The Irish Warrior

“Nay.” He cupped the nape of her neck and, in the small pocket of space between them, felt their heat mingling together. “I’m told she’s paying for it now.”

“Do not say such things. She is not.”

“Ye think not?”

She rested her forehead against his. “I have a heresy in my heart, Finian,” she confessed quietly. “I have met ever so many priests and abbots in my travels. Some have been gentle hearts, others with a brutality to depths I cannot fathom. At times, I was of the opinion they must worship different gods, because they have told me such different things.”

He smiled faintly. Senna would have an opinion about dirt. “They all said the same to me,” he said. “Ye think some of them may be wrong?”

“I think,” she replied slowly, “if there is a place in Heaven for each of them, how could there not be a place for each of us?”

He scooped up her free hand as it dangled off her knee in the small pocket of space between them. “Ahh,” was all he could say, surprised to hear his voice had gone hoarse.

Her free hand, the one he wasn’t holding, scuffed and dirty, rested on her knees. Her braid fell over her shoulder, trailing into the space between them like a rope lowered down the side of a castle.

She was succoring him, and all he wanted was to rescue her. It was enough to

make you weep. He, who was filled with so many holes he didn’t know why his ship hadn’t sunk thus far, he wanted to rescue her. A woman who shone like the sun. He’d bared his deepest shame, the horror in his dreams, and all he could think was, How could your mother have left you behind?

“You see?” she asked.

“I see.” Lifting her delicate hand in his callused one, he pressed a kiss to her knuckles, then let her go.

“Finian—”

He got to his feet. “Ready, Senna?”

She had her mouth open, as if to say something more, then she closed it and got to her feet. Wise woman. “I am ready.”

“Just another hour or so.”

He turned and began trekking a path into the woods. He heard her swing the pack over her shoulder and follow behind. They didn’t speak of missing mothers again. They didn’t need to.

Chapter 28

Battered, weary, and waterlogged from crossing yet another river—“Stream, whichever,” she’d snapped when Finian tried explaining the difference—Senna would have praised him as a god, if it were required, when he halted them after another two hours of hiking. She was literally stumbling from exhaustion.

They came to a small clearing, he stopped moving forward, and her knees slowly buckled. She looked up at him.

“We’re done for the night, Senna.” His tone was gentle.

She half smiled, rubbed her shoulders wearily, then threw her bag on the ground and slumped on top of it. She cried out briefly as her fingers took some of the impact, then was asleep before she could finish the cry.

Finian watched her, curled around the satchel—a pack full of knobbly objects and sharp edges—like a nestling cat. Her knees were by her chin, her arms clutched around the bag, hair tugging free from the braid and spilling over her face until only the profile of a small, delicate chin could be seen.

Turning on his heel, he walked to a small rise in the land and began his watch.

The moon rose to its heights and a small wind blew by in gentle gusts, pulling the soft, wet scent of loamy earth and growing things behind. He ran his hand through his hair, drew a deep breath, and began a slow reconnoitering around the perimeter of the clearing. In the center of his sweeping circle, Senna slept.

Nothing moved in the dark world. Years of practice made him move soundlessly through the sticks and leaves covering the ground. One circuit, two.

An owl hooted.

He froze.

In the treetops to the west, the rapid beat of wings shuddered briefly, then a bird shot out of the dark greenery, squawking.

Moving swiftly and soundlessly, he pushed his spine up against a tree trunk. Another small sound far to his left disturbed the night silence. His body was frozen but for his hand that swung to his sword hilt.