“And now let’s make sense of this,” Ciaran said hotly, coming to a hard stop several feet inside the door.
“Hush, all of you! You startled poor Lily!” Was Claire’s angry reprimand, last to be heard.
Ciaran ignored the last, and Claire’s attempts to soothe the whimpering bairn, though he did lower his voice.
“Say it again,” He instructed Ivy.
Ivy wrung her hands, color flooding her cheeks. “I don’t...” She faltered, her eyes lifting helplessly to Alaric.
“We’ve learned so much over the centuries,” Ciaran repeated for her, his tone biting, his gaze locked with Alaric. “From now, she said, until whenever they,” he paused, stabbing his finger at Ivy and then Claire, “come from. ‘When they come from’, she said.”
Alaric’s sigh was slow and heavy. “Bluidy hell.”
“Aye, that it is.” Ciaran’s voice was like ice. Though he still didn’t understand...anything, Alaric hadn’t denied one bit of it. “If ye canna explain so that I dinna want to strike ye through or command pyres to be lit in the bailey, then I suggest ye pack up, mount up, and take yer leave. Now.”
Once more, nearly in tears, Ivy whispered, “Alaric, I thought you would have told him.”
Alaric shook his head and showed Ivy a grim smile, expected to assuage her guilt, Ciaran assumed. “Dinna fret, lass. I should have told him—Ciaran at least.”
Through gritted teeth, Ciaran was forced to inquire. “Told me what?”
Alaric rubbed a hand over his jaw, his shoulders heavy. “It’s nae simple telling. But since the words are out, better ye hear it straight than twisted.”
Ciaran’s patience was gone. “Then speak it plain.”
Alaric’s gaze flicked to Ivy, who nodded with resignation, before locking eyes with Ciaran. “Ivy and apparently Claire as well are nae from here. This time. They are...from elsewhere. From a time far ahead of ours.”
Ciaran was not amused. He was beyond befuddled, having no idea why Alaric risked his life by provoking him, and that of Ivy and the child by spewing such madness. “Try again,” he suggested abrasively.
Ivy’s eyes filled, but her voice broke in, nearly indignant. “It’s true. I’m not from this...century. I was born hundreds of years in the future. I don’t know how it happened or...or why, but I found myself here. Years—centuries—back. I thought I was going mad until Alaric found me.” She glanced at Claire, seeking courage. “She came the same—under similar circumstances, I mean. Pulled out of her life—the year she lived in—and dropped into this one.”
As she spoke, Alaric moved to the foot of the bed, meaning not only to shield Ivy, but to place himself where he could guard both her and the bairn at once, on opposite sides of the bed.
Ciaran turned his thunderous glower onto Claire, who stiffened in reaction. Her hand on the babe’s back went still for a moment. And then her jaw tightened. “It’s true,” she confirmed. “Our circumstances were similar, though not exactly the same. But I’m not from...here either.”
When his stony expression did not shift, she spoke again, her voice lifting with a flash of indignation that mirrored Ivy’s. It struck him almost as a rebuke—how dare he refuse her words.
“I didn’t do this myself,” she said. “I didn’t ask to be snatched from my own time and plunged into this one. But why would we make this up?”
Ciaran stared at them both, his disbelief grinding against the seeming sincerity of Ivy’s slip—we’ve learned so much over the centuries. The conviction in both their gazes and the steadiness in Claire’s tone prickled his skin.
Alaric exhaled, the sound rough, resigned. “'Tis nae witchcraft. Nae trick, save for what was donetothem. I kent ye’d find it impossible to believe—God’s bluid, I can hardly accept it myself.”
This wrung a small gasp from Ivy.
Alaric turned to her, defending, “What? It’s simply too difficult to comprehend, love. I...” He shrugged but said no more.
And now Ciaran had to wonder if these were lies Ivy had invented for Alaric to hear and know—but for what reason? And how did Claire play into it?
Ciaran’s chest heaved once, twice, as he looked from Ivy, pale and trembling, to Claire, who held his gaze as if daring him to call her a liar outright.
“Shite,” he muttered. “And now I, too, am expected to believe that the pair of ye are—what? Spirits? Fae? Persons displaced...people out of time?”
Furthering his contempt, Claire and Ivy nodded solemnly.
“Time-travelers,” Claire named them.
“But notwillingtime-travelers,” Ivy was quick to insist.
