by Nora Roberts
Aisling took her hand. “Will you let me look?”
“At me? Or . . . in me.” Nerves popped. “I . . . that’s part of it?”
“It can be.”
“Okay. All right. Do I have to do anything?”
“Nothing at all.”
And nothing changed as Aisling kept Breen’s hand clasped in hers.
The kettle still sputtered, the dog still barked.
“You’re a healthy one, and that’s a fine thing. Fit as well, you are. Strong—stronger than most will think, and isn’t that grand? You have worries, of course, but so many come from thinking you’re not good enough or clever. I’ll say that’s bollocks, but you have to learn that yourself. But we’re connected now, not just hand to hand. What do you see in me?”
“You’re beautiful.”
Aisling laughed. “And didn’t I do just a bit of a glamour this morning, as Marg said you’d come. Vanity isn’t such a bad thing, is it?”
“I’d like to learn that one. I know you love your family. I can see that without magicks. And you must be clever because there’s a spinning wheel over there, and a loom there. You must be a good mother because your kids are happy and healthy and really charming. And—”
She jolted; her mouth dropped open. “The baby moved! I felt the baby move. How—”
“We’re connected, and I opened to you to help you see and feel.”
“It feels amazing. It makes you so happy. And . . .”
“What?”
“A little smug.”
Aisling laughed again. “Aye, it does. You’re a good one, empathic, and that’s helpful. Not all healers are empaths, not all empaths are healers. Having both makes each the stronger. Why not see what we have here?”
Aisling rose, went to her darning basket. She came back with a needle. She pricked her finger, held it out as she took Breen’s hand in her free one again.
“See the blood, just a drop. The skin broken. Feel the little sting. Just a tiny bit of a thing. Let yourself feel that, just as you did the life stirring in me. Feel it, imagine closing that tiny bit of a wound. Open to it, and it’s the light—the shine and the warmth of it—that heals what hurts.”
She didn’t know if she felt or just imagined the slight sting in her own finger. But she pressed her thumb against it, and Aisling smiled.
“Well done.”
“But I didn’t—”
“You did, with a bit of help guiding you.” Aisling wiped the drop of blood away, then held out her finger to show the unbroken skin. “A small thing, aye, a first step.”
Over Breen’s appalled objections, Aisling burned her finger on the stove, nicked her arm with a kitchen knife. And worked with Breen to heal the small wounds.
“You’ve a talent for it,” Aisling told her, “just as Marg said. More serious injuries take more, but you’ll build to that, and learn to combine what you have with the right potions, balms, other treatments. Now I think you could use another cup of tea.”
As she rose to make it, Keegan came through the door with a swirl of his duster.
“Morena said she was here. That’s good then, I’ve time to start on her training.”
“She has a name, as I’ll remind you.” Aisling spoke tartly as she continued making tea. “Breen and I have been working on her healing skills. She’s done very well indeed.”
“Well then, she’ll find them handy when dealing with the bruises she’ll have after training.” He turned to Breen. “Basic hand-to-hand for today, so we’ll see what you’re made of.”
If she could have glued her butt to the chair, she would have. “I don’t intend to fight anyone.”
“It’s not about bloody intent. Are you going to do nothing but kick and squeal if Odran sends one of his creatures after you? Will you sit and shiver next time he puts you in a cage? Why should any risk protecting you if you won’t work to protect yourself?”
“Out with you! Take your rude self outside. She’ll be along soon enough.” Aisling fisted her hands on her hips. “Out of my kitchen before I give you a bruise of your own.”
Keegan only shrugged, but he left.
“I’ll apologize for the boneheaded brother the fates have given me. Keegan does tend to be abrupt.”
“That’s a word we could use.”
With a smile Aisling offered Breen the tea. “Oh sure, I’ve used many others when dealing with him over these years—all, in my opinion, well earned, as taoiseach or no, he’s my idjit brother. But . . .” She sat again. “He’s also got the right of it. You must learn, as he said, for your sake and that of others. There’s not a one in this world who wouldn’t give their life to protect you.”
“I don’t want—”
“It’s not what you want, it’s what is.” Reaching out, Aisling took Breen’s hand, and her eyes—so clear and blue—looked deeply into Breen’s. “I remember when you were taken as a child. I remember the battle drums. I remember how many we sent to the gods who lost their lives to help bring you home safe. My father was one of them.”
“I’m so sorry.” Guilt strangled her. “I’m so sorry.”
“It’s not for you to be sorry.” In comfort, in strength, Aisling’s fingers tightened. “You were a child. And you fought, you fought with all that’s in you. The shield around you won’t last forever, and the fact of it is, it’s already been breached once. Keegan was there, and so you sit here now.
“He’s a man who strains for patience, and uses it up, I’ll tell you, in dealing with the council, the judgments, the politics, the weight of his rank. His approach on this is boneheaded, as I said. But that doesn’t make him wrong.”
Sitting in the kitchen that smelled of fresh bread and tea, Breen remembered the battle she’d seen through Marg’s eyes, and all the people who’d risked their lives for her.
“All right. He’s going to be really unhappy when I’m not any good at it.”
