Blood Magick (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy #3)(53)

“It’s for us to say tonight,” she said. “It’s for us tonight.” She arched toward him. “Love me.”

“Only you. Always you.”

He gave himself over to the need, to her demand, to his own heart.

When they came together, they were the thunder, they were the lightning. And over their heads her stars shone the brighter.

? ? ?

WHEN HE WOKE, THE SUN WAS UP AND STREAMING. A BRIGHT day for the start of a new year. And Branna lay sleeping beside him.

He wanted to wake her, to make love with her in that streaming sunlight as they had in the dark and through to the soft kiss of dawn.

But shadows haunted her eyes. She needed sleep, and quiet, and peace. So he only touched her hair, and smiled, reminding himself she could be annoyed at best, ferocious at worst, on waking.

So he got out of bed, pulled on his pants, and slipped out of the room.

He’d work. He wanted work, wanted to find the way to end all of it, to resolve it once and for all. And to find the way to break the curse a dying witch had laid on him, so long before.

If he could break the curse, remove the mark, he and Branna could be together, not for a night, but a lifetime.

He’d given up believing that could be. Until this New Year, until the hours spent with her. Now that hope, that faith was back inside him, burning bright.

He would find a way, he told himself as he went to his workshop. A way to end Cabhan and protect the three, and all that came from them. A way to erase the mark from his body, and purge his blood of any trace of Cabhan.

Today, the first day of the New Year, he’d renew that quest.

He considered the poison they’d created for the last battle. Strong and potent, and they’d come close. The injuries to Cabhan—or what inhabited him—had been great. But not mortal. Because what empowered Cabhan wasn’t mortal.

A demon, Fin thought, paging through his own books. One freed by blood sacrifice to merge with a willing host. A host with power as well.

Blood from the sire.

He sat to make notes of his own.

Blood from the dam.

Shed by the son.

He wrote it all down, the steps, the words, what he’d seen, and what he’d felt.

The red stone created by blood magicks of the darkest sort, of the most evil of acts. The source of power, healing, immortality.

“And a portal,” Fin murmured. “A portal for the demon to pass through, and into the host.”

They could burn Cabhan to ash as Sorcha had, but wouldn’t end him without destroying the stone, and the demon.

A second potion, he considered, and rose to pace. One conjured to close this portal. Trap the demon inside, then destroy it. Cabhan couldn’t exist without the demon, the demon couldn’t exist without Cabhan.

He pulled down another book, one of the journals he kept when he traveled. With his hands braced on the work counter, he leaned over, reading, refreshing himself. Considering what might be done.

“Fin.”

Engrossed, his mind on magicks dark and bright, he glanced over. She wore one of his oldest shirts, a faded chambray he sometimes tossed on to work in the stables. Bare feet, bare legs, tumbled hair, and a look in her eyes of astonished sorrow.

His heart skipped—just the sight of her—even before he followed her gaze to the window, to the stained-glass image of her.

He straightened, hooked his thumbs in his front pockets. “It seemed right somehow, to have the Dark Witch looking over my shoulder when I worked here. Reminding me why I did.”

“It’s a constant grief to love like this.”

“It is.”

“How do we go on, as that may never change?”

“We take what we have, and do whatever we can to change it. Haven’t we lived without each other long enough?”

“We are what we are, Fin, and some of that is through no choice of our own. There can’t be promises between us, not for tomorrows.”

“Then we take today.”

“Only today. I’ll see to breakfast.” She turned to go, glanced back. “You’ve a fine workshop here. Like the rest of the house, it suits you.”

She went down. Coffee first, she told herself. Of a morning, coffee always made things clearer.

She’d begun the New Year with him, something she’d sworn would never happen. But she’d made that oath in a storm of emotion, in turmoil. And had kept it, she admitted, as much for self-preservation as duty.

And now, for love, she’d broken it.

The world hadn’t ended, she told herself as she worked Fin’s very canny machine. Fire hadn’t rained from the sky. They’d had sex, a great deal of lovely sex, and the fates appeared to accept it.

She’d woken light and bright and loose and . . . happy, she admitted. And she’d slept deeper and easier than she had since Samhain.

Sex was energy, she considered, gratefully taking those first sips of coffee. It was positive—when done willingly—a bright blessing and a meeting of basic needs. So sex was permitted, and she could thank the goddesses for that, and would.

But futures were a different matter. She wouldn’t make plans again, let herself become starry-eyed and dreaming. Today only, she reminded herself.

It would be more than they’d had before, and would have to be enough.

She hunted in his massive fridge—oh, she’d love having one so big as this—and found three eggs, a stingy bit of bacon, and a single hothouse tomato.