Now Breen hunkered down. “Your gift is of the Wise, like your mother’s.”
He studied her. “Ma says that, but I can’t do anything.”
“You will. Good things and great things. I see it. I feel it.”
His eyes rounded. “Do you swear it?”
She touched a hand to his heart, and felt that pulse of light, that soft, young power. “I do. I swear it. Your dragon is only this big now.” She held out her other hand, measured the distance. “He needs his mother for a while longer. He’s green as your fields, with blue like the bay on his wings.”
Finian gasped. “You’ve seen my dragon?”
“I see him in you. You’ve named him Comrádaí in your heart, for brother, and he’ll be, like Kavan, a brother to you.”
“I picked his name! I did! But I haven’t seen him. I have to tell Ma. Come on, Kavan, I have to tell Ma about my dragon.”
Kavan stopped playing with Marco’s hair, smiled, and scrambled down to run after Finian.
“Did you really see all that?”
“Yeah. I didn’t expect to. I—the longing is so strong in both of them. It was all just there. God, I hope it’s all right I told him all that.”
“You know what I think?” Marco pushed up, took Breen’s arm to draw her up with him. “I think if you saw and said all that, you were supposed to. And you sure made that kid happy.”
Since Mab followed the boys, and Bollocks stood vibrating, watching her with hope, she stroked his topknot. “Go ahead. I’ll call for you when we’re ready to ride.”
“Is it like that with the dragons, you think? Like it is with you and Bollocks?”
“That’s what they say. Now, I guess we should find Harken, or check in the house to let them know we’re getting the horses.”
She led the way to the stables first and found Harken crooning as he ran his hands over a mare. The mare, Breen realized, she’d watched Keegan’s stallion impregnate on a rainy summer day.
“Good morning to you both.” Harken murmured something to the animal, rubbed his cheek to hers.
“It’s Eryn, isn’t it? Is she all right?”
“More than fine. Just giving her a once-over before I let her have a run in the field. She and the foal are both well. And how are you faring after the big night?”
“More than fine,” Marco answered. “Is it okay if I pet her?”
“Sure she likes the attention. You’ve just missed Morena, who left to take Amish hunting. And my mother as well, as she and Minga are off for a ride.”
“It’s still all right if Marco and I ride to the gravesite?”
“It is, of course. I’ll get your tack.”
“We’ll get it. I know where everything is now.”
Marco stroked the mare another moment. “I guess some of the soldiers left for the south already.”
“Before the sun broke the night, and Keegan with them. He and Mahon will come back for Finian’s birthday celebration, then off they’ll go again.”
Breen laid a hand on his arm. “And you?”
“Not this time. I’m here, as Keegan wants me close to our mother and sister, the boys. They’ll not get past them, but we take no chances.”
“Will you go to the Capital?”
“No, and thank the gods for that. I’m not one for the crowds and the noise. The farm needs tending, the valley protecting, and that’s for me. Well now, you’ve a fine, fresh day for a ride, so enjoy it. Come on there, Eryn, my beauty.”
Without halter or reins, the mare followed him dutifully out of the stables.
“He’s a lot like you,” Breen said as she watched Harken go.
“Harken? Like me?”
She tapped a hand on her heart. “In here. The kindness, patience, loyalty. I think now that’s why I felt comfortable around him so fast.”
They gathered the tack and hauled it out to the paddock, where Harken already had Boy and Cindie waiting.
The man himself hooked his muscular plow horse to a plow. As she saddled Boy, Breen watched him walk along behind the horse as the plow turned the earth in a fallow field.
What would he plant there, she wondered, and at this time of year? Or did the plow just aerate the soil? She didn’t know the first thing about farming—though her father had been a farmer.
“He doesn’t strike me as the, you know, warrior type,” Marco commented as the song Harken sung while he worked carried back to them.