Shadow Spell (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy 2)

“Keep close then. I don’t know the way here.”

“We’re not home.”

“We’re not.”

Meara lifted the sword she carried so the blade caught the filtered light of the moon. “Did you give me the sword or did I bring it in myself?”

“I don’t know that either.” Something shimmered over his skin, teased the edges of his senses. “There’s something in the air.”

“Smoke.”

“Aye, and more.” He lifted his hand, held a ball of light. He used it as a kind of torch, dispelling shadows to better see the way.

A deer stepped onto the rough path, its rack a crown of silver, its hide a glimmer of gold. It stood a moment, statue still, as if allowing them to bask in its beauty, then turned and walked regally through the swirl of mist.

“Do we follow the hart?” Meara wondered. “As in song and story?”

“We do.” But he kept the light glowing. The trees thickened, and there was the scent of green and earth and smoke as the hart moved with unhurried grace.

“Does this happen often for you? This sort of dream?”

“Not often, but it’s not the first—though the first I’ve had company from my side of things. There, do you see? Another light up ahead.”

“Barely, but yes. It could be a trap. Can you feel him, Connor? Is he here with us?”

“The air’s full of magicks.” So full he wondered she couldn’t feel it. “The black and the white, the dark and the light. They beat like pulses.”

“And crawl on the skin.”

So she could feel them. “You won’t go back?”

“I won’t, no.” But she stayed close as they followed the hart toward the light.

Connor cast himself forward, let himself see. And made out the shape, then the face in the shadowed light.

“It’s Eamon.”

“The boy? Sorcha’s son? We’re back centuries.”

“So it seems. He’s older, still a boy yet, but older.” So Connor cast out again, this time speaking mind to mind. It’s Connor of the O’Dwyers who comes. Your blood, your friend.

He felt the boy relax—a bit. Come then, and welcome. But you are not alone.

I bring my friend, and she is yours as well.

The hart drifted off into the dark as the lights merged. Connor saw the little cottage, a small lean-to for horses, a garden of herbs and medicinal plants, well tended.

They’d made a life here, he thought, Sorcha’s three. And a good one.

“You are welcome,” Eamon repeated, and set his light aside to clasp Connor’s hand. “And you,” he said to Meara. “I thought not to see you again.”

“Again?”

Now the boy looked closer, looked deep with eyes as blue as the hawk’s-eye stone he wore around his neck. “You are not Aine?”

“A goddess?” Meara laughed. “No indeed.”

“Not the goddess but the gypsy named for her. You are very like her, but not, I see, not her at all.”