The best thing for him would be a few hours’ escape in sleep. They’d be back to Cabhan in the morning—or later in the morning. And the sooner the better. Ending him would fulfill his obligations. Ending Cabhan would end his own personal torment.
So he’d slip away—no one would miss him by this point.
Then Iona stepped up, as if she’d read his mind, twined her arm with his, took his hand.
“The problem with throwing a really great party is people don’t want to leave.”
“I do.”
She laughed, squeezed his hand. “We’re down to the diehards, and we’ll start nudging them along. Your circle won’t leave you alone with them. Give it about twenty minutes. What you should do is go around, start gathering up the empties since the caterers left a couple hours ago. It’s a sign it’s time to go.”
“If you say.”
“I do.” To demonstrate, she began picking up bottles and glasses, gave Boyle a telling look that had him doing the same.
In moments a handful of those diehards readied to go with many thanks and wishes for a happy and prosperous New Year. And in the case of a few, such as Sean, heartfelt if somewhat sloppy hugs.
Party magicks, Fin decided, and started on discarded tea and coffee cups.
He carted them up to the kitchen, said good-bye to another handful. Two birds, he decided, he’d have the party debris dealt with, and move out the stragglers.
Though it took thirty minutes rather than Iona’s predicted twenty, he wouldn’t complain.
“That’s the last of them,” Iona announced.
“Thank the gods.”
“You gave a lot of people a fun and memorable evening.” She tipped onto her toes to kiss his cheek. “And you had one yourself.”
“I’m happy to remember it now that it’s done. And thank you for all you did.”
“Couldn’t have had a better time of it.” She glanced around the living room, nodded. “And we’re not leaving you with much of a mess. Branna, I can ride with you if you want, just leave my car here. I’m not taking Nan to the airport until afternoon tomorrow, so I can come back for it easily.”
“Best you ride with Boyle.”
“We’ll make a caravan of it,” Connor said as he shrugged into his coat. “A short drive for certain, but it’s still the dead of night. Branna can follow you and Boyle out, and Meara and I will come up behind.”
“I’m not driving home tonight at all. I’m staying here.”
Branna looked at Fin as she spoke. He wasn’t sure how he kept his feet when she’d rocked him back so stunningly on his heels.
“Well then!” Brightly, Meara smiled, and jammed her cap on her head. “We’ll be off. Good night, and happy New Year.”
“But,” Connor began as she all but dragged him to the door with Iona pushing Boyle behind him.
“Would you let me get my coat on?” Boyle complained even as Iona firmly closed the door behind the four of them.
Fin stood exactly where he was. Only one thought managed to eke through the logjam in his mind. “Why?”
“I decided for this time, this place, I wouldn’t think about yesterday or about tomorrow. It may be we’ll both come to regret it, but I want to be with you. I always have, likely always will, but this is only tonight. There can’t be any promises or building dream castles this time around, and we both know that. But there’s need, and there’s finally trust again.”
“You’re content with that?”
“I find I am, and God knows I’ve turned it all over a hundred different ways, but I find I am content with that. We’re both entitled to make this choice. You asked me to stay with you. I’m saying I will.”
So much of the turmoil inside him settled into calm even as all the resignation he’d carried for years dropped away to make room for a tangle of joy and anticipation.
“Maybe I changed my mind on it.”
She laughed, and he saw the light sparkle in her smoky eyes. “If that’s the case, I wager I can change it back again quick enough.”
“It seems the least I can do is give you that chance.” He held out a hand. “I won’t kiss you here or we’d end up on the floor. Come to bed, Branna.”
She put her hand in his. “We’ve never been in a bed together, have we? I’m curious about yours. I resisted going upstairs and poking around during the party. It took heroic willpower.”
“You’ve never lacked that.” He brought her hand to his lips. “I’ve imagined you here a thousand times. A thousand and a thousand times.”
