“Then I can be with my family, and the stars will shine over all the worlds. No one from mine has done this, but no one until now has found the five others. And we have the Fire Star. We have to keep it safe.”
“We will.”
Bran turned to the globe he’d set on the counter, with the star shimmering inside. “I have a place where it will be safe, where she can’t reach it.”
“Not with us?” Doyle turned away from his watch. “I’m sworn to guard it.”
“As am I. If we keep it with us, we risk her getting through us—we all know she won’t stop trying just that. But if it’s not with us, even if she gets through, she won’t have it.”
“I don’t much like the idea of not being able to keep an eye on it,” Riley said. “Just where are you talking about?”
“It’s best to show you. I’ll be a minute.”
When he left the room, Riley scowled into her beer. “If it’s not with us, what’s to stop her from finding the hiding place, just walking the hell away with it?”
“I’m not risking that. And she damn well won’t get through me.”
Like the others, Sawyer studied the star. “I’ve got to lean with Riley and Doyle on this. I’ve spent damn near ten years looking, and now we’ve got the first of them, and burying it somewhere doesn’t sit right. We’ve handled what she’s thrown at us so far.”
“Bleeding, nearly drowning,” Sasha pointed out. “And with the opinion she’s just been playing with us. What happens when she gets serious?”
“If it’s away from us, how can we know it’s safe?” Tentatively, Annika reached out a hand for the globe. When her fingers brushed it, the star inside pulsed.
“We’re still not a team, not a unit. Even after all this.” Weary, Sasha turned to the sink to wash blood and salve from her hands. “You don’t trust, not enough to wait to see and understand what he means to do. You don’t trust what we are if you really believe we can only keep it safe if we can see it, or touch it.”
She turned back, grabbed up Riley’s beer, took a deep gulp. “For God’s sake. For God’s sake! I’m standing here after yet another battle with—I don’t know what to call them—her minions? That’ll do. Her minions. Cleaning up blood while this god-star sits on the kitchen counter as casually as a toaster. I’m standing here with a mermaid, a lycan, a man who can zip through time and space—and whatever the hell Doyle’s got going he hasn’t decided to tell us. I was fine living my life. Fine! My work, my house, the quiet. I’d learned to deal with what I had—or to ignore it so I could just live the life I thought I wanted. Now I’m fighting some power-crazed god who’d like to end my life altogether. I’m in love with a magician and shooting a crossbow. And I’m drinking beer when I don’t even like beer.
“Every one of you, every single one, has been on this—this quest—or known about it for years. I’ve known for weeks, so why am I the only one here who can reach down and pull out some goddamn trust when the person with power tells us he has a way?”
“Ass,” Sawyer muttered, “consider yourself kicked.”
“I don’t want to kick anyone’s ass. I don’t want to rant like this, and I can’t seem to stop. God, I think I need to sit down.”
As she started to, she saw Bran in the doorway, his gaze—dark and intense—locked on her face.
“Just had a little meltdown,” she managed, and did sit. “I’d apologize to everyone, but I think I had some valid points mixed in with the tirade.”
“More valid points than tirade,” Riley told her.
Annika poured a glass of wine, brought it to Sasha. “I’m apology.”
“I’ll give you waiting to hear the plan.” Doyle leaned back on the counter, nodded to Bran. “So let’s hear it.”
“I thought of it sitting on the terrace of the hotel, the first day. It needed some work,” he added, and laid the painting on the table.
“My painting—the one you said you’d bought.”
“Before I met you, yes. I sent for it. I told you I knew these woods, this path. Because I’ve walked that path through those woods, toward that light. I have a place there, of my own.”
“In Ireland.”
“Yes, near the coast in Clare. A place I happened upon some time ago. It spoke to me, so I built a home there, though Sligo had always been mine before. This place, at the end of the path and into the light called to me. And to you, or why else would you have painted it? Why else would I have wandered into that gallery and seen it, and known it for mine? There’s a purpose in things, and this is clearly purposeful. The star will be safe there. I believe with all I am it will be beyond her there.”
“Okay.” Riley shoved up to pace. “Okay, I get it. That’s a powerful and strong connection. And I’m giving Sash her valid points. We should have more trust. But how do we get it there? Tap Sawyer for another zip—can you get us all that way?”
“If I had the coordinates, yeah, I think so.”
