"I can only imagine what it was like for you, losing your father and brother, being left alone here to struggle to take care of your mother. But Ido know this—after Niall found me wandering the hills, he told me about the last day you all spent together as a family here, your mother's joy, your father's laughter. He described the way you darted about the bushes gathering fistfuls of berries, remembered you could not eat enough of them. When he spoke of you, I saw how vivid the memory was to him. He recalled just how much you loved the berries so long ago. Is it not possible that his gifts are telling you things he cannot say?"
Fiona fretted her bottom lip. "The only thing Niall can do for me now is to ride away from Daire, leave Mother and me as he found us! I want nothing from him."
"If that were true, you would have thrown his wooden sword into the fire, not kept it, safe, tucked upon your father's cairn so many years."
Fiona gaped, her cheeks flaming as if she had been caught in some shameful act. "How—how did you know?"
"Niall and I found the sword together. It is a beautiful place where your father sleeps, Fiona. So peaceful, well tended, filled with the love and memories you tried so hard to keep alive. After what I saw there, you will never make me believe that you had forgotten your brother."
"Nay!" Fiona said in a hard little voice. "I buried him there, in my heart, with my father. It was easier to pretend he was dead than admit that he left me behind on purpose and never even glanced back. The brother I knew is dead."
"He is alive, Fiona. And devoured by his guilt. He was only a boy when Conn came to Daire, a helpless child just like you were, caught up in things he could not control. He lost his father the same terrible way you did, but you still had your mother and Daire, fragments of their love all around you. He was swept away from everything and everyone he had ever known."
"You cannot expect me to give him sympathy?"
"He is not asking for your sympathy. Not even your forgiveness. All he is asking you to give him, Fiona, is a chance."
"A chance for what? To play at fairies and dragons again? A chance to bandage scraped knees and soothe my hurts? A chance to be part of the family he cast to the devil? It is not so simple to forget all that happened. You cannot begin to understand!"
"That is true. I never knew my family, and now I never will. They are dead. It is too late for me. But not for you. Niall meant to kill me in the woods that first night after we left the abbey. Icould still hate him for that. But I have not regretted for a moment offering him another chance. He has shown me anger, aye, and impatience, but also great tenderness, a questing spirit, a desperate desire to do what is right. He is a man with flaws like anyone, but he is a man who tries, Fiona."
The girl stared at her, almost pouting, obviously torn. "But what if..."
"If he fails you again? Then you will be as you were when we found you—alone. But if you can mend things with Niall, heal this wound between you and your brother... think, Fiona. Neither of you will ever be alone again."
The girl swallowed hard, and, despite Fiona's best efforts to disguise it, Caitlin saw a flicker of hope in her face. "Is this how your nuns argue people out of lives of sin?"
Caitlin smiled. "I do not believe anyone could persuade you to do anything you did not want to do deep inside, Fiona. But if you sift through what I have said, if it feels right to you, then why not take this chance?"
Muttering imprecations on nuns, brothers, and perfectly good rages ruined, Fiona turned and walked away. Caitlin sighed, noting that Fiona strode determinedly in the opposite directionfrom the path Niall and his mother had taken earlier.
Stubborn and brave, bruised and still hurting, the girl tugged at Caitlin's heart almost as much as the stalwart man who was Fiona's brother, a man who had finally opened his heart to the most fragile sense of hope.
Twilight ranfingers of rose and gold across the green hills of Daire, setting their crests aglow. Niall paused for a moment at his task. A rusted knife he had unearthed amidst the rubble of the castle mews days earlier was dulled with scraps of wood shavings as he gazed up at the countryside that had once been his home. As the adored son of Ronan, he had been too busy about his mischief to take in the magic of this place. And as Conn's fosterling, he had been too bitter to remember Daire with anything except shame. But now, he saw the land as his father must have an eternity ago, with an unbidden welling of pride, an unwelcome ache at the rich gift of belonging to such a place.
But nay, Niall thought with a twinge of sadness. He could never truly belong to Daire. SoonConn would grow impatient with the absence of his strongest warrior and the foster son he had affection for. The longer Niall was absent, the more suspicions would be aroused that something was amiss. It would not be long before Conn would send men searching. Niall would have to ride away, leave Daire behind. Strange that a place he had hated should suddenly steal into his heart.
The knife skidded off a knot in the wood, and he cursed as it nicked one finger. Niall stared down at the drops of blood soaking into the turf at his feet. Aye, his blood, the blood of his father, his father's father, all had flowed from this land, made it almost... sacred somehow. What a terrible time to realize such a truth, just as he was losing Daire again forever.
But he would take memories with him, and so would his sister. Precious things no chieftain or twist of fate could ever steal. He turned back to the object he had labored on for nearly three days, uncertainty and pride warring inside him. It was nearly finished. Perhaps somehow it would help Fiona understand.
A crunching of footsteps on the stone-scattered turf startled him. He leapt to his feet with awarrior's instinct. His cheeks burned when he saw Fiona smirking down at his cut finger.
"Did Conn's warriors fail to teach you how to handle sharp edges, brother?" she asked, shaking her head in mode dismay.
A stinging retort sprang to his lips, but he swallowed it, forcing himself to look past Fiona's nasty expression to the softness all but hidden in eyes so like his own.
But her gaze had already fallen on his carving—a box just big enough for her to carry, its wooden surface gold and new and sweet-smelling from the stroke of his knife. "I could understand you spending your time carving the spear. It is a weapon, after all, even though I cast it in the dirt. But Niall of the Seven Betrayals, Conn's mightiest warrior, taking up the task of a mere underling?" She pressed her hand against her breast in mock dismay. "What could be so important you would lower yourself to such depths?"
"This is." Niall straightened, stunned at the flutter of excitement and unease in the pit of his stomach, wanting so much to please her. "It is a—a chest."
"I can see that." She pulled a face. "What is it for? The heads of your enemies? The blood gold you should have gotten for Caitlin's murder?"
He would not let her burning words anger him. "I made it for you."
Fiona's eyes widened, something sweet and fearful curving her lips. Surprise. Disbelief. Hope.
Niall sucked in a deep breath. "I hoped that you could put your treasures in it, all the things you wish to remember. That way, you can keep a part of Daire with you even after we must leave it."
