Conal drew her farther into the circle. The fire rose up again, and shot sparks into her eyes, stroked warmth over his skin. He bent to pick up the pendant, and slipping the chain around her neck, sealed the promise.
“This belongs to you, and so do I.”
“It belongs to me.” She pressed their joined hands against it. “Until it belongs to another. I’ll always be yours.”
She kissed him there, inside the echo of magic, then stepped back. “Come home,” she said.
SOME say that the faeries came out of their raft to celebrate and danced round the Midsummer fire while the star showered the last of its light. But those who had magic in their hearts and had pledged it left the circle, walked from the cliffs and along the quiet beach to the cottage with dark blue shutters that waited by the sea.
IN DREAMS
For those who believe in magic
PROLOGUE
ALL he had were the dreams. Without them he was alone, always and ever alone. For the first hundred years of his solitude, he lived on arrogance and temper. He had plenty of both to spare.
For the second, he lived on bitterness. Like one of his own secret brews, it bubbled and churned inside him. But rather than healing, it served as a kind of fuel that pushed him from day to night, from decade to decade.
In the third century, he fell into despair and self-pity. It made him miserable company, even for himself.
His stubbornness was such that it took four hundred years before he began to make a home for himself, to struggle to find some pleasure, some beauty, some satisfaction in his work and his art. Four hundred years before his pride made room for the admission that he may have been, perhaps, just slightly and only partially responsible for what had become of him.
Still, had his actions, his attitude, deserved such a harsh judgment from the Keepers? Did his mistake, if indeed it had been a mistake, merit centuries of imprisonment, with only a single week of each hundred-year mark in which to really live?
When half a millennium had passed, he surrendered to the dreams. No, it was more than surrender. He embraced them, survived on them. Escaped into them when his soul cried out for the simple touch of another being.
For she came to him in dreams, the dark-haired maid with eyes like blue diamonds. In dreams she would run through his forest, sit by his fire, lie willing in his bed. He knew the sound of her voice, the warmth of it. He knew the shape of her, long and slender as a boy. He knew the way the dimple would wink to life at the corner of her mouth when she laughed. And the exact placement of the crescent moon birthmark on her thigh.
He knew all of this, though he had never touched her, never spoken to her, never seen her but through the silky curtain of dreams.
Though it had been a woman who had betrayed him, a woman who was at the root of his endless solitude, he yearned for this dark-haired maid. Yearned for her, as the years passed, as much as he yearned for what had been.
He was drowning in a great, dark sea of alone.
1
IT was supposed to be a vacation. It was supposed to be fun, relaxing, enlightening.
It was not supposed to be terrifying.
No, no, terrifying was an exaggeration. Slightly.
A wicked summer storm, a strange road snaking through a dark forest where the trees were like giants cloaked in the armor of mists. Kayleen Brennan of the Boston Brennans wasn’t terrified by such things. She was made of sterner stuff. She made a point of reminding herself of that, every ten seconds or so as she fought to keep the rental car on the muddy ditch that had started out as a road.
She was a practical woman, had made the decision to be one quite deliberately and quite clearly when she was twelve. No flights of fancy for Kayleen, no romantic dreams or foolish choices. She had watched—was still watching—such occupations lead her charming, adorable, and baffled mother into trouble.
Financial trouble. Legal trouble. Man trouble.
So Kayleen had become an adult at twelve, and had stayed one.
An adult was not spooked by a bunch of trees and a few streaks of lightning, or by mists that thickened and thinned as if they breathed. A grown woman didn’t panic because she’d made a wrong turn. When the road was too narrow, as this one was, to allow her to safely turn around, she simply kept going until she found her way again.
And a sensible person did not start imagining she heard things in the storm.
Like voices.
Should have stayed in Dublin, she told herself grimly as she bumped over a rut. In Dublin with its busy streets and crowded pubs, Ireland had seemed so civilized, so modern, so urbane. But no, she’d just had to see some of the countryside, hadn’t she? Just had to rent a car, buy a map, and head out to explore.
But honestly, it had been a perfectly reasonable thing to do. She’d intended to see the country while she was here and perhaps find a few treasures for her family’s antique shop back in Boston. She’d intended to wander the roads, to drive to the sea, to visit the pretty little villages, and the great, grand ruins.