Page 3 of Shadow Spell

For now, he’d fish. It was good to be a man, he thought, to hunt and fish, to provide. To pay back his cousins for the shelter and the care.

He’d learned patience since being a man—and caught four fish before he rowed the boat back to shore. He secured the boat, strung the fish on a line.

He stood a moment, looking out at the water, the shine of it now under the fullness of the sun. He thought of his mother, the sound of her voice, the scent of her hair. Her words would stay with him.

He would walk back through the little woods. Not great like home, but a fine wood all the same, he told himself.

And he would bring Ailish the fish, take some tea by the fire. Then he would help with the last of the harvest.

He heard the high, sharp cry as he started back to the cottage and the little farm. Smiling to himself, he reached into his satchel, drew out his leather glove. He only had to pull it on, lift his arm, and Roibeard swooped out of the clouds, wings spread to land.

“Good morning to you.” Eamon looked into those golden eyes, felt the tug of connection with his hawk, his guide, his friend. He touched the charmed amulet around his neck, one his mother had conjured with blood magicks for protection. It carried the image of the hawk.

“It’s a fine day, isn’t it? Bright and cool. The harvest is nearly done, and we’ll have our celebration soon,” he continued as he walked with the hawk on his arm. “The equinox, as you know, when night conquers day as Gronw Pebr conquered Lleu Llaw Gyffes. We’ll celebrate the birth of Mabon, son of Mordon the guardian of the earth. Sure there’ll be honey cakes for certain. I’ll see you have a bit.”

The hawk rubbed its head against Eamon’s cheek, affectionate as a kitten.

“I had the dream again, of Cabhan. Of home, of Ma after she gave us almost all there was of her power and sent us away to be safe. I see it, Roibeard. How she poisoned him with a kiss, how she flamed, using all she had to destroy him. He took her life, and still... I saw the stirring in the ashes she made of him. The stirring of them, something evil, and the glow of red from his power.”

Eamon paused a moment, drew up his power, opened to it. He felt the beating heart of a rabbit rushing into the brush, the hunger of a fledgling waiting for its mother and its breakfast.

He felt his sisters, the sheep, the horses.

And no threat.

“He hasn’t found us. I would feel it. You would see it, and would tell me. But he looks, and he hunts, and he waits, as I feel that as well.”

Those bold blue eyes darkened; the boy’s tender mouth firmed into a man’s. “I won’t hide forever. One day, on the blood of Daithi and Sorcha, I’ll do the hunting.”

Eamon lifted a hand, took a fistful of air, swirled it, tossed it—gently—toward a tree. Branches shook, and roosting birds took flight.

“I’ll only get stronger, won’t I?” he murmured, and walked to the cottage to please Ailish with four fish.

***

BRANNAUGH WENT ABOUT HER DUTIES AS SHE DID EVERYday. As every day for five years she’d done all that was asked of her. She cooked, she cleaned, tended the young ones as Ailish always seemed to have a baby at the breast or in the belly. She helped plant the fields and tend the crops. She helped in harvest.

Good honest work, of course, and satisfying in its way. No one could be more kind than her cousin Ailish and her husband. Good, solid people both, people of the earth, who’d offered more than shelter to three orphaned children.

They’d offered family, and there was no more precious gift.

Hadn’t her mother known it? She would never have sent her three children to Ailish otherwise. Even in the darkest hour, Sorcha would never have given her beloved children to anyone but the kind, and the loving.

But at twelve, Brannaugh was no longer a child. And what rose in her, spread in her, woke in her—more since she’d started her courses the year before—demanded.

Holding so much in, turning her eyes from that ever-brightening light proved harder and more sorrowful every day. But she owed Ailish respect, and her cousin held a fear of magicks and power—even her own.

Brannaugh had done what her mother asked of her on that terrible morning. She’d taken her brother and sister south, away from their home in Mayo. She’d kept off the road; she’d shuttered her grief in her heart where only she could hear it keening.

And in that heart lived the need to avenge as well, the need to embrace the power inside her, and learn more, learn and hone enough to defeat Cabhan, once and done.

But Ailish wanted only her man, her children, her farm. And why not? She was entitled to her home and her life and her land, the quiet of it all. Hadn’t she risked it by taking in Sorcha’s blood? Taking in what Cabhan lusted for—hunted for?

She deserved gratitude, loyalty, and respect.

But what lived in Brannaugh clawed for freedom. Choices needed to be made.

She’d seen her brother walk back from the river with his fish, his hawk. She felt him test his power out of the sight of the cottage—as he often did. As Teagan, their sister, often did. Ailish, chattering about the jams they’d make that day, felt nothing. Her cousin blocked most of what she had—a puzzlement to Brannaugh—and used only the bit she allowed herself to sweeten jams or coax bigger eggs from the hens.

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