“But you’ve thought, more than once, his leaving was your fault. I don’t have to slip into your mind to know it,” Connor added.
“I know it’s not true. I’m meaning I know he didn’t leave because of me.”
“And still it can make you doubt yourself.” Iona sent her a look of understanding. “Make you wonder, when you’re feeling low, what it is about yourself they can’t love. I know how it is, and how hard it is to accept someone who should love you absolutely, doesn’t. Or not enough. But it wasn’t me, and it wasn’t you. It was them, the lack in them.”
“I know it, but you’re right. Sometimes . . . The rose he gave me began to bleed, and he said I was a whore for lying with a witch. But I certainly never had before my father left us. And God, come to it, the man was too much of a coward ever to say such things to anyone’s face.”
She paused, stared down at her plate. “He was so weak, my father. It’s hard admitting you loved something—someone so weak.”
“We can’t choose our parents,” Boyle said, “any more than they can choose us. We all just have to muddle through best we can.”
“And loving . . .” Connor paused until she lifted her eyes to his. “It’s never something to be ashamed of.”
“What I loved was an illusion, as much as what I saw today. But I believed in both, for a while. And with this, today, I felt things change when he said those things to me, those hard things he, for all his flaws, would never have said. I heard the rain again, and I heard Roibeard, and I knew him for a lie. I had the shovel. I hadn’t when I walked with him, but now I did again. I swung it at him, swung it at his head, but he was quick. I swung it again, but the world started to turn and rock. And you, Connor, riding up like a demon on Alastar, and Boyle running from the stables, and Kathel and . . . He smiled at me—Cabhan now and nothing like my father.”
She saw it clearly now, that cruelly handsome face smiling. “And it felt like something stabbed my heart—so sharp and cold—as he smiled and swirled away in the fog.”
“Black lightning,” Boyle stated. “That’s what it looked like to me, just a flash of it from the stone he wears.”
“I didn’t see it.” Meara lifted her water glass, drained it again. “I tried to walk, but it was like swimming through the mud. I felt sick and dizzy, and I couldn’t feel the rain now as the shadows closed so thick.
“I couldn’t get out of them, couldn’t seem to move, couldn’t call out. And there were voices in the shadows. My father’s, Cabhan’s. Threats, promises. I . . . He said, he would give me power. If I took Connor’s life, he’d give me immortality.”
She groped for Connor’s hand, comforted when he took it. “I couldn’t get out, and it all got darker and darker. I couldn’t speak or move, as if bound up, and it was so bitter cold. Then you were there, Connor, talking to me, and there was light. You were the light. You told me to take your hand. I didn’t know how, but you said to take your hand.”
“And you did.”
“I didn’t think I could, it hurt so. But you kept saying I could. Kept telling me to take your hand and go with you.”
She linked fingers with him now, a strong grip.
“When I did, it was like being pulled out of a pit while something fought to drag me back, pulled out and out, and the light, it was blinding. Then I felt the rain again. It hurt, everything, all at once. My body, my heart, my head. The shadows were horrible, but I wanted to go back where I didn’t feel the pain.”
“Part of it was shock,” Branna said. “And what he’d used to take you. Then the abrupt yank back. It’s why Connor put you to sleep.”
“I owe you all.”
“We’re a circle,” Boyle began. “Nothing’s owed.”
“No, I do. Owe you for coming for me—and yes, any of us would for the other. And I owe you my apology for being so foolish as to give him the chance to take me. And doing that put us all at risk.”
“It’s done.” Boyle reached over, poked her shoulder.
“It is,” Branna agreed. “Now you’ll have some tea and quiet up in bed.”
“I’ve slept enough.”
“Not nearly enough, but you can take your tea out by the fire until you’re ready to go up.”
“I’ll tuck you up.”
Meara frowned at Fin. “I can move my arse from here to there.”
“Now then, you’re not after an argument after such a fine apology, are you?” He settled it by going around the table, plucking her right out of her chair. “You’re a sturdy girl, Meara Quinn.”
“Oh, am I now?”
He shot Connor a grin over his shoulder, carted her into the sofa. He gave the fire a little boost with a finger flick, then set her down, pulled the pretty throw over her while she eyed him balefully.