she was ready, sent her soul on a search for hidden dangers. The earth fell away from her as she soared through sky and wind. A rush of freedom filled her and she knew that was the real danger of astral travel. You could become so lost in the sensations that you didn’t want to crawl back into a body that would feel leaden on your return.
But she was on a mission and as she sailed over Manorbier castle, no more than a thought on the wind, she reached with her mind for whatever was waiting for them.
She felt it first. A smudge of evil like a dirty fingerprint on a white door. She swooped in closer, trusting that her disembodied spirit wouldn’t be sensed or noticed.
Men and guns.
Gathered, hidden behind the walls and tumbled stones of the castle. Waiting for them. But how did they know she and Torin were coming? Shea returned quickly to her body. It didn’t matter how their enemies knew about them. All that mattered was that the trap they had set wouldn’t work now.
She came back with a jolt and looked up into Torin’s swirling gray eyes. “It’s a trap. There are men with guns down there and they’re just waiting for us to show up. They’re mostly around the inner yard—which, naturally, is exactly where we have to go.”
He helped her off the capstone. “Then we won’t disappoint them.”
“Right.” She nodded and looked from him to the castle far below. “Weird, isn’t it? Our past was filled with betrayals and pain—now the present is looking pretty much the same.”
“Yes, but we are not the same as we once were, Shea,” he told her and pulled her close, holding on to her at the top of the world. “Nothing can defeat us if we stand together.”
“We will, Torin,” she said, tipping her head back to look up at him. “We do this together.”
She was still staring into his eyes as his fire wrapped itself around them both and whisked them to their past.
Chapter 43
The stone walls of Manorbier castle were studded with bracken and the snaking, climbing tendrils of dark green ivy. Long unused arrow slits, like empty eyes, looked down on the modern world, and walls that had once rung with shouts and laughter lay quiet in the afternoon gloom.
Shea took a breath and let the scene sink into her soul. She was home, she thought and wondered how she could feel so sure about a place where she’d never been. But the answer was in her heart, her mind. Her very soul recognized this place as her spiritual home. As the land where she had been happiest—until the night everything had changed so drastically, so completely.
She felt the spirits clinging to this place, their energies stamped for all time on the castle that had been home and safety. Shea almost expected to hear the clang of swords as warriors trained in the outer yard. She turned her head to look at the sweeping staircase leading from the buttery to the great hall and imagined servants scurrying to and fro, carrying meals hot from the ovens. She remembered parties in the great hall and the respect granted to her and her sister members of the coven.
Before they turned from their legacy, life had been good here. At this castle, witchcraft was treated with deference. Shea and her sisters had been sought after for potions and healing, to attend births and deathbeds. They were seen as guides to the next world and the coven had protected those within these walls in thanks for the refuge granted them.
“If only we hadn’t—” She broke off, looking up at the walls with the ivy creeping along the stones. Taking a breath, she sighed and admitted, “I can’t help wondering how things might have been different if we hadn’t turned our backs on who we were. On the Eternals.”
“Shea . . .”
“No,” she said, cutting him off by laying the tips of her fingers across his mouth. Shaking her head, she fought back a sheen of tears that clouded her vision. “I have to think of these things, Torin. I have to realize what I lost. What we all lost while chasing momentary glory, for God’s sake. We turned away from everything important to us, thinking that we knew best. That we could control the uncontrollable. We should have mated long ago, Torin. We should have joined. And I’m sorry I held myself back from you.”
He