“She was a brave young thing, and asked about you. The goddess with the red hair who broke her chains.”
“I don’t know how I did it.”
“And yet you did. How proud your da would be.”
“I saw you fight in the south. How proud your son would be.”
Emotion swirled into his eyes before he leaned down to kiss her cheek. “That is the world to me. The world to me you’d say it. Rest now, and there’ll be lemon biscuits for you tomorrow. And something for you,” he added, and rubbed Bollocks. “He jumped right in after you,” Sedric told her. “Not to play, but to guard.”
He smiled over her head. “Come now, Marg, call your fierce dragon and let’s put these old bones to bed.”
“That I will.” She hugged Breen first. “Don’t be too hard on him,” she said. “He carries such weight. A little hard, of course.” She smiled as she drew back. “For he earned it.”
“We’ll talk tomorrow,” Morena told her. “And Aisling as well, as she had as fierce a dislike for Shana as I—and we’re proven right, which is no small satisfaction. Mahon needs to get her home, but we’ll hear all there is to hear tomorrow. It was a fine punch,” she added, then strolled to Harken as he called his dragon.
When Keegan walked back to her, the faint bruise on his jaw more than made up for her throbbing hand. For a moment, he just looked at her—straight and deep and silent.
“I’ll take you to the farm or to Marg’s or—”
“My cottage. I want my own bed, and I want the quiet.”
“As you like.”
When Cróga glided down, she climbed on before he could help her. A delighted Bollocks scrambled up behind her.
After he mounted, they flew over the trees, over the fields. She saw her grandmother’s dragon and Harken’s, both riderless now, soaring north.
They shot through the portal at the Welcoming Tree, into Ireland, and a gentle rain.
At the cottage, Bollocks leaped down, then surprised her by sitting, waiting, rather than streaking straight for the bay. She slid off, then felt surprise again as Keegan dismounted rather than flying away.
“I’d speak to you a moment. Out of the rain,” he added when she said nothing. “If it’s the same to you.”
She wanted a warm drink, a blazing fire, and time alone to brood, but she turned and walked into the cottage.
Keegan brought in the bag she’d forgotten, set it on the table.
“I’ll not apologize to you, as I’ve apologized to you more in these past months than to all and any in the whole of my life.”
Breen hung up her cloak, then walked into the kitchen to make herself tea.
“There wasn’t time to waste with you being delicate about the matter.”
“Delicate.” She’d worked hard on the cool and aloof, but felt the ice crack. “Is that what you call my reaction to being stripped naked, without my permission, against my will, in front of a dozen?”
“They weren’t there to gawk at you, and what needed doing needed doing quickly. Bugger it.” He strode away, slapped a hand toward the fire to start it, strode back. “It’s a body, for gods’ sake. Everyone’s got one.”
Since Bollocks stood beside her, head ticking back and forth from her to Keegan, she got a biscuit out of the jar for him.
Rather than gobble it down, he just stood with it clamped in his mouth.
“Really?”
“Aye, for these purposes. You’d have sunk like a stone in all of that, and until we were in the water, at the breach, how could I know how bad it was? How much it would take to seal it? All the time it took to get there, Yseult had that time to gather herself. She might have tried coming back through, and then we’d need to take her on with Marg and Sedric already weary, with my sister carrying.”
She wished it didn’t make sense, but still.
“In the time it took to get there, you could have explained things to me, what I’d need to do.”
“I didn’t think of it. There’s a woman I once bedded who tried to murder the one I’m bedding now who’s gone to Odran. Her father, a good man, a wise one in the ways needed, has resigned from the council, and I can’t find the words to change his mind on it. Her mother will mourn the rest of her days. The man who loves her is no good to me now, and won’t be until he can draw himself back, if he ever can.”
He paced as he spoke, like a man caged.
“She meant something to me once. Meant enough for me to be with her. And in being with her, I played a part in all of this. I don’t take blame for it,” he said before she could object. “But that’s the fact of it. So I didn’t think to tell you that if you went into the water fully dressed you’d sink like a shagging stone, as I thought you had the sense to know it yourself.”