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I believe him.
His free arm wraps around my body, locking me tighter against him. He promised never to let me fall. In this moment, I trust that. We sway and I relax.
“The Veil knows you, Eala Duir. You belong to it.”
Soft, damp lips move against my neck as he speaks. Millions of bubbles the size of pearls bob inside me. The sensation of floating is intoxicating. I’m as feathery as my hair, drifting through the Veil.
“Open your eyes, Swan.”
All around us, a membrane as delicate as a wall of burnt sugar wavers and shimmers. The formidable glass walls that defined the Veil on my earlier travels now ripple like silk curtains. Veil Sprites dive and spin around us. Barely perceptible iridescent streaks waver through their light. Our feet rest on the carpet of the shining turquoise and violet orbs I saw the first time Sion took me through the Veil. This time, I feel no disorientation, only joy.
I lean my cheek against his. “It’s beautiful.” Our lips are so close, we share breath. His arm stays locked around me. I spin as delicately as a leaf on a breeze until our bodies are face-to-face. I twine my arms around his neck, leaning into him until I’m aware of every button on his coat pressing against my dress. His hands slide around my waist until they meet at the small of my back.
The Veil is ours. We ride a mystical Celtic breeze through time and place. Sionnach the fox is right. We belong to the Veil and it to us. Who I am. Who he is. The parents I never knew. None of that matters.
Find me.
The Veil called me to Ireland, to this man who is both young and old.
Side-by-side be damned. I thread my hands into Sion’s galaxy of curls and pull his mouth to mine. The moment our lips touch, Veil Sprites pierce our bodies in cataclysmic delight. Passion moves us into a rhythm, banishing any question of trust. The kiss deepens and deepens until we are Veil Sprites, illuminating darkness by splitting white light into a spectral glow. Spirit becomes magic, the visceral—incandescent, joy our truth.
And then a violent jolt clunks my temple against Sion’s collarbone with a crack. Mud soaks into my skirt as we settle into soggy ground.
I start to unleash every curse I’ve ever heard in English and Irish when Sion hoists me out of the grass and muck onto a slope peppered with stones. One of his arms stays firmly looped around my waist. As soon as I stop struggling, he points upward.
Across an expanse of ragged lawn, stretching toward the clouds is indeed a leviathan. The structure looks like a disjointed castle. Walls studded with towers that must be fifty or sixty feet high reach into the night. Crazy tall ladders climb to elevated walkways or stairs. Jutting from the center is a tube wide enough to drive the rental car through or for a man to discover galaxies outside the Milky Way.
“Up there’s where we’ll find the earl.”
The river in the woods behind us muffles Sion’s words. “On the left platform.”
I recognize the figure from the soulfall. The Third Earl of Rosse, master of Birr Castle, leans on an arched wooden rail curved liked a crooked finger, staring at stars that stretch from horizon to horizon. The round glasses on the edge of his nose remind me of Jeremy Olk’s.
My head swims from traveling. Not with the nausea of the passing but from a kiss that replaces my bones with soft warm clay. I’m glad we’re off our feet because I’m not ready to stand.
Sionnach continues to stare at the earl, ignoring me. Dread, colder than the mushy earth, comes a calling. Was our kiss in the Veil crossing real, or a dream flash? I kissed Sionnach without hesitation or doubt. Did the Veil show me an image of my wish, or did it happen?
I have an urgent need to put distance between Sionnach and me. What if he read my mind while we travelled and saw me kissing him? Not exactly the definition of a platonic partnership.
When I begin to slide away from him, something sharp slices my calf. “Ouch.” I grab the object. Victorian era mud in an open wound is a recipe for a horrid infection.
He plucks the hand-sized shard of dull copper from my hand. “Fast work finding the artifact, my darlin’ girl.” He leans in, lips claiming mine in a maddingly possessive way. I greedily answer his passion with my own. Our kiss lasts long enough to ignite a steady pulse of need between my thighs. Teeth capture my lower lip in a promise of more before he breaks the kiss.
Not a dream. Not a wish. A kiss. Oh, if only we had one night to ourselves without souls to save.
Relief floods my previously bubble-filled veins. What happened in the Veil wasn’t simply a manifestation of my desire. It was real, and good sense help me; I want it to happen again.
Sion brushes my nose with his. “I’ve been wishing to claim your sweet lips since I first laid eyes on the spirted woman in the Druid’s Cave.”
I press my mouth back to his and whisper. “I didn’t think you wanted this between us.”
“Then you’d be thinking wrong.” He pulls my body against his as we kiss slowly. I open my lips and his tongue slides against mine, driving all thoughts of the earl out of my head until I shiver with cold. Sion eases me away. “I much prefer this, but on we must go.”
He’s right of course. Excitement and adrenaline waltz together in my chest. I know exactly how I want to spend tomorrow in real time, and it isn’t on a tour of Dublin Castle. I raise the shard in my hand. “This is the key to the earl’s virtue?” I use my skirt to wipe goo off the bit of metal and then attend to my cut.
Sionnach lifts the artifact to catch moonlight. “Our friend shattered a lot of metal trying to make a mirror for his beastie of a telescope. The earl finally figgered the reflecting piece had to cool slow-like for weeks on end. He baked the final product in an oven massive enough to roast an ogre. Genius.”
Wind through my wet skirt and separation from Sion’s body make me uncomfortably cold. I scoot closer to him. “How will broken metal restore humility?”
