Belladonna

  “When Caitlin had a first birthday, he sent a present and a packet of money by way of a ship heading north. A few weeks later, he sent another packet of money and a letter by way of another ship. A few weeks after that, there was just a packet of money. We never heard from him again. But the cottage belonged to Caitlin Marie, since she was a daughter of his lineage, so we still had a place to live.

  “During that time, after Devyn went back to the road without her, Maureen began sending letters to her sister Brighid, who lived on the White Isle. I don’t know how many letters she sent. She got a few in return, but whatever was said never eased her heart.”

  His throat closed with the pain of remembering.

  “Finish it,” Glorianna said gently.

  “When Caitlin turned two, Maureen tried to bake a cake as a special treat. Didn’t turn out right. Don’t know why it didn’t, but it wasn’t edible—and it was all she had to give. She wept and raged and smashed things.” His eyes filled with tears as he thought about that day, with him holding on to Caitlin to protect her from the shards of dishes and glass while his mother screamed out the pain of a broken life. “She walked out of the cottage—just left us there in the debris. And that night, she walked into the sea.”

  “Guardians of the Light and Guides of the Heart,” Glorianna whispered.

  Michael wiped the tears away. “You understand my mother, don’t you, Glorianna Belladonna? You know why she hurt, and what she should have done to ease the pain. Don’t you?”

  “It wasn’t your fault, Michael. It wasn’t Caitlin’s fault—or Devyn’s. She was a Landscaper who needed to connect with the places that resonated with her heart. The world was always calling, and she was always searching for something she couldn’t name but knew she needed. There were places that resonated for your father where she was comfortable, but they were his places, not hers. And there were some places where she became a dissonance because she didn’t fit at all. She never found the place her heart recognized as ‘home,’ and the pain of it eventually broke her.”

  “Will that happen to Caitlin Marie?” Michael asked.

  “I think the White Isle holds some of the answers Caitlin has been looking for,” Glorianna replied. Then she turned away. “I’d better see how Lee is coming with that bridge.”

  He held out a hand to stop her. “I’m not sure what I’m asking, so if I’m out of line I need you to tell me so.”

  She looked at him and waited.

  “I need to know what I do when I’m in one of my…landscapes. After things are settled with Caitlin, could you come with me to visit one of them?”

  For a moment, while they looked into each other’s eyes, he could have sworn the world itself held its breath waiting for her answer.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’ll come with you.”

  He stepped away to let her pass just as the ship sailed under that one bit of cloudy sky.

  Kenneday raised a hand, hailing him. He hesitated, wondering what excuse he could give. And then there was no reason to hesitate, no need for an excuse—because no one would be able to distinguish the clouds’ tears from his own.

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Merrill didn’t know what to think, didn’t know what to feel as she watched those…people…escort Brighid to the wrought-iron gate that served as the visitors’ entrance to Lighthaven. Brighid, who had been the heart of this sanctuary of Light and never should have left the White Isle to tend those demon-spawn children. Brighid, who was coming back to them maimed in body and spirit by her time in the outside world.

  When Shaela had told her someone was coming up the road in a hired carriage, she had rushed outside and locked the gate, unable—and unwilling—to hear Shaela’s objections over the pounding of her own heart. She had known on some level who was coming, and locking the gate was the only way to protect what she loved best. Not the people, despite her affection for the Sisters who nurtured the Light. No, it was the place itself she truly loved. Because it was the only safe thing to love.

  Anger clogged her throat, clogged her lungs, thickened the blood trying to pump through her heart. The carriage had stopped some distance away, but she could tell who crawled out of it as though it were some pus-filled womb. Not just the demon-spawn children of Brighid’s sister coming to foul a Place of Light, but the sorceress called Belladonna was with them, along with a dark-haired man.

  Belladonna. How had that creature managed to reach Lighthaven?

  Hadn’t she done everything in her power to cast the Dark out of Lighthaven? Since the day Belladonna appeared on the White Isle, hadn’t she stood in the gardens for hours, focusing her heart and will on the effort of casting out the Dark? Hadn’t she spent hours in the prayer room cleansing her own heart of any feelings that didn’t belong to the Light? Hadn’t she spent just as much time praying that the hearts of all her Sisters would be equally purified?

  It had worked. Almost. She had not been strong enough to cast out the shadows lodged in Shaela’s heart, and she had not been strong enough to cast out a friend who had served the Light for so many years. But those shadows must have provided the crack through which sorcery could reach the Light.

  She couldn’t let the crack widen, couldn’t let the contamination spread.

  She watched Brighid approach the visitors’ gate, leaning on the brown-haired man she assumed was Caitlin’s brother Michael, while Caitlin Marie kept pace with them. Belladonna and her companion were trailing far behind the others. Good. She had no desire to shame Brighid, but she was Lighthaven’s leader and had a duty to this place, so the words had to be said.

  She took a deep breath and let her authority and conviction ring in her voice. “It is with joy that we look upon our lost Sister and welcome her back to the place where her heart truly dwells. But the rest of you are not welcome here. I will not allow the darkness that crawls within your hearts to poison the Light. Brighid may come back to us—if she turns away from you, who are unclean.”

