“Where would she go? I was trying to think where I’d go in her place. The Welcoming Tree?”
Tarryn nodded. “It’ll be guarded and well. And the falls.”
“The falls? That leads to…”
“Aye, to Odran. We take no chances. I can only hope they find her quickly, and before she harms another.” She set the cup aside. “Should I send someone to keep you company?”
“Thanks, no. We’re fine.”
Tarryn smiled down at Bollocks, stroked the head he’d propped on her knee to comfort her. “You are well guarded, no doubt, by such a brave heart, and you’re safer here than anywhere in Talamh. That helps keep Keegan’s mind clear while he deals with this.”
She rose. “Try to rest. I’ll see you in the morning.”
Alone, Breen sat by the fire and began to search the flames. Maybe she’d see, though as yet she’d been unable to call a vision, only see what came when it came.
But she sat, as Bollocks curled loyally at her feet, and tried to look through the smoke and flames to the heart. Nothing cleared for her, and she wished she had her globe, that she’d thought to send for it.
And remembered how once Keegan had shown her how to transport something as simple as a glass of water.
So she visualized the globe sitting now beside her bed. The size of it, the shape, the weight, the colors. How smooth it was in her hand, how worlds shifted inside it.
She imagined its path to her, through stone and wood and air.
And cupping her hands, she called it to her, let the power inside her rise, spread, reach.
“I am Breen Siobhan O’Ceallaigh,” she heard herself say. “I am child of Fey and man and god. I am my gift, and my gift is I. Now I use it for the light.”
She felt it burst, so strong, so hot, so bright.
A violence in it, as something turned in her, as for a moment, just a moment, she no longer sat in the chair, in the tower, in the castle.
A fury and a purpose, a striking out.
For an instant she stood somewhere else, with water drumming onto water, with chants and screams pounding in her ears.
For an instant her eyes met Odran’s.
Then she stood in front of the fire, in the tower, in the castle with the aftershocks of power coursing through her.
And in the firelight, with the candles flickering, she held the globe in her cupped hands.
“Was that the same as before? Was it then or now or not yet? God, my blood’s on fire. And it feels … right.”
She looked down at the globe, saw her hands held steady. “What does it mean that I can do this, and feel I’ve crossed some bridge or boundary, scaled some wall?”
It left her breathless and thrilled and triumphant.
She lifted the globe, watched the firelight play over it, watched the glow from the candles, from the lamps swirl into it.
“Show me what I need to see.”
And she saw, in those depths, a figure running through shadows, through forest shadows that shifted and swirled like water.
Shana.
But that shifted, changed, and the figure she saw running was a child. A faerie, for she saw wings, just the blur of them fluttering.
Very deliberately, Breen focused, looked deeper.
A child, a girl. Of the Sidhe. Naked.
The child from the waterfall. The sacrifice. Odran’s side—where, somehow, she herself had just been.
She wanted to push herself into the globe, push herself into that world again, to the child. The child, she saw now, shivering with cold and shock as she ran, as her wings lifted her up a few inches off the path.
Dilly. Her name was Dilly. She was only six.
“This is happening now. It’s all happening now.” She was as certain of it as anything she’d ever known. “And I was there, even though I was standing right here, I was there to stop the knife, to break the chains holding the girl. How did I do it, and why can’t I get back and help her?”
As she tried to clear her mind again, bring back what had flooded into her, she saw the cat.
The silver cat streaked across the child’s path, so she stumbled to a halt, breath heaving, eyes glassy with fear. Then he became a man, and Sedric brought a finger to his lips. He laid the other on his heart as he crouched down.
When he opened his arms, the girl fell into them, and holding her close, laying a kiss on her tangled hair, he slid into the shadows.
Only seconds later, only seconds it seemed, a pack of demon dogs charged down the path. One paused to throw up its head, scent the air. But they ran on.
In the shadows, Breen saw a glimmer of light flash—here, then gone.