Daughters of Legianne, page 21
Róisín offered him a small smile before continuing on. “Shasta’s been teaching me how to balance my mother’s powers with my own. How to filter my life force back into me, behind the power I expel when I use another, so I don’t drain myself. We don’t know what will stop Madigan, and without the full support of the council, the other Covens, I don’t know if we’ll be strong enough.”
She could sense he’d stopped walking, and turned to face him.
His hands were at his hips, the tips of his fingers white from how hard he held there. He opened his mouth to speak, but then closed it, pressing his lips into a thin line. “Does he know you’re here, Munson?”
“He knew the moment I walked into your town meeting that evening. I could sense his probing. I also sensed Bill’s thrall. I needed him, still need him, to think I’m weaker than I am. He’s severed the connection we carry, so he does not know my grandmother has moved on from this life or who I truly am. It’s why, as much as I want to, I cannot walk out here and heal all of this or fix the town’s poisoned waters.”
“Does Lina know all of this?”
“No.” She shook her head. “She knows about my magic, yes. That’s all. David and I have said nothing about the rest. To everyone here, I’m just a girl trying to work with her new community to stop a mega-rich guy from over-developing the land, killing animal habitat, and poisoning the water with the dredges his factory dumps.”
“Meanwhile, you’re a magical being, trying to stop a blockbuster movie ranked baddie from killing us all,” he supplied.
“It’s not just me. I have Lucius, Nanette, Shasta, Matthew, their Covens.”
“What about yours?”
“I wasn’t lying when I said that I was alone. Aoife took them all. We think she spared me only because of my power, paired with the belief that I would follow her anywhere, do anything when the time came.”
He drifted his gaze from her to the surrounding woods.
Róisín’s chest squeezed, her lungs burning. She took a slow, unsteady breath and tried to blink the burning sensation away that was building around her eyes.
Finally, he looked back at her. “Still doesn’t stop me from loving you.”
She threw up her hands.
“What?” he asked. “Did you think taking me out here, showing me what you did, telling me all of that would change a damned thing?”
“We can’t, Caid.” It’s not safe, you’ll die, and I can’t bear that. Can’t survive that.
“Give me a really good reason we can’t. Just one.”
In a sick twist of fate, she realized it would’ve been easier if he’d run out of her front door the moment she opened her palm. She had finally found someone who loved all of her, and it was dangerous to hold on to it. “One thing? Fine. I’m almost one hundred and twenty years old.”
He slowly raised a brow and let out a low whistle. “What, so, you like, live really long?”
“My mother was four hundred-twenty-four years old, my grandmother almost seven hundred.”
He crossed his arms over his chest and tipped his head to one side.
“I can’t watch you die.” She blinked quickly, trying to contain the tears that blurred her sight.
“We all die someday, Róisín.”
“You’re human. You have another forty years, at best.”
He shrugged and moved closer. “Then we make the best of those forty years. I can see it in your eyes.” He pointed at her, still moving closer. “You are digging, searching for something that will scare me off. You’re coming up empty every single time, aren’t you? There is nothing, Róisín. This is what has been bothering you since you’ve come back, isn’t it? Why? Why try to shut me out? I told you I wanted to help, whatever it is.”
“It’s not safe,” she pressed. “I will admit, I was terrified of you finding out. I was terrified the moment I realized I loved you because love isn’t enough to keep people in my life. I didn’t want to lose you.”
“And I’m still standing here, aren’t I?”
He stood almost toe to toe with her now, forcing her to tip her head back to look at his face. “You’ll die, Caid. He can destroy you, and I can’t keep you safe. I don’t even know if I can keep myself safe, let alone you.”
“Then let me try to keep you safe,” he whispered.
Her heart dropped to her feet. He would try. He would run toward danger, without a second thought, for her. She had been so wrapped up in her history, tying him in with all the others. Lina had even told her, insisted. Yet, Róisín had let her past cloud her mind, filling her with unnecessary worries. The wrong worries, and she found herself unprepared and helpless.
