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“I don’t scare easily, Lazarus.”
He grabbed her arm, pulling her in close enough that she tilted her head back to meet his gaze. She remained unflinching, but he sensed her uncertainty and perhaps even a hint of fear. As it should be.
“Then you’re a fool,” he said, letting her feel the killing weight of his regained powers.
She struggled, but he gripped her, his fingers biting into her flesh.
His mage energy flooded him. Tangled her heart in its serpent grip. Coiled around it. Slowed it beat by beat by beat until she gasped and went limp. Releasing the spell, he dropped her into a chair to recover before spilling his stomach into the slops jar. His legs barely holding him up, his body wracked with uncontrollable spasms as the presence retreated once more.
“I’ll do what I should have done from the beginning.” A clean shot to the head. A simple kill. Sabrina and her brother would be safe from St. John.
He no longer needed to worry about finding Máelodor.
His master would find him. He already had.
Aidan rested his chin on his hands. Gazed on Sabrina with older-brother exasperation that set her teeth on edge. “This isn’t exactly how I anticipated our first meeting.” He sighed. Shot a despairing glance at the unwelcome addition to this little tête-à-tête, sitting silent and watchful in the corner.
Sabrina braced herself against the unconscious fall into little-sisterly submissiveness. Felt Lady Kilronan’s scrutiny like a pricking up and down her spine. “Did you think we’d enjoy a nice reminisce over tea and cakes, Aidan? Tease each other over our misspent youth and compare notes of the past seven years?”
“Aye. Something along those lines.” Aidan smothered a smile behind his hand, but his dancing eyes gave him away as he shared a private joke with his wife.
For some reason, that just made her dig her heels in further. “You commanded me, Aidan. Like one of your servants or a dog brought to your side with a whistle. Did you ask whether I wished to leave the sisters for Dublin? Did you take into consideration what I might want?”
“How could you possibly know what you want when all you’ve known for the past seven years is Glenlorgan and the life of a priestess?” His features fell into more serious lines. “You’ve been closeted in that place long enough. You’ve not been home to Belfoyle once since Father and Mother died.”
“I don’t want to go to Belfoyle. What’s there for me now? It’s a house, Aidan. Not a home. And hasn’t been for the last seven years.”
“It could be.” He shot another exclusionary glance in Lady Kilronan’s direction. Obviously obtained the silent answer he was looking for since he turned back to Sabrina with new resolve. “This isn’t how I would have broached the subject, but now we’re hip deep in it, I might as well wade further. Cat and I want you to come with us when we return to County Clare, Sabrina. To live. I want you to get to know her. To see her as family. As a sister.”
That woman? Not bloody likely. She spun around to finally face the nervy hoyden who’d seduced Aidan into marriage. Found herself eye to eye with a young woman perhaps only a year or two older than herself. Slender. Slight. A sheen of jet black hair. Feline green eyes. Not exactly the blowsy hips and bosoms Covent Garden wares Sabrina had scornfully imagined bear-leading Aidan to the altar. But there was a spark of something in the way Lady Kilronan returned the unblinking stare. A maturity to her solemn features. Experience in the tiny lines dimpling the edges of her turned-down lips.
Rather than an overfriendly smile or oozing goodwill, she regarded Sabrina with the same wary watchfulness she received. Head cocked a bit to the side. A lip chewed between her teeth.
Nervous. Proud. Hopeful. Sad. Sabrina felt all these things when she looked upon Aidan’s wife. A twining of emotions showing only in the flicker of her eyes and the poised way she rested her hands in her lap.
No. She didn’t want to like her. Didn’t want to know her. She needed to stand firm. Stand fast. She wasn’t the eager-to-please baby sister any longer, and Aidan—no matter how much he shoved—couldn’t fit her back into that mold.
“My family are the priestesses of High Danu,” Sabrina bit the words off in staccato syllables. “And my home is Glenlorgan. The sooner you both understand that, the sooner we can end this farce of a family reunion and I can leave.”
Before her courage faltered or either of them could talk her around, she fled.
Cat’s sardonic “So, should we take that for a no?” echoing faintly after.
Sabrina smoothed out the note. Read it once more. Traced the ornate, swoopy handwriting. As flamboyant, showy, and enigmatic as Brendan himself.
Where had he been all these years? Why hadn’t he tried contacting her before now? Why had he let them all think him dead? And what did it all have to do with Daigh and Máelodor and St. John and her father?
She’d toyed with the idea of going to Aidan with the note right up until the moment he’d begun harping on Glenlorgan and his grand plans for family reunification. Her intentions had shriveled on the vine. He wouldn’t listen. He’d bull his way past her explanations and her questions, ignoring her. Treating her like a child with a pat on the head and careless condescension.
So whom did that leave?
Her fingers brushed over the ink. Held the edges of the card. Brendan had touched this. Brendan, the brother she’d wept over for nights too numerous to count, whose face haunted her dreams for long years after, who’d taken a part of her heart with him when he left.
Daigh asked about Brendan. Needed his help. And sought to warn him about St. John and Máelodor.
Perhaps she’d misread the sign from the gods. Perhaps they hadn’t been telling her to keep quiet about Brendan at all. Perhaps they’d been warning her of the life awaiting her if she didn’t speak to Daigh.
Perhaps she needed to stop relying on the gods. They were singularly unhelpful.
