Bile rose in her throat at the idea of anyone hurting a horse. Any animal, for that matter. She saw the issue with his arm clearly enough now, though. It had been crushed between a flailing hoof and a rock, she would say.
“And left a foal without its mother,” the other boy muttered, despite his concern. “’Tis not the way of a warrior, brother.”
“Nay,” she agreed softly. While tempted to let the boy bleed to death for his cruelty, it just wasn’t in her. Not when she could help. When she had the power. For would she not be as cruel as the boy she healed if she simply let him die? Would that not make her a monster too?
So she rested a hand on his arm, the other over his heart, closed her eyes, and chanted. Willed away his pain. Spun the torn muscles back together. Stopped the bleeding. Healed him from the inside out until she opened her eyes to his dark gaze and felt a strange sensation roll through her.
A connection she would have never expected with someone like him.
“Ye did it,” his brother said. “Ye really did it.”
“Here, Revered One.” She had no idea she was shivering and soaked until the boy she had raced after wrapped a blue cloak around her. “Warm yerself in my cloak. Keep it in thanks for yer selfless help.”
“Thank ye,” she whispered, only to look up into the palest blue eyes she had ever seen.
Blue eyes that reminded her of so very much.
Things that would make all the difference when she snapped awake.
Chapter Twenty-Two
“DECLÁN,” RIONA EXCLAIMED, waking him when she sat up abruptly. “It was you,” she gasped. “And the wounded boy was Raghnall.”
He frowned and wrapped his arms around her when he saw her shivering. Felt how cold she was. “What do you mean?”
“I mean this.” She grasped his arm, and her gaze shined blue. Showed him things he would never have imagined.
Made him remember things from their last life.
“I recall that moment,” he said softly. “Putting my blue cloak around your shoulders. The way I felt when you looked up at me and our eyes connected.” He shook his head. “’Twas unlike anything I had felt before.Yewere unlike anything I had ever felt.”
“And I felt the same.” Riona met his eyes. “I felt a connection with Raghnall, but it was nothing like what I experienced when I met your eyes for the first time.” She grew teary. “I knew at that moment when I was only a little girl that I was in trouble. Nothing good would come of it despite how right it seemed. I felt like I had just met my best friend, but as time went on....”
When she began shivering uncontrollably, he scooped her up and sat in front of the fire with a blanket wrapped around them both. He manifested a cup of whiskey, brought it to her lips, and urged her to drink.
“We knew then, at that very moment,” Riona finally murmured, “that we should part ways, but we didn’t.” She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head before her pained gaze met his. “And more often than not, time spent with you meant time spent with your overbearing brother.”
