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“I live near there—in the twenty-first century—but I’ve been sent there to ferret things out from both the future and the past. It’s interesting seeing the same place from different vantage points.”
Arianrhod redirected her oblique gaze to face him more directly. “Are ye going to tell me more about that?”
“Nay.” After a long pause, he added. “If you’re truly curious, ask your kin.”
She cocked her head to one side, intrigued. “Why them and not you?”
“I go where I’m sent. Like right now. If I had my way, I’d be swimming with the Selkies off Northern Ireland.”
Her interest deepened. “Selkies is it? What exactly are you?”
“I have no idea.”
The bitterness she’d picked up earlier was back in force. She considered scanning him with magic to answer her own question, but restrained herself. Instead, she picked a different approach. “How is it ye doona know?”
“Arawn fished me from a time-travel tunnel when I wasn’t much past boyhood. He did something, so I have no memories from before then. If I had a place to return to, I have no idea where or when it is.” He hooded his gaze.
Arianrhod shuttered her magic to offer the illusion of privacy in their cramped quarters. Obviously the god of the dead had his reasons for waylaying Angus. Arawn never did anything that wasn’t carefully scripted beforehand. She ground her teeth together in frustration. He and Gwydion were two of a kind. Magic pushed against her mind. She took a chance and laid a hand on Angus’s thigh.
He flinched and said, “Don’t. I don’t want your pity.”
“I wasna offering pity. Ye do want my knowledge, or ye wouldna have tried to peek inside my head just now.”
He looked hard at her, his eyes on fire with resentment. “Wouldn’t you do damn near anything to find out who you are? What you’re capable of?” The line of his jaw tightened. “Maybe since you’ve always known those things, you can’t imagine what it’s like to discover power you had no idea you possessed. Except you’re clumsy with it when it first surfaces.”
Once he began talking, his voice rose, and words came faster. “No one’s ever given me a straight answer—about anything. Some of what I dream is true-seeing, some isn’t. I’ve handed over information that created enormous problems.”
“Och, it canna be as bad as all that.” She tried for diplomacy, shielding her kin and hating herself for misplaced loyalty.
“Yeah, it can.” Muscles rippled across his jaw as he engaged in an inner struggle she could only guess at. “Your brother and some of the others have killed innocents on the basis of my visions.”
“Mayhap they doona know any more than you—” The words tasted false on her tongue, so she cut them off. “Why do ye suppose Arawn hid your origins? What of the others who tapped you to do their bidding? Even though we’ve never met afore, I’ve heard your name bandied about.”
“If I knew the answers to any of that, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Have ye tried telling them no?”
A short bark of a laugh, so harsh the tunnel walls drew back, burst from him. He twisted his mouth into a wry expression. “Have you ever told Ceridwen no?”
“Touché. Only on verra rare occasions. I’ve thought about it frequently, mind ye, but I’m one of them. Loyalty among brothers and all that rot. Ye should have a shred more latitude.”
“It seems I have far less. No say in anything, except during the brief periods when no one wants me to play whipping boy for them.”
“I’m sorry.”
His already intense gaze bored into her. She dropped her shielding and allowed him free access to her mind. It was a risk, but a small one. If he wished her ill, she’d have sensed it.
“You’re telling the truth.” Incredulity underscored his words, and he withdrew from her mind.
“Aye. Of course I am. What would be the purpose in lying to you?”
“I don’t know.” He laid a hand over the one she still had on his upper leg. “I’m so used to the Celts playing me like their own personal puppet, it never occurred to me you wouldn’t be like all the rest.”
Och, sweetheart. If ye only knew…
“Perhaps I can help figure out who ye are.”
“Why would you do that?” He forged on without stopping for breath. “If Arawn and Ceridwen and the rest found out, they’d be furious. The only reason I keep dancing to their tune is because they dangle the truth of my beginnings in front of me like a piece of meat before a starving dog. Part of me doesn’t give a crap anymore, but another part does.”
