CHAPTER ONE
After what came to be known as the Battle of the Dark Portal, Breen stayed in the Capital for three weeks. The first days were as painful as any she’d known as she helped treat the wounded, helped bring in the dead from blood- and ash-soaked battlegrounds.
She held Morena as her oldest friend wept and wept and wept over the loss of her brother. She did her best to comfort Phelin’s parents, his pregnant wife, his brother and his brother’s family, his grandparents even as her own grief cut like a blade.
She’d only just remembered him, only just seen him again after so many years, and now he was lost, killed defending Talamh against the forces unleashed by her grandfather.
She stood with the family at the Leaving, clutching Morena’s left hand while Harken held her right.
Her friend’s grief rolled through her like a tidal wave as Phelin’s ashes, and so many others, flew back over the sea to the urns held by loved ones.
She held Morena close before her friend and Harken flew back to the valley. And knowing their sorrow, watched Finola and Seamus, hands linked, spread their wings before following.
With Keegan busy with council meetings and patrols, she visited the grieving until she was so full of their sorrow, she wondered she didn’t drown in tears.
After the first week, she pushed Marco to go back to Fey Cottage.
Under his trim goatee, his jaw set. “I’m staying with my girl.”
Since she’d expected that response, she’d prepared for it. While they stood on the bridge below the castle, watching her Irish water spaniel, Bollocks, swim and splash in the water, she hooked an arm with Marco’s—her closest friend, she thought, one who had always, would always stand by her. And who’d proven it by leaping into another world with her.
“Your girl’s fine.”
“Not nearly. You’re worn out, Breen, taking on so much.”
“Everyone’s taking on, Marco. You—”
“I helped, sure.” He looked across to a field where people trained with sword and fist and bow. And remembered the blood and the bodies strewn over it.
He’d never forget.
“I helped,” he repeated, “but you take on more than anybody, and you take it on here.” He tapped his heart.
“Odran did this, all this, to get to me. Not my fault,” she said before he could speak. “Not mine, not my father’s, my mother’s, Nan’s. It’s all his. But that doesn’t change the fact so many are dead because Odran wants me, what I am, what I have. So if I can lessen a little of the pain even for a little while by taking it in, that’s what I need to do.”
He unhooked their arms and used both of his to draw her in. “And that’s why I’m staying.”
“That’s why I’m asking you to go back.” Lifting a hand, she stroked his cheek, looked into his warm, worried brown eyes. “I want to go back myself, but I feel I need to stay awhile longer. But that means I’m not there for Morena, for Finola and Seamus. They’re family to me, Marco, and I’m not there for them.”
“You were, and they know you’re here now for Phelin’s mom and dad, for his wife, his brother.”
“That’s a big part of why I need to stay. Go, be there for Morena and the rest for me, Marco. For the valley. We lost too many. Go back with Brian.”
“First, Brian’s leaving tomorrow at freaking dawn, and he’s heading west on his dragon. No way in hell, girl, I’m flying on a damn dragon again in this lifetime.”
He made her smile. “I could make you a calming potion.”
“Hey, there’s an idea!” His big brown eyes rolled. “I fly on a dragon but get high first. How about no?”
“How about you ride on a horse? Keegan’s sending Brian and some troops west, and some will be on horseback. You like riding. Hell, you ride better than me, which sort of pisses me off. It would take a worry off, Marco. I swear to God that’s the truth.”
“Let me see that face.” He cupped it, looked into her eyes, then sighed. “Damn it, it’s the truth. I don’t like leaving you.”
“I know, so I know I’m asking you to do the hard. But I’ve got Keegan and my fierce dog.”
Bollocks leaped onto the bridge, shook joyfully. Water flew; his eyes danced. But she remembered how he’d leaped into battle; she remembered the blood on his muzzle and the warrior gleam in those happy eyes.
“And,” she added, “I just happen to be a pretty powerful witch.”
“Pretty powerful doesn’t cover it. I’ll go, but you have to promise you’ll send a message. Every day, Breen—that’s deal-breaker time. Send, you know, a falcon or whatever.”
“I went to Ninia Colconnan’s shop yesterday and got you a scrying mirror.”
“A what now?”
“It’s a way to talk to you. Plus, it’s pretty. Consider it a kind of Zoom call. I’ll show you how it works.” She pushed her hands through her mass of curling red hair. “This takes a load off, seriously. Plus, the practicalities. If Sally or Derrick try to get in touch, they can’t reach us. They’ll worry.”
It was a good lever, she’d calculated, using Sally, the mom of the heart for both of them, to nudge Marco along.
“Yeah.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that.”
“So you can head that off, do a little FaceTime with Philadelphia when you get back. And”—she drilled a finger into his belly—“get the hell back to work, for me.”
Crouching down, she ran her hands over Bollocks to dry him, had his purple-hued curls springing.
“What about you? I know you can’t be writing much.”
“A little.” She gave Bollocks’s doggy beard a gentle tug before she rose. “I haven’t been able to work on Bollocks’s next adventure, just can’t write the happy right now. But I’m working some on the second draft of the adult novel. I’ve got more insight into battle scenes now.”
“Ah, Breen.”
She leaned against him. She could always lean against him.
