“She was going to take me through the portal in the waterfall. How would she get me through?”

“I haven’t heard of her back in Talamh since we shuttered it. It must have taken her years to work a spell. She’s from here,” Marg added. “So that would help her. There are other portals, of course, all closely guarded. Still scouts slip through, as did the one Keegan killed when we visited Eian’s grave.”

“She came alone,” Harken pointed out. “If she went through the waterfall, she couldn’t bring soldiers with her, that tells me. I’ll be taking myself off there, seeing if I can shore up whatever chink she managed.”

“Don’t go alone. Don’t,” Aisling insisted.

“What little faith you have in me.”

“I’d say the same to any, you blockhead. Go with two others to make three.”

“The witch rides with a faerie and a were,” Breen said. “An elf and a troll will come through the green wood. And with wood, stone, light, and magicks, the five close the door again.”

Breen slumped back, stared at the faces around her. “What was that! I could see it. You and Morena and a man who becomes a bear. A woman who comes out of a tree, a troll with a stone axe.”

“A vision.” And Marg smiled at her.

“I don’t have visions. I mean, I have dreams, and they can be lucid. And I get flashes like anyone, but—”

“Not like anyone at all.”

“Likely it is when you joined power with Keegan it gave you a bit of a boost. Would you like more tea?” Aisling added.

“No, no, I’m fine. It was like being there, watching, but through a curtain, a thin curtain.”

“The curtain will lift with time,” Marg told her. “Now I think you need some rest. You’ve had a trying time of it.”

“Not rest. Practice. I need to learn more, and get better at what I learn.”

“All right then.” With a nod, Marg rose. “We’ll practice.”

When they’d gone, Aisling put a hand on Harken’s arm. “What does she feel? You looked, I’m sure, out of concern, to be sure—as I needed to be about her body—that her mind was clean and clear. But you saw what you saw.”

“I did.” He strapped on the sword he rarely wore. “And while clean and clear it was, she’s caught between fear and fascination just as she’s caught between Talamh and the world she’s known. Her loves, her loyalties, her needs, her doubts, they tangle inside her like vines.”

He put on his cap, his jacket. “There’s naught for us to do about it, Aisling. She’ll make her choices when she makes them.”

“I could bash your head for your patience alone.”

“And it would still be what it will be.” He kissed her cheek. “Now I need to saddle a horse and go fetch Morena, and I think it must be Sean she saw in her vision. If Mahon and Keegan aren’t back, stay for supper.”

“Cook it, you mean.”

“Well, of course,” he agreed in his cheerful way. “But I enjoy the company and the children as well as the food.”

She gave him a swat as he walked to the door. “And when will you finally ask Morena to wed you so she’ll cook your supper?”

“She’s a terrible cook, as you know very well. And I’ll be asking her when she is ready to say yes, and not before.”

“Why not give her a bit of a push?” Aisling wondered when he shut the door. Then she sighed, said, “Blessed be, brother,” and walked back to the window to look out on her children.

She’d kill for them. She’d die for them, she thought as she folded her hands over the life growing inside her. Now she could only hope Breen would fight for them, and all the children in all the worlds.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

She worked and practiced until moonsrise. She ate, and gratefully, the roast beef and vegetables Sedric prepared. Though Marg urged her to stay, Breen insisted on going back to her cottage.

She wanted the space, the quiet, and she wanted to sit down and write out every detail about what had happened.

Writing it down would help her remember those details so, hopefully, she wouldn’t make the same mistakes again.

When she settled into bed with Bollocks curled in front of the fire she could now light with a thought—progress!—she started to put rosemary under her pillow.

Then, thinking of the vision in the farmhouse kitchen, she set it aside. Maybe it was time to welcome dreams, whatever they might hold.

So she dreamed again of the black castle with its walls like glass, of the stony island on which it rose, and the raging sea below the sheer cliffs.

The god stood on a wide balcony on the topmost tower. His black cloak swirled as he threw dark bolts of light at the sky and sent it to boiling.

His eyes gleamed with rage, his face a mask of fury.

From that boiling sky rain, sharp as arrow tips, fell. On the ground below and on the cliffs, those who served him screamed and scattered and sought cover from the lethal storm.

