She was part of that now, as even with the magicks, the shared blood, the knowledge, she hadn’t been. Because now she’d fought and killed and bled for Talamh.
She looked over at Keegan, so alert, she thought, so intense. Animpatient man who somehow held bottomless wells of patience. A hard man who was, in essence, made of kindness. A living, breathing contradiction.
It fit, didn’t it, she decided, because he would fight and kill and bleed for the single most vital goal of his world.
Peace.
She edged Lonrach a little closer to Cróga so she could call out over the wind.
“What happens next?”
He glanced at her, but only briefly before he continued to scan the land, the air, the distant sea.
“You go back to training, in magicks, in combat, as before.”
“No, I mean now.”
“That is now, and tomorrow, and the day after. We have time, but can’t waste it. Odran lost more than we did. He won’t grieve as we have, as the demons and the dark he sent through to destroy us don’t matter to him. But he lost power.”
“He has to gather it again. It could be weeks, months, even years.”
“Not years. Not this time.”
“Because I’m here.”
“So close, he’d think, to taking you and all you are. You, the key, the bridge, Daughter of man and Fey and gods hold all he covets. So close, he’d think, to taking all he wants and raining vengeance on all the worlds.”
Keegan glanced over again. “But he’s wrong. He’s only farther away than he once was.”
“Why?”
“Because of all you are. Now, do you want the valley or the cottage? I’ll take you where you wish before I go south.”
“You’re going south?”
“I have duties I couldn’t attend to while needed at the Capital. Mahon’s handled the repairs there, and the razing of the Prayer House, the building of the memorial. I need to show the South the taoiseach remembers.”
“Then I want to go to the South.”
“You haven’t been home for weeks now.”
“Neither have you. No, I’m not taoiseach,” she said before he could. “But you said to let them see my grief. Let them see me. Was that only for those in the Capital?”
He said nothing for a moment, only studied her. Then, with a nod, he veered south.
“The warm,” he said conversationally, “will make a pleasant change.”
“I won’t mind that. But I don’t mind the cold. I like seeing what it does to the trees. The green of the pines seems to get deeper with the colors that burst out in the oaks and chestnuts, the maples. The light changes, and nights go long. The deer build their winter coats. I never expected to see fall here, or the winter that’s coming so fast. Not when I came to Ireland, or even when I first came through to Talamh.”
She gestured to a pair of dragon riders plying the sky north.
“They’re ours,” he told her. “Patrolling.”
“Ours. Odran doesn’t have dragons,” she realized.
“No. He can’t turn them or enslave them as he can with some Fey. They’re pure.”
“If he turns their rider?”