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She looked to the lighted windows of Ard-siúr’s office. Nearly called out for help. She needed Sister Ainnir. Ard-siúr. Someone older and wiser and more experienced. But Daigh had begged her silence. Done more than beg. He’d demanded it. And no wonder. They already questioned his continued stay among them. Any more bizarre behavior and he’d be sent away.
She should heed Ard-siúr’s warning. That was the sensible thing to do. The safe thing to do.
She frowned, decision hardening to cool purpose.
But it was not the right thing to do.
Her body stiffened as if meeting an invisible challenge. She wouldn’t betray Daigh. Not yet. Not now. Not until she understood what the devil was happening.
A blanket drawn up over his shuddering shoulders. Words washing over his consciousness like a soothing draught. Clear. Melodious. Octaves purring up and down in a mantra, easing the tight bands across his back, the aching bowels where not even water rested easily.
He’d not scared her away. She’d returned. Gazed upon him with an incandescent smile that warmed a heart long frosted over. Challenged the darkness invading his soul to sit beside him. Whisper to him. Used her magic to lull him into a sleep untroubled by nightmares.
A glimpse of thick, unbroken forest speared by shafts of golden light. Gilding her hair. Sparkling in her blue eyes. Light hands cooling the raging fever heat of his body. He used these to fight the presence balanced startled and uncertain at the edge of his awareness.
“Sabrina.” He threaded his fingers with hers. Gripped her hand as if she might vanish with his other dreams.
She answered, but his name upon her lips tangled in the meeting rush of sleep. He heard nothing more.
“Come, Sister Clea. It’s long past the time when you should be asleep.”
Sabrina took the frail woman’s shoulders. Tried guiding her back to the bed at the end of the row while projecting the warmth of a soft bed. The snuggly security of heavy quilts. The delight at being safe and protected while outside the weather howled.
“I’ve got to find Paul,” Sister Clea whined. “Where’s Paul? Mother said he’d be home by the end of the summer.” She dug in her heels. Tried twisting out of Sabrina’s grasp. “I want Paul. He promised to be back by my birthday.”
“Shhh. You’ll wake the others.” Shuttered lamps at each end of the room sent long shafts of wavery light across the floor. Picked out the few filled beds. Blankets heaped against damp from the rain tapping at the windows.
Sister Clea kept up her insistence. “But he said he’d be back. Said to meet him at the wharf, and he’d bring me a gift.”
An unbidden image of Brendan, grim-faced and pale, assuring Sabrina he’d return in a month at the latest pushed its way into her sleep-deprived mind. He’d ridden out that same afternoon. The pain of his departure swallowed all too soon in the monumental agony of her father’s murder. Her mother’s death. If only she’d known it would be the last time she’d see her brother, she would have parted with him differently. No sulking. No cold shoulder. No standing like a statue in the circle of his farewell embrace. Those last horrible moments still haunted her.
“I’m sure Paul will be home soon,” Sabrina comforted.
But he wouldn’t.
Her brother would never return to the sister who still mourned him.
“I want Paul. He said he’d come. It’s my birthday, and he promised me.” Sister Clea writhed in Sabrina’s arms, her voice growing frantic, her actions frenzied. Not even the strength in Sabrina’s empathic link enough to calm the confused old woman.
“I’m home, lass. Just as I promised.”
A shadow stretched over Sabrina’s shoulder. Flickered in the uneven light like a risen spirit.
Her heart slammed into her throat, and she wheeled around to find herself face to chest with Daigh. Untucked shirt. Bare feet. A day’s growth of stubble darking his chin. Disconcerting in the extreme, but not, thankfully, the seaweed-soaked corpse she’d half expected.
“Paul?” Sister Clea’s reedy voice piped with sudden excitement, her wild gyrations subsiding as she peered with rheumy eyes at his shadow-hidden features. “Is that you?” One birdlike hand reached up. Her lips curved in a toothless smile. “It is you. I knew you’d come.” She sighed, leaning into his arm. Letting him guide her back to bed. “I’ve been waiting so, so long, Paul. It was naughty of you to stay away.”
“I tried coming home to you, lass, but . . .” His gaze passed over the hunched old woman to settle on Sabrina. “In the end, it was impossible.”
A prickly buzz shimmied up her spine like the perfect struck note of a tuning fork. The air shifting and shimmering with a million darting lights.
“But now I’m back . . .” Daigh’s voice came deep and echoing as if spoken through water. “For you.”
“You’ll stay this time?” Sister Clea asked, her girlish joy infectious. “For good?”
He offered a slow, solemn nod, though whether directed at Clea or Sabrina she couldn’t be certain.
The air turned hot and thick a
