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It ripped through her, the fire and flame. He smothered her cry with his mouth, feasting there as her body trembled, as her body went limp. Drove into her and into her until he emptied.
And even empty, she filled him.
Though her muscles had turned to water, she stayed wrapped around him. Her heart thudded so hard, she wondered it didn’t sound in all the worlds.
As she tried to find her breath again, she spotted Bollocks on his bed by the fire, curled in a ball, his back very deliberately toward them.
“We lit all the candles, the fire’s still roaring. And I think we embarrassed the dog.”
“I like how you look in firelight, in candlelight. And the dog, he’ll learn to live with it.” Keegan turned his face into her hair. “Sure this wasn’t the plan.”
“You had a plan?”
“I thought to take some time, some care. You seduced me, so it’s on your head, isn’t it?”
Oh, how she loved the idea she could seduce him.
“We didn’t use much of the night. Plenty of time left to implement your plan.”
He shifted her so he could look at her. “I know where you came from, but I often wonder what turn of the path sent you to me.”
“I often wonder what turn put you on my path. Then I decide I don’t need to know, because I’m fine with it.”
“I’m more fine than I ever thought to be, and still I wonder. But since it seems we’re on the same path, let me show you my plan.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Because he needed the time, and the feel of his horse under him, Keegan mounted Merlin for the trip to the Capital. He left before daybreak, before even Harken started his daily tasks, and with Cróga soaring overhead, set off in the cool dark at a full gallop.
He wanted the solitude and the speed, with the only sound the stallion’s hooves ringing on the hard-packed road. In the silence, he could think.
Odran had found a way to slip Yseult’s potion into Talamh, and into the hands of one of his supplicants. The portals, though guarded well, remained vulnerable. He might have sent a raven through, or a Were in its spirit animal form. Yseult herself may have bespelled the guards long enough to slither in and out again.
They could, and would, hold back an army, but a lone spy or messenger presented a different challenge. After all, he himself sent spies into Odran’s world.
They’d weakened Odran’s forces in the Battle of the Dark Portal, but full victory remained elusive.
And if he looked at the long river of history, it would remain elusive until Odran’s death.
Weakening him wasn’t enough; containing him only offered respites from the war. It wouldn’t end, it couldn’t end, until Odran ended.
And only Breen could end him.
The sword of the taoiseach and all it stood for couldn’t strike theblow, at least not from his hand. Gods knew Eian had wielded it with purpose and skill, but had failed and given his life in the effort.
Every song, every story on that long river of history put the weight of it all on the Daughter of the Fey, and nothing he did changed it.
And now, because he loved where he’d vowed he wouldn’t, he feared for her. And fear clouded judgment when it must remain keen. It rocked the heart when the heart must stay steady, and troubled the mind when the mind must hold cool and clear.
So he rode at a gallop toward the first break of light in the east until the distance from her, from the other side, even from the valley helped the keen and steady, the cool and clear.
Around him as they slowed to a strong trot, the land began to wake. Lights glowed in cottages and farmhouses; animals stirred in the fields. Birds chorused the dawn.
He saw the waking sun glint off the snow icing the high mountains and mists rising from streams and curtaining the deep forests. A six-point buck, regal in his winter coat, waded through the mists, lifted his head to scent the air. When he crossed to the stream, a small herd followed, sliding silent through the curtain.
A pair of hawks, calling to each other, circled the sky on the hunt for breakfast. A red fox streamed across a field and into the forest shadows and its den, done with its night’s work.
Small magicks, he often thought, as essential to life, a good life, as breath.