  A few man-lengths away from the carriage, Glorianna tripped, caught herself, then looked back to see what had snagged her foot.

  “What’s wrong?” Lee asked softly, stopping with her.

  “Nothing,” she said just as softly as she studied the ground. “Everything.”

  It wasn’t visible to the eye, but if she let her mind and heart drift in the currents of Light and Dark that flowed through the White Isle, she could almost see it as a physical reality: the border that separated two landscapes.

  “Brighid said she could tell the moment she took the first step on ground that belonged to Lighthaven,” Lee said. “And she’s right. Between one step and the next, everything does feel a little different. We must have crossed a border.”

  Glorianna kept studying the ground as the currents of power flowed around her, and through her.

  From the moment her feet had touched the White Isle, she had felt that same odd dissonance she’d felt when she’d taken the island out of reach of the Eater of the World. Since Michael tended to describe things in terms of music, she guessed he would say the island was playing two different songs and, because the notes were tangled together, both sounded slightly out of tune.

  But they were untangling now, becoming clearer, more distinct. And…

  “It was a border,” she said, not quite believing what she was sensing, “but it’s becoming a boundary.”

  “Boundaries require bridges,” Lee said sharply. “And these people don’t know about boundaries and borders and bridges, so this doesn’t usually occur.”

  That’s right. It didn’t. Maybe Elandar and this island weren’t as seamless as people thought, but it was still a whole, unbroken piece of the world.

  But that didn’t answer the question of why Ephemera was altering a border to become a boundary that would make the separation of places apparent. Was it because she and Caitlin were on the island together? Or was something else spurring this change in the world?

  The currents swelled suddenly, washing thr
ough her. She spun around and looked at the people standing on opposite sides of a gate.

  Three women—Brighid, Merrill, and Caitlin Marie. Three heart wishes in conflict with each other. And yet…the same heart wish.

  “Guardians and Guides.” She staggered as the ground suddenly dipped and swayed beneath her, as the world itself cried out for help.

  “Hey!” Lee grabbed her. “Don’t you faint on me again. Don’t you do that, Glorianna.”

  She gave him a shove that had him stumbling back a step and uttering a shocked curse. “We have to stop them before…” No time to explain. The bedrock of a Landscaper’s heart wasn’t established well enough here, so Ephemera was gathering itself to manifest those heart wishes without guidance.

  She ran for the gate, aware that an argument was taking place, aware that the Dark currents in this place had been extinguished to the point where they couldn’t absorb the bad feelings now swelling in a Place of Light, aware that the ground had become soft and the air heavy, that every heartbeat was a distant clap of thunder, a warning peal of the storm about to break.

  She couldn’t move fast enough. She would never reach them in time to tell them to stop, to wait, to think. So she did the only thing she could since she had a connection to the White Isle and Ephemera trusted her to guide it through the most ever-changing landscape of all—the human heart.

  Ephemera, hear me. Give those hearts what they desire. But manifest those heart wishes through me. Through ME.

  As she felt the world gather itself to obey her command, she heard two voices, raised in anger, say at the same moment, “I don’t want you.”

  Thunder. Avalanches. The crash of the sea. The scream of the wind when it was filled with wild insanity.

  The roar of a world tearing itself apart.

  Everything snapped back into focus. Her last step had her knocking into Caitlin before she put her hands out to catch herself as she fetched up against the stone wall beside the gate. She leaned against it, rested her cheek against it as she closed her eyes.

  Good stone. Solid stone. Not the stone of anger, but the stone of strength.

  All the tangled currents were no longer tangled. Her resonance formed the bedrock for Lighthaven, but what lay beyond the boundaries of this landscape…

  “I thought shattering the world had been difficult, but it wasn’t,” she said as strong hands settled on her shoulders. “The difficult part is keeping the pieces in harmony enough to stay together.”

  For a moment, she thought it was Lee standing behind her. Then she realized the shape of the hands wasn’t quite right. And the warmth of those hands, the way they touched her…No, those weren’t her brother’s hands.

  “Darling, I’m hearing the words, but they have no meaning,” Michael said as he drew her away from the wall and back against him. “And if you’re going to be scaring me on a regular basis, I’m telling you now I want kisses. The kind that make a man’s head swim and will kick his heart back out of his stomach.”

  “Isn’t there a saying about the connection between men’s hearts and stomachs?” Foolish to be flirting, but she felt oddly light and happy, as if she’d taken in that first breath of spring after a hard winter.

  “I haven’t the foggiest idea what you’re talking about,” Michael said, laughter in his voice.

  Then Lee said in a strained voice, “Fog is a good way to describe it,” and the breath of spring vanished as she eased away from Michael and looked back toward the place where she had tripped.

  Dark currents flowed through Lighthaven again, but they were slender threads that resonated with her. That fog, however…

  She brushed her fingers over Michael’s arm. “Go with Lee. See if you can find out the source of that fog.”

