by Nora Roberts
terror, gave him pain, great pain. He burned, he bled.”
“And he got away from us. Don’t,” she continued before he could speak. “Don’t say to me you could have finished him if we’d let you go. It wasn’t an option then, and will never be.”
“Has it occurred to you that’s just how it needs to be done? For me, of his blood, for me, who bears his mark, to finish what your blood, what cursed me, to end him?”
“No, because it isn’t.”
“So sure, Branna.”
“On this I am. It’s written, it’s passed down, generation by generation. It’s Sorcha’s children who must end him. Who will. For all those who failed before us, we have something they lacked. And that’s you.”
She used all her will to keep her mind quiet as she spoke, to keep her words all reason.
“I believe you’re essential to this. Having one who came down from him working to end him, working with the three, this is new. Never written of before in any of the books. Our circle’s the stronger with you, that’s without question.”
“So sure of that as well?”
“Without question,” she repeated. “I didn’t want you in it, but that was my weakness, and a selfishness I’m sorry for. We’ve made our circle, and if broken . . . I think we’ll lose. You gave me your word.”
“That may have been a mistake for all, but still I’ll keep it.”
“We can end him. I know it.” As she spoke, she took the crystal from her pocket, turned it in the light. “Connor, Iona, and I, we’ve all seen the first three. Not in simple dreams, but waking ones. We’ve connected with them, body and spirit, and that’s not been written of before.”
He heard the words, the logic in them, but couldn’t polish away the edges of frustration and doubt. “You put great store in books, Branna.”
“So I do, for words written down have great power. You know it as I do.” She laid her hand on the book. “The answers are here, the ones already written, the ones we’ll write.”
She opened the book, paged through. “Here I wrote you and I dream-traveled to Midor’s cave, and saw his death.”
“It’s not an answer.”
“It will lead to one, when we go back.”
“Back?” Now his interest kindled. “To the cave?”
“We were taken there. We’d have more, learn more, see more, if we took ourselves. I can find nothing about this man. The name meant nothing to Sorcha’s Brannaugh. We need to seek him out.”
He wanted to go back, thought of it every day, and yet . . . “We have neither the place nor the time. We’d have no direction, Branna.”
“It can be done, it can be worked. With the rest of our circle here to bring us back if needed. Cabhan’s sire, Fin, how many answers might he have?”
“The answers of a madman. You saw the madness as well as I.”
“You’d go back without me if you could. But it must be both of us.”
He couldn’t deny it. “There was death in that cave.”
“There’s death here, without the answers. The potion must be changed—no, not the essence of it, in that you’re right. But what we made, we made specific to Samhain. Would you wait until Samhain next to try again?”
“I would not, no.”
“I can’t see the time, Fin, can you? I can’t see when we should try for him again, and without that single answer, we’re blind.” She pushed up, wandered the room. “I thought the solstice—it made good logic. The light beats back the dark. Then Samhain, when the veil thins.”
“We saw them, the first three. The veil thinned, and we saw them with us. But not fully,” he added before she could.
“I thought, is it the solstice, but the winter? Or the spring equinox? Is it Lammas or Bealtaine? Or none of those at all.”
Temper, the anger for herself in failing, bubbled up as she whirled back to him. “I see us at Sorcha’s cabin, fighting. The fog and the dark, Boyle’s hands burning, you bleeding. And failing, Fin, because I made the wrong choice.”
On a half laugh—just a touch of derision in it, he arched his eyebrows. “So now it’s all yours, is it?”
“The time, that choice, was mine, both of them. And both of them wrong. All my careful calculations, wrong. So more’s needed to be certain this time. This third time.”
“Third time’s the charm.”
Huffing out a breath, she smiled a little. “So it’s said. What we need may be there, for the taking, if we go back. So, will you go dreaming with me, Fin?”
To hell and back again, he thought.
“I will, but we’ll be sure of the dream spell first. Sure of it, and of the way back. I won’t have you lost beyond.”
“I won’t have either of us lost. We’ll be sure first, of the way there, and the way back. It’s Cabhan’s time, his origins—we agree on that?”
“We do.” So Fin sighed. “Which means you’ll be after bleeding me again.”
“Just a bit.” Now she lifted her eyebrows. “All this fuss over a bit of blood from a man who so recently claimed he’d die for me?”
