Page 79 of The Pirate Queen

“It smells like wet earth. Like a freshly tilled garden row.” Once more she looks at him, pleading. “We have to go in now.”

Grace expects scorn but sees only steel on his face. Perhaps disappointment. Perhaps he thinks her a fool. “Is there anything else?” he asks.

She shakes her head, but too quickly.

“What is it?”

There is one last thing that she’s afraid to admit. Something that has echoed in her ears since first setting foot outside the tower this morning. But it is impossible. Horses. Running madly and free. A distant thunder of hooves, not clouds.

“Nothing,” Grace tells her father. “There is nothing.”

She wonders if he sees the heat in her face, the way her own skin betrays the lie. He watches as she sets her fingers over her ears to muffle the sound of those faraway steeds. His eyes narrow.

“Then back the mizzen,” Eóin orders.

Grace reaches out to ease the mizzen sheet until the wind pushes against its back side. She holds it there as the stern swings out and the bow rotates southward, then eastward, turning the boat toward land. All the while Eóin stares at her, reading something in her expression.

“How bad do you think this storm will be, bird?”

The turn complete, she releases the mizzen sheet, then trims it for their new point of sail. The wind is now at her back, blowing hair into her eyes, but still she does not look away from her father. This is the kind of storm she has always wanted. Until now.

“It will be terrible,” she tells him.

Later that night, Eóin walks into the bedchamber he shares with Maeve. He was born to a life at sea, has been on water since before he could walk on land. But no captain’s quarters can compare to his wife’s warm body and a feather mattress.

“You were right,” Eóin says.

Maeve lies directly in the center of their big curtained bed, taking her half out of the middle. She lies perfectly still, the slight whoosh of her breath sliding in and out her nose. He thinks she’s asleep, that she doesn’t hear him approach or peel off his clothing.

But she surprises him by murmuring, “I am always right. But why this time?”

He climbs into the bed and pulls his wife against his chest. “Gráinne has the Sense.”

Maeve goes still, then flinches when a crash of lightning hits the beach, rattling the walls of the tower house. By the time they reached Clare Island, the wind had risen and the waves were so choppy that Donal had leaned over the edge and emptied his stomach. The last time Eóin could remember a storm like this was the night their daughter was born. He’d felt it coming this morning; he knows what it means when his skin crawls, when his neck aches for no reason.

Rain lashes the walls around them like a whip. Thunder pounds the air, rattling the slate roof tiles. He can feel it in his body like a battering ram. He thinks of Gráinne up in her garret, listening, knowing she was right.

“I hadn’t expected her to have it,” he says.

“Why?” Maeve asks. “She is your daughter. More so than mine, it seems.”

“My own da didn’t have the Sense. Only my grandfather. And his before him. Skips a generation, I was told. And even then, I’ve never heard of it coming to a girl. Much less one so young. Manannán is usually stingy with his gifts.” He lies with his thoughts for a moment before adding, “But she has them all.”

“All of what?”

“All the ways to sense a storm. She could feel it and smell it. I think she could even hear it, though she wouldn’t admit as much.”

Maeve turns to him, her face in shadow. “How does one hear a storm? Thunder? That doesn’t seem so rare.”

Eóin pulls her closer so her head is tucked beneath his chin. “Horses. It sounds like horses running just out of sight. My grandfather called it Manannán’s steed. You can hear them, even miles out to sea. I’ve been told the sound can drive men mad when they don’t know what it means.”

“You’ve heard these horses?”

“Barely enough times to count on one hand. Thrice when I was young. Once on the day Gráinne was born. And again this morning, before the sun rose.”

Maeve lifts herself onto one elbow. “What does this mean?”

Eóin O’Malley, Chief of the Name, has not let his wife see him cry since the night Donal was presented to him. Now—as then—they are tears of apology. “It means that she will be in danger for the rest of her life.”