“I saw you, New Year’s Eve. Right at midnight.”
“Aye. I took a moment in the air by the balefire, and there you were. It looked like a fine ceilidh.”
“It was.”
“Your dress that night. I hadn’t seen it before.”
“A bon voyage gift from Sally and Derrick when we first left for Ireland. Marco wouldn’t take no. ‘Girl, if you can’t wear that killeron New Year’s Eve, then when?’” She tipped her head up toward him. “You didn’t like it?”
“I liked it quite a bit. What there was of it, I liked.”
“The celebration in the Capital must’ve been wonderful.”
He shrugged and took the stick Bollocks hunted up, gave it a long, hard toss. “Good craic for most. Sure I danced more than I wanted to, drank less. Kiara sends her best wishes.”
“How is she?”
“She’s well, truly. I find I misjudged her as I did Shana. And it may be I did because of Shana. I thought Kiara sweet, aye, and more than a bit foolish. She has the sweet, right enough, but not the foolish. She’s life in her. She’s filled with life.”
He thought of her in her pretty red dress and dancing ribbons. Life, he thought again, and surprising strength.
“What Shana broke in her has mended only stronger.”
He tossed the stick a second time, then walked awhile in silence.
“When I left, I thought a few days, a week if that. And I’d go back after another few at home to give my mother more time with Aisling and the children. But…”
“Circumstances.”
“Aye. I’d tell you of them. It’s not explaining, it’s telling.”
“Okay.”
“Some is just… the small, the necessary. The bloody politics and diplomacy.”
He threw the stick harder this time, as if throwing politics and diplomacy.
“My mother handles this with a light touch. I have to work harder to approach that touch. There’s no need to talk about all that. It is. And the meetings with scholars and warriors and trainers—all needed to prepare or refine strategies. It’s the Judgment I’ll tell you of, as you should know.”
“She didn’t deny any of it or plead for mercy.”
His brow furrowed as he looked at her. “You know this already?”
“I saw it in her that night. The fervor. Like Toric. Not as violent or overt, I think, but the fervor.”
“You have the right of it. And a pride for her actions. More a contemptfor her family, no shame in it. A contempt for all of Talamh, but so much for her family I all but heard her mother’s heart break.”
Breen reached for his hand, and Bollocks, stick clamped in his teeth, fell into step with them.
“But with the pride, the fervor, as you said, the contempt, she told us a great deal. More than I’d thought I’d pry from her she gave freely. Yseult sent the potion by raven, so we’ll do what we can to watch for this.”
“How did he indoctrinate her?” Breen wondered. “Turn her? How did Odran find her to know he could turn her?”
“I think Yseult, in her many guises, has come through many times over the years. And the scouts and spies. No one can pass through the Welcoming Tree who would do harm, but this is the only portal that can’t be breached. We use protection,” he explained. “But this can be worn away, like the sea against the shore, over time with magicks and focus and purpose.”
“Like the breach under the waterfall.”
“Aye. And this way they hunt for the weak or the unhappy, the angry. Gods know. This girl said she’d gone through to Odran’s world.”