“I couldn’t do the same, as even my heroic will wouldn’t have held up against the imagining.” Amazed at her own calm, she kissed his hand in turn. “I knew when Iona walked into my workshop you’d come back. You’d be a part of this, a part of me again. I asked why, why, when I’d found my life, made myself content with it, fate should put you back into it again.”
“What was the answer?”
“I’ve yet to get one, and still can’t stop the asking. But not tonight. It’s so grand, your home. All these rooms, and the all but heartbreaking detail of every centimeter of space.”
And none of it, he thought, so much home as the kitchen of her cottage.
He opened the door of his bedroom, kissed her hand again, then drew her in. Rather than turn on the lights, he flicked his wrist.
The fire kindled in the hearth, and candles flickered to life.
“Again grand,” she said. “A grand male sanctuary, but warm and attractive instead of practical and Spartan. Your bed’s glorious.” She moved to it, trailed fingers over the massive footboard. “Old, so old. Do you dream of those who’ve slept here?”
“I cleansed it so I wouldn’t feel I shared the bed with strangers from other times. So, no, I don’t dream of them. I’ve dreamed of you when I’ve slept here.”
“I know it, as I had a moment in that bed with you in dreams.”
“Not just then. A thousand and a thousand times.”
She turned to him, looked at him in the light and shadow of dancing flames. The heart she’d lost to him so many years before swelled inside her. “We won’t dream tonight,” she said, and opening her arms, went to him.
The nerves that had hummed just under her skin dissolved. Body to body with him, mouth to mouth with him, her world simply righted.
This, of course, the single missing link in the chain of her life.
For tonight, if it could only be tonight, she would give herself a gift. She would only feel. She would open herself, heart, body, mind, and feel what she’d struggled against for so long.
Tomorrow, if need be, she’d tell herself it was only the physical, only a way to relieve the tension and strain between them for the greater good. But tonight, she embraced the truth.
She loved. Had always loved, would always love.
“I’ve missed you,” she murmured. “Ah, Finbar, I’ve missed you.”
“Ached for you.” He brushed his lips over her cheeks, brought them back to hers.
She clung as they lifted inches off the floor, then a foot, circling. With a laugh, she flung her arms up, scattered stars above them.
“By firelight and starlight, by candle flame, tonight, what I am, is yours.”
“And what you are, is cherished.”
He lowered them to the bed, sank into the kiss.
With her, at last with her, free to drink deep and deep from her lips, free to feel her body under his, to see her hair spread out.
The gift she gave them both, too magnificent to rush. So he would savor her gift, and give all he had in return.
He took his hands slowly up her body, gently captured her breasts. No longer the budding girl etched in his memory, but the bloom.
New memories here to layer over what had been.
He pressed his lips to her throat, lingered over the scent of her caught there, just there, that had haunted his days and nights. His again, to take in like breath.
As he slid the dress down her shoulders, she arched to ease hi
s way. Her skin, white as milk, caught the gold of his firelight, the silver of her stars. He undressed her as if uncovering the most precious of jewels.
Her heart fluttered under his touch. Only he had ever been able to bring her that sensation, one of both nerves and pleasure. Each time he kissed her, it was slow and deep, as if worlds could spin away and back again while he savored.
“You’ve more patience than you did,” she managed as her blood began to sing under her skin.
“You’re more beautiful than you were. I never thought it possible.”
She caught his face in her hands a moment, fingers skimming up into his hair, then she shifted to rise above him with stars sparkling over her head.
“And you.” She drew his sweater up, off. “Witch and warrior. Stronger than the boy I loved.” She spread her hands over his chest. “Wounded, but ever loyal. Valiant.”
When he shook his head, she brought his hands up, pressed them to her own heart. “It matters to me, Fin, more than I can tell you. It matters.” She lowered to press her lips to his lips, to press her lips to his heart.
She’d broken his heart, as he’d broken hers. She didn’t know what fate would grant them, even if those hearts could be truly mended. But tonight she wanted him to know she knew his heart, and valued it.