“I’d rather not do it by the drop.”
“No,” she said when he started to pull off his sweater. “Not from the mark. His origins, Fin. He didn’t bear the mark at his beginning.”
“The blood from the mark’s more his.”
She did what she did rarely, stepped to him, laid a hand over the cursed mark. “Not from this. Yours from your hand, mine from mine, so our blood and dreams entwine.”
“You’ve written the spell already?”
“Just pieces of it—and in my head.” She smiled at him, forgetting herself enough to leave her hand on his arm. “I do considerable thinking when I clean.”
“Come to my house and think your fill, as your brother left the room he uses there a small disaster.”
“He’s the finest man I know, along with the sloppiest. He just doesn’t see the mess he makes. It’s a true skill, and one Meara will have to deal with for years to come.”
“He says they’re thinking the solstice—the summer—for the wedding, and having it in the field behind the cottage here.”
“They’re both ones for being out of doors as much as possible, so it suits them.” She turned away to fetch a bowl and her smallest cauldron.
“They suit each other.”
“Oh, sure they do, however much that surprised the pair of them. And with Boyle and Iona before them, we’ll have spring and summer weddings, new beginnings, and the gods willing, the rest far behind us.”
She got out the herbs she wanted, already dried and sealed, water she’d gathered from rain on the full moon, extract distilled from valerian.
Fin rose, got down a mortar and pestle. “I’ll do this,” he said, measuring herbs.
For a time they worked in easy silence.
“You never play music in here,” he commented.
“It distracts me, but you can bring in the iPod from the kitchen if you’re wanting some.”
“No, it’s fine. You played last night. Late in the night.”
Startled, she looked up from her work. “I did. How do you know?”
“I hear you. You often play at night, late in the night. Often sad and lovely songs. Not sad last night, but strong. And lovely all the same.”
“It shouldn’t carry to you.”
His gaze lifted, held hers. “Some bonds you can’t break, no matter how you might wish it, no matter how you might try. No matter how far I traveled, there were times I’d hear you play as if you stood beside me.”
It tugged and tore at her heart. “You never said.”
He merely shrugged. “Your music brought me home more than once. Maybe it was meant to. Bowl or cauldron?” he asked.
“What?”
“The herbs I’ve crushed. For the bowl or the cauldron?”
“Bowl. What brought you home this last time?”
“I saw Alastar, and knew he was needed. I bargained and bought him, arranged for him to
be sent. But it wasn’t time for me. Then I saw Aine, and knew she was for Alastar, and . . . more. Her beauty, her spirit, called to me, and I thought, she must come home, but it wasn’t time for me. Then Iona came to Ireland, came to Mayo, walked by Sorcha’s clearing through the woods to you. In the rain, she walked in a pink coat, so full of excitement and hope and magicks yet untapped.”
Stunned, Branna stopped her work. “You saw her.”
“I saw she came home, and came to you, and knew so must I. He would see, and he would know. And he would come, and with the three I might finally end him.”
“How did you see Iona—even to her pink coat?” Flummoxed, Branna pushed her hands at her hair, loosened pins she had to fix in again. “She’s not your blood. Do you ask yourself how?”
“I ask myself many things, but don’t always answer.” He shrugged again. “Cabhan knew her for of the three, so it may be through him I saw, and I knew.”
“It should remind you, when you doubt, the blood you share makes our circle stronger.” She lit the candles, then the fire under the little cauldron. “Slow heat builds to a steady boil. We’ll let that simmer while we write the spell.”
When Connor came in he kept his silence, as magicks swam through the air. Branna and Fin stood, hands outstretched over the cauldron while smoke rose pale blue.
“Sleep to dream, dream to fly, fly to seek, seek to know.” She spoke the words three times, and Fin followed.
“Dream as one, as one to see, see the truth, truth to know.”
Stars flickered through the smoke.
“Starlight guide us through the night and safe return us to the light.” Branna lifted a hand, and with the other gestured toward a slim, clear bottle.
Liquid rose from the cauldron, blue as the smoke, shining with stars, and in one graceful flow, poured into the bottle. Fin capped it.
“That’s done it. We’ve done it.” She let out a breath.
