She had to walk outside, breathe, dance with the dog again.

Then she made herself sit down, write a response she read over three times to make certain it was professional.

“Okay, here goes!”

She attached the manuscript to the email, then just sat.

“Hit send, for God’s sake! Just hit send.”

She looked at the dog, who’d laid his head lovingly on her thigh. “I wish you could do it. But you can’t. So . . .”

She hit send and then breathed again. “Okay, we’ve got to get out of here or I’ll sit and obsess about this all day.”

She obsessed about it on the walk, then firmly locked it in the back of her mind. If she thought about it, she’d end up telling someone about it. She didn’t want to tell anyone, not yet.

Not even Marco.

She went straight to her grandmother’s. She didn’t bring up the dream, not yet, because it would distract from the work she wanted to do.

She had to get better, faster.

She spent two hours spell-casting, even the one she’d written herself.

After she’d cleaned the cauldron and tools, set the crystals out for charging, she sat with Marg over cups of tea and the biscuits Sedric put on a plate warm from the oven.

“These smell amazing.”

“Lemon biscuits,” Sedric told her. “Finola sent fresh lemons.”

“Taste amazing, too.” She studied the cookie. “I’ve never baked cookies.”

“How can that be?” Marg demanded. “They’re baked for Yule—for Christmas—this is tradition. And for the jar for children.”

“My mother doesn’t bake, and she didn’t approve of me eating sugar. We’d sneak off to the bakery sometimes,” she remembered. “Da would take me to the bakery. I used to wonder why he so often let her have her way. I understand that better now.”

She thought of her excitement and joy on reading an email from an agent. Of the magicks she’d practiced in the afternoon.

Of the dream of storms and dark gods.

“He lived in two worlds, and felt guilty for it. He couldn’t give her, or me, all of himself, because he owed a duty to Talamh. And because he had to protect me.”

She got up to take the papers she’d folded into the pocket of her jacket.

“I had a dream last night—or a vision. I wrote it all out. I think it’s clearer if you read it instead of me trying to tell it.”

She sat again. “Please,” she said to Sedric. “You can read it with Nan. I understand what you are to each other. I don’t remember, but I feel these aren’t the first lemon cookies—biscuits—you’ve made for me.”

“You always favored them.”

He sat beside Marg, a hand on her shoulder, as they read what Breen had written.

When they’d finished, Marg folded her hands over the pages. “She’s wily, is Yseult, offering herself in sacrifice. She would know when his mind cooled, he’d understand he needs her skill and power. But in the end, they’ll betray each other for more. It’s their nature. She betrayed her people, her vows, as he did. There is no loyalty in either.”

“She was afraid of him. I felt it.”

“As she should be. And she overrates herself. That and her thirst for the more will be her undoing. As it was his,” Marg added. “They are much the same creature.”

“He saw me, in that moment before I woke. How could he?”

“You’re connected by blood. You opened yourself, seeking to see, and so gave him a moment to see in return. But the power was yours, the control was yours. You need to take care to keep it.”

“He wants you.” Sedric spoke now, choosing his words carefully. “For what you are, the mix of you that offers him the unique and powerful, even more than your father.”

“Because of my mother—human and from outside. I know you said I was the only one, but there have to be others who—”

“There is no other with the blood of the outside, the blood of the Fey—both the Wise and the Sidhe—and the blood of the gods. You are the only,” Sedric told her, “in all the known worlds. And you are the only with his blood in you. You offer him the way to rule or destroy Talamh, the world of your mother. And with those, more still.”

“By draining me. Like a transfusion.”

“Your power, your light, your life.”

“He will never have you. Mo stór, from the moment of your birth we’ve protected you. We will never stop.”

“My father, Keegan’s father, how many others died to protect me? You brought me here, gave me the means to find you, so I’d learn how to protect myself.”

“You’ve done well,” Marg began.

“With the magicks, pretty well. Because I like it. With the rest? Not so much, really, because I don’t like it. That has to change.”

And would, she promised herself. Starting now.

