Eleven – 03

Neve gave me a long, silent look before she sighed, smiling wryly and shaking her head. “Well, I guess if you want to know, you want to know.” She tilted her face back toward the clouds and sky again, the faraway look returning. “Some of this I know you’ve heard before—about how we ran wild with the children of the clan chiefs of old, how we grew close to them and got into the worst and best sorts of trouble with them at our sides. Teague loved one of them with his whole soul. Seamus dallied with another, though he didn’t love her.” She shot a faint, weak smile in Leinth’s direction.

The other woman gave her a reassuring smile of her own. “I’m well aware of his past relationship with Brighid of the Imbolg,” she said. “Marin and I have had that discussion as well.”

Neve slanted a curious look at me and I shook my head. “It’s not important.”

She didn’t look convinced, but she shrugged and went on. “Phelan was cousin to them by way of their mother,” Neve said. “To Brighid and Ciar. Perhaps that’s why he spent so much time with them—because of the blood link.” Another smile ghosted across her face. “Or maybe because they were just the most like us. They threw caution to the wind even though the weight of responsibility hung heavy on their shoulders. Ciar was training to be a druid almost as soon as he could talk and Brighid…she was a warrior-born if I’ve ever seen one, and I’ve seen many.”

My cheeks grew warm. Where was she heading with this, I wondered, unless it was just trying to make me pay for not coming to her rescue, for agreeing that she should tell us some stories of old? I didn’t think it could be that, not really.

Could it?

“Maybe that’s why they seemed to have a target pinned on their backs just like we did.” Neve shook her head. “Maybe that’s why Ciar was taken and almost lost.”

“What happened?” Carolyn asked, her voice little more than a whisper.

I swallowed hard and answered for Neve. “Ciar was the Ridden Druid. They nearly lost him forever—and before Seamus, he was the only man to ever walk away from the Wild Hunt and survive to tell the tale.”

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