“Someone needs to think practical,” Meara tossed back at him.
“She’s right. I’ve poured over Sorcha’s book.” Branna shook her head. “What we did, what we had, how we planned it, it should’ve worked.”
“He changed the ground,” Boyle reminded her. “Took the fighting ground back in time.”
“And still, I can’t find what we might add to it.” Branna tossed a glance toward Fin, just a beat. He only gave her the most subtle shake of head. “So we’ll keep looking.”
“No, you sit.” Iona took more dishes before Connor could do so. “Considering your dawn adventure, you get a pass at kitchen duty. Maybe I wasn’t strong or skilled enough last summer.”
“Do you need reminding of a whirlwind called?” Boyle asked her.
“That was more instinct than skill, but I’m learning.” She glanced back at Branna.
“You are, yes, and very well indeed. You’re no weak link if that’s what you’re thinking, nor have you ever been. He knows more than us, and that’s a problem. He’s lived, in his way, hundreds of years.”
“That makes him older,” Meara put in, “not smarter.”
“We have books and legends and what was passed down generation to generation. But he lived it all, so—smarter or not—he knows more. And what he has is deep and dark. His power has no rules as ours does. He harms who he wants, no matter to it. That we can never do and be what we are.”
“His power source—the stone he wears around his neck, wolf or man. Destroy it, destroy him. I know it,” Fin stated, clenched a fist on the table. “I know it as truth, but don’t know how it can be done. Yet.”
“We’ll find the way. We must,” Connor said, “so we will.”
Fin rose when Connor reached over the table to lay his hand on Branna’s, and joined the others across the room with the clatter of dishes, the whoosh of water in the sink.
“Worrying for me won’t help, and isn’t needed. I don’t have to look,” he added, “to see.”
“And if he’d harmed you and the boy, where would we be?”
“Well, he didn’t, did he? And between us we gave him a solid boot in the balls. I’m here, Branna, as ever. We’re meant for this, so I’m here.”
“You’re a thorn in my side half the time.” Her hand turned under his until their fingers curled together and gripped. “But I’m used to you. You’ll have a care, Connor.”
“I will, of course. And the same for you.”
“The same for us all.”
* * *
IT AMUSED HIM, AND TOUCHED HIM WHEN MEARA FELL INTO step beside him as he left the house for the falconry school.
“Are you leaving your lorry then?”
“I am. I want to walk off that breakfast.”
“You’re guarding my body.” He slung an arm around her shoulders, pulled her in so their hips bumped.
She’d dressed for work at the stables, rough pants and jacket, sturdy boots, and with all that hair braided back to hang through the loop of her battered cap.
And still she made a picture, he thought, the dark-eyed Meara with the gypsy in her blood.
“Your body can guard itself.” She glanced up, watched the hawks circle in the heavy sky. “And you’ve got them keeping an eye out.”
“I’m glad for your compan
y all the same. And this gives you time to tell me what’s troubling you.”
“I think a mad sorcerer bent on our destruction’s enough to go around.”