The Choice--The Dragon Heart Legacy Book 3 Read online

  “That’s not what I’m saying, Keegan. You train for war because Talamh and all the worlds need protection and defense. You taught me that, the hard way, by knocking me on my ass countless painful times in training.”

  Shrugging, he glanced over to one of the training fields. “You’re not as easy to knock down these days.”

  “You hold back. I hate to admit you always did. I’m never going to be a brilliant swordsman—woman—or a Robin Hood with a bow.”

  “Those are good stories. The Robin Hood stories. And no, you won’t.”

  “You sure don’t hold back there.”

  He smiled a little and wound one of her curls around his finger. “Why lie when the truth’s right there? You’re better than you were.”

  “Which isn’t saying much.”

  “You’re better than you were after you were better than you were. Your magicks are … formidable. They are, and will always be, your keenest weapon. And this?” He lifted her hand, turned her wrist to run a finger over her tattoo.

  “Misneach. Courage, and yours is as keen as your magicks.”

  “Not always.”

  “Often enough. You sent Marco away, denied yourself his comfort for the comfort of others. That’s courage. You’d go with him, but you stay because I need you to stay.”

  “For reasons.”

  “For reasons.”

  The young ones trooped into the training field, some on wing, some with elf speed, some still yawning the sleep away.

  Not a school day, she realized, as Talamh stood strong for education. She glanced down at Bollocks and his pleading eyes.

  “Go ahead.”

  He darted off, barking with joy.

  “You don’t ask what they are,” Keegan noted. “The reasons.”

  “You feel I’m safer here, with you here. Shana tried to kill me, twice, and she’s his now. She’s Odran’s now.”

  “All the portals are guarded. She can’t come through. She can’t harm you.”

  “She won’t kill me.”

  His eyes narrowed. “You’ve foreseen?”

  She shook her head. “I know I won’t give her the satisfaction. Then there’s Yseult. She’s tried for me twice, not to kill—because unlike Shana, she’s not, in Marco’s terms, crazy as fuck—but to disable me enough to get me to Odran. The first time, she’d have succeeded if not for you. The second time, right back there.”

  She turned, pointed. “I dealt with her. But I let my emotions, my anger, my need to hurt and punish her rather than just end her get in the way. I won’t make that mistake again.”

  “You’ve grown fierce, mo bandia.”

  Fierce? She didn’t know about that. But resolute. She had become resolute.

  “I believed myself ordinary—less than even that—for a very long time. I know what I am now, what I have, and I’ll use it. You worrying about me takes your mind off what you need to do. You should stop.”

  Like her, Keegan watched the littles line up for training. Young, he thought, with a mixture of pride and regret. And, laying a hand on the hilt of his sword, remembered he’d been the same, done the same.

  “Do you think the only reason I want you here is worry for you?”

  “It’s a factor, but I’m also useful here, and you know it.”

  “Aye, you are. You helped with healing wounded and brought comfort—bring it still with your visits to those in mourning. And you take too much there. It shows.”

  “Thank you very much. I’m going to start using glamours.”

  “You’re beautiful.”

  The way he said it so casually, as if it simply was, brought her a ridiculous thrill.

  “Even when you’re tired,” he continued, “and too pale and I see their grief all over you.”

  “You do the same. Yes, you’re taoiseach, yes, it’s duty, but it’s more than that. You grieve, too, Keegan.”

  “Don’t take that from me.” He gripped her hand before she could lay it on his heart. “Even a shadow of it. I need it, just as I need the anger, as I need the cold blood. I know you helped with the dead, and I wouldn’t have wished that for you.”

  “They’re my people, too. I’m as much Talamhish as American. Probably more when it comes down to it.”

  “And still, I wouldn’t have wished it. You sent Marco back, and I can’t offer you, not now, the same kind of companionship here, in a place that’s not home to you, like Ireland or the valley. I’ve hardly had time with you other than sex and sleep—and more sleep than sex, I’m sorry to be saying. This, here and now, is I think the longest we’ve spoken alone since after the battle.”

