Page 92 of Shadow Spell

Straightening again, Iona waved a hand toward the happy mix of zinnias, foxglove, begonias, nasturtiums. “Not specific types or colors. All of them. All that color and joy, just the way you manage to plant them so they look unstudied and happy, and stunning all at once.”

“Then you want Lola.”

“Lola?”

“She’s a florist, has a place just this side of Galway City. She’s a customer of mine. I send her vats of hand cream as doing up flowers is murder on the hands. And she’ll often order candles by the gross to go with her arrangements for a wedding. She’s an artist with blooms, I promise you. I’ll give you her number if you want it.”

“I do. She sounds perfect.”

Iona glanced toward Connor. He crouched on the ground studying a potato as if it had the answer to all the questions printed on its skin.

“I warned you I’d bore you brainless.”

“No, it’s not that. It got me thinking about family, about gardens and flowers. And the bluebell Teagan asked me to plant at her mother’s grave. I haven’t done it.”

“It’s too much of a risk to go to Sorcha’s cabin now,” Branna reminded him.

“I know it. And still, it’s all she asked. She helped heal Meara, and all she asked was that I plant the flowers.”

Setting down her bucket, Branna crossed over to him, crouched down so they were face-to-face. “And we will. We’ll plant the bluebell—a hectare of them if that’s what you want. We’ll honor her mother, who’s ours as well. But none of us are to go near Sorcha’s grave until after Samhain. You’ll promise me that.”

“I wouldn’t risk myself, and by doing that risk all. But it weighs on me, Branna. She was just a girl. And with the look of you, Iona. And I’m looking at you,” he said to Branna, “just like I looked at Sorcha’s Brannaugh, and I could see how she’d be in another ten years, and see how you were at her age. There was too much sorrow and duty in her eyes, as too often there’s too much in yours.”

“When we’ve done what we’ve sworn to do, the sorrow and duty will be done.” She gave his grubby hand a squeeze. “They’ll know it just as we do. I’m sure of that.”

“Why can’t we see, you and me together? And with Iona the three? Why can’t we see how it ends?”

“You know the answer to that. As long as there’s choice, the end is never set. What he has, and all that’s gone before, it blurs the vision, Connor.”

“We’re the light.” Iona stood with her bucket of pods, garden soil staining the knees of her jeans. And the ring Boyle had given her sparkling on her finger. “Whatever he comes with, however he comes, we’ll fight. And we’ll win. I believe that. And I believe it because you do,” she told Connor. “Because with your whole life leading to this, knowing it did, you believe. He’s a bully and a bastard hiding behind power he bartered for with some devil. What we are?” She laid a hand on her heart. “What we have is from the blood and from the light. We’ll cut him down with that light, and send him to hell. I know it.”

“Well said. And there.” Branna gave Connor a poke. “That’s our own Iona’s St. Crispin’s Day speech.”

“It was well said. It’s just a mood hanging over me. A promise not yet kept.”

“One that will be,” Branna said. “And it’s not just that and digging potatoes that’s put you in a mood—a sour one that’s rare for you. Have you and Meara had a fight?”

“Not at all. It’s all grand. I might worry here and there at the way Cabhan’s taken too fine an interest in her. When it’s one of us, we have weapon for weapon, magicks to magicks. She’s only wit and spine, and a blade if she’s carrying one.”

“Which serves her well, and she wears your protective stones, carries the charms we made. It’s all we can do.”

“I had her blood on my hands.” He looked down at them now, saw the wet red of Meara’s blood rather than the good, dark soil. “I find I can’t get around it, get past it, so I’m after texting her a half dozen times a day, making up some foolish reason, just to be sure she’s safe.”

“She’d knock you flat for that.”

“I know it well.”

“I worry about Boyle, too. And Cabhan hasn’t paid any real attention there. It’s natural,” Iona added, “for us to have concerns about the two people we care about who don’t have the same arsenal we do.” She looked at Branna. “You worry, too.”

“I do, yes. Even knowing there’s nothing we can do we haven’t done, I worry.”

“If it helps, I promise I’m with her a lot during the workday. And when she takes out a group—ever since the wolf shadowed her—I braid a charm into her horse’s mane.”

Connor smiled. “Do you?”

“She indulges me, and so does Boyle. I’ve been adding them to all the horses as often as I can manage. It makes me feel better when we have to leave them at night.”

“I gave her some lotion the other day, asked her to use it every day, to test it for me.” Now Branna smiled. “I charmed it.”

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