Page 72 of The Seer

Jaysus! Could he? Fintan hoped not. If they were the same person born centuries apart, it didn’t seem likely without Ardghal killing himself. Yet, they were of two separate minds at the moment, so perhaps the possibility existed that should he destroy the human, the Siren would remain.

Learning about the sigils taught Fintan one thing, though. His Siren was indeed Ardghal. He hadn’t known about the grotto or the artifacts it claimed were beneath it. If the spell was truly cast in the past, and if Peter was taking it as gospel, it must be so.

“Let me out, ya feckin’ bastard!”Fintan shouted. He hoped that if he could cloud the creature’s mind with noise, it would have no choice but to release him.

“It didn’t work in reverse when I tried it. It won’t work for you,”Ardghal replied dryly.“Calm yourself, friend.”

“Look, I’ll do whatever ya want,”he lied.“Just let me speak to Taryn.”

“Siren’s sense intent.”

Fecking grand.

“Be patient. It will be over soon.”

That’s what he was deathly afraid of.

Fintan’s attemptsat freedom amused Ardghal. Now the shoe was on the other foot, so to speak, his other half was bargaining as if his entire world depended on it. Perhaps he was right, and it did. The future remained to be seen. Ironic for a Seer, but still.

“Why would Elizabeth want you to die?” Taryn croaked, bringing Ardghal back to the present.

“She was tired. Of war, of losing family members and friends, of life.” He shrugged and stared at the bottom of the pool. “Of me,” he added whisper-soft. “My magic kept her alive longer than any witch would normally live. She wished to end her suffering.”

“Why didn’t you do it for her? Why draw out her pain?” she asked curiously.

Wonderful question. But Ardghal didn’t want to examine the answers too closely. They all boiled down to one, anyway. “I loved Elizabeth and couldn’t imagine life without her in it.”

Understanding dawned, and Taryn touched his wrist. “You let her take the necklace!”

Meeting her incredible eyes, he absorbed the comfort of her compassion without taking anything else. If he could help it, he’d never steal a drop of her magic.

But hewouldborrow it to open the grotto.

“I did. What was life without her?”

“Fuck, that’s romantic,” she breathed with stars in her eyes.

“Is it?” he asked softly.

He didn’t know anymore. At the time, it had felt right to give her what she wanted, but his soulless energy had drifted around those cursed halls above until Fintan’s birth, when it fused with his body. Before then, the days had stretched endlessly, one into the next, until he was on the precipice of madness. And perhaps he’d stepped over the ledge.

Hope came in the form of his soul’s rebirth. Or rather, part of his soul. The other half had stayed with Elizabeth, where it belonged. Ardghal had slept for most of the boy’s growing-up years, when suddenly the young man’s interest in music had sparked life into him. It wasn’t until he saw Elizabeth, as Taryn, standing in the audience, that all the missing pieces of his soul clicked back into place, complete once more.

It was also when he remembered he had a mission to perform. But those bloody busybodies controlling Fintan had other ideas. They’d facilitated Peter’s death to keep the boy away from Taryn, following it with lies about her role in Fintan’s eventual demise.

Fools, the lot of them.

Her restlessness pulled Ardghal from the past.

She shifted, putting space between them. Her wariness sank in, and he cursed himself for an eejit. Without being party to his thoughts, she was subjected to his angry energy and didn’t understand that it wasn’t directed at her.

“Let me explain.” For the next ten minutes, he told how he’d come to be reborn as Fintan’s Siren and how the so-called ancestors manipulated everyone to maintain charge of the Seer’s ability. “With it, they control the witch community, dousing any fires able to consume them.”

“They played him? Using his gift to anticipate danger to their positions? Is that what you’re saying?” Her outrage was glorious. The fierce protectiveness of Fintan was a replica of Elizabeth’s for him in the early days, when she believed his path was the right one.

“Yes. Just as they played my wife.”

Ardghal felt the hammering of her heart through their connection.

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