Low whines, mingled with small whuffy sounds, filled the air. If Rune had been a cat, he would have been purring, but she decided not to tell him that. Aislinn squatted next to him and hugged him hard. He licked her face, and she realized she was crying. What’s happened to me? I’m an emotional mess. Got to pull myself together. Snuffling, she stood and began checking the contents of Marta’s medical office.
“Holy shit,” she told Rune after a few minutes. “There’s nothing she didn’t have here. Wonder how the hell she restocked her medicines and medical supplies after the places she bought them closed down?”
“Probably the same way she came by all that food. She used her Hunter magic to find far more than the dark.” Fionn stood in the doorway. She hadn’t heard him approach, possibly because the thick carpet muffled his footsteps. “I cleared the electrical field.”
“Wow! You did that really fast.”
“Magic wielders use similar patterns for all their spells. It was akin to the outside wards, so I was able to figure it out easily enough.”
Aislinn turned to gaze at him. Lines creased his face that she didn’t remember seeing before. She could only guess the strain of watching her die and being afraid his magic wouldn’t be up to the task of bringing her back. “Thanks,” she said softly, “for saving my life.”
He closed the distance between them in two long strides. “Don’t you get it yet?” he said against her hair as his arms closed tight about her. “I am not sure how it happened, but you and I are fated to be together. The blood of the earliest Irish kings dances in your veins. For years, I sought you, settling for others when it seemed an impossible task. In truth, I despaired ever finding you. I tried everything. Nothing ever worked. You asked me before about children. That was why I never had any. I couldn’t find their proper mother.” He drew in a ragged breath and pulled her even closer. “I do not understand how it is I have found you now, with the Earth standing at the edge of a precipice, yet here you are. And I am grateful.”
“I was foretold somehow?” Her voice was muffled against his chest. What he said didn’t seem possible. In spite of the warmth of his arms, it gave her the creeps.
“Och aye, lassie. My lassie. Heart of my heart, breath of my breath. I shall be holding you still when light leaches out of the world.” The Gaelic words swirled, soft against her ears.
“My mother used to sing me that.”
“Of course she did. It is because you are royalty from the ancient line. Your mother was an Irish queen.”
Chapter Sixteen
“How could you possibly know that?” Aislinn pushed back far enough to look up at him.
“I have been inside you. Held your blood in my hands. In my soul. You have done enough Healing. You understand how it is done—”
“Not what I meant. How could you know Mother was some sort of queen?”
“I recognize your blood—and hers. We thought Tara was the last of her line,” he said without missing a beat. “She disappeared from Ireland about thirty years ago. Some of my…associates have been hunting her ever since. Since she was the last living MacLochlainn, it was her duty to return to Ireland, produce children with a proper father—”
She waved him to silence, trying to think. “Mom and Dad met at Cambridge.” She counted back on her fingers, realizing with a shock that it had, indeed, been thirty years ago.
“Did you never meet any of your mother’s people?” His voice was soft, but insistent, as if he already knew the answer, but wanted to be sure she paid close attention to it.
“No. She told me she didn’t get on with them. That they didn’t approve of Daddy…” Her voice ran down. Could Fionn’s story possibly be true?
“Och aye, and ’tis more than true. Naught but males were born to the MacLochlainn line for centuries. They even married well outside the clans, hoping against hope to produce a female. Tara was the first since, well in a verra long time. I thought ’twas she my future was linked to. I waited for her to grow a bit, but by the time I showed up to claim her, she was gone.” He shrugged helplessly. “See, and I was wed to another. I needed to extricate myself.”
“You knew Mother?”
“Aye, that I did.”
Aislinn’s head spun. Prophecies, matches that had been preordained, or some such thing, for centuries… It was all too much to get her mind around. He was still talking, but she’d stopped listening. The last thing she heard was “…and so, ’twas not her, but you—”