To change the mood she danced her fingers along his left ribs. Fin jumped like a rabbit.
“Bloody hell.”
“Ah, still a weakness there, I see. That one small spot.” She reached for it again, and he caught her wrist.
“Mind yourself, as I recall a weakness or two of yours.”
“None that make me squeal like a girl, Finbar Burke.” She shifted again as he reared up, wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck. “Still would rather a fist in the face than a tickle along the ribs.”
“The one’s less humiliating.”
She shook back her hair, laughed up at the ceiling.
“Do you remember—”
She looked back at him, met his eyes. It was all there, in that instant, looking out at her. His craving for her, and the love wrapped around it. Past and present collided, rushed through her like a hot wind, sparking her own terrible, burning need.
“Oh God, Fin.”
No more patience, no more careful explorations. They came together in a fury, all wild need and desperation. Rough hands rushed over her, took greedily while her own yanked and pulled to free him of the rest of his clothes.
Nothing between them, she thought now. She couldn’t bear even air between them. Their mouths came together in heat and hunger as they rolled over the bed to find more of each other.
She closed her teeth over his shoulder, dug her fingers into his hips.
“Come inside me. I want you inside me.”
When he drove into her, the world stopped. No breath, no sound, no movement. Then came thunder, a hoarse roar of it, charging like a beast from the hills. And lightning, a flash that lit the room like noon.
With her eyes locked on his, she gripped his hands.
“It’s for us to say tonight,” she said. “It’s for us tonight.” She arched toward him. “Love me.”
“Only you. Always you.”
He gave himself over to the need, to her demand, to his own heart.
When they came together, they were the thunder, they were the lightning. And over their heads her stars shone the brighter.
• • •
WHEN HE WOKE, THE SUN WAS UP AND STREAMING. A BRIGHT day for the start of a new year. And Branna lay sleeping beside him.
He wanted to wake her, to make love with her in that streaming sunlight as they had in the dark and through to the soft kiss of dawn.
But shadows haunted her eyes. She needed sleep, and quiet, and peace. So he only touched her hair, and smiled, reminding himself she could be annoyed at best, ferocious at worst, on waking.
So he got out of bed, pulled on his pants, and slipped out of the room.
He’d work. He wanted work, wanted to find the way to end all of it, to resolve it once and for all. And to find the way to break the curse a dying witch had laid on him, so long before.
If he could break the curse, remove the mark, he and Branna could be together, not for a night, but a lifetime.
He’d given up believing that could be. Until this New Year, until the hours spent with her. Now that hope, that faith was back inside him, burning bright.
He would find a way, he told himself as he went to his workshop. A way to end Cabhan and protect the three, and all that came from them. A way to erase the mark from his body, and purge his blood of any trace of Cabhan.
Today, the first day of the New Year, he’d renew that quest.
He considered the poison they’d created for the last battle. Strong and potent, and they’d come close. The injuries to Cabhan—or what inhabited him—had been great. But not mortal. Because what empowered Cabhan wasn’t mortal.
A demon, Fin thought, paging through his own books. One freed by blood sacrifice to merge with a willing host. A host with power as well.
Blood from the sire.
He sat to make notes of his own.
Blood from the dam.
Shed by the son.
He wrote it all down, the steps, the words, what he’d seen, and what he’d felt.
The red stone created by blood magicks of the darkest sort, of the most evil of acts. The source of power, healing, immortality.
“And a portal,” Fin murmured. “A portal for the demon to pass through, and into the host.”
They could burn Cabhan to ash as Sorcha had, but wouldn’t end him without destroying the stone, and the demon.
A second potion, he considered, and rose to pace. One conjured to close this portal. Trap the demon inside, then destroy it. Cabhan couldn’t exist without the demon, the demon couldn’t exist without Cabhan.