Keegan brought the swords to the near field he’d designated as training ground. He saw her walking up the road from Marg’s cottage. One thing could be said about Breen, he thought. She was prompt, always.

Clumsy with a sword she was, and he feared she would ever be. Pitifully easy to fell in a physical battle. But she was reliably timely.

She’d tied her hair back in a horse’s tail, but there was simply too much of it to fully contain. She wore the pants that molded her legs and hips, and would provide ease of movement, and an open jacket though the day was warm and bright.

Why, he wondered, when the woman moved with true athletic grace in a walk did her feet turn into leaden clumps whenever they sparred?

A mystery, he thought. She had many of them.

The dog reached him first, as ever thrilled with a rub before he raced off to devil the sheep and horses.

Keegan started to speak, but Breen took papers from the pocket of her jacket and thrust them out to him.

“Read this first.”

With that, she strode off to watch the horses in the paddock.

She’d written down the dream in a way that brought him into it so he smelled the burning flesh and hides of Odran’s supplicants and slaves.

The sulfur on the wind, the turbulent crash of the sea.

The fact he could all but taste Yseult’s fear brought him deep satisfaction.

Refolding the papers, he walked to her.

“You let him see you.”

“Not on purpose.”

“You had the reins,” he said.

Unlike her grandmother, she thought, Keegan wouldn’t soften things. She’d let him read her dream because she needed the hard from him.

“I understand that now, but I didn’t. And I thought—I believed I understood what he wanted from me and why. But I didn’t, not really. Not enough. I do now. And I understand, after I was born, my father was more obstacle than prize to him. So he killed him. My father died to protect me. Yours, too. So many others. I understood that in my head, but it didn’t reach my gut until now. It’s a lot to take in, in one summer, so I think I’m entitled.”

She took the papers back and put them into her pocket. “Sedric said I was unique. God, I used to long to be special in some way. In any way. Now if that’s what I am, it’s not all bright and shiny. It’s a burden, and a responsibility.”

She turned to him. “I’m pretty good at responsibility, and doing things I don’t really want to do because they’re expected of me. That ought to be a decent foundation for all of this.”

She took off her jacket, hung it over the fence, and stood in a black T-shirt that showed off strong arms.

“So, you have to push me harder. With fighting—defense, offense. And teach me how to focus and channel what else I have. It can’t just come when I’m pissed off. That didn’t help me with Yseult yesterday.”

“You were bitten.”

“Before that.”

He disliked making excuses for anyone, but in this, he felt, she earned them. “She bespelled the fog. Like a drug.”

“Then I should’ve recognized that, and had some way to fight back.”

He nodded. “Aye, you should. You do. You don’t wield it well.”

“It’s your job to teach me how to wield it well.” She marched back, picked up her sword. “Do your damn job.”

He tried, and failed to turn his smile into a sneer as he went back for his own sword. “And so now it’s myself who’s lacking.”

“I’ve been a crap teacher, so it’s easy to recognize another.”

He cocked his head, considered he was thought of as one of the best trainers in Talamh. But not, apparently, when it came to her. So he’d try another way.

“When you walk, you walk with confidence, with grace. You have strength in your body, good limbs. Then you pick up a sword and you’re clumsy, awkward.”

“It doesn’t feel natural. It doesn’t feel like me.”

“It’s not you, but must be an extension of you or you defeat yourself, not an enemy. You had training in dance.”

“Well, I had ballet lessons, but only until I was about eleven.”

“Why did you stop?”

“I was . . . my mother said I’d never be more than average at best, and she couldn’t afford the time or the money as a single parent.”

He thought of his own mother, who would never have demeaned any of her children so. Who would have lowered anyone who had done so.

Sympathy rose up, but he shrugged. “By eleven, what you learned is in your muscles. So use it. Can you . . .” He twirled a finger in the air.

“What? Pirouette? What’s the point?”

“I’m your teacher. If you argue, it wastes time. Show me.” He twirled his finger again.

She already felt stupid, but started to lay down the sword and obey.

“No, with the sword.”

She’d probably trip and impale herself, but she set, rose up, spun.

“Your body knows. Do it again. Good. You know more steps. Show me.”