Morrigan's Cross (Circle Trilogy 1)

“Might as well. Just having my own private pity party. It’ll pass,” she said with a shrug. “I’m a little homesick. Small potatoes compared to how you must feel.”

“I stand in the room I shared with Cian when we were boys and feel too much, and not enough.”

She rose, got a second glass, poured wine. “Have a seat.” She sat down again, set the wine on the table. “I have a brother,” she told him. “He’s a doctor, just starting. He has a whiff of magic, and he uses it to heal. He’s a good doctor, a good man. He loves me, I know, but he doesn’t understand me very well. It’s hard not to be understood.”

How could it be, he wondered, that there had never been a woman in his life other than family he could speak to about anything that truly mattered. And now, with Glenna, he knew he could, and would, talk with her of anything. And everything.

“It troubles me, the loss of him, of what we were to each other.”

“Of course it does.”

“His memories of me—Cian’s—are faded and old while mine are fresh and strong.” Hoyt lifted his glass. “Yes, it’s difficult not to be understood.”

“What I am, what’s in me, I used to feel smug about it. Like it was a shiny prize I held in my hands, just for me. Oh, I was careful with it, grateful for it, but still smug. I don’t think I ever will be again.”

“With what we touched tonight, I’m doubting either of us could be smug again.”

“Still, my family, my brother, didn’t understand—not fully—that smugness or that prize. And they won’t understand—not fully—the price I’m paying for it now. They can’t.”

She reached out, laid a hand over Hoyt’s. “He can’t. So, while our circumstances may be different, I understand the loss you’re talking about. You look terrible,” she said more lightly. “I can help ease that bruising a little more.”

“You’re tired. It can wait.”

“You didn’t deserve it.”

“I let it take control. I let it fly out of me.”

“No, it flew away from us. Who can say if it wasn’t meant to.” She’d bundled her hair up to train, to work, and now pulled out the pins so it fell, messily, just short of her shoulders.

“Look, we learned, didn’t we? We’re stronger together than either of us could have anticipated. What we’re responsible for now is learning how to control it, channel it. And believe me, the rest of them will have more respect now, too.”

He smiled a little. “That sounds a bit smug.”

“Yeah, I guess it does.”

He drank some wine and realized he was comfortable for the first time in hours. Just sitting in the bright kitchen with night trapped outside the glass, with Glenna to talk with.

Her scent was there, just on the edges of his senses. That earthy, female scent. Her eyes, so clear and green, showed some light bruising of fatigue on the delicate skin beneath them.

He nodded toward the paper. “Another spell?”

“No, something more pedestrian. Lists. I need more supplies. Herbs and so forth. And Moira and Larkin need clothes. Then we need to work out some basic household rules. So far it’s been up to me and King for the most part. The cooking, that is. A household doesn’t run itself, and even when you’re preparing for war, you need food and clean towels.”

“There are so many machines to do the work.” He glanced around the kitchen. “It should be simple enough.”

“You’d think.”

“There used to be an herb garden. I haven’t walked the land, not really.” Put it off, he admitted. Put off seeing the changes, and what remained the same. “Cian might have had one planted. Or I could bring it back. The earth remembers.”

“Well, that can go on the list for tomorrow. You know the woods around here. You should be able to tell me where to find the other things I need. I can go out in the morning and harvest.”

“I knew them,” he said half to himself.

“We need more weapons, Hoyt. And eventually more hands to wield them.”

“There will be an army in Geall.”

“We hope. I know a few like us, and Cian—it’s likely he knows some like him. We may want to start enlisting.”