Stars of Fortune (The Guardians Trilogy, #1)(41)

“Everything was here.” Sawyer turned. “Ready to eat?”

Sasha hadn’t thought she could face food, and now found the opposite true. “More than, and those look great. We’re missing Doyle and Bran.”

“They’re doing a walkabout. Snooze you lose,” Riley announced. “How’re you doing?”

“Fine now. How about both of you?”

“Bumps and cuts, and nothing a hot shower and Bran’s magic salve didn’t deal with. Probably shouldn’t have said magic,” Riley realized.

“It is what it is. Annika and I are having wine.” She chose a bottle, got glasses, and took them out with her.

“She came around quick,” Sawyer observed.

“Men.” Pitying him, Riley screwed a half dozen beers into a bucket she’d filled with ice. “She’s pissed, cutie. Down to a smolder maybe, but pissed—and trying to figure out how she feels about the fact that she was locking lips a few hours ago with a guy who turns out to be a sorcerer.”

“Oh, yeah? Lip-lock?”

“Talk about smoldering.” She winked at him, hefted the bucket. And noticed when she carried it out, Bran and Doyle rounding the side of the villa. They struck her as pretty easy with each other already.

“Order up!” she called to Sawyer, then plucked out a beer, dropped down into a chair. She waited until Sawyer brought the food, until others had taken wine or beer. Then lifted her own bottle.

“Here’s to a damn good fight.”

When Sasha just stared, Riley gestured with the bottle. “Any fight you walk away from and polish off with a cold beer is a good fight.”

“Can’t argue with that.” Doyle took a sandwich. “Got beer, got food—and appreciate it. But I still don’t have answers. Mr. Wizard’s being vague. Let’s get specific.”

“Mr. Wizard.” Riley snorted out a laugh. “That’s a good one,” she insisted as the others kept silent. “Sash, you should start rolling the ball, seeing as you got things going.”

“I don’t think I got anything going, but all right.” She took a sip of wine first. “I’m an artist.”

“I could see that from the sketch.”

“I live in North Carolina, now. I’ve always had . . .”

“A gift,” Bran finished, as if daring her to contradict him.

She just ignored him. “Right after the first of the year, I began having dreams, about us—all of us here—and about the stars.”

She took him up to her arrival at the hotel in Corfu.

“So you just hopped on a plane and . . . followed your dreams?”

“I couldn’t ignore them, couldn’t make them stop, so yes, that’s what I did. Riley, you should take it from there.”

“Sure. Most excellent salsa,” she added, and dipped a chip in the hill she’d put on her plate. “Tracking legends, myths, finding antiquities and artifacts—that’s what I do. The stars have been on my radar for a long time, and I’d dug up some information that arrowed here. I’d just finished a job, had some time, and decided to see what I could find out on the spot.”

She waved the bottle, took another hit.

“The thing is—and I didn’t mention this before—I didn’t plan to stay in that hotel. I’d planned to come to this area all along, but I had this impulse, is the best I can say. Treat yourself to a good hotel for a day or two, Riley, take a break. So there I was, taking a break with a very nice Bellini on the hotel terrace, and up walks the blonde.”

When she’d finished her side of it, she reached for another beer. “Over to you, Bran.”

He’d wrangled with himself over how much to tell them, what he should hold back. And decided, considering all, on full disclosure.

“Someone in my family, generation by generation, has been tasked to look for the stars, to hold them safe, and to one day return them to where they began, to where they can never be used for ill. So it came to me. We descend from Celene.”

“The goddess?” Riley set her beer down. “You’re a god?”

“I’m not.” Impatience sharpened his voice. “I’m what I told you. I’m a magician, and descended from her. She mated with a sorcerer—a mortal—and bore his son.”

“The demigod Movar,” Riley prompted, “conceived with the sorcerer called Asalri.”

“As you say.”

“And Movar had five sons and three daughters. I know the legend. Or,” Riley corrected, “your family tree.”

“The gift of magicks has come through the blood, and so has the quest for the stars. I came here because, as with you, Riley, I came upon some information. While once again scouring books until my eyes bled, I came on a passage that spoke of a fallen star, one of fire, waiting in a land of green. You might think Greenland, and I did, or Ireland, but there was more that convinced me it was here. It was written the maidens of Korkyra had hidden it, away from the mother of lies.”

“Not much different from what I found,” Riley said. “And the timing? You, me, Sasha? It cements it.”

“I’d barely arrived, and like you, booked the hotel on impulse as I thought to rent a villa. For the quiet, the privacy, as I’d need to work, and hotel rooms aren’t always . . . convenient for certain work.”