Carolyn blinked, looking between me and Neve for a moment. She shook her head after a moment. “I didn’t realize.”
“I know,” I said. “I wouldn’t even know parts of the tale if not for…well. For the whole reborn souls thing.”
“Right.” Her gaze shifted fully to Neve. “So…the story?”
“Yeah.” Neve cleared her throat. “Understand that I know about half of the tale secondhand—most of it I wasn’t allowed to be a part of, and I’ll explain that in the telling. Phelan was more involved than any of us, though we all helped in the hunt for him as best we could.
“War was looming even then, and Brighíd and Ciar—twins, you know—would be seventeen the following autumn when it all began. The druids had claimed Ciar when he was a boy, and despite his being the elder, he demurred leadership of the clan early in favor of his sister. She was raised to lead the Imbolg. It had been early that past winter when their father had been killed during a hunt and the mantle of chieftain fell onto Brighíd’s shoulders. She was already promised to the heir to the Fianna, Finn, who was about a year her senior but hadn’t yet come into his inheritance. Father was negotiating with the Southron clans to marry off Teague to one of them and completely ignoring the fact that he was in love with another. Maybe if he hadn’t been—if my father hadn’t been negotiating with the Southrons—things would have been different.
“Brighíd was summoned to attend a great hunt called by my father on the border of Imbolg lands. My father had called it and my brothers and Phelan had gone with him. Aoife and I didn’t attend—very few women did that time—but Brighíd was one of the most skiled boar-hunters in old Ireland and nothing would stop her from being there. She rode with Finn and Phelan out into the woods after a boar and so she wasn’t there when it happened.
“Ciar had come along with his sister to the hunt to meet with the druid contingent that was sure to be in attendance, but he ended up mildly disappointed by the turnout—that’s what Seamus told me later. There were only two or three druids, none of them known to Ciar, but he trusted them as his brothers.
“That trust was sadly misplaced.”
awwww, the back story is revealed. Yeah!!!