Blood Magick (The Cousins O'Dwyer Trilogy #3)(54)

Like today only and sex, it would have to be enough.

She heard him come in as she finished cobbling together what she thought of as a poor man’s omelette.

“Your larder is a pitiful thing, Fin Burke. A sad disgrace, so you’ll make do with what I could manage here, and be grateful.”

“I’m very grateful indeed.”

She glanced around. He’d put on a black long-sleeved tee, but his feet remained as bare as hers. And he had a smile on his face.

“You seem very happy for a miserly bit of bacon and tomato scrambled up with a trio of eggs.”

“You’re wearing only my old shirt and cooking at my stove. I’d be a fool not to smile.”

“And a fool you’ve never been.” She stuck a second mug on his coffee machine, pressed the proper buttons. “This one here is far better than mine. I should have one. And your jam was old as Medusa, and just as ugly. You’ll make do with butter for your toast. I’ve started you a list for the market. You’ll need to—”

He whirled her around, lifted her to the tips of her toes, and ravished her mouth. When she could think, she thought it fortunate she’d taken the eggs off the heat, or they’d have been scorched and ruined.

But since she had, she gave as good as she got in the kiss.

“Come back to bed.”

“That I won’t as I’ve taken the time and trouble to make a breakfast out of your pitiful stores.” She pulled back. “Take your coffee. I’m plating this up before it goes cold. How do you manage breakfast on your own?”

“Now that Boyle’s rarely available for me to talk into frying one up, I get whatever’s handy. There’s the oatmeal packs you make up in the microwave.”

“A sad state of affairs.” She put a plate in front of him, sat with her own. “And with such a lovely spot here to have your breakfast. I think, once Boyle and Iona are in their house, you’d be able to see their lights through the trees from here. It meant something to them, you selling them the land.”

“He’s a brother to me, and he’s lucky for all that, as otherwise I might have snatched Iona up for my own. Though she can’t cook for trying.”

“She’s better than she was. But then she had nowhere to go but up in that department. She’s stronger every day. Her power’s still young and fresh, but it has a fierceness to it. It may be why fire’s hers.”

This was good, she thought, and this was sweet. Sitting and talking easy over coffee and eggs.

“Will her grandmother take your cottage to rent?” she asked him.

“I think she will.”

Branna toyed with her eggs. “There’s connections everywhere between you and me, and us. I put it all out of my mind for a very long time, but I’ve had to ask myself in these last months, why so many of them? Beyond you and me, Fin. There’s always been you and Boyle and Connor, and Meara as well.”

“Our circle,” he agreed, “less one till Iona came.”

“That she would come as fated as the rest. And didn’t you have that cottage when Meara’s mother needed it, and now for Iona’s Nan? You and Boyle and the stables, you and Connor with the falconry school. Land you owned where Boyle and Iona will live their life. You’ve spent more time away than here these past years, and still you’re so tightly linked. Some may say it’s just the way of things, but I don’t believe that. Not anymore.”

“What do you believe?”

“I can’t know for certain.” Poking at the eggs on her plate, she stared off out the window. “I know there are connections again, the three now, the three then. And each of us more closely linked to one of them. And didn’t Eamon mistake our Meara for a gypsy he knew—name of Aine as you named the white filly you brought back to breed with Alastar? I feel Boyle has some connection there as well, some piece of it, and if we needed we’d find that connection to Teagan of the first three.”

“It’s no mystery.” He rubbed his shoulder. “It’s Cabhan for me.”

“I think it’s more, somewhere. You’re from him, of his blood, but not connected in the way I am with Sorcha’s Brannaugh, or Connor with Eamon and so on. If you were, I can’t see how you’d have known to bring Alastar back for Iona, and Aine back for Alastar.”

“I didn’t bring Aine back for Alastar, not altogether, or not only. I brought her back for you.”

The mug she’d lifted stilled in midair. “I . . . I don’t understand you.”

“When I saw her, I saw you. You used to love to ride, to fly astride a horse. I saw you on her, flying through the night with the moon bursting full in the sky. And you, lit like a candle with . . .”

“What?”

“As you are in the window upstairs, just as I saw you years before when I had it done. A wand in one hand, fire in the other. It came and went like a fingersnap, but was clear as day. So I brought her back for you, when you’re ready for her.”

She said nothing, could say nothing for a moment. Then she rose, went to the door, and let in the little dog she’d sensed waiting.

Bugs wagged around her feet, then dashed to Fin.

“Don’t feed him from the table,” she said absently as she sat again. “It’s poor manners for both of you.”