“That’s yet to be seen. And there’s no one better to teach you in this than Keegan. He was trained by our father, and then yours, and he’ll give you—in his way—what they gave him.”
As Breen saw it, she had two choices. Say no and deal with the guilt—and feel like a coward. Or go out and take her lumps—probably literal lumps.
She’d rather have bruises on her body than on her still-shaky ego.
She went out to see Keegan galloping bareback around the paddock on a dark brown horse with both boys—the younger in front of him, the older behind.
While her first reaction was he rode too fast, she couldn’t deny the absolute glee on both boys’ faces.
He spotted her, and slowed down. When he pulled the horse to a stop, he got pleas for more from front and back.
“Later,” he said. “Off you go, Fin.”
With obvious reluctance, Finian climbed down onto the paddock fence. Keegan swung off, plucked the younger off the horse, gave him a quick, high toss.
“Go on and pester your mother.” He gave them each a rub on the head before plunking Kavan over the fence, then swinging over it himself.
He looked strong, she thought, and pondered those lumps.
“Make a fist.”
She knew that one because Marco had shown her—thumb out, not in.
He gripped her balled hand, then annoyed the crap out of her by gripping her biceps with the other.
“You’re no weakling, but there’ll be times you’ll come up against the bigger, the stronger. You need to learn how to use what you have to defend, to use what they have—that strength and size—against them.”
“I took a course. I know SING.”
He just stared at her. “A tune isn’t going to stop a fist aimed at your face.”
“No, not that. Solar plexus, instep, nose, groin. S-I-N-G.”
Head cocked now, he gave a slight nod. “All right then, show me.”
“Well, if I were in a parking garage, for instance, and you were a mugger or a rapist who came up behind me.”
She turned her b
ack. Keegan swept her legs out from under her.
Astonishment came first—no one had ever knocked her down. Resentment followed fast. “You said to show you.”
“I’m still waiting for that, and wondering why you’d turn your back on an enemy.”
She got to her feet. “To demonstrate.”
“And what if I’m coming at you, face-to-face?”
When he lunged forward, she stumbled back. And he knocked her down again.
“The tune might be more useful,” he commented, and pulled her up.
She punched his solar plexus—met a solid wall—and ended up on her ass again.
“You’ve got more muscle than that.”
“I didn’t see any point in hurting you.” Before, she thought. She got up, punched again with feeling. But when she tried to bring the heel of her foot down on his instep, he sidestepped, and flattened her again.
She had to admit the process had worked better in class.
“Your singing may have some merit, but not if you lack speed and power. Try again.”
She punched, hard enough to make her hand sting, then skipped the middle steps and brought her knee up. Though part of her wanted to, she didn’t follow through.
He grinned at her. “Now there’s potential. And what if—”
He spun her around, clamped an arm around her throat. She jabbed back with her elbow, as taught, but missed the instep as he had his legs spread.
“Stop struggling. Go limp. Use your wiles a bit. You’re a woman—weaker. Make who has you believe you’re weaker. Go limp.”
She was weaker, and the reality of his far superior strength frightened more than a little.
He could hurt her, and she couldn’t stop him.
She sagged.
“In your mind, think the next steps. The one who’s attacked you thinks he’s won. Now the elbow. Aye, not bad—harder the next time—and his grip loosens. Use it.”
She slid down, managed to turn and bring her knee up again.
“Not so pitiful. What if I just—”
He rammed a fist toward her face, stopping just shy of her nose. Shaking his head, he stared into her shocked eyes. “You’d be done, and likely out as well. You’ll block.”
He yanked up her arm so it knocked his fist away. “Firm! And strike back. Fast!”
She spent an hour, a great deal of it on the ground, before he left her with faint praise.
“You’ll do better tomorrow.”
She had to call the dog, had to keep her voice away from the whine inside her. She’d thought learning to ride a painful experience, but it was nothing compared to the throbs, twinges, stings, aches she experienced now. She waited until she’d made the turn onto Marg’s path, until she was sure she was out of anyone’s sight, before she sat on the ground, brought her knees up, lowered her head to them.
Bollocks licked at her, letting out the canine versions of the whine she’d held in.
She’d never experienced physical violence, had never had anyone deliberately cause her physical pain. Or known the terrible desire to cause it in someone else.
Was this the price of power—of self?
She thought of her life before, so ordinary, so uneventful. So, yes, confining, but still . . .
She lifted her head, wiped at her eyes. “Freedom costs,” she told the dog. “I don’t know how much I’m willing to pay.”
But she sat and used what Aisling had taught her to soothe the bruises.
For himself, Keegan walked into his sister’s house and poured a whiskey.
Aisling eyed him as she chopped cabbage for a supper of colcannon. “A bit on the early side for that, I’d say.”
“Not from where I’m standing.”
“How’d she do then? I found I couldn’t watch you knock her down another time without wanting to come out and box your ears until they rang.”
“She’s strong, and she’s quick when she doesn’t think so damn much. The woman’s in her bloody head more than she’s out of it.” He tossed back whiskey. “She learns, I’ll give her that.”
He tugged up his shirt to study the storm cloud of bruises on his ribs.
