Нора Робертс - Blood Magick

“We’ll have some now, as I’m hungry every minute of every day.” Laughing, Brannaugh opened her arms to her sister.

Teagan, so pretty with her hair like sunlight, her eyes like the bluebells their mother had prized.

Brannaugh gathered her close—then immediately drew her back again.

“You’re with child!”

“And you couldn’t give me the chance to say so to you myself?” Glowing, beaming, Teagan grabbed hold for another strong embrace. “I was only just sure of it this morning. I waked, and I knew there was life in me. I haven’t told Gealbhan, for I needed first to tell you. And to be sure of it, absolutely sure. Now I am. I’m babbling like a brook. I can’t stop.”

“Teagan.” Brannaugh’s eyes welled as she kissed her sister’s cheeks, as she remembered the little girl who’d wept on that dark morning so long ago. “Blessed be, deirfiúr bheag . Come inside. I’ll make you some tea, something good for you and the life in you.”

“I want to tell Gealbhan,” she said as she went in with Brannaugh, took off her shawl. “By the little stream where he first kissed me. And then tell Eamon he’ll again be an uncle. I want music and happy voices. Will you and Eoghan bring the children this evening?”

“We will, of course, we will. We’ll have music and happy voices.”

“I miss Ma. Oh, it’s foolish, I know, but I want to tell her. I want to tell Da. I’m holding a life inside me, one that came from them. Was it so with you?”

“Aye, each time. When Brin came, and then my own Sorcha, I saw her for a moment, just for a moment. I felt her, and Da as well. I felt them there when my babes loosed their first cry. There was joy in that, Teagan, and sorrow. And then . . .”

“Tell me.”

Her gray eyes full of that joy, that sorrow, Brannaugh folded her hands over the child within her. “The love is so fierce, so full. That life that you hold, not in your womb, but in your arms? The love that comes over you? You think you know, then you do, and what you thought you knew is pale and weak against what is. I know what she felt for us now. What she and Da felt for us. You’ll know it.”

“Can it be more than this?” Teagan pressed a hand to her middle. “It feels so huge already.”

“It can. It will.” Brannaugh looked out at the trees, at the rioting gardens. And her eyes went to smoke.

“This son in you, he will not be the one, though he’ll be strong and quick to power. Nor will the son that comes from you after him. The daughter, the third, she is the next. She will be your one of the three. Fair like you, kind in her heart, quick in her mind. You will call her Ciara. One day she will wear the sign our mother made for you.”

Suddenly light-headed, Brannaugh sat. Teagan rushed over to her.

“I’m well; I’m fine. It came over me so quick I wasn’t ready. I’m a bit slower these days.” She patted Teagan’s hand.

“I never looked. I didn’t think to.”

“Why should you think to? You’ve a right simply to be happy. I wouldn’t have spoiled that for all the worlds.”

“You haven’t. How could you spoil anything by telling me I’ll have a son, and another, and a daughter? No, sit as you are. I’ll finish the tea.”

They both glanced toward the door as it opened.

“Sure he has the nose for fresh bread, has Eamon,” Teagan said as their brother walked in with his brown hair tousled, as always, around a heartbreakingly handsome face.

With a grin he sniffed the air like a hound. “I’ve a nose, for certain, but didn’t need it to make my way here. You’ve enough light swirling around the place to turn up the moon. If you’re after doing a spell so bright, you might’ve told me.”

“We weren’t conjuring. Only talking. We’re having a bit of a céili at the cabin this evening. And you can keep Brannaugh company when I leave, so I can have time to tell Gealbhan he’s to be a father.”

“As there’s bread fresh, I can— A father is it?” Eamon’s bold blue eyes filled with delight. “There’s some happy news.” He plucked Teagan off her feet, gave her a swing, then another when she laughed. He set her down in a chair, kissed her, then grinned at Brannaugh. “I’d do the same with you, but it’s like to break my back, as you’re big as a mountain.”

“Don’t think you’ll be adding my jam to that bread.”

“A beautiful mountain. One who’s already given me a handsome nephew and a charming niece.”

“That might get you a dollop.”

“Gealbhan will be overjoyed.” Gently, as he was always gentle with Teagan, he brushed his fingers down her cheek. “You’re well then, are you, Teagan?”

“I feel more than wonderful. I’m likely to cook a feast, which will suit you, won’t it?”

“It will, aye, it will.”

“And you need to be finding the woman to suit you,” Teagan added, “for you’d make a fine father.”

“I’m more than fine with the two of you providing the children so I can be the happy uncle.”

“She’s hair like fire, eyes like the sea in storms, and a shimmer of power of her own.” Brannaugh sat back, rubbing a hand over the mound of her belly. “It comes in waves these days. Some from him, I’m thinking—he’s impatient.” Then she smiled. “It’s good seeing the woman who’d take you, Eamon. Not just for a tumble, but for the fall.”

“I’m not after a woman. Or not one in particular.”

Teagan reached out, laid a hand on his. “You think, and always have, you’re not to have a woman, a wife, as you’ve sisters to protect. You’re wrong, and always have been. We are three, Eamon, and both of us as able as you. When you love, you’ll have no say in it.”

“Don’t be arguing with a woman who carries a child, especially a witch who does,” Brannaugh said lightly. “I never looked for love, but it found me. Teagan waited for it, and it found her. You can run from it, mo dearthair . But find you it will.

“When we go home.” Her eyes filled again. “Ah, curse it, I’m watering up every time I take a breath it seems. This you have to look to, Teagan. The moods come and go as they will.”

“You felt it as well.” Now Eamon laid a hand on Brannaugh’s so the three were joined. “We’re going home, and soon.”

“At the next moon. We must leave on the next full moon.”

“I hoped it would wait,” Teagan murmured. “I hoped it would wait until you’re finished birthing, though I knew in my head and my heart it would not wait.”

“I will birth this son in Mayo. This child will be born at home. And yet . . . This is home as well. Not for you,” she said to Eamon. “You’ve waited, you’ve bided, you’ve stayed, but your heart, your mind, your spirit is ever there.”

“We were told we would go home again. So I waited. The three, the three that came from us. They wait as well.” Eamon ran his fingers over the blue stone he wore around his neck. “We’ll see them again.”

“I dream of them,” Brannaugh said. “Of the one who shares my name, and the others as well. They fought and they failed.”

“They will fight again,” Teagan said.

“They gave him pain.” A fierce light came into Eamon’s eyes. “He bled, as he bled when the woman named Meara, the one who came with Connor of the three, struck him with her sword.”

“He bled,” Brannaugh agreed. “And he healed. He gathers again. He pulls in power from the dark. I can’t see where, how, but feel only. I can’t see if we will change what’s to come, if we can and will end him. But I see them, and know if we cannot, they will fight again.”

“So we go home, and find the way. So they who come from us won’t fight alone.”

Brannaugh thought of her children, sleeping upstairs. Safe, innocent still. And the children of her children’s children, in another time, in Mayo. Neither safe, she thought, nor innocent.