Once, twice, a third time her breath caught as the pain snuck closer, then it faded.
“Drink this now, there’s a girl. Every drop.”
“It burns my throat. And it’s bitter.”
“The potion’s on the bitter side,” Aisling agreed, and swiped the back of a blood-streaked hand over her brow. “But it works well. Now just lie still for a moment or two.”
She focused on Aisling’s face now, and on Marg’s, saw they both carried the sweat sheen of effort.
“It hurt, what you did. It hurt you, taking on the pain.”
“Healing’s a gift.” Aisling spoke briskly as she got to her feet. “But not without a price, and the price is given willingly.”
“I need to see to my horse.” Keegan shoved to his feet, walked out.
“Right pissed, he is,” Aisling noted.
“I know he’s angry with me, but I—”
“Not with you.” As she might one of her boys, Aisling gave Breen a light cuff on the head. “Don’t be stupid. Here now, Kelly, here—give him over, Marco.”
When he did, she flapped open her shirt and set his greedy mouth on her breast.
“When you’ve rested a bit, and Keegan works off the mad, we’ll all have a drink not bitter, and you’ll tell us what the devil happened.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Breen learned Morena had come on wings and had flown to the farm just as Marco stepped out to warn the boys to stay outside. Assured Breen was in good hands, she flew off to help Harken deal with the ash.
Finola and Seamus had rushed from home as well. It seemed half the valley or more had hurried to defend whatever and whoever needed defending.
She sat at the big table now, with her arm healed and unscarred—though Aisling warned it would throb a bit off and on for a day or two—and with those closest to her.
Most took whiskey, or tea with a healthy dollop of whiskey in it, but she gratefully took a glass of wine, sipping slowly as she related the story.
“Bold of him,” Sedric commented. “Bold and rash with it.”
“He’s both of those. He’d know of the wraiths in your training from those who spied for him,” Marg added, “so used that for his. Sly. Something else he is.”
“He bargains with you,” Morena pointed out. “Do this, or I do that. But if he could do that, he would.”
“He wanted to scare me, and hurt me. He did both, so missions accomplished. But I think he really believes I’ll be lured, not just with threats, but with promises.”
“Many are.”
She glanced at Keegan. “He could have killed me—maybe—but he doesn’t want me dead. Not until he gets what he wants out of me.But he couldn’t take me, or that. Not through the wraith. I know I wasn’t as good with the sword as I should’ve been, and maybe at least part of that was me believing his couldn’t really hurt me.”
“Any weapon’s to be treated with respect.”
“Lesson fully learned. He doesn’t. Learn, I mean, or he’s too full of himself to learn. When I was a teacher, I’d have students like that sometimes. The kind that didn’t really pay any price for not learning the lessons, so they didn’t really learn from a mistake or a bad grade.”
“Kids with ’tude,” Marco put in. “He ain’t no kid.”
“Yet for all the time he’s existed, he keeps reaching for the same thing and failing.”
“Definition of insanity.” Now Marco shrugged. “Psycho, like I said before.”
“He never had a prize such as you as a goal before.” At the table’s head, Keegan turned the cup of whiskey in his hand. “As you’re our key, you’re his as well, and this he knows. He makes it a choice, a false one, but a choice come to that. And shed your blood this day to show you what it could cost you to make the choice against him.”