“Another dreaming spell?” Now Connor crossed the room. “When do we go for him?”
“It’s not for that, not yet.” Branna shoved her hands through her hair again, muttered a curse at herself, and this time just pulled the pins out. “What time is it? Well, bloody hell, where did the day go?”
“Into that.” Fin pointed to the bottle. “She nearly ate my head when I was so bold as to suggest we take an hour and have lunch.”
“She’ll do that when she’s working,” Connor agreed, giving Fin a bolstering pat on the shoulder. “Still, there’s always supper.” He gave Branna a hopeful smile. “Isn’t there?”
“Men and their bellies.” She took the bottle to a cupboard so it could cure. “I’ll put something together as it’s best we all talk through what Fin and I worked out today. Get out of my house for a bit.”
“I’ve only just got into the house,” Connor objected.
“You’re after a hot meal and wanting me to make it, so get out of the house so I can have some space to figure on it.”
“I just want a beer before—”
Fin took his arm, grabbed his own coat. “I’ll stand you one down the pub as I could use the air and the walk. And the beer.”
“Well then, since you put it that way.”
When Kathel trotted to the door with them, Branna waved at the three of them. “He could use the walk himself. Don’t come back for an hour—and tell the others the same.”
Without waiting for an answer, she turned and walked through to her kitchen.
Spotless, she thought, and so beautifully quiet—a lovely thing after hours of work and conjuring. She would’ve enjoyed a glass of wine by the fire, and that hour without a single thing to do, so she had to remind herself she enjoyed the domestic tasks.
She put her hands on her hips, cleared her head of clutter.
All right then, she could sauté up some chicken breasts in herbs and wine, roast up some red potatoes in olive oil and rosemary, and she had green beans from the garden she’d blanched and frozen—she could do an almondine there. And since she hadn’t had time to bake more yeast bread, and the lot of them went through it like ants at a picnic, she’d just do a couple quick loaves of beer bread. And that was good enough for anyone.
She scrubbed potatoes first, cut them into chunks, tossed them in her herbs and oil, added some pepper, some minced garlic and stuck them in the oven. She tossed the bread dough together—taking a swig of beer for the cook, and with plenty of melted butter on top of the loaves, stuck them in with the potatoes.
As the chicken breasts were frozen, she thawed them with a wave of her hand, then covered them with a marinade she’d made and bottled herself.
Satisfied things were well under way, she poured that wine, took the first sip where she stood. Deciding she could use some air, a little walk herself, she got a jacket, wrapped a scarf around her neck, and took her wine outside.
Blustery and cold, she thought, but a change from all the heat she and Fin had generated in the workshop. As the wind blew through her hair, she walked her back garden, picturing where her flowers would bloom, where her rows of vegetables would grow come spring.
She had some roses still, she noted, and the pansies, of course, who’d show their cheerful faces right through the snow or ice if they got it. Some winter cabbage, and the bright orange and yellow blooms of Calendula she prized for its color and its peppery flavor.
She might make soup the next day, add some, and some of the carrots she’d mulched over so they’d handle the colder weather.
Even in winter the gardens pleased her.
She sipped her wine, wandered, even when the shadows deepened, and the fog teased around the edges of her home.
“You’re not welcome here.” She spoke calmly, and took out the little knife in her pocket, used it to cut some of the Calendula, some hearty snapdragons, a few pansies. She’d make a little arrangement, she thought, of winter bloomers for the table.
“I will be.” Cabhan stood, handsome, smiling, the red stone of the pendant he wore glowing in the dim light. “You’ll welcome me eagerly into your home. Into your bed.”
“You’re still weak from your last welcome, and delusional besides.” She turned now, deliberately sipped her wine as she studied him. “You can’t seduce me.”
“You’re so much more than the rest of them. We know it, you and I. With me, you’ll be more yet. More than anyone ever imagined. I will give you all the pleasure you deny yourself. I can look like him.”
Cabhan waved a hand in front of his face. And Fin smiled at her.
And oh, it stabbed her heart as if she’d turned the little knife on herself. “A shell only.”
“I can sound like him,” he said in Fin’s voice. “Aghra, a chuid den tsaol.”
The knife twisted as he said the words Fin used to say to her. My love, my share of life.