  “You’re taoiseach, and you’ve had council meetings, Judgments. I know you’ve spoken to all the wounded, all those who lost someone. I know because they tell me. There are repairs and training and I can’t even imagine what else. Do you think I expect you to spend time with me when you have so much else to do and think about?”

  He looked at her in that way he had, so intense. Then looked away again, to the training fields and the village.

  “No, you don’t expect, and maybe that’s why I wish I could give it to you. You’re a mystery to me still, Breen Siobhan. And all I feel in me for you, another mystery. I don’t always like it.”

  He made her smile again. “That’s often abundantly clear.”

  “I need you here, for all the reasons you said yourself. All of those, aye, but I need you here for myself. I don’t have to like that either, but … I’m explaining, as best I can.”

  It touched her, in the deep, that he’d bother to try.

  “You’re getting better at it. The explaining. You’re never going to be brilliant at it, but I think, with practice, you could be competent enough.”

  A smile twitched at the corners of his mouth. “That’s a bit of a poke, and well done.”

  “I thought so. I like being needed.” She skimmed fingers down the warrior braid on the side of his head. “I went so long without being needed. Marco, yes, and Sally and Derrick. But that’s different. So right now, the sleep and sex and whatever else we can fit in, it’s enough.”

  “I haven’t any more right now. Bloody council meeting.”

  “That’s fine. I’m due in the training field soon. Bloody archery.”

  “I’m told you’re not as pathetic as you were.”

  “Shut up. Go be the leader of the world.”

  He cupped his hands under her elbows, lifted her to her toes. Kissed her, and kissed her while the mists thinned away and the sun showered through.

  “Keep Bollocks with you, would you? And someone—Kiara or Brigid or whoever you like—along if you go off to the village or visiting.”

  “Stop worrying.”

  “I’ll worry less if you do those things.”

  “All right. Worry less. I’m going to get my bow and be less pathetic. I also think I’ll have a better time than you will.”

  “No doubt of that. Keep the dog close,” he repeated, then strode back over the bridge toward the castle, where the banner flew at half staff.

  * * *

  She stayed busy, day after day, training, helping with repairs—both magickally and practically—and spent as much time as she could with Phelin’s family.

  Her family, too, she thought as more and more memories of her first three years shimmered back. Flynn’s big hands tossing her high in the air so she squealed, Sinead frosting cookies, running in the fields with Morena, with Seamus and Phelin always plotting an adventure.

  She’d been as at home with them as she’d been on the farm where she’d been born.

  But it was Flynn, warrior, council member, father, who finally snapped the tight rope she’d kept binding her own grieving.

  She wanted the air, and she wanted the quiet. After giving herself two early-morning hours to work on her book—and hoping for another two in the evening—she took Bollocks out for a walk and a wander.

  Just a little time, stolen time as she thought of it, to do nothing. The
n she’d work with Rowan—council member and of the Wise—along with a few young witches on potions and charms. They’d continue to rebuild the supplies used during the aftermath of the battle.

  Magicks weren’t an abracadabra thing, but effort, skill, practice, and intent.

  She’d fit in some gardening work to help replenish crops destroyed during the battle. She hoped to persuade Sinead and Noreen to work with her there, to get them out in the air and the sun for even an hour.

  Field training after that, her least favorite part of any day. Sword work and hand-to-hand made up today’s torture, and she already anticipated the bruises.

  It amazed her how full her days here were, how one tumbled right into the next. Though she found the castle endlessly fascinating, the wild roll of the sea exhilarating, she missed her pretty cottage on the other side, missed the farm in Talamh’s west, her friends there, her grandmother. And, she could admit privately, the self-satisfying routine she’d developed since she’d left Philadelphia so many months before.

  But she was needed here, for now, and had come to understand that simply seeing her go about the daily tasks gave people in the Capital hope after so much loss.

