What good would it do if belief wasn’t enough in the end? If she was the one who fell, how much harder for him to accept if he knew all she felt, all she wanted, all she hoped for?
“I’ll work on that,” she repeated, and reached for his hand.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Spring rushed by. Breen remembered that in her old life May had dragged its pretty feet so the last weeks before the summer break seemed endless. Now it raced like an elf. No matter how she tried to hold each day, one simply slid into the next.
June brought constant inner conflict. As much as she wanted it all over, wanted the chance to live a life without fear and threat, she dreaded what would come.
What had to come.
She reminded herself she’d been given a year of wonder, of love and discovery, of dreams coming to fruition. If she could have no more than that year, it had to be enough.
And still she looked, she searched, in the fire and the smoke, in the flicker of a candle flame, in the globe, in her dreams.
But visions remained shadows, silent and secret.
She worked the garden, found real joy in watching the flowers bloom, in hoeing rows, mounding potato plants, learning how to stake tomatoes.
She wrote, and the writing became a kind of escape. She completed the next Bollocks book, then ordered herself to hit send and zip it off to New York.
Because she desperately wanted that escape, she barely took a breath before she began the next. And beginning the next gave her hope she’d live to finish it.
Live her wonder of a life in two worlds.
She trained, though her aches and bruises belied Keegan’s scale oflight and easy. She practiced, with Marg and on her own. Every skill learned, every skill honed, made her stronger.
She helped with plans and preparation for the festival.
Then, so fast, the time of planning and preparation ended.
She rejected Marco’s wish for her to wear one of the summer dresses he’d talked her into buying in New York. If she had to fight to the death, it wouldn’t be in a sundress.
Besides, and he agreed, the sword at her side ruined the look.
“I hope the sun’s shining over there.” Though he’d already delivered contributions of a honey-glazed ham, had Brian haul over boxes of baked goods, Marco carried more.
“It is.”
“What is what?”
“The sun. It’s a bright day in Talamh.”
“How do you know? Wait. You can tell from over here?” Eyes rolling, he gave her an elbow bump. “Why the hell haven’t you said so before?”
“Once I figured out I could look and see, I realized I kind of liked the surprise of it, so didn’t. But I did today.”
“Girl, get my sunglasses out of my pocket and put them on my good-looking face.”
Since she carried less than he did, she obliged.
He’d tied back his braids with a red leather band that matched his T-shirt and high-tops. The high-tops sported silver laces that matched his belt and the stud in his ear.
He put rainbow ribbons in Bollocks’s topknot. And the dog seemed very pleased with them.
He’d entered contests—today’s entries included cherry pie and strawberry shortcake—and he’d man a stand bartering sweets when he wasn’t serving as one of the judges on fruit jam or putting in time as a coordinator of two of the races for littles.
He and Breen would also, as he wouldn’t take no, help provide musical entertainment.