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“I thought so. I like being needed.” She skimmed fingers down the warrior braid on the side of his head. “I went so long without being needed. Marco, yes, and Sally and Derrick. But that’s different. So right now, the sleep and sex and whatever else we can fit in, it’s enough.”
“I haven’t any more right now. Bloody council meeting.”
“That’s fine. I’m due in the training field soon. Bloody archery.”
“I’m told you’re not as pathetic as you were.”
“Shut up. Go be the leader of the world.”
He cupped his hands under her elbows, lifted her to her toes. Kissed her, and kissed her while the mists thinned away and the sun showered through.
“Keep Bollocks with you, would you? And someone—Kiara or Brigid or whoever you like—along if you go off to the village or visiting.”
“Stop worrying.”
“I’ll worry less if you do those things.”
“All right. Worry less. I’m going to get my bow and be less pathetic. I also think I’ll have a better time than you will.”
“No doubt of that. Keep the dog close,” he repeated, then strode back over the bridge toward the castle, where the banner flew at half staff.
She stayed busy, day after day, training, helping with repairs—both magickally and practically—and spent as much time as she could with Phelin’s family.
Her family, too, she thought as more and more memories of her first three years shimmered back. Flynn’s big hands tossing her high in the air so she squealed, Sinead frosting cookies, running in the fields with Morena, with Seamus and Phelin always plotting an adventure.
She’d been as at home with them as she’d been on the farm where she’d been born.
But it was Flynn, warrior, council member, father, who finally snapped the tight rope she’d kept binding her own grieving.
She wanted the air, and she wanted the quiet. After giving herself two early-morning hours to work on her book—and hoping for another two in the evening—she took Bollocks out for a walk and a wander.
Just a little time, stolen time as she thought of it, to do nothing. Then she’d work with Rowan—council member and of the Wise—along with a few young witches on potions and charms. They’d continue to rebuild the supplies used during the aftermath of the battle.
Magicks weren’t an abracadabra thing, but effort, skill, practice, and intent.
She’d fit in some gardening work to help replenish crops destroyed during the battle. She hoped to persuade Sinead and Noreen to work with her there, to get them out in the air and the sun for even an hour.
Field training after that, her least favorite part of any day. Sword work and hand-to-hand made up today’s torture, and she already anticipated the bruises.
It amazed her how full her days here were, how one tumbled right into the next. Though she found the castle endlessly fascinating, the wild roll of the sea exhilarating, she missed her pretty cottage on the other side, missed the farm in Talamh’s west, her friends there, her grandmother. And, she could admit privately, the self-satisfying routine she’d developed since she’d left Philadelphia so many months before.
But she was needed here, for now, and had come to understand that simply seeing her go about the daily tasks gave people in the Capital hope after so much loss.
She let Bollocks play in the water under the bridge, and through her bond with him knew that while it made him happy, he missed their bay, missed running the fields with Aisling’s boys and playing with Mab, the Irish wolfhound that minded them.
When he scrambled out to shake, she dried him with a stroke ofher hands. The November wind came brisk, smelled of the sea and the turned earth. She saw some busy in the gardens on the rising hills and fields, bringing winter crops back to life.
She’d worked with others of the Wise to heal the charred and bloody ground, and now saw the fruits of the work in the orange pumpkins and butter-yellow squash, the greens of kale and cabbage.
Flowers and herbs thrived again. She saw fresh thatch on the roofs of cottages, children playing in dooryards, people in the village browsing stalls and shops, smoke puffing from chimneys.
Life and light, she thought, were stubborn things. They must, and they would, bloom and shine against the dark. They would not be snuffed out like a candle, but flame on and on and on.
She had a part in that, and she’d do whatever she needed to do to keep that fire burning.
Bollocks pranced ahead, then under the dripping branches of a willow. She followed him through and found Flynn sitting on a stone bench with Bollocks’s head on his knee.
She didn’t have to see the man’s grief when she felt it like an anchor on her heart.
