“Help me up,” Phelan said suddenly. “Let’s walk.”
“Eh?” J.T. blinked at him, expression blank, confused.
Phelan smiled briefly and shook his head. “I’m not in the mood to stay here in the dark, near-death experience or not. Let’s walk up to the forge. You can’t tell me that Matt and Thom won’t be up there right now, and if I’m right, Thordin will be with them, too.”
J.T. just kept right on blinking, staring at him. “Why are we—”
“Trust me,” Phelan said, then slowly swung his legs over the side of the bed. Clothes, still. Thank goodness for small favors. As close as he was to all of them, the idea of one of the girls—Marin or Kellin or Jacqueline or Carolyn, any of them—stripping him and re-dressing him was near enough to make him blush as red as his hair. “It’ll be good for both of us.” I need to be around breathing people. We both do. Gods and monsters, Ériu, what were you doing here? Did you come for me, for him, or both?
Or was it more than that? Something I won’t realize until it’s nearly too late?
He groped around for his coat and shoes, wincing at the pain in his ribs. “Damnation. I’d forgotten how much this hurts.”
“I’m sure you’ll pull through,” J.T. said as he stood slowly. “Who was she, anyway?”
“Who was who?” Phelan asked as the bottom dropped out of his stomach. He already knew who J.T. was asking about—he just wasn’t sure he wanted to answer the question.
“The spirit girl. Ériu.” J.T. fumbled over the name, but he managed to pronounce it well enough. “She seemed…I don’t know, Phelan. Really fond of you. More than a goddaughter should be.”
He choked back a laugh, shrugging slowly into his jacket. “I was there when Brighid found her.”
“Found her?” J.T. echoed. He spun to follow Phelan as he brushed past on his way to the door, hands shoved deep into his pockets to keep them warm against the chill he knew he’d be facing.
They walked together out into the dim of the hallway before Phelan found the words to answer. “Aye. She washed up as a foundling on the shore. Brighid found her and we were with her—her boys.” He smiled a wistful, longing smile. “That’s what she called us. Her boys—her brother and her husband and I.” He could hear the waves against the shore, smell the salt air and feel the warmth of the afternoon sun against his back. It had been a fair day, that day so many centuries before, the first in months, after a long, cold winter and a stormy spring. Not quite summer that day on the shore, but it had been promised in the sun’s warmth.
Phelan sighed and shook his head. “Brighid heard the sound of a babe crying among the rocks while we were fishing. To this day, I’ve no idea how the child survived, how she really came to us. She was in a little wooden boat, wrapped in wool and linen, hair so blonde it was nearly white. She and Finn had no children of their own, not then, and Brighid was always a kind-hearted woman despite appearances to the contrary. She took up that babe and told us that she and Finn would care for her, that Ciar—her brother—would train her in the ways of the druids of old, that the child would want for nothing…and that someday, she would lead their clans united against any threat that stood against them.”
They walked out into the fading sunshine of late afternoon, boots crunching on the snow.
“What happened to her?” J.T. asked.
Phelan smiled sadly, throat tightening and tears stinging in his eyes. “Like most of the men and women that I’ve loved in my life…she died.”
