“Just wait.” Cian kept pulling her along. “You’ll soon see.” He winked back at her. “Or should I sayhear?”
He couldn’t remember the last time he had felt quite like this. Happy. Frustrated. Eager. Alive. But mostly content.
“So I assume it’s gonna get crazy loud?” She laughed. “Or am I stating the obvious?”
“You’re stating what makes sense.” They continued on. Up and down. Left and right. Closer and closer. “Yet ‘tis not quite what you think.”
“No.” The awe in her voice was obvious. “It isn’t, is it?”
“Nay.” Cian slowed, then stopped when they came to an opening overlooking the sea. “Stand here.” He stood behind her and rested his hands on her shoulders. “And wait...listen.”
Moments later, when the next round of waves rolled in, it happened, and she gasped.
“What do you hear?” he murmured in her ear.
“A man,” she whispered, clearly loathe to interrupt the moment. “Roaring yet not. It starts as a roar then becomes more of a calling...a plea to something....” She shook her head. “That’s incredible. It sounds so real. So emotional.”
“And ‘tis nothing but the waves against rock echoing through crevices in this exact location.” He tried not to inhale the sweet scent of her hair as he pointed over her shoulder at the ocean. “A roar made only in this spot that overlooks the Atlantic in that direction.”
Rather than tell her what direction it was, he waited. Wanted to see if she sensed it. Understood.
She didn’t let him down.
“That’s the direction of America’s northern seacoast.” She barely breathed now. “The exact direction of New Hampshire.”
“The exact direction of your house,” he said. “The exact direction where I would find you. Where my brothers will find your sisters.”
“How is that possible?” She met his eyes over her shoulder. “Surely it’s just a coincidence?”
“Is it?” He backed away before he lost himself in her gaze. Before he finally pressed his lips against hers and never let her go. “Is it when you dreamt of King’s Heart without ever having seen it? Dreamt of something every bit as connected to you and your sisters as I believe this location is? Several locations in Ireland, for that matter.”
Her brows swept up, then whipped together. “How many?”
“Three more in addition to this spot and King’s Heart.”
“All named after you and your brothers?”
“All named for kings.” He shook his head. “As to them being named after my brothers and me? Impossible to know as they all existed before we were born. All except, possibly, King’s Heart. That remains up for debate.”
While he would much rather linger and get to know her, they needed to go to his castle first. He sensed all was well, but his people needed him there. Now more than ever.
“So this location and the others back up the prophecy,” Madison said while they continued on. “A prophecy you say was set forth by the gods.”
“Yes.” He grabbed her hand and led her along when the path grew narrower. “One told to our parents upon our birth.”
Comfortable being honest, he explained how, like Adlin MacLomain, he and his brothers had been conceived of Druidess Chiomara and King Erc, then delivered into their Irish mother’s womb.
“Sort of like Jesus then?”
“Nothing like Jesus.” He frowned back at her. “We’re pagan.”
“Fair enough...yet still.”
He stopped and eyed her. “Still,what?”
“Wasn’t Jesus born of immaculate conception?”
“We were not born of that.”