“It’s okay, Marco. We covered that already. We fought and killed evil things.” She looked back at him, her gray eyes hard, her shoulders set. “When the time comes, I’ll do it again. And again and again, until this is finished.”
Then the hard softened, and she took his hands. “Come on, I’ll help you pack and give you a lesson in scrying mirrors.”
* * *
She stood in the dawn mists to watch him go. Her Marco, the born-and-bred urbanite, sat in the saddle as if he’d been born in one. The frisky mare danced under him, and she heard him laugh as he set off in a trot with the warriors, heading west.
Overhead, a trio of dragons, bright as jewels in the dawn light, flew over a gray November sky with their riders. A pair of faeries winged behind them.
Battle and blood would come again, spilled and waged by the fallen god Odran. Her grandfather.
But Marco would be safe, she thought, as safe as anyone could be in a land devoted to peace and threatened by a god determined to bring war.
And he, the best human being ever born, would be with the man he loved. For now, it was all she could hope for.
“He’ll be more than fine.” Beside her, Keegan watched those he’d sent west slide into the mists. “And you were right to push him to go.”
“I know. And I know he’ll bring comfort to the valley. It’s important.”
“Aye, it’s important. You’d bring it as well. I want you here for … reasons, but I know you’d serve a purpose there, and find comfort yourself.”
“I’m not ready for comfort.” She studied him, this man, this witch, this warrior she’d come to love, to want, to need almost more than she could stand. Strong, and strongly built, his dark hair with its warrior braid disordered. And she saw both fatigue and anger in the deep, deep green of his eyes.
“Neither are you.”
“I’m not, no, I’m bloody well not.”
“And with Odran sealed up again, there’s no one to fight right here, right now.”
He gave her a long, cool look. “To wish for war is to wish for death. That’s not our way.”
“That’s not what I’m saying, Keegan. You train for war because Talamh and all the worlds need protection and defense. You taught me that, the hard way, by knocking me on my ass countless painful times in training.”
Shrugging, he glanced over to one of the training fields. “You’re not as easy to knock down these days.”
“You hold back. I hate to admit you always did. I’m never going to be a brilliant swordsman—woman—or a Robin Hood with a bow.”
“Those are good stories. The Robin Hood stories. And no, you won’t.”
“You sure don’t hold back there.”
He smiled a little and wound one of her curls around his finger. “Why lie when the truth’s right there? You’re better than you were.”
“Which isn’t saying much.”
“You’re better than you were after you were better than you were. Your magicks are … formidable. They are, and will always be, your keenest weapon. And this?” He lifted her hand, turned her wrist to run a finger over her tattoo.
“Misneach. Courage, and yours is as keen as your magicks.”
“Not always.”
“Often enough. You sent Marco away, denied yourself his comfort for the comfort of others. That’s courage. You’d go with him, but you stay because I need you to stay.”
“For reasons.”
“For reasons.”
The young ones trooped into the training field, some on wing, some with elf speed, some still yawning the sleep away.
Not a school day, she realized, as Talamh stood strong for education. She glanced down at Bollocks and his pleading eyes.
“Go ahead.”
He darted off, barking with joy.
“You don’t ask what they are,” Keegan noted. “The reasons.”
“You feel I’m safer here, with you here. Shana tried to kill me, twice, and she’s his now. She’s Odran’s now.”
“All the portals are guarded. She can’t come through. She can’t harm you.”
“She won’t kill me.”
His eyes narrowed. “You’ve foreseen?”
She shook her head. “I know I won’t give her the satisfaction. Then there’s Yseult. She’s tried for me twice, not to kill—because unlike Shana, she’s not, in Marco’s terms, crazy as fuck—but to disable me enough to get me to Odran. The first time, she’d have succeeded if not for you. The second time, right back there.”
She turned, pointed. “I dealt with her. But I let my emotions, my anger, my need to hurt and punish her rather than just end her get in the way. I won’t make that mistake again.”
“You’ve grown fierce, mo bandia.”
Fierce? She didn’t know about that. But resolute. She had become resolute.
“I believed myself ordinary—less than even that—for a very long time. I know what I am now, what I have, and I’ll use it. You worrying about me takes your mind off what you need to do. You should stop.”
Like her, Keegan watched the littles line up for training. Young, he thought, with a mixture of pride and regret. And, laying a hand on the hilt of his sword, remembered he’d been the same, done the same.
“Do you think the only reason I want you here is worry for you?”
“It’s a factor, but I’m also useful here, and you know it.”
“Aye, you are. You helped with healing wounded and brought comfort—bring it still with your visits to those in mourning. And you take too much there. It shows.”
“Thank you very much. I’m going to start using glamours.”
“You’re beautiful.”
The way he said it so casually, as if it simply was, brought her a ridiculous thrill.
“Even when you’re tired,” he continued, “and too pale and I see their grief all over you.”
“You do the same. Yes, you’re taoiseach, yes, it’s duty, but it’s more than that. You grieve, too, Keegan.”
“Don’t take that from me.” He gripped her hand before she could lay it on his heart. “Even a shadow of it. I need it, just as I need the anger, as I need the cold blood. I know you helped with the dead, and I wouldn’t have wished that for you.”
“They’re my people, too. I’m as much Talamhish as American. Probably more when it comes down to it.”
Copyright © 2022 by Nora Roberts
