Rushing forward blindly, Fin hacked at the fog, called out in hopes of drawing the wolf off the man and to him. He brought the wind, a torrent of it to tear and tatter the thick and filthy blanket that closed him in. Through the frayed ribbons of it, he saw the horse stumble, the wolf again gather to leap, and threw out power to block the attack as he charged into the battle.
The wolf turned, red stone, red eyes gleaming bright fire. It flew at Fin’s throat, so fast, so fleet, Fin only had time to pivot Baru. Claws scored his left arm, shoulder to wrist, the force of it nearly unseating him, the pain a tidal wave that burned like hellfire. Swinging out with his sword arm, he lashed out with blade and flame, seared a line along the wolf’s flank—and felt the quick pain of it stab ice through the mark on his shoulder.
He pivoted again, hacking, slicing as the fog once again closed in to blind him. Fighting free, he saw the maneuver had cost him distance. Another charge, another burst of power, but the wolf was already airborne, and though the wounded warrior swung his sword, the wolf streaked over the flash of the blade, and clamped his snapping jaws on the warrior’s throat.
On a cry of rage, Fin spurred Baru forward, through the shifting curtains of fog.
Both horse and rider fell, and with a triumphant howl the wolf and fog vanished.
Even as Baru ran, Fin jumped down, fell to his knees beside the man with bright hair and glazed blue eyes.
“Stay with me,” Fin told him, and laid his hand over the gaping, jagged wound. “Look at me. Look in me. I can help you. Stay with me.”
But he knew the words were hollow. He had no power to heal death, and death lay under his hands.
He felt it—the last beat of heart, the last breath.
“You bled for him.”
With rage, pain, grief all swirling a tempest inside him, Fin looked up, saw the woman. Branna, was his first thought, but he knew almost as soon as that thought formed, he was wrong.
“Sorcha.”
“I am Sorcha. I am the Dark Witch of Mayo. It is my husband, dead on the ground. Daithi, the brave and bright.”
Her dress, gray as the fog, swayed over the ground as she walked closer, and her dark eyes held Fin’s.
“I watch him die, night after night, year after year, century by century. This is my punishment for betraying my gift, my oath. But tonight, you bled for him.”
“I was too late. I didn’t stop it. Saving him might have saved all, but I was too late.”
“We cannot change what was, and still your blood, my love’s, Cabhan’s lay on this ground tonight. Not to change what was, but to show what can be.”
She, too, knelt, then laid her lips on Daithi’s. “He died for me, for his children. He died brave and true, as he ever was. It is I who failed. It is I who out of rage harmed you, who cursed you, an innocent, and so many others who came before you.”
“Out of grief,” Fin said. “Out of grief and torment.”
“Grief and torment?” Her dark eyes flashed at him. “These can’t balance the scales. I cursed you, and all who came between you and Cabhan, and as it is written, what I sent out into the world, has come back to me threefold. I burdened my children, and all the children who came after them.”
“You saved them. Gave your own life for them. Your life and your power.”
She smiled now, and though grief lived in the smile, he saw Branna in her eyes. “I held fast to that grief, as if it were a lover or a beloved child. I think it fed me through all the time. I wouldn’t believe even what I was allowed to see. Of you or in you. Even knowing not just Cabhan’s blood ran in you, I couldn’t accept truth.”
“What truth?”
She looked down at Daithi. “You are his as well. More his, I know now, than Cabhan’s.”
With a hand red with Daithi’s blood and his own, Fin gripped her arm. Power shimmered at the contact. “What are you saying?”
“Cabhan healed—what’s in him helped him come out of the ashes I’d made him. And healed, he sought vengeance. He couldn’t reach my children—they were beyond him. But Daithi had sisters, and one so fair, so fresh, so sweet. He chose her, and he took her, and against her will planted his seed in her. She took her last breath when the child took his first. You are of that child. You are of her. You are of Daithi. You are his, and so, Finbar of the Burkes, you are mine. I’ve wronged you.”
Carefully, she unpinned Daithi’s brooch, one she’d made him for protection that held the image of horse, hound, hawk to represent their three children. “This is yours, as you are his. Forgive me.”
“She has your face, and I hear her in every word you speak.” He looked down at the brooch. “I still carry Cabhan’s blood.”
With a shake of her head, Sorcha closed Fin’s fingers around the copper. “Light covers the dark. I swear to you by all I ever was, if I could break the curse I put on you, I would. But it is not for me.”
She rose, keeping his hand in hers so they stood together over Daithi’s body. “Blood and death here, blood and death to follow. It is beyond me to change it. I give my faith as I gave my power to my children, to the three who came from them, to the two who would stand with them, and to you, Finbar from Daithi, who carries both the light and the dark. Cabhan’s time must end, what joined with him must end.”