  She let Bollocks play in the water under the bridge, and through her bond with him knew that while it made him happy, he missed their bay, missed running the fields with Aisling’s boys and playing with Mab, the Irish wolfhound that minded them.

  When he scrambled out to shake, she dried him with a stroke of her hands. The November wind came brisk, smelled of the sea and the turned earth. She saw some busy in the gardens on the rising hills and fields, bringing winter crops back to life.

  She’d worked with others of the Wise to heal the charred and bloody ground, and now saw the fruits of the work in the orange pumpkins and butter-yellow squash, the greens of kale and cabbage.

  Flowers and herbs thrived again. She saw fresh thatch on the roofs of cottages, children playing in dooryards, people in the village browsing stalls and shops, smoke puffing from chimneys.

  Life and light, she thought, were stubborn things. They must, and they would, bloom and shine against the dark. They would not be snuffed out like a candle, but flame on and on and on.

  She had a part in that, and she’d do whatever she needed to do to keep that fire burning.

  Bollocks pranced ahead, then under the dripping branches of a willow. She followed him through and found Flynn sitting on a stone bench with Bollocks’s head on his knee.

  She didn’t have to see the man’s grief when she felt it like an anchor on her heart.

  Still, he smiled at her as he patted Bollocks’s curly topknot. “Here’s a joy of a dog.”

  “He really is.”

  “And soon to be far-famed in song and story. You can see much from this spot. The village and its bustle, the fields and the hills, the shadow of the mountains, all the while if you listen, there’s the drumbeat of the sea behind you. Your nan had this bench placed here before I was born. Many’s the time I sat here with your dad, thinking thoughts and finding the quiet.

  “And there?”

  He pointed, so she stepped closer.

  “In that cottage there lived a girl I had a terrible yen for in my wild youth. Before Sinead, of course, for there’s a woman who put a lock on my heart that can’t be broken. But the yen was real enough while it lasted, and the memories of it harmless and sweet.”

  “Where is she now, the girl?”

  “Married a farmer, she did, and they had three children—no, four, I’m thinking. They’re in the midlands, and travel here to barter and trade. Come sit awhile. I wanted the air for a bit of time.”

  She hesitated, but instinct told her he needed the company now as much as the air. And when he put a hand over hers after she sat beside him, she felt his heart and knew she was right.

  “When your father and I were boys in the valley, I yearned for the Capital, this bustle. No farmer was I, not like Eian or my own da. Nor clever as my da with the building of things. There was music, of course. Ah, that was a thing that bonded me with Eian tight as a drumskin. And how I loved our times in the pubs, here and on the other side, playing. Me, Eian, Kavan, and Brian—brothers they were to me always. But I wanted the warrior’s life, that’s the truth of it. Raising a family with Sinead in the valley, that was precious, a time of joy, and peace as well. For a time.”

  He turned to look at her. “Your ma made him happy. You should know that.”

  “I do.” For a time, Breen thought.

  “But you, little red rabbit, you were the beat of his heart, the light of his soul. When Odran had you … A lesser man might have gone mad, and let that madness and fear rule him. Eian was no lesser man, so he locked up that heart, used his mind, his power, his strength. As you did, barely more than a babe. As you did,” Flynn murmured.

  “Your mother flew me home again, and Sinead rocked me and sang to me. I remember it all so clearly now, how they made me feel safe again after I’d been so afraid. When I first came back, Nan helped me see, in the fire, how my father fought that night, and how she fought. And … you, with your great wings and sword. You fought for me, for him, for Talamh.”

  “A terrible, brutal night it was, but I yearned to be a warrior, and so would have died for you, for him, for Talamh. A choice I made. But I lived. We lost Kavan that night.”

  “I know.”

  “A brother to me. Then Brian fell, and then Eian. Their deaths, my brothers’, took pieces from me, as death should. But I lived, a warrior, a husband, a father—and grandfather as well—as the pieces death takes from you find a way to live without them. You honor their death by living and doing and standing.”

