“We’ll go,” he said. “I think we’ve done what we were meant to do this morning. And now, Jesus, I’m starving.”
The power, he thought as he began to walk. The sheer force of it had hulled him out. Turning toward home, he sensed his sister’s hound seconds before Kathel ran toward him.
“You felt it as well, did you now?” He gave Kathel’s great black head a stroke, continued on. “I’d be surprised if all of Mayo didn’t feel a jolt from it. My skin’s still buzzing like my bones are covered with bees.”
Steadier yet with hound and hawk, he walked out of the shadows of the woods into the pearly morning. Roibeard circled overhead as he walked the road with Kathel to the cottage. A second hawk cried, and Connor spotted his friend Fin’s Merlin.
Then the thunder of hoofbeats broke through the quiet, so he paused, waited—felt a fresh stirring as he saw his cousin Iona, his friend Boyle astride the big gray Alastar. And Fin as well, racing with them on his gleaming black Baru.
“We’ll need more eggs,” he called out, smiling now. “And another rasher or two of bacon.”
“What happened?” Iona, her short cap of hair tousled from sleep, leaned down to touch his cheek. “I knew you were safe, or we’d have come even faster.”
“You all but flew as it is—and not a saddle between the three of you. I’ll tell you inside. I could eat three pigs and top it off with a cow.”
“Cabhan.” Fin, his hair dark as his mount’s, his eyes the dark green of Connor’s when the power had taken him, turned to stare into the trees.
“Him and more. But Iona has the right of it. I’m fine and well, just starving half to death while we stand here on the road. You felt it,” he added when he began to walk again.
“Felt it?” Boyle stared down at Connor. “It woke me from a sound sleep, and I don’t have what the three of you do. I’ve no magick in me, and still whatever it was shot through me like an arrow.” He nodded toward the cottage. “And it seems the same for Meara.”
Connor looked over, saw Meara Quinn, lifelong friend, his sister’s best mate, striding along toward them—tall and lush as a goddess in her flannel sleep pants and old jacket, he thought, and her long brown hair a tangle.
She made a picture, he mused, but then she ever did.
“She stayed the night,” he told the others. “Took Iona’s room as you stayed over at Boyle’s, cousin. Good morning to you, Meara.”
“Good morning be damned. What the bloody hell happened?”
“I’m after telling you all.” He slipped an arm around her waist. “But I need food.”
“Branna said you would, and she’s already seeing to it. She’s shaken, and pretending not to be. It was like a bleeding earthquake—but inside me. That’s the devil of a way to wake.”
“I’ll see to the horses.” Boyle slid off Alastar. “Go on in, stuff something in your belly.”
“Thanks for that.” Smiling again, Connor lifted his arms so Iona could drop into them from Alastar’s back. Then she wrapped around him.
“Scared me,” she murmured.
“You’re not alone in that.” He kissed the top of her head, his pretty cousin from America, the last of the three, and keeping her hand in his, went into the cottage.
The scent of bacon, of coffee, of warm bread hit his belly like a fist. In that moment he wanted to eat more than he wanted to live—and needed to eat if he wanted to live.
Kathel led the way back to the kitchen, and there Branna worked at the stove. She’d tied her dark hair back, still wore the flowered flannel pants and baggy shirt she’d slept in. That alone showed her love, he mused, as she’d have taken the time to change, to fuss with herself a little knowing there’d be company—and Finbar Burke most especially.
Saying nothing, she turned from the stove, handed him a plate holding a fried egg on toast.
“Bless you, darling.”
“It’ll fill the worst of the hole. There’s more coming. You’re cold,” she said quietly.
“I hadn’t noticed, but I am, yes. A bit cold.”
Before she could flick a hand toward the kitchen hearth, Fin did so, and the little fire flashed.
“You’re quivering some. Sit, for God’s sake, and eat like a human.” Voice brisk, Meara all but shoved him into a chair at the table.
“I’m not a one to brush away some fussing, and truth be told, I’d kill for coffee.”