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Sion’s eager smile raises my temperature even higher than my internal lightning bugs.
“Flicks of heat?”
I nod.
“I knew it.” He runs a finger up my arm, lingering at the pulse point on my wrist, and smiles. “The Veil Sprites have taken you in. Or rather, you’ve taken them in.”
Veil Sprites? I take a step back and stare at the man so unfazed by all things weird. “Who are you?”
“Sionnach Loho at your service.” He sweeps into a bow. His tone is warmer, more genuine than the way he used the same line on Daisy at breakfast.
Disorientation mingles with an overwhelming sense of belonging. I’m thoroughly confused, my voice shaky. “What are you?”
“Fánaí, same as you.”
My teeth grind into my lower lip. I understand the Irish word perfectly. Too perfectly. The usual flipping through virtual vocabulary cards in my head isn’t necessary. Tiny vibrations of alarm waver in my stomach.
Real?
Unreal?
Where am I on that continuum?
“Foe-nee,” he repeats with more patience than I’d ever give him credit for being capable of.
“Fánaí, wanderer, I get it.” I rest my hands on either side of my head. “Why do I get it?”
Sion gently lowers my hands. I snatch his wrist, copying his earlier gesture and press my finger to his pulse. A steady rhythm thrums beneath my touch.
He’s real. His heart beats.
“You’re a product of the Veil same as me, Eala. We fánaí can walk between the worlds. Here to there. Now to then.”
I break contact. “A product?”
He waves his hands through the air as if erasing his last statement. “I’m not dandy with words. Child of the Veil is a better way of it.”
I bite my tongue—hard, using the technique that’s pulled me from oncoming vivid daydreams in the past. It doesn’t work. Doubt is a thunderhead, rising from my toes through my body to fill my chest. “This is too bizarre. I don’t get it. I-I thought for a moment I might, but?—”
I back away. The dancing prickles of heat beneath my skin pulse. The glow of Veil Sprites in the woods dims around us as if sensing my waning belief.
Sion’s brow creases. His words are strangled. “Hold on to it all, Eala. Hold fast.”
“Take me to the bonfire.” The fluttering inside me slows. The pins and needles pain like circulation returning to a limb replaces it. I shake my arms to rid myself of the sensation.
Without a word, Sion snatches my hand and marches us toward an opening in the trees. I’m so grateful to be returning to a place where the world makes sense, I don’t fight him. Oddly, there’s confidence in his grip I don’t mind. In moments, we pass the leaning stone. How could I have been near the campsite and not seen the bonfire painting an orange wash across the sky? He doesn’t drop my hand until we’re free of the wood.
Sion points to the sky. “See the moon.” Rings of light radiate in concentric circles around a completely full moon. It’s then I notice that far away is a familiar colorful shimmer like the edge of my dream flashes.
What the hell?
I stare nonplussed at the transient sky. Where has the three-quarter moon gone?
He addresses my confusion before I can voice it. “Moon’s always full in the Veil. Provides the energy for travel.”
I whip my gaze down the hill where the bonfire belongs.
It’s not there.
