Fin stopped in his tracks. “I gave more than enough yesterday, and the day before.”
“I want fresh.”
“She wants fresh,” Fin grumbled and tossed off his coat. “What are you doing with what’s left I bled for you yesterday, and the day before that?”
“It’s safe—and you never know when it might be useful. But I want to start it all fresh today. I’ve changed some of the spell.”
“Again?”
“Yes, again,” she said in as irritable a tone as he. “It needed work. Connor agreed—”
“I’m not in this.” Connor held up his hands. “The two of you sort this out. In fact, now that you’re here, Fin, I’m off. It’s Boyle, I think, who’s coming in a bit later, so he can sweep up the leavings if the two of you battle.”
He grabbed his coat, his cap, his scarf, and was out the door with Kathel slipping out with him—as if the dog agreed some distance wouldn’t hurt a thing.
“Why are you so cross?” Branna demanded.
“Me? Why are you? You’ve got that I’m-annoyed-at-every-fecking-thing between your eyebrows.”
Only more annoyed, Branna rubbed her fingers to smooth out any such line. “I’m not annoyed—yes, I bloody well am, but not at every fecking thing, or at you. I’m not used to failing so spectacularly the way I am with this damnable brew.”
“Not getting it right isn’t failing.”
“Getting it right is success, so its opposite is failing.”
“They called it practicing magicks for a reason, Branna, and you know it full well.”
She started to snap, then just sighed. “I do know it. I do. I thought I’d come closer the first few times than I have. If I keep missing by so wide a mark, I’ll need to send for the ingredients again.”
“So we start fresh.” He walked to her, kissed her. “Good day to you, Branna.”
She let out a half laugh. “And good day to you, Finbar.” Smiling, she picked up her knife. “And so...”
She expected him to roll up his sleeve, but he pulled off his sweater.
“Take it from the mark,” he told her. “As you did for the poison for Cabhan. From the mark, Branna, as you should have done the first time with this.”
“I should have, it’s true. It hurts you, it burns you, when I take blood from there.”
“Because the purpose is the enemy of the mark. Take it from there, Branna. Then I want a damn biscuit.”
“You can have half a dozen.”
She stepped to him with the ritual knife and the cup.
“Don’t block it.” He drew her eyes to him. “The pain may be part of it. We’ll let it come, and let it go.”
“All right.”
She was quick—quick was best—and scored across the pentagram with the tip of her blade. She caught the blood in the cup—felt the pain though he made no sound, no movement.
“That’s enough,” she murmured, and set the knife aside to pick up the cloth she had ready, pressed it to the wound.
Then, putting the cup by the jars, turned back to him to gently heal the shallow wound.
Before he knew what she was about—perhaps before she did—Branna pressed a kiss to the mark.
“Don’t.” Stunned, appalled to the marrow, he jerked back. “I don’t know how it might harm you, what it might do.”
