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“Barely,” I say through a smile.

James goes next, followed by Ellen and then Amelia.

None of them hesitate, which I admire most about this found family of mine.

Robert goes last, leaving only one tether still pulsing from the basalt.

He comes to the table with that hard stillness of his. He lays his hand above the oathing stone and closes his eyes before a word is even spoken.

When he speaks the oath, he doesn’t falter once. And when he comes to, I shall not leave unanswered the wrong done to her people where answer may yet be made, the words fall from him like an executioner’s promise.

The tethers answer him most fiercely.

The lines above it whip inward. A pulse of green shoots through the broken edge, bright enough this time to throw colour over his face. He doesn’t flinch. If anything, he seems satisfied to see it, as though some inward curiosity has been answered.

When Robert speaks the final line, the basalt answers in full. Every etched line glows green, the broken seam blazing with it, until the whole tablet is lit from within like something waking. The brightness swells fast, fierce enough to force a squint—then comes that same blinding burst as before, sharp and sudden, and the light goes out of it all at once.

At last Mannie says, quietly, “The binding has heard the six first called by it. It is done.”

But then he shakes his head once, almost to himself.

“No. Not done. Begun.”

“Tonight, you have bound yourselves to a promise older than memory and younger than the morning to come. Sleep, if sleep will have you. Hold fast to one another. At first light, we speak of what comes next.”

Sleep is a lovely thought, but I’ve just sworn myself to Éire, had an ancient stone answer beneath my hand, and watched the woman I ache for do the same. I suspect the night has far less innocent plans for me than sleep. And this time, Mannie won’t be getting in the way.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

ALEX

When we turned toward the quarter house, I knew what she was going to say before she said it.

“Are we going somewhere to reminisce?”

I smiled at her. “Enough time’s passed that I can tell that story without shame. It wasn’t my fault the current had it out for me. In fact, it made for one hell of a conversation starter for a few weeks there.”

She snorts. “I still think I should have left you there to see how you would have got out of the situation on your own.”

“But you didn’t,” I say, slipping my arm around her shoulders and tugging her a little closer to my side. “You saved my ass, literally. What’s a guy gotta do to repay that kind of loyalty?”

By now, the cabin has come into view, and my pulse has begun to climb. The last time we were here, everything between us still had room to hide. We could laugh it off then. Pretend whatever was building between us was only heat, only circumstance, only shameless flirting. That feels impossible now.

Róisín tips her head up to look at me, her green eyes bright with mischief. There’s something else there, too. Something deeper she’s trying to press down. The banter hangs between us the way it always does—easy and teasing and almost cruel in its usefulness, because it gives us both somewhere to keep our real feelings other than in each other’s hands, where they have always belonged. After tonight, I want that to change.

She bites her lip.

Then, as if the words have slipped free before she can stop them, she asks, “Do you feel it too?”

“Feel what?”

She rolls her eyes, a flush creeping up her freckled cheeks. “This... us. Our connection. Don’t play daft, you great lump.”

I don’t answer.

Not because I don’t have one, but because I have too many, and none of them feels right to blurt out.

So I keep walking.