Shadow Spell (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy 2)

Something here, Brannaugh thought as she busied herself with the tea. She sensed her cousin’s nerves, and they stirred her own.

“Now that the harvest is in, you might settle in with your sewing. It’s needed work, and restful for you. I can see to the cooking. Teagan and Mabh will help there, and I’ll tell you true, Mabh’s already a fine cook.”

“Aye, sure and she is that. I’m so proud of her.”

“With the girls seeing to the cooking, Eamon and I can help our cousin hunt. I know you’d rather I didn’t take up the bow, but isn’t it wise for each to do what we do well?”

Ailish’s gaze veered away a moment.

Aye, Brannaugh thought, she knows and, more, feels the weight of asking us not to be what we are.

“I loved your mother.”

“Oh, and she you.”

“We saw little of each other the last years. Still she sent messages to me, in her way. The night Mabh was born, the little blanket my girl still holds as she sleeps was there, just there on the cradle Bardan made for her.”

“When she spoke of you, it was with love.”

“She sent you to me. You, Eamon, Teagan. She came to me, in a dream, asked me to give you a home.”

“You never told me,” Brannaugh murmured, and carried the tea to her cousin, sat with her by the peat fire.

“Two days before you came, she asked it of me.”

With her hands clasped in her lap over skirts as gray as her eyes, Brannaugh stared into the fire. “It took eight for us to travel here. Her spirit came to you. I wish I could see her again, but I only see her in dreams.”

“She’s with you. I see her in you. In Eamon, in Teagan, but most in you. Her strength and beauty. Her fierce love of family. You’re of age now, Brannaugh. Of age where you must begin to think of making a family.”

“I have a family.”

“Of your own, as your own mother did. A home, darling, a man to work the land for you, babes of your own.”

She sipped her tea as Brannaugh remained silent. “Fial is a fine man, a good man. He was good to his wife while she lived, I can promise you. He needs a wife, a mother for his children. He has a fine house, far bigger than ours. He would offer for you, and he would open his house to Eamon and Teagan.”

“How could I wed Fial? He is . . .” Old was her first thought, but she realized he would be no older than her Bardan.

“He would give you a good life, give a good life to your brother, your sister.” Ailish picked up her sewing, busying her hands. “I would never speak of it to you if I believed he would not treat you with kindness, always. He is handsome, Brannaugh, and has a fine way about him. Will you walk out with him?”

“I . . . Cousin, I don’t think of Fial in that way.”

“Perhaps if you walk out with him you will.” Ailish smiled as she said it, as if she knew a secret. “A woman needs a man to provide, to protect, to give her children. A kind man with a good house, a pleasing face—”

“Did you wed with Bardan because he was kind?”

“I would not have wedded him hadn’t he been. Only consider it. We’ll tell him we wait until after the equinox to speak to you of it. Consider. Will you do that?”

“I will.”

Brannaugh got to her feet. “Does he know what I am?”

Ailish’s tired eyes lowered. “You are the oldest daughter of my cousin.”

“Does he know what I am, Ailish?”

It stirred in her now, what she held in, held back. Pride stirred it. And the light that played over her face came not only from the flickers of the fire.

“I am the oldest daughter of the Dark Witch of Mayo. And before she sacrificed her life, she sacrificed her power, passing it to me, to Eamon, Teagan. We are the three. Dark witches we.”