“I’ve a better way, the way I’m sure it stays beyond her. I can send it through the painting.”
“That’s fucking genius. Is that even possible?” Riley demanded. “Because it’s fucking genius, and makes me want to kick my own ass for doubting you had a solid plan.”
“It’s my place, and Sasha’s vision of it, here. It’s possible, yes.”
Doyle stepped over to the table. “Through the painting to the coast of Clare.”
“Where your people were from.” Bran gave Doyle a long, cool study. “I think that’s not without purpose either.”
Doyle looked up into Bran’s eyes, then shifted his gaze to Sasha. “Trust comes hard, but you have mine for this.”
“We’re six, all linked to each other, to a purpose, to a quest,” Bran added, brushing a hand over Sasha’s. “We must all agree.”
Sawyer scanned the room, nodded. “So say we all.”
“Then.” Bran walked over, lifted the star in its shielding globe. He set it gently on the painting, in the glow of light at the end of the path. “If so say we all, each lay a hand on the globe, and say this. Together:
“To protect this bright fire, this pure light, I send it safe where no eye can see, no hand can touch, no darkness shadow.”
As they echoed his words, Bran lifted his own hands up, seemed to draw power out of thin air. It swirled around the globe.
As he lowered his hands, fingers spread over the hands of the others, the star began to sink into the painting. Its fire sparked and simmered on that quiet path in sudden and brilliant reds and golds.
Then it poured toward the light, illuminated all.
And went quiet.
“I could feel it.” Riley lifted her hand, turned it over. “The heat—it’s all yours, Bran—the power of it. And now—nothing.”
“It’s safe.”
“But the painting’s a kind of portal to it, right?”
Bran nodded at Sawyer. “So, as I sent for the painting, I’ll send it back. And it will be beyond her as well.”
“Maybe what we should do next is get ready to get out of here,” Riley began. “In the opposite direction.”
“I don’t think we’ll get anywhere without a fight,” Doyle put in. “Even if Sawyer was up to another group trip this quickly.”
“It’s more than that.” Bran looked at Sasha. “Isn’t it?”
“It’s not—or we’re not—done here yet. I don’t know why. And I don’t know where we look next, or which star we’re supposed to look for. I can’t see or feel. I . . . Maybe the six of us were only meant to find and protect the first.”
“Don’t buy that.” Sawyer shook his head. “Not for a minute.”
“You trust, but doubt yourself too easily.” Obviously irritated, Bran held his hands over the painting, vanished it.
“I can’t call it up the way you do.”
“I say we take a break. Take an hour.” Riley set a hand on Sasha’s shoulder. “One thing, we have to get that boat out of the yard.”
“I think we wait for dark there. I can ease it back to the marina, but I don’t want to give people a heart attack. An hour’s good.” Sawyer got to his feet. “Since we’ve got time, let’s recharge a little. I need to let my family know the status. Maybe somebody’s got an idea how and where we go from here.”
“And when she comes?” Doyle demanded.
“I’ll bring the wrath of a thousand lights down on her,” Bran said. “From the high point. I can give her fear, and perhaps some pain. And give us time to go where we’re meant to go.”
“I’ll spend some time with the maps,” Sawyer said.
“I’ll make some calls.” Riley followed him out of the room.
As Sasha rose to clear, Annika nudged her aside. “No, I can do this. You could rest.”
“I could, thanks. It might help.”
“You should go with her,” Annika suggested to Bran when Sasha left. “She’s still upset. She stood for you. You should stand for her.”
On a sigh, Bran leaned down to kiss her cheek. “I think you may be the best of us.”
“Go ahead.” Once again, Doyle turned to the door. “I’ll stand watch.”
* * *
When he got upstairs, she stood at the open terrace doors, her back to the room.
“I don’t know why you’re angry with me. I can’t just snap my fingers and know the way you can snap yours.”
“I’m not angry. You’re mistaken.”
“I know what I feel.”
“Maybe it’s your own anger.”
She whirled around. “I can feel yours, and yes, it makes me mad. I’m doing the best I can, the best I can even after watching people I care about being slashed and bitten while you shield me so I barely get a scratch. I won’t be the weak link.”
“You’re the only one who thinks you are, and you’re wrong.”