  “I know you do.” She looked out, as he did. A rabbit, gray like her eyes, hopped its way over a field and to a row of cabbage to munch.

  “I never lost someone close before. I thought my father had just left me behind.”

  “Never he would. Never.”

  “I know that now, and so I know you honor the death of ones you love by living and doing and standing.”

  “I sit on the council and do what I can to be wise and true there. I fight what comes against us. Now, Breen, now I hold my wife, the wife of my boy, his brother, his sister, my own ma and da. Those arms must be strong for them because those pieces are lost inside them.

  “But my boy, my child who came into my hands on his first breath, is gone. And the child waiting to be born will never know his father. His wife will never again feel his arms around her. His mother will never hear his voice again or look on his face.

  “Those pieces are gone, and I don’t know how to live without them.”

  She had no words, so simply put her arms around him. She couldn’t take his grief, no power could. But she let it come into her, the overwhelming pain of it, so at least it was shared.

  “You’re a warrior,” she said at last. “A husband, a father, a grandfather. You’ll stand. All the pieces death took from you, the light of the lost fills them. Phelin’s light’s in you and always will be.”

  Tears wanted to flow; she wouldn’t let them.

  “I can feel his light in you. And my father’s.” She drew back enough to lay a hand on his heart, and with her eyes on his, pushed what she felt into him. “It’s so bright, even death can’t dim it.”

  Flynn laid his head on her shoulder, sighed once. “He’d have been so proud of you.”

  “His light’s in me, too.”

  Flynn lifted his head, stroked her hair. “I see him in you, and it’s a comfort. You’re a comfort to me.” He pressed his lips to her forehead. “I thank whatever powers put me in this place at this time, and you with me. Little red rabbit,” he murmured before he kissed her again, then left her alone under the willow.

  And alone she wanted to shake under that shared grief, just crumple under the weight of it.

  Not here, she thought, where someone might find her, see her. Stepping out, clear of the branches, she called her dragon.

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; Yes, yes, dear God, she needed air, and distance, and release.

  When Lonrach landed, she climbed onto his gold-tipped red back. “Just wait,” she told Bollocks before he could scramble up with her. “Just wait.”

  And sent Lonrach bulleting into the sky. High and fast so the air streamed over her, sent her hair, her cloak flying. The wind bit as they went higher, higher, through the clouds and the damp held inside them. When Talamh below her spread like a child’s toy with the distance, she screamed.

  Screamed, screamed out the rage so tightly bolted to the grief. She felt the air shake with it, heard thunder boom with it, lightning flash through it. And didn’t care.

  This was hers, and hers alone, for every drop of blood shed, for all the tears, all the loss. Dark and light, twin sides of her rage, clashed so the sky swirled and shook, the clouds broke and wept. Lifting her arms high, hands knotted into fists, she welcomed the storm.

  “I will damn you!” She shouted it. “I swear by all the gods, for my father, for Phelin, and for all, I will bring you death.”

  She took Lonrach down and down, showing him where she needed to go, where she hadn’t had the strength to go since that bloody day.

  When he landed in the forest, with the trees whipping, the rain pounding, she leaped off to stand facing the Tree of Snakes. Her blood had opened this portal to bring a hell to Talamh; she, her grandmother, and Tarryn had closed it with theirs.

  She drew power, more and more, lifted her face to the storm, merged with it. And stood, lit like fire, both in and outside herself.

  “Hear me, Odran the Damned. Hear me and tremble. I am Breen Siobhan O’Ceallaigh. I am Daughter of the Fey, of man, of gods. I am the light and the dark, hope and despair, peace and destruction. I am the key, the bridge, the answer. And with all I am, I will end you. Your blood will boil in your veins, your flesh will burn, and all the worlds will hear your screams of fear and pain. Hear me, Odran, as the gods once cast you out, I will burn you to ashes that even hell won’t take. And you will be as nothing. This is my vow. This is my destiny.”

  She stood, hands lifted, light swirling from them, and her eyes as dark and fierce as the storm.