“Bloody right.” He plucked her off her feet, carried her down the narrow, curving stairs, through archways where he nearly bent double to pass through, and out again into the air and the patter of rain.
The wet felt like heaven on her cheeks. “I’m okay. Just a little dizzy. I don’t know what happened.”
“A vision. I’ve seen Connor caught in one.”
“I could see them, the old woman, the girl, bathing her grandmother’s face. Fever, she was so hot, like she was burning from the inside out. I could hear them, and him. I could hear him trying to get to her, trying to draw her out. I felt her pain, physical and emotional. She wished, so much, she could spare the girl she loved from the risk and responsibility. But there wasn’t a choice, and there wasn’t time.”
He shifted her to open the truck door, maneuvered her inside, amazed his hands didn’t shake to mimic his heart.
“You spoke in Irish.”
“I did?” Iona shoved at her hair. “I can’t remember, not exactly. What did I say?”
“I’m not sure of it all. ‘You’re the one, but there must be three.’ And I think . . .” He struggled with the translation. “‘It ends here for me, begins for you.’ Something like that, and more I couldn’t understand. Your eyes went black as a raven’s, and your skin pale as death.”
“My eyes.”
“They’re back,” he assured her, stroked her cheek. “Blue as summer.”
“I need more training. It’s like trying to compete in the Olympics when you’re still learning how to change leads and gaits. And that’s a potent place, full of energy and power.”
He’d been there before, felt nothing but some curiosity. But this time, with her . . .
“It hooked to you,” he decided. “Or you to it.”
“Or she did, the old woman. She’s buried in there. One day we should come back, one day when this is finished, and leave flowers on her grave.”
At the moment he wasn’t inclined to bring her back ever. But as he walked around to get in the truck, the rain stopped.
“Look.” She took his hand, pointed with the other at the rainbow that glimmered behind the ruins. “Light wins.”
She smiled and meant it and, thinking rainbows, leaned over to kiss him.
“I’m starving.”
He didn’t think at all, but pulled her in again to kiss her until the image of her swaying on the ledge faded away. “I know a place not far that does a fine fish and chips. And Christ knows I could do with a pint.”
“That’s what I’m talking about. Thanks,” she added.
“For what?”
“For showing me two amazing places, and for catching me before I fell.”
She looked back at the friary, at the black birds, at the rainbow. Her life had forever changed, she thought. But unlike her ancestor, she considered it a gift.
* * *
IN THE COZY KITCHEN WITH THE HOUND AT HER FEET AND a fire in the hearth, Iona told her cousins everything.
“A busy day for you,” Connor commented.
“And then some.”
“That would be three events, we’ll call them, in a single day.” Branna, her hair still bundled up from her workday, contemplated her tea. “But only the first involving Cabhan.”
“The last one, too,” Iona reminded her. “She felt him coming.”
“A vision of the past. Whether yours or another’s, still the past. I doubt he’d venture so far now.” Branna looked at Connor.