“Do you think that weakens me? Tempts me to open to you? You are all I despise. You are why I am no longer his.”
“You chose. You cast me away.” Suddenly he was Fin at eighteen, so young, so full of grief and rage. “What would you have me do? I never knew. I never deceived you. Don’t turn from me. Don’t cast me aside.”
“You didn’t tell me,” Branna heard herself say. “I gave myself to you, only you, and you’re his blood. You’re his.”
“I didn’t know! How could I? It came on me, Branna, burned into me. It wasn’t there before—”
“Before we loved. More than a week ago, and you said nothing, and only tell me now, as I saw for myself. I am of the three.” Tears burned the back of her eyes, but she refused to let them thicken her voice. “I am a Dark Witch, daughter of Sorcha. You are of Cabhan, you are of the black and the pain. You’re lies, and what you are has broken my heart.”
“Weep, witch,” he murmured. “Weep out the pain. Give me your tears.”
She caught herself standing in front of him, on the edge of her ground, and his face was Cabhan’s face. And that face was lit with the dark as the red stone glowed stronger.
Tears, she realized, swam in her eyes. With all her will she pulled them back, held her head high. “I don’t weep. You’ll have nothing from me but this.”
She jabbed out with the garden knife, managed to stab shallowly in his chest as she grabbed for the pendant with her other hand. The ground trembled under her feet; the chain burned cold. For an instant his eyes burned red as the stone, then the fog swirled, snapped out with teeth, and she held nothing but the little knife with blood on its tip.
She looked down at her hand, at the burn scored across her palm. Closing her hand into a fist she drew up, warmed the icy burn, soothed it, healed it.
Perhaps her hands trembled—there was no shame in it—but she picked up the flowers, the wineglass she’d dropped.
“A waste of wine,” she said softly as she walked toward the house.
But not, she thought, a waste of time.
She’d stirred the potatoes, taken the bread from the oven, and had poured a fresh glass of wine before the rest of her circle began wandering in.
“What can I do,” Iona asked as she washed her hands, “that won’t give anyone heartburn?”
“You could mince up that garlic there.”
“I’m good at mincing, also chopping.”
“Mincing will do.”
“Are you all right?” Iona said under her breath. “You look a little pale.”
“I’m right enough, I promise you. I have something to tell all of you, but I’d as soon wait until I have this all done.”
“Okay.”
She focused on cooking, on letting the voices flow around her while she worked. She didn’t have to ask for help—others set the table, poured wine, arranged food on platters or in bowls.
“Do you have a marketing list?” Meara asked as those bowls and platters made their way around the table. “And if not, if you could make one, I’ll be doing the marketing for you—unless you object.”
“You’re doing my marketing?”
“The lot of us will be taking turns on it, from now on. Well, as long as you’re stuck doing most of the cooking. It’s gone past cleaning up after being a fair trade-off. So we’ll see to the marketing.”
“I have a list started, and planned to go to the market tomorrow.”
“It’ll be my turn for that, if that’s all right with you.”
“Sure it’s fine with me.”
“If there’s anything you want taken into your shop, I can haul it in for you at the same time.”
She started to speak, then looked around the table, narrowed her eyes. “What’s all this then, doing the marketing, taking in my stock?”
“You look tired.” At Connor’s eye-roll and sigh, Boyle scowled. “Why dance around it?”
“Thank you so much for pointing it out to me,” Branna snapped back.
“You want the truth or want it fancied up?” Boyle’s scowl only deepened. “You look tired, and that’s that.”
Eyes narrowed still, she ran her hands down her face, did a glamour. Now she all but glowed. “There, all better.”
“It’s under it where you’re tired.”
She started to round on Fin, and Connor threw up his hands. “Oh leave off, Branna. You’re pale and heavy-eyed, and we’re the ones looking at you.” He jabbed a finger when she started to rise, sent a little shove across the table to put her back in her chair.
She didn’t need the glamour now to bring the flush to her cheeks. “Want to take me on, do you?”
“Just stop it, both of you,” Iona ordered. “Just stop. You have every reason to look tired, with all you’re doing, and we have every right to take some of the load off. It’s just marketing, for God’s sake, and cleaning up and chores. We’re doing it so you can have some time to breathe, damn it. So stop being so snarly about it.”