“Caught you more than once. Here, let me see.”
“No, I’ll see to it.” He dropped his shirt. “She regrets, and it holds back what she has. She could’ve bruised my balls more than once, but holds back, regrets the harm done before she does harm.”
“Don’t we all, at the bottom of it?”
Though he wanted to disagree, he couldn’t. Not when he lived with regrets every bloody day of his life.
And still.
“Regrets need to be set aside to keep worlds safe and whole. But that’s a lock in her I don’t know she’ll open. And inside with them she keeps doubts close—like a woman might a favored jewel.”
“She needs time.”
“So do we all. That doesn’t mean we’ll get it.”
When he stepped over to stare out the window, she stopped her kitchen work to go to him. Slipped an arm around him.
“It’s not all of it on her shoulders, Keegan. It’s for all of us. All the Fey, and all those with us.”
“I know it, but I swore to Eian, I swore to him I’d protect her, I’d help her become. I don’t know how to keep my promise any other way but this.”
He felt the warmth over his ribs, sighed. “I told you I’d see to it.”
“Now it’s done.” Because she loved him, she kissed his cheek for good measure. “Are you having supper here?”
He shook his head. “I thank you for it, but no. Harken and I will make do, and I need to send a falcon to Ma. If I can keep her and the rest up-to-date, I don’t need to go back to the Capital for now. I feel I’m needed here more than there.”
“Send love with the bird,” she told him, and went back to chopping.
Since she’d managed to soothe her body, Breen soothed her mind and heart FaceTiming Marco.
“Look at you! Girl, look at that face. I miss that face.”
“We FaceTimed last week.”
“I still miss that face.”
“I miss yours, too. Busy night at Sally’s?”
“Wall-to-wall. DesDamona’s got a new act, and it slays. I’m gonna crash after we talk. Everybody’s missing you and reading your blog. Now tell me everything you’re not writing in the blog.”
If only she could. “It’s pretty much all there. Writing, walking, hanging out with Bollocks, learning to ride.”
“Can’t believe you got yourself up on a horse.”
“I really like it.”
“Dogs and horses. We’re gonna have to start looking at farms or something if you keep this up. Something going on,” he decided, narrowing his tired eyes. “I know that face. You tell me what’s going on.”
“I’m still figuring it out, Marco. There’s an awful lot of figuring out.”
“You’re not getting out enough. How come I don’t hear about you sitting in pubs, singing a tune, flirting with some hot Irish guy?”
“Flirting’s not on the schedule right now, especially with my wingman thousands of miles away. How about you? Any new man?”
“I’ve taken a couple for a dip. Just no sparkage. I’m in a slump there, girl. Come on now, Breen, who knows you like me? I can see something’s going on. You homesick, honey?”
“I miss you, and Sally and Derrick. Maybe a part of me thought I’d hear from my mother, but I haven’t. And I’m okay with it. I don’t like being okay with it.”
“More than that.”
She needed to give him something because he did know her. Since she couldn’t give him Talamh, she grabbed something else. “I guess I’m feeling anxious, and I don’t want to write about it in the blog, and get people who follow it going on about it.”
“What now?”
“You know that children’s book I wrote?”
“About the dog, sure. I’m going to keep nagging until you send it to me.”
“What I did was . . . I quer
ied an agent.”
“You did what now?”
He popped up from where he’d been sitting so all she saw for a moment was his lean torso in a white tank top. “Well, for Christ’s sake, you don’t tell me this so I can send all kinds of vibes out?”
“I figured if I ever get a response it’ll just be don’t ever darken our door again.”
“Stop that.” He wagged a finger at her. “You send me a copy right now.”
“In the morning. If I email you a copy now, you’ll stay up and read it because you love me, and you won’t get any sleep. I’ll send it tomorrow. I promise.”
“I’m proud of you, girl. You wrote a book, and that’s something else. And you talked to an agent.”
“I haven’t actually talked to her yet.”
“Same thing.”
“Well, close. Now take my mind off it, because it gives me the jitters. Tell me what everyone’s doing, how everyone is. Give me all the dish.”
Since he always had dish, they talked for almost another half hour before she closed her tablet.
And she did feel soothed.
She loved the time she spent with her grandmother. The more Breen came to know her, the more she found someone she admired. She learned more than the careful casting of spells, the joys and responsibilities of power. She learned of her heritage, of the part of her so long locked away as if it were something shameful.
The next day she walked with Marg beyond the workshop, into the screen of trees, to cast her first circle outside.
“How do you do it?” Breen asked her. “How do you shed the anger, the resentment toward my mother?”
“By remembering she once loved my son. By knowing all that lives in a mother’s heart. By understanding my world was never truly hers.” Marg set the tools she’d brought on the stone dolmen she used as an altar. “And still, truth be told, I have to work at it more often than not.”
“I’ve tried—maybe not very hard, but some. I can’t get over the lies. Not just the money, Nan, although without it, I don’t see how I’d ever have come to Ireland, and then here. All the time wasted—”
“Not wasted, no. Never wasted. Every day is a gift, every day you learn. How do we know you would have found what you’ve found here if not for the life you led in the other?”