The sensation she felt at seeing him was indescribable. Joyous and heartbreaking all at once.
“How is this possible?” she and Liam said at the same time as the three of them followed his former incarnate.
“I’d say thanks to Shannon’s druid magic igniting,” Riona said. “I see the same not only because of my gift but because of my connection to her.”
“So this is what?” Shannon asked tentatively, even though she suspected she knew the answer. “Our past? Unfolding right in front of us in this era?”
“That’s right,” Riona confirmed. “Right at this very spot.”
She could tell by the look on Liam’s face that unsettled him as much as it did her. They had stood on this land before together? How ironic, given he had become king of it in this life.
“What did ye do?” his other self roared in the same language she swore she’d spoken when she slept with Liam the night before. He strode for a bridge that was different than the one that stood there now. “What did ye do to my sister, druidess?”
“I had dreaded this,” Shannon whispered before a ghostly woman appeared at the top of the bridge and turned back.
“That’s you in your last life,” Riona confirmed. “That was the woman I saw crying beneath a young King’s Heart.”
“Yet here I am at King’s End.” She shivered at how she had felt back then. How heartbroken on the inside even though she showed no sign of it on the outside. Rather, she notched her chin and squared off with Liam in that life.
“What did ye do?” he growled. “Tell me the rumors I hear are false.” He clenched his fists. “That ye did not kill my sister.” He shook his head. “That when ye did, the monster who has stalked her for years did not steal her death.”
“I had never been so angry.” Liam’s eyes were as turbulent as his counterpart’s. “Never felt so betrayed.”
“Which implies we knew each other before that,” she murmured, only to have it confirmed soon after.
“I did the only thing I could,” her other self said. She might appear to stand strong, yet Shannon knew she was anything but. She was devastated. “She broke our rules. Did the forbidden when she fell in love with another. ‘Twas her choice to accept her punishment. To be reborn and help Éire in thefuture.” Her voice faltered. “I could not foresee what her stalker did. How he would change things.”
Her stalker being the former King Raghnall in that life.
“Why ye?” His voice dropped an octave, his torment obvious. “Why did it have to be ye, ceann milis? How could ye have done it when....”
“When what?” Shannon exclaimed when the memory faded. Not liking the sound of that, she rounded her eyes at Liam. “Whenwhat, Liam?”
“When you were tempted to break the same rules.” He sounded just as troubled. “When ‘twas just a matter of time.”
“I wondered about that,” Riona said.
“That’s awful.” Shannon frowned at her. “As much as I hate it, killing you for a forbidden crime would have been one thing had I been innocent of it myself. The fact I was nearly just as guilty,” if not more guilty, “makes it ten times worse. Makes me a total hypocrite!”
“You had your reasons,” Riona said softly as they continued toward the bridge. “I’m certain of it.”
“Yeah, like taking the spotlight off myself by ending you,” she muttered. “Sounds like I was as much a monster as Raghnall.”
“Ye were nothing of the sort, m’lady,”came an unfamiliar masculine voice in her mind. One that sounded around Liam’s age, if not a tad younger.“Yers was a more noble heart than most.”
She stopped at the overwhelming sense of familiarity she felt at his words.
“Tréan?” she managed when her wolf sat at the foot of the bridge and waited for her. “Is that you?”
“’Tis.”He lowered his head in what seemed a show of respect.“’Tis good to finally speak with ye like this.”
“It is, isn’t it?”she replied telepathically, somehow not surprised to hear he had an Irish accent.“So you are my familiar?”
“I am.”
“And why are you just speaking with me now?”
He glanced from where she’d been standing on the bridge in another life to where Liam’s incarnate had just been.“Need ye ask?”