“Then stop being pissed because I can’t pop out a vision at will. God.” She pressed her fingers to her eyes. “I’m tired of fighting.”
“Good, as fighting’s not at all what I had in mind.”
With a wave of his hand, he slammed the terrace doors, shuttered the glass. The sound was explosive enough to have her taking an instinctive step back as he strode to her.
He dragged her to him, pulling her head back by fisting a hand in her hair. Crushing his mouth to hers with such heat, such force it stole her breath.
“Does that feel angry?”
She pressed a hand on his shoulder as much to push him away as for balance. “Yes.”
Whatever sparked in his eyes seemed beyond fury to her.
“You don’t know the depths of it. I nearly let you drown.”
“Let me— You didn’t—”
“Didn’t I hold you in the dream, wake you from it? Then I set it aside as no more than just that. Then you were gone. Gone. And I couldn’t find you.”
She started to say his name, but he took her mouth again, plundered it. Anger, yes, there was anger in him, and guilt, and over it all a hot and reckless desire that left her reeling.
“Do you think it’s all duty then? All convenience?” He swept her toward the bed. “Know what I feel, what I want, and what, by the gods, I can make you want.”
Could she have stopped him? Was there enough of the man who’d touched her so tenderly in him still to stop the one who tore away her shirt, and ravaged?
She didn’t know. She didn’t care. She didn’t want to stop him.
His hands bruised her, and thrilled her, as he ripped her into the dark where desire was edged with panicky stabs of desperation.
Here was a storm unleashed, and she had no choice but to ride it.
He took, too unhinged to care how roughly. She cried out for him, and hearing the shocked pleasure in the sound only fed the rising hunger. He’d have all of her, and be damned the cost.
The room went to shadows, darkened by his needs. In them, under him, she trembled, she arched, she writhed.
When he plunged into her, he muffled her scream with his mouth. Drove and drove and drove, blind with greed, as helpless against the violence of it as she.
He felt the climax rip through her, felt it tear another cry from her throat, and felt like a savage at the feast.
He pushed for more, and more, until her breath was sobs, until her hands slid limp off his back, until at last that fire gathered like a fist and struck hard and full.
He collapsed on her, stripped raw, his heart pounding, his mind still whirling in the dark.
Then her arms came around him.
His mind began to clear as did the shadows that haunted the room.
He cursed himself, viciously, but struggled to keep his voice easy as he lifted his head. “I hurt you. I— Ah, God.”
Her eyes swam with tears as they stared into his.
“I had no right.” He started to push away, but her arms tightened around him.
“You didn’t hurt me. I’m not crying—or not like that. I didn’t know . . . I never knew anyone could want me like that. That it was possible to want like that. I didn’t think it was duty, Bran, but maybe I did think, at least a little, that part of it—of this—was convenience. I don’t think that now.”
He laid his forehead on hers. “You weren’t breathing. Things had to be done—that’s duty—but all the while, from that moment when I put my hand on your heart and you had no breath to this moment all I could think was I’d lost you. For duty. For a promise made before either of us existed.
“And everything stopped until you breathed again. And the time between your breaths, fáidh, was an eon.” He touched his lips to her brow, shifted away. “Since this . . . duty came to be mine, I’ve known little fear. It’s been a challenge, a mission, a purpose. And now there’s fear, that you could be hurt beyond my power to heal.”
“It’s my purpose, too.” She sat up with him. “And I’m afraid something will happen to you. Doyle said I was the glue. Maybe that’s true, though I don’t think the glue’s as strong as it needs to be. But you’re the power—the source of it. We can’t do this without you. And I . . .”
“You said you were in love with me.”
“What?”
“Downstairs, when you were giving the others a good piece of your mind, you said you were in love with me.”
“I was raving.” To stall for time, for composure, she looked around for her clothes, found the ripped ruin of her shirt.
He took it from her, tossed it aside, then caught her hands in his. “Are you? You know feelings, Sasha. Is what you feel a spark, an attraction, a bit of heat and excitement? Or is it love, that holds and waits and opens?”
“I want it to be the first. So much easier for both of us.”
“But is it?”
She shut her eyes. “I’m so in love with you. I fell in love with you before I met you. In dreams, in drawings. Then there you were, and part of me just wanted to fall at your feet and beg.”
“You beg from no one.” He caught her face in his hands. “You beg for nothing.”
