“No.” He shoved a hand through his hair. “I don’t know, I just don’t know, but if I did, I did it in my fecking sleep and not meaning to. Bugger it, Branna, I wouldn’t bespell you. Whatever you think of me you shouldn’t think that. I’d never use you that way.”
She took a breath, then a second. “I do know it. I apologize, for of course I know it when I calm myself. I’m sorry, I am. I was . . . upset.”
“Small wonder. I’m not doing so well myself.”
“I could do with coffee myself, if you don’t mind.”
“Right.”
He walked over to the coffeemaker—the type she’d been toying with indulging in, as it did all the fancy coffees and teas and chocolates besides.
“Will you sit?” He lifted his chin toward the little glassed-in bump where she imagined he took his coffee in the morning.
She slid onto one of the benches thickly padded in burnt orange, studied the turned wooden bowl—as glossy as glass—full of sharp red apples.
They were adults, she reminded herself, and couldn’t shy away from discussing what had happened in that big bed.
“I won’t, and can’t, blame you or any man for where his mind goes in sleep,” she began.
“I won’t, and can’t, blame you or any woman for where hers goes.” He set her coffee, served in an oversized white mug, on the table in front of her. “For it could’ve been you as easily as me.”
She hadn’t thought of it, and found herself baffled into silence for a moment. To give herself time to think, she tried the coffee, found it doctored exactly as she liked.
“That’s fair enough. Fair enough. Or, as I didn’t give myself the chance to think of it before this, it could’ve been other powers entirely.”
“Others?”
“Who can say?” More frustrated than angry now, she threw up her hands. “What we know is I came or was brought to your bed, and in this dreaming state we began what healthy people might begin.”
“Your skin’s as soft as rose petals.”
“Hardly a wonder,” she said lightly, “as I use what I make, and I make fine products.”
“For those moments, Branna, it was as it once was with us, and more besides.”
“For those moments, both bespelled. And what happened, Fin, when we joined? In that moment? The lightning, the storm, the light then the dark, and we were thrown into another place and time. Can it be clearer, the price paid for those moments?”
“Not to me, not clear at all. What did we learn, Branna? Go back to it.”
She folded her hands on the table, deliberately, firmly, set emotion aside. “All right. Into the dark, thick woods, no moon or stars, great wind moaning through the trees.”
“A river. The rush of it somewhere behind us.”
“Yes.” She closed her eyes, took herself back. “That’s right, yes. The river behind, power ahead. The dark of it, and still we went toward it.”
“The cave. Cabhan’s lair, I know it.”
“We saw nothing of him.”
“I felt him, but . . . it wasn’t as it is now. Something else.” He shook his head. “It isn’t clear at all, but though I don’t know where we were, I sensed something familiar all the same. As if I should have known. Then the old man was there.”
“I didn’t know him.”
“Nor did I, but again it felt as if I should. We were too soon to see, he said, and too late to stop it. Riddles. Just fecking riddles.”
“A time shift, I’m thinking. We weren’t in the now, but not when we could know more. He called himself the sacrifice.”
“And the sire of the dark. He bled and bled. Mad and dying, but there was power in him. Fading, but there.”