“You know, I hope that someday, you’ll be the one to talk me out of doing things that are stupidly rash and potentially dangerous rather than the other way around,” Finn said. He was chewing on that damned thumb again, the way he always did when he was attempting wisdom.
Wisdom has its own price for all of us, I guess. My brother’s cost him his sight and all but the tatters of his sanity. Mine cost me him. Finn’s? He had to look like an idiot, chewing on that thumb.
I shook my head and turned my back to him, concerning myself with stocking the quiver and making sure that my leathers were in good repair. It’d be a long ride to answer the call, and I needed to be ready for it.
“What happens if you ride out there and don’t return? What will the Imbolg do without their chieftain, Brighid?”
I closed my eyes and sucked in a deep breath before I turned back to him, my gaze meeting his. I could see Thom somewhere in his soul, a spark that neither of us were aware of all those centuries ago. “Then they will have you,” I murmured. “They will have you and Ciar and our daughter.”
“They won’t accept her,” Finn said, standing slowly and reaching out to grip my arms. His hands were big, strong and calloused from long years of handling weapons, of handling tools. “She’s not one of us. Too many have realized that she’s a foundling. Some whisper that she’s some sort of changeling.”
“She’s a child,” I snapped, “an orphan with no one else. I swore an oath to a man dying years ago that if I ever came across one of his isle that needed—”
“Hush,” Finn whispered. “I know it, Brighid, I know it, and I don’t gainsay your choice. But until there is an heir of your body and mine, neither the Imbolg nor the Fianna will accept that they’re secure.”
I sat down heavily on the bed we shared, perhaps not often enough for the comfort of our clans, and stared at the fire. I pressed my lips together so hard they began to hurt after a moment, taking deep, almost ragged breaths.
“There’s naught I can do for that, Finn,” I whispered at last. “Either we’ll be blessed, or we’ll not. We try.”
“I know,” he said, sitting with me among the blankets and my war kit. “I know. It’s not as if we don’t, and it’s not as if I don’t love you and you, I. Perhaps it’s—”
“What?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted with a weak, rueful smile. “I don’t know. Perhaps it’s our lives, our lifestyle. We are warriors born, warriors made, hunters and killers. Perhaps we’re not meant to make life between us.”
“That can’t be it,” I murmured.
“Pray it’s not,” Finn said, putting his arms around me.
Our lips met, then, and he pressed me down against the blankets, against my leathers and my quiver, and I realized I didn’t care about riding to meet the call anymore.
Not then. Not in that moment. In that moment, I had more immediate concerns, ones that were far more pleasurable than riding to war.
Lips brushed lightly against my cheek and I came awake with a deep breath and a stretch, blinking up in the darkness at Thom, who smiled wryly down at me.
“You were right,” he whispered. “This storm isn’t going to end any sooner than dawn. A couple hours won’t hurt.”
I smiled and held back the covers for him. “Glad you came to your senses.”
“Me too,” he said as he undressed and crawled in with me. His hands were cold as he slid his arms around me, pulling me tightly against his chest. “I left your brother on watch. He’ll come if anything starts.”
“We’ll traumatize him for sure,” I said, wrapping one leg around his. He shivered.
“So be it.”
He kissed me again and like Brighid and Finn all those centuries ago, we made love in the darkness, warmed more by each other than any fire, on the eve of war. It was the proverbial calm before the storm, enjoyed only because beyond our shelter, the snow continued to fall and the wind continued to howl.
But the storm would break at dawn and the war would begin—a war we hadn’t started in this life, but we were bound by fate to finish.