“I dreamed of you, and I’m here with you. And that’s so much more than I ever expected to have.”
“Woman, you can infuriate me. Would you settle for so little?”
“To take more than you’d ever expected isn’t settling.”
“Bollocks to that.” He grabbed her hand, pressed it to his heart. “Damned if it’s just words for you. Feel it. Feel what I feel. Know it. Don’t argue with me,” he said before she could. “I’ve opened to you. Now feel what I feel.”
She might have resisted, tried to block, but he pushed—and her own heart wanted so much to know. It flowed from him, into her. The love. Soft and generous, fierce and determined, powerful and weak. A vow as yet unspoken.
All she felt for him echoed back—him to her.
“You love me.” She let out a half laugh, lifted his hand to her heart. “You love me. You love me.”
“A phrase spoken three times is powerful magick. I suppose now I’ll have to. I love you—and now you have the words as well. What I feel, what you know is only yours. No one before, and for always. Yours.
“The moment I saw you, I wanted. That’s the spark. And when I had you, I wanted only more. That’s the binding. But the love, and all it means, came in a dozen ways.”
“I need to . . .” She wrapped her arms around him, pressed her face to his shoulder as everything she felt, he felt, twined together inside her like braided rope. “Hold on. To you, to this, to this exact moment. Whenever I’m sad or afraid, I can bring it back, and be here.”
“Whenever you’re sad or afraid, I’ll be there. This moment, and all the ones after.” He drew her back to look in her eyes. “Love is a serious business for me, fáidh. A serious and lasting business. I give you my oath, heart and body, love, loyalty, and fidelity. They’re yours, first and last.”
It stopped her heart, stopped it so it could beat stronger again. Not only love, she realized, but a pledge. He pledged himself to her.
“Will you give me yours?”
She thought she’d known joy, but here was joy with a promise. “Yes, I give you my oath, heart and body, love, loyalty, and fidelity. They’re yours, first and last.”
When he kissed her, the promise shone through it, bright as the stars.
* * *
He left her before the hour was up. Even amid joy came duty. She dressed for her vision, for the storm she knew would come. If not tonight, then soon. When it came, when Bran brought it, she would be with him, on the promontory, with the wind, the fierce lightning and pelting rain.
It would be enough; whatever they did would be enough. She believed it. And accepted, if she was wrong, and their best wasn’t enough, she’d known the true depth of love.
As she put on her hiking boots she considered her own preparations. She’d keep the crossbow close, within reach, and with a quiver full of bolts. The knife Bran had given her would be, from now on, sheathed on her belt.
If there was time, she’d practice—hand-to-hand, the damn push-ups, pull-ups, the tumbling. She’d practice until she was strong and quick. And she would open herself to visions—and that uneasy connection with Nerezza.
With some regret, she picked up her sketch pad. The time she’d given to her art had to wait now as she filled it with other things, immediate things.
But when she started to tuck it away, she found herself reaching for a pencil.
Open, she thought again, because something was pushing at her mind, something pushed to get in.
No, she realized. Something pushed for freedom.
She gave herself to it, stepped outside, in the light, propped the book on her easel. She heard voices below, battle plans and strategies, maneuvers and deceptions. For now, she closed them off, let the door open inside her.
Quickly, confidently now, she began to sketch what formed in her mind.
When it faded, her arm trembled with fatigue and the light had softened toward evening. She stepped back to stare not at a sketch but a painting. Her sketches littered the terrace floor, but on the easel stood a finished painting of an island of rough hills and bold flowers, of steep streets where buildings climbed and trees spread. And three crags rose out of the sea near it like guards on watch.
“Here.” Bran stepped toward her, held out a glass. “Drink this.”
She didn’t ask what it was, simply took it, drank it. Her throat was dry as dust, and the cool liquid slid through her, settled her.
“I don’t remember painting this. I felt something pushing to get out, and started to sketch. This.” She bent to pick up one of the sketches. “I saw it, so clearly. Not just in my head, but when I looked out, at the sea. It was there. Boats in the water, and those three rocks spearing up. I don’t know where it is, or what it is. Or if it’s real.”
“It’s real. Sit a moment. You’ve been at it for nearly three hours.”
“I’m fine.” She let out a half laugh. “In fact, I feel more than fine. What did I drink?”