“Are you hurt?” With the danger passed, Connor dropped to his knees beside Meara.
“No, no. God, did I let it in? Did I open us up to that?”
“Nothing got in.” But Connor gathered her up, pressed his lips to her hair. “You opened nothing but the door.”
“I had to. Felt I couldn’t breathe, and wanted—craved—the dark and quiet.” Shaken, she balled her hands, pressed them to her temple. “He used me again, tried to use me against all of us.”
“And failed,” Iona said crisply.
“He sees you as weak. Look at me now.” Fin crouched down to her. “He sees you as weak as you’re a woman, and no witch. But he’s wrong, as there’s nothing weak about or in you.”
“And still he used me.”
“He wanted you to go out, beyond the protections and charms.” Connor brushed her hair away from her face. “He tried to lure you out, away from us. Not to use you, darling, but to harm you. For he’s enraged by what we’re doing here. The music, the light, the simple joy of it all. He’d have hurt you, if he could, for only that.”
“You’re sure of it? The music, the lights?” Meara looked from Connor to Branna, and back. “Well then. We’ll play louder, and if you’d do me a favor considering, use what you will to make the lights brighter.”
Connor kissed her, helped her to her feet. “No, not a bit of weak in or about you.”
* * *
LATE INTO THE NIGHT WHEN THEY’D PLAYED THEMSELVES out, Connor held her close against him in his bed. He couldn’t seem to let her go. The image played in his mind—the dazed look on her face as she’d stepped from light to dark.
“It’s mind tricks he’s using, and he’s enough of them, enough in him to slither through the shields.” As he spoke, he traced a finger over the beads she wore. “We’ll work on something stronger.”
“He doesn’t go after Boyle the same way. Is Fin right? It’s because I’m not a man?”
“He
preys on women more, doesn’t he? He killed Sorcha’s man to be sure, but he killed Daithi to torment her, to break her heart and spirit. And he tormented her again and again over that last winter. The history of it says he took girls from the castle and around.”
“Yet it’s the boy, Eamon, he’s tried to get to.”
“Take out the boy, and he’d see the girls as more vulnerable to him. He wants Brannaugh—both the one who was and our own. I feel it whenever I let him in.”
She shifted. “Let him in?”
“Into my head—a bit. Or when I’m able to slip through, as he does, and get into his. It’s cold, and it’s dark, and so full of hunger and rage it’s hard to understand any of it.”
“But letting him in, even for a moment, is dangerous. He could see your thoughts as well, couldn’t he—use them against us? Against you.”
“I’ve ways around that. He doesn’t have what I have, or only a whisper of it. What Eamon has as well, and he’d love to drain the boy of his power, take it for his own.”
Idly, he stroked her hair, loose from its braid. Despite all, he found himself oddly content to just be with her, bodies warm and close, voices hushed in the dark.
“He bothered us so little before Iona came. With Fin he’s been relentless since the day the mark burned into Fin’s shoulder.”
“He never speaks of it, our Fin, or rarely.”
“To me he does,” Connor told her, “and sometimes to Boyle. But no, even then it’s rare. Things changed all around when Cabhan’s mark came on him. And changed all around again when Iona came. He pushed at her those weeks, as she was not only a woman but so new and inexperienced, just learning all she had in her and how to use it. He thought her weak as well.”
“She proved him wrong.”
“As you have more than once already.” He kissed her forehead, her temple. “But he won’t stop trying. Harming you harms us all. That he can see well enough, even if he can’t understand it, as he’s never loved in the whole of his existence. How is it, do you think, to exist for so long, so many lifetimes, and never know love, giving it, being given it?”
“People live without it—or do for one lifetime—and don’t torment and kill.”
“I’m not meaning it as an excuse.” Now he propped up on his elbow to look down at her. “He can bespell a woman and take her body, and her power if she has it. Lusting without love—without any love for anything or anyone—that’s the dark. Those who go through their time with only that? I think they must be sad creatures, or evil ones. It’s the heart that gets us through the hard times, and gives us joy.”