"You're not making any sense. You know who I am."
"Of course I do. I summoned you."
"Summoned me? Why? Who am I?"
He could sense the leap of her pulse, the nervous thundering of her heart. "You mean you don't know who you are?"
"Answer the question!"
"You are Ciaran MacCailte."
Ciaran. A name.Hisname, the woman claimed. Why didn't it mean anything to him? "Ciaran." He echoed, testing its syllables like a blind man seeking with the tips of his fingers, striving to recognize the lines of a familiar face. But it was still as strange, as unreal as the mist swirling around him.
"I can't remember," the admission tore from him, his voice cracking. "Why can't I remember?"
The woman's voice gentled. "All that hurtling through time and space must've been more difficult than I realized. It must've left you in shock."
"Through time?"
"From the land of the fairies."
"Fairies?"
"That's where you've been, ever since they cast their spell on you. But you won the right to return every three hundred years when things were bleakest."
"Stop! Damnation!" He pressed one hand to his skull. "My head hurts enough without you mocking me. I—" the words died, a sick sensation knotting in his stomach. "You mean... you're serious. She's serious!" He rolled his eyes skyward to whatever fates were perched on the storm clouds, roaring with laughter at his plight. Wasn't it bad enough he'd been bashed in the head and his memory was gone? He had to be found by a woman who had lost her mind. Mad Irish. The label flickered through his consciousness. He'd heard the term a hundred times somewhere he couldn't recall but he'd never entirely appreciated the truth of it until now.
"You're Ciaran of the Mist," the woman insisted, her chin jutting out at a stubborn angle. "Come to right great wrongs, to fulfill the promise of your legend."
"My legend? What the—?" He couldn't help but reach out with one hand, brace himself against some stone abutment. He took a staggering step, as if he could outpace the haze choking his mind. If he could clear it for but a heartbeat, he could make sense of this whole mess, grasp it somehow.
"Listen, woman—whoever you are."
"Mary Fallon Delaney. Fallon of Misthaven House. My mama gave me the cloak brooch to summon you. Her grandmother had it before her."
Perfect. She'd been spawned by an entire family of lunatics. "Miss Delaney, I might not have a clue who I am, but I know damned well I'm not this figment of your imagination. No legend. No fairies."
"You are Ciaran. You just can't remember yet. I'm certain it will all come to you after you get some rest. If you'll just come with me to Misthaven."
He grimaced, and it hurt like hell. He could rest until the millennium, and he'd never remember any land of the fairies. He knew he wasn't that insane, whoever he was. But what was he going to do until he did regain his memory?
He could hardly go traipsing door-to-door, his hips swathed in a woman's cloak, demanding to know if anyone recognized him. But the sooner he got away from this lunatic woman the better.
"Take me to the nearest authorities. There must be a local magistrate? A garrison of soldiers?"
"No! You can't possibly go there!"
Hope flickered inside him. "Someone might have reported me missing."
"I doubt they have files reaching back a thousand years." She said it so gently he wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled.
"This isn't some sort of game of make-believe! And I'm not going to let you pretend otherwise. I'm a man, not some kind of myth. I'm flesh and blood, and I'm going to find out who the devil I am the quickest way possible."
"I know you're confused. Upset. Who wouldn't be, considering what you've been through? I never guessed how difficult it must be for you, plunging into a different place and time."
"I didn't plunge anywhere, except off my feet or into somebody's fist! I'm going to the authorities whether you help me or not!"
Fear edged her voice. "Don't you understand? It would be too dangerous. Why, minutes before you appeared, the new commander of the garrison at Galway was here at the castle, poking around."