  He gave her a questioning look, then nodded. Good. Since they both knew he didn’t have the training to figure out the reason for the fog, he was assuming she just didn’t want her brother going alone to investigate. Which was true.

  The other part of the truth was she wanted the men out of hearing before she let her anger flow.

  She waited until Lee and Michael were halfway between the gate and the fog before she turned to look at the women. Shock and fear on Merrill’s face. Fear and confusion on Caitlin’s. Confusion…and an awakening…in Brighid’s eyes. And a recognition: I know you.

  Merrill first.

  “Open the gate,” Glorianna said coldly. “You got what you wanted. More than you wanted. Now you have to live in the landscape your heart helped shape.”

  “I don’t…,” Merrill stammered.

  “Open the gate.”

  Pebbles popped out of the ground all around the gate.

  “Sorceress,” Merrill whispered.

  “Landscaper,” Glorianna replied.

  This time, the stones that popped out of the ground in response to her anger were fist-sized and had sharp edges.

  Shaela stepped up to the gate and nudged Merrill to one side. Her hands shook as she unlocked the gate, but she pulled it all the way open.

  Satisfied with that step, Glorianna glanced toward the spot where Lee and Michael were standing, thankfully still visible. Since the men didn’t need her, she turned her attention—and her temper—on Caitlin Marie.

  “Did you learn nothing in the past few days?” she asked, making her voice as sharp and hard as stone. “You have seen what happens to the world when you become careless. You have seen, Caitlin Marie. You no longer have the excuse of ignorance for what you do or the harm you cause.”

  The girl took a step back, shocked by the deliberately aimed emotional blow.

  “I didn’t do anything,” Caitlin said, now looking sick and scared.

  “You’re a Landscaper,” Glorianna snapped. “You can’t lie with words when your heart knows the truth. Feel the difference. This place has changed.” For the better, she added silently, but she still had one more of them to deal with before she acknowledged that.

  “It wasn’t just me,” Caitlin cried. “It wasn’t. Why aren’t you yelling at her?” She flung out an arm to point dramatically at Merrill. “She started it by saying I don’t belong here. She—”

  “—is right.”

  Silence. Shock and pain. And in that silence, when the hearts of those women had no defenses, Glorianna, as Landscaper and Guide, heard all their secrets. Especially the ones they had kept hidden from themselves.

  Now she could gentle her own heart. Because now she understood the tangles between herself and Caitlin.

  “You don’t belong here, Caitlin Marie,” Glorianna said quietly. “You never did. If you had come when you had first learned of Lighthaven, if you had been welcomed when the dream of it was still a fluid dream, I think you could have walked here in harmony with this Place of Light. But always as a visitor. Now you resent the place and feel bitterness toward the people who live here. Now you are a dissonance. You are not the bedrock of Lighthaven.” She turned to look at Merrill. “I am.”

  Merrill’s eyes widened. She clamped a hand over her mouth to stifle a cry. Then her hand slowly lowered as she stared at Glorianna in wonder. “I know. I feel you in the Light in a way I couldn’t before.”

  “I am the bedrock. And you are the anchor.” She looked at Brighid. “Just as you were once the anchor.” She saw wariness in Brighid’s eyes. It must have been hard for the woman to hide her true nature, even from the people she loved.

  She took a step toward Brighid, then tipped her head toward Merrill and Shaela. But her eyes stayed locked with Brighid’s. “They are Sisters of the Light, but you are a Guardian. A true Guardian, descended from the first ones who were shaped by Ephemera in response to a cry from the human heart. What we came from was not human, and even now, generations later, we are not completely human. But it’s time to stop hiding, Brighid. The Eater of the World is loose in the world again, and people need to know they do not stand alone.”

  Brighid studied her, hope now battling wariness. “My family line has been a secret kept f
or generations. A secret entrusted only to the daughters destined for Lighthaven. Even Maureen didn’t know because she wasn’t…like me. You’re not a Guardian. How do you know about these things? Why do you talk as if we’re the same? We’re not. I know we’re not.”

  “Two branches from the same tree,” Glorianna replied. “You came from a line of Guardians, the ones who remained apart from the world in order to nurture the Light. I came from the line who walked in the world in order to know the human heart. I’m a Guide.”

  Four women sucked in their breaths as they understood the significance of that word.

  “You’re a Heart Seer?” Brighid asked.

  Glorianna nodded.

  “But I’m not,” Caitlin said, looking heart-bruised.

  “No, you’re not,” Glorianna replied gently. “But you are a very strong Landscaper, Caitlin, and it’s time for you to knowingly take care of your pieces of the world.”

  “I don’t know how.”

  “My mother and I can teach you.”

  Caitlin looked at her with eyes drenched in unshed tears. “I don’t know where I belong.”

  Glorianna stepped close enough to brush her fingers over the girl’s short hair. “That’s all right,” she said, smiling. “I do.”

  Then she looked past Caitlin and saw the men coming back to the gate. Michael’s face was pale as ice, and Lee’s…She had never seen her brother look so grim—or so scared.

  She looked at Brighid, then at Merrill. “I think the rest of this conversation should be more private.”