He pulled down another book, one of the journals he kept when he traveled. With his hands braced on the work counter, he leaned over, reading, refreshing himself. Considering what might be done.
“Fin.”
Engrossed, his mind on magicks dark and bright, he glanced over. She wore one of his oldest shirts, a faded chambray he sometimes tossed on to work in the stables. Bare feet, bare legs, tumbled hair, and a look in her eyes of astonished sorrow.
His heart skipped—just the sight of her—even before he followed her gaze to the window, to the stained-glass image of her.
He straightened, hooked his thumbs in his front pockets. “It seemed right somehow, to have the Dark Witch looking over my shoulder when I worked here. Reminding me why I did.”
“It’s a constant grief to love like this.”
“It is.”
“How do we go on, as that may never change?”
“We take what we have, and do whatever we can to change it. Haven’t we lived without each other long enough?”
“We are what we are, Fin, and some of that is through no choice of our own. There can’t be promises between us, not for tomorrows.”
“Then we take today.”
“Only today. I’ll see to breakfast.” She turned to go, glanced back. “You’ve a fine workshop here. Like the rest of the house, it suits you.”
She went down. Coffee first, she told herself. Of a morning, coffee always made things clearer.
She’d begun the New Year with him, something she’d sworn would never happen. But she’d made that oath in a storm of emotion, in turmoil. And had kept it, she admitted, as much for self-preservation as duty.
And now, for love, she’d broken it.
The world hadn’t ended, she told herself as she worked Fin’s very canny machine. Fire hadn’t rained from the sky. They’d had sex, a great deal of lovely sex, and the fates appeared to accept it.
She’d woken light and bright and loose and . . . happy, she admitted. And she’d slept deeper and easier than she had since Samhain.
Sex was energy, she considered, gratefully taking those first
sips of coffee. It was positive—when done willingly—a bright blessing and a meeting of basic needs. So sex was permitted, and she could thank the goddesses for that, and would.
But futures were a different matter. She wouldn’t make plans again, let herself become starry-eyed and dreaming. Today only, she reminded herself.
It would be more than they’d had before, and would have to be enough.
She hunted in his massive fridge—oh, she’d love having one so big as this—and found three eggs, a stingy bit of bacon, and a single hothouse tomato.
Like today only and sex, it would have to be enough.
She heard him come in as she finished cobbling together what she thought of as a poor man’s omelette.
“Your larder is a pitiful thing, Fin Burke. A sad disgrace, so you’ll make do with what I could manage here, and be grateful.”
“I’m very grateful indeed.”
She glanced around. He’d put on a black long-sleeved tee, but his feet remained as bare as hers. And he had a smile on his face.
“You seem very happy for a miserly bit of bacon and tomato scrambled up with a trio of eggs.”
“You’re wearing only my old shirt and cooking at my stove. I’d be a fool not to smile.”
“And a fool you’ve never been.” She stuck a second mug on his coffee machine, pressed the proper buttons. “This one here is far better than mine. I should have one. And your jam was old as Medusa, and just as ugly. You’ll make do with butter for your toast. I’ve started you a list for the market. You’ll need to—”
He whirled her around, lifted her to the tips of her toes, and ravished her mouth. When she could think, she thought it fortunate she’d taken the eggs off the heat, or they’d have been scorched and ruined.
But since she had, she gave as good as she got in the kiss.
“Come back to bed.”
“That I won’t as I’ve taken the time and trouble to make a breakfast out of your pitiful stores.” She pulled back. “Take your coffee. I’m plating this up before it goes cold. How do you manage breakfast on your own?”
“Now that Boyle’s rarely available for me to talk into frying one up, I get whatever’s handy. There’s the oatmeal packs you make up in the microwave.”
“A sad state of affairs.” She put a plate in front of him, sat with her own. “And with such a lovely spot here to have your breakfast. I think, once Boyle and Iona are in their house, you’d be able to see their lights through the trees from here. It meant something to them, you selling them the land.”
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