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Inside the manor house, she sat in a wondrous kitchen. A huge man with skin dark as coal worked at a stove, though she didn’t think he was a servant.
He was called King, but she understood this wasn’t his rank. He was a man, like the others. A soldier like her.
“We’ll patch you up,” Glenna told her. “If you want to clean up first, I can show you upstairs.”
“Not until we’re all here.”
Glenna cocked her head. “All right then. I don’t know about the rest of you, but I want a drink.”
“I’d kill for one,” Larkin said with a quick smile. “Actually, it seems I have. I didn’t believe you, not really.” He laid a hand on Moira’s. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right, it’s no matter. We’re alive, and where we’re meant to be. That’s what matters.” She looked up as the door opened. But it was Hoyt who came in, not the one called Cian. Still she got to her feet.
“We haven’t thanked you properly for coming to help us. There were so many. We were losing until you came.”
“We’ve been waiting for you.”
“I know. Morrigan showed you to me. And you,” she said to Glenna. “Is this Ireland?”
“It is, yes.”
“But—”
Moira merely laid a hand on Larkin’s shoulder. “My cousin believes Ireland is a fairy tale, even now. We come from Geall, that which was made by the gods from a handful of Ireland, to grow in peace and to be ruled by the descendent of the great Finn.”
“You’re the scholar.”
“Well, she loves her books, that’s for certain. Now this is fine,” Larkin said after a sip of wine.
“And the one of many shapes,” Hoyt added.
“That’d be me, all right.”
When the door opened again, Moira felt relief rush through her like a tide.
Cian flicked a glance at her, then at Glenna. “She needs tending to.”
“Wouldn’t budge until the gang was all here. Why don’t you finish your wine, Larkin? Moira, come on upstairs with me.”
“I have so many questions.”
“We all do. Let’s talk over dinner.” Glenna took Moira’s hand, drew her out.
Cian poured himself a drink, dropped down at the table. There was blood soaked through his shirt. “Do you usually bring your woman into strange places?”
Larkin took another gulp of wine. “She wouldn’t be my woman, but my cousin, and fact of it is, she brought me. Had a vision or a dream or something mystical or other—which isn’t that unusual for her. Fanciful sort, she is. But she was bound and determined to do this thing, and I couldn’t have stopped her. Those things out there, some came to Geall. They killed her mother.”
He took another deep drink. “We buried her this morning, if time’s the same here. Ripped her to pieces is what they did. Moira saw it.”
“How did she survive to tell it?”
“She doesn’t know. At least—well, she won’t really speak of it. Not as yet.”
Upstairs, Moira washed in the shower as Glenna had showed her. The sheer pleasure of it helped ease her aches and hurts, and she considered the heat of the water nothing short of miraculous.
When the blood and sweat had been washed away, she put on the robe Glenna left her, then came out to find her new friend waiting in the bedchamber.
“No wonder we speak of Ireland like a fairy tale. It seems like one.”