Some the arrows pierced and burned through like acid. Some the whirling wind lifted up and tossed into the thrashing sea.

Buildings that had begun to rise again from the rubble on the cliffs toppled and crashed.

And still, Odran’s wrath did not abate.

Yseult stepped out. The gale whipped at her bloodred hair, at the gown of the same color. In the dream, Breen could read the fear in her eyes no matter how she tried to hide it.

“My king, my liege, my all.”

He spun around, clamped his hand around her throat, and lifted her off her feet. She didn’t resist. Though the fear spiked, she didn’t resist.

“You failed! You were to bring her to me. Why should I not hurl you into the sea? Why should I not see your body break on the rocks?”

Instead, he threw her onto the floor of the balcony. Breen saw pain mix with the fear, but Yseult gathered herself to kneel at Odran’s feet.

“All the power I own is yours to command. I would hurl myself onto the rocks if you command it. She has more than we believed, more rising up in her than we knew. But my king, my lord, this knowledge is to your benefit.”

“It would benefit if you fulfilled your duty.”

“More has awakened in her. When you have her, you won’t have to wait, not long, to drink her powers. She will become much sooner than we believed. And when you drink her dry, on that glorious day, no door will be locked to you, no world will be barred against you.”

She bowed her head. “My king, my liege, my all, I am loyal only to you. I have forsaken all oaths but my oath to you. With the black magicks, I joined with you, with the blood of seven virgins, I helped you restore your castle. And I will fulfill my oath to help you rebuild your glorious city, to help you take your throne above all gods, above all worlds, and crush to dust any who go against you.”

She lifted her head. “I beg you, Odran the Incomparable, not to take my life in anger. If you must have my death, let it be taken in cold blood, with cold mind, and on the altar of sacrifice so my death will serve you beyond my life.”

He studied Yseult, gray eyes—like Breen’s father’s, like her own—calculating. “You would go to the altar willing, witch?”

“My life is yours to use, to take, to do with as you wish. As it has been since I took my vows to you in blood and smoke.”

“Rise.” He flicked a hand at her, turned. The killing rain ceased, and the wind died. He stood, his gold hair shining to his shoulders. “It’s not your loyalty I doubt, but your skill. You disappoint me, Yseult.”

“I have no deeper regret.”

“Send a slave with wine—a comely one. And see the mess below put to order again.”

“As you wish.”

She slipped back inside.

Odran stepped to the wall, gazed out across the sea.

For a moment, one terrible moment, it seemed his eyes locked with Breen’s. She saw something in his—quick surprise, dark satisfaction.

And woke shivering as if dipped in ice.

She grabbed her tablet, wrote it all down.

And put the rosemary under her pillow.

In the morning she managed to write a blog, focused on the garden. Everything bright and cheerful and full of pretty pictures.

She started back on her book and made a little progress because she introduced an evil witch who wore a magickal pendant of two-headed snakes.

Later, she’d bring in the live ones, but she wasn’t ready for that yet. In any case, she couldn’t keep her head in the story, not when it wanted to go back to the dream, or the fog, or the intensity in Keegan’s eyes when he’d helped her heal.

He’d felt the pain, too, she realized. That scorching, inhuman pain. And still, he hadn’t pulled away.

“Misneach,” she murmured, laying a hand over her wrist. He had courage.

Some time on her own, she thought. She needed that to contemplate whether she had more than the word over her pulse.

To let her mind clear, she decided to shut down early and take care of some household chores she’d neglected.

She started some laundry before driving to the market in the village. That reminded her she’d gotten so used to how life worked in Talamh, the Irish village seemed like the other world.

With laundry done, groceries put away, the garden weeded, she checked her email before leaving for her afternoon with the Fey.

“Oh my God.”

She read the email, pushed up. She walked around and around the room in a way that had Bollocks racing in and out.

She read it again, standing up.

“Oh my God! Stop, stop, stop. Don’t get so excited. It’s just the next step. Oh, hell with that! I’m so excited.”

When Bollocks jumped up to lean on her, she grabbed his front paws and danced. “The agent wants to see the whole manuscript. She didn’t say don’t ever contact me again, you pitiful excuse for a writer. No, no, she said she loved the first chapter and synopsis I sent her, and wants to see the rest!”