“I’ll get it.” Iona hurried over to the pot.
“Ah, what man can complain with three beautiful women pampering him. Thanks, mo chroi,” he added when Iona gave him the coffee.
“You’ll not be pampered long, I can promise. Sit down, the lot of you,” Branna ordered. “I’ve nearly got this fried up. When his belly’s full enough to settle him, he’ll damn well explain why he didn’t call for me.”
“It was fast and done. I would’ve called for you, for all of you. It wasn’t me in harm’s way, I’m thinking. He didn’t come for m
e this morning.”
“And who then, when the rest of us were asleep in our beds?” When Branna would have lifted an enormous platter of food to bring to the table, Fin simply took it from her.
“Sit then, and listen. Sit,” he repeated before she could snap at him. “You’re as shaken as he is.”
The minute the tray hit the table, Connor began to scoop eggs, sausage, bacon, toasted bread, potatoes onto his plate and into a small mountain.
“I woke early, and with an edge on,” he began, and took them all through it between enthusiastic bites.
“Eamon?” Branna demanded. “The son of Sorcha? Here and now? You’re sure of it?”
“As sure as I know my sister. I only thought him a boy at first, and in Cabhan’s path, but when I took his hand . . . I’ve never felt the like, never. Not even with you, Branna, or you and Iona together. Even on the solstice when the power was a scream, it wasn’t so big, so bright, so full. I couldn’t hold it, couldn’t control it. It just blew through me like a comet. Through the boy as well, but he held on to me, on to it. He’s a rare one.”
“What about Cabhan?” Iona demanded.
“It ripped through him,” Fin said. “I felt it.” Absently, he lifted a hand to his shoulder, where the mark of his blood, of Cabhan’s blood scarred his flesh. His heart. “It stunned him, left him, I promise you, as shaken as you were.”
“So he slithered away?” Boyle dug into eggs. “Like the snake he is.”
“That he did,” Connor confirmed. “He was gone, and with him the fog, and there was only myself and the boy. Then only myself. But . . . He was me, and I was he—parts of one. That I knew when we joined hands. More than blood. Not the same, but . . . more than blood. For a moment, I could see into him—like a mirror.”
“What did you see?” Meara asked.
“Love and grief and courage. The fear, but the heart to face it, for his sisters, for his parents. For us, come to that. Just a lad, no more than ten, I’d venture. But in that moment, shining with a power he hasn’t yet learned to ride smooth.”
“Is it like me going to visit Nan?” Iona wondered, thinking of her grandmother in America. “A kind of astral projection? But it’s not exactly, is it? It’s like that, but with the time shift, much more than that. The time shift that can happen by Sorcha’s cabin. You weren’t by Sorcha’s cabin, were you, Connor?”
“No, still outside the clearing. Near though.” Connor considered. “Maybe near enough. All this is new. But I know for certain it wasn’t what Cabhan expected.”
“It may be he brought the boy, brought Eamon,” Meara suggested. “Pulled him from his own time into ours, trying to separate him from his sisters, to take on a boy rather than a man like the sodding coward he is. The way you said it happened, Connor, if you hadn’t come along, he might have killed the boy, or certainly harmed him.”
“True enough. Eamon was game, by God, he was game—wouldn’t run when I told him to run, but still confused, afraid, not yet able to draw up enough to fight on his own.”
“So you woke and went out,” Branna said, “you who never step a foot out of a morning without something in your belly, and called up your hawk. Barely dawn?” She shook her head. “Something called you there. The connection between you and Eamon, or Sorcha herself. A mother still protecting her child.”
“I dreamed of Teagan,” Iona reminded them. “Of her riding Alastar to the cabin, to her mother’s grave, and facing Cabhan there—drawing his blood. She’s mine, the way Eamon is Connor’s.”
Branna nodded as Iona looked at her. “Brannaugh to Branna, yes. I dream of her often. But nothing like this. It’s useful, it must be useful. We’ll find a way to use what happened here, what we know. He hid away since the solstice.”
“We hurt him,” Boyle said, scanning the others with tawny eyes. “That night he bled and burned as we did. More, I’m thinking.”
“He took the rest of the summer to heal, to gather. And this morning tried for the boy, to take that power, and—”
“To end you,” Fin interrupted Branna. “Kill the boy, Connor never exists? Or it’s very possible that’s the case. Change what was, change what is.”
“Well now, he failed brilliantly.” Connor polished off his bacon, sighed. “And I feel not only human again, but fit and fine. It’s a pity we can’t take the bastard on again now.”
“You need more than a full fry in your belly to take him on.” Rising, Meara gathered dishes. “All of us do. We hurt him on the solstice, and that’s a satisfying thing, but we didn’t finish him. What did we miss? Isn’t that the thing we need? What did we not do that we need to do?”
“Ah, the practical mind.”