Because his mother was dead. She'd been so fragile, outcast for his sake. Every day he'd spent away from her he'd fought, struggled to hone himself into the best, the finest, the boldest fighter of all. He'd wanted so much to bring her someplace safe and care for her. But by the time he'd been old enough, strong enough to wrench free of his father's grasp, it had been too late. She'd died, weak with hunger, sick with fever. Alone.
He wanted to shove the memories away, longed for the blissful oblivion where he could begin again, with no mistakes, no regrets to haunt him.
Yet the memory wouldn't be halted. It charged on, despite his pain. A cloth-wrapped bundle thrust into his hand by the crabbed old woman who had buried her.
He closed his eyes, seeing his trembling fingers fold back the material. And for the first time he saw—actually saw—a fragment from his past: the ancient dagger, gleaming there, gold and exquisite.
Anger, outrage and confusion mingled with tearing grief.
"Why did she not sell it? It could have kept her fed, warm, until I came to find her!"
"Some things are without price. No man who ever fought with the dagger fell to an enemy. She believed it was magic."
Magic. More magic. He wanted to rage at her, bellow at the fates. He wanted to fling the dagger away.
"She tried to cling to life, to give it to you, certain you'd return because you'd promised you would. She spoke about you every day, watched the horizon. 'He cannot keep my son from me forever. My son vowed he would come back to me. He vowed it.'"
She'd been waiting for him all this time? While he'd been piling up brave deeds, proving himself again and again to men who meant nothing to him. While he'd been reaching higher, higher, no honor he'd attained enough. If he could just master one more art of swordplay, one more contest of the intellect, she would be so much prouder of him.
The knowledge was agonizing. He could have come to her so much sooner, if he'd not been attempting to prove himself to the father he despised. He'd been a vain fool, and it had cost his mother her life.
"Fling the dagger into the fire. What do I care about it after all it has cost me?"
"Do you not see, you brainless boy? This dagger was all she had to give you. Her only legacy. She loved you beyond any price—her honor, her life, her very soul. She wanted to give it to you, when you returned. This symbol of her love you can carry with you forever."
But he'd wantedher. He 'd wanted to see pride shine in her eyes. He wanted a chance to tell her that no matter what cruel things his father said, he'd never forgotten her gentleness, her courage.
"We were poor," Ciaran said aloud. "My mother and I. But I never realized it. When they took me away, I had everything I could want, and yet I had nothing. Does that make any sense?"
A tiny crease appeared between Fallon's brows. "All my life I've lived in a mansion, with every servant at Misthaven House at my beck and call. Hugh would buy me whatever I wished—gowns and trinkets and sweetmeats. I never went to bed hungry. And yet, sometimes I would go to one of the cottages. They'd give me sour milk and potatoes in a crude bowl by the peat fire. And I'd look around at the faces—a ma and da, brothers and sisters, a lazy cat dozing by the fire. And I would have traded everything I owned just to have the chance to climb up on someone's lap and feel their arms around me."
Their eyes met, held. Understanding. So complete it was terrifying. He wanted to stop the horses, to go to her, slide her down until she was in his arms. He wanted to stroke her hair and tell her she would never be alone again, his brave, generous-hearted Fallon. There would always be someone to hold her when the night grew too dark, the cry of the wind too lonely. He would be there to hold her. But those were promises he couldn't make, no matter how much he might wish it. He couldn't be certain... And now, he knew with heart-shattering clarity how high a price such uncertain vows might cost him.
"The dagger—my mother gave it to me. Where would a gentle lady have gotten such a weapon? It might have been handed down through the family, I suppose. Or collected, somehow. But—"
"But?"
"It would have been far easier if—" He stopped. Was he utterly mad to even consider the possibility? Yet she was peering at him with those eyes, ancient and wise as the first winds ever born, yet at the same time as gloriously new and fresh with wonder as a babe's.
"If what, Ciaran?"
"If she got the dagger when it was... new."
He saw a tiny shiver work through Fallon, but not the unrestrained joy he might have expected. He was admitting there was a possibility her wild tale was true, that he was the man she'd said he was from the beginning. Yet her pleasure was tarnished with something akin to resignation, and a soft sorrow on those lips that had tasted so sweet, so right beneath his when he'd claimed them with his own.
Because if he was the legendary Ciaran, she could never follow him into the kingdom beyond the mist. Did she realize, though, his bold, beautiful lady, that that might be the least painful sort of parting? A far worse one would be to walk away from her as a mere mortal man, to wander the world, a hunted fugitive, a smuggler, a dishonored criminal, gazing up at the heavens every night and knowing that Mary Fallon might be watching the stars, might be thinking of him, yearning for him, the way he yearned for her.
He looked away from Fallon, already feeling that rending of his spirit, and was stunned to see the walls of the castle ruin rising up before them.Caislean ag Dahmsa Ceo, Fallon had called it. Castle of the Dancing Mist. And the mist did seem to dance about it, ethereal, exquisite, until the shattered walls became oddly graceful, the slender fingers of stone seeming more powerful in their destruction. The single soaring tower that had escaped whole was a triumph.
Fallon had found him here, battered, confused. Whatever secrets shrouded his past, the key was here.
Ciaran drew rein and dismounted, tying his horse to a low-lying branch. Then wordlessly he picked his way through crumbling stone softened by wisps of grass, delicate clouds of wildflowers, all the sharp edges worn away by wind and rain and the loving hands of time.
Did he belong to this place? To this land that had cast a spell upon his heart? Or was it only that he suddenly wanted to, for Fallon, for mischievous, elfin Caitlin Dunne and Siobhan Moynihan with a babe in her belly and grief for two sons shadowing her lovely eyes?
"This castle—it isn't ancient enough to have been built when Ciaran first lived," he said quietly. "You say Ciaran returned to build it centuries after he'd first been bewitched. Why would he do such a thing? He couldn't live in it, Fallon. He had to leave it behind, empty. What could he hope to accomplish?"
"The legend says that each time Ciaran was summoned back to the land of mortals, his heart bled. He could see that three hundred more years of pain, of suffering must pass before he could return again."
