“It’s not pandering if you’re hungry.” Iona filled her plate. “We’re going to get cancellations today.” She nodded toward the steady, soaking rain. “Not only rain, but a cold one, too. Normally I’d be sorry about that, but today I think we could all use the extra time.”
She sampled some eggs. They were very . . . firm, she decided.
“If it’s as slow as I think it may be,” she continued, “I can probably get off early. I can come work with you, Branna, if you want.”
“I’ve some stock to finish up as I didn’t work on it yesterday. I’ll need to get it done and run it into the shop. But I’ll be here by noon, I’d think. Fin and I’ve finished the changes to the potion we used on the solstice. It’s stronger than it was, but the spell needs work, as does the timing, and the whole bloody plan.”
“We’ve got time.”
“The days click by. And he’s growing bolder and bolder. What he tried last night—”
“Didn’t work, did it now?” Connor countered. “What are his devil bats now but ash blown by the wind, washed by the rain? And it gave me a notion or two, the whole business of it.”
“You’ve a notion, have you?” Branna lifted her coffee.
“I have, and a story to tell as well. I looked for Eamon in dreams, and he for me. So we found each other.”
“You saw him again.”
He nodded at Iona. “I did, and pulled Meara into it with me. He was a man, about eighteen, as he said it had been five years since he’d last seen me. His Brannaugh has two children with a third to come, and Teagan is carrying her first.”
“She was pregnant—Teagan,” Iona added, “when I saw her, in my own dream.”
“I remember, so this would have been for me the same time in their world as it was for you. I
t was, for me as for you, at Sorcha’s cabin.”
“You know better than to go there,” Branna snapped, “in dreams or no.”
“I can’t tell you in truth if it was my doing or his, for I promise you I don’t know even now. But I knew we were safe there, for that time, or I would have pulled it back. I wouldn’t have risked Meara again.”
“All right. All right then.”
“They’d come home,” he continued, and lathered toast with jam, “and that was bittersweet. They know they’ll fight Cabhan, and they know they won’t win, won’t end him, as he’s here in our time, our place. I told him we were six, and that one of our six had Cabhan’s blood.”
“And did that float well?” Branna wondered.
“He knows me.” Connor tapped a hand on his heart. “And he trusts me. So in turn, he trusts mine, and Fin is mine. He had the pendant I gave him as well as the amulet we share. I had the little stone he gave me, and when I took it out, it glowed in my palm. You had the right of that, Branna. It has power.”
“Well, I wouldn’t put it in a sling and play David to Cabhan’s Goliath, but it’s good to keep it with you.”
“So I do. And more, I had the bluebell.”
“Teagan’s flower,” Iona added.
“I planted it, fed it with my blood, with water I drew from the air. And the flowers bloomed there on Sorcha’s grave.”
“You kept your word.” Iona brushed a hand over his arm. “And you gave them something that mattered.”
“I told him we’d end it, as I believe we will. And I think I know something that we missed on the solstice. Music,” he said, “and the joy of it.”
“Music,” Iona repeated even as Branna sat back, speculation in her eyes.
“What drew him here last night, so enraged, so bold? Our light, yes, and we’ll have that. Ourselves, of course. But we made music, and that’s a light of its own.”
“A joyful noise,” Iona said.
“It is that. It blinds him—with that rage against the joy. Why couldn’t it bind him as well?”