He ran a hand through his hair, his eyes hard on hers. “Róisín… What do you want me to do? Do you want me to turn around, walk back to my truck, and go home? Not look back? Not call you? Think about you? Just forget I ever knew you?”
That wasn’t what she wanted, but she couldn’t let him know that. Safety, she had to keep him safe. Whatever she had to do to make sure he was, she had to do it.
“Yes,” she choked out, fighting that fire that rose inside of her, pushing the pain down.
He looked her over once more before finally nodding. Then, without a word, he turned and walked away from her. The ferns grew up to block out his retreating form as he made his way back to the house.
She let several minutes pass before letting herself sink to the ground. As her body hit the forest floor, a spray of aster popped up around her.
Chapter 46
Caid stopped at the door of his truck, his hand on the handle, staring at his reflection in the window. His hair a mess, mouth set in a tight, grim line. What was he doing? Was he really letting her push him away?
Yes, yes, I am. He forced himself to open the door.
She couldn’t stop him from loving her, but he would not force her to be with him.
A soft wind wrapped around him, and he stopped half in and half out of the truck. It pricked at his senses, feeling as though it tried to pull him back. He turned back to the house, watching, waiting for a moment.
He started to swing his other leg up into the truck when the wind kicked up.
“She needs you,” a song-like voice said in his ear.
“What?” He set both of his feet on the driveway, his head jerking around. “Who’s there?”
“Go to her,” the voice urged, the wind wrapping around him, nudging him back toward the woods.
A wave of urgency washed over him, and then he was running. Around the house, across the yard, to where he had left her.
Róisín sat on the ground, body awash with light. Flowers, brambles, and vines exploding from the earth around her. Her body rocked and shook with jarring, silent sobs. In an instant, he was on the ground in front of her, pulling her into his arms, wrapping her tight.
“What are you doing?” Her cries muffled against his chest.
“I’m not leaving you. There’s nothing you can say or do, Róisín. I’m here.” He closed his eyes and hugged her tighter, breathing in the smell of her. “I’m here.”
“It’s not safe for you. You can’t…” she choked out between sobs. “What if something happens?”
“Look, I will not even remotely pretend in my head that I can go up against magic. I’m also not going to sit by if something happens to you. Does that mean I have a death wish?” He shrugged. “I have to at least try, Róisín.”
When she pulled back to look at him, her eyes still swam with the unfamiliar colors. Slowly, they swirled, fading, until they returned to solid turquoise again.
“I was going to leave,” he confessed. “I’d be a lowlife if I tried to press the matter when you so clearly wanted me to go. I was going to go home, lick my wounds, and try to get on with life.”
“You came back,” she said hoarsely.
“I did.” He nodded. “She told me to. Said you needed me, to go to you.”
“She?”
“Until a few hours ago, I’d have thought I was crazy and hearing shit, but after all this?” He looked around them. “I’m thinking I need to pay more attention.”
She tried to pull free of his hold. “Who told you?”
“The voice in the wind.” He said it so matter of fact, he shocked himself.
“What—” She swallowed hard. “What did the voice sound like?”
He thought for a moment, recalling the musical note each word carried. “Pretty. Sort of rolling. A little like singing.”
“My mother,” she breathed out.
“Your mother?”
“She…” She looked up at the sky, closing her eyes. Then, her whole body sagged and she became something more painful, more shattered before him. Her body shook violently and loud, gasping sobs escaped as new tears streamed down her face.
“Shh.” He rubbed a hand over her back, soothing.
“I can feel her. Faintly, but she’s here.” She buried her face against his chest.
Not knowing what else to do, Caid took her in his arms, then carefully rising to his feet, brought her back to the house. He kicked off his shoes by the back door, then made his way upstairs to her room, laying down on the bed with her.
She finally quieted, her body still, when the sky outside had darkened with night.
“Róisín?” he whispered into the dark room. After a moment of no response, he knew she’d fallen asleep. With her body still tucked tightly against his, he closed his eyes and let himself drift.
Chapter 47
Róisín stood at her kitchen sink, lost in the motions of rinsing the soap from the pot she’d used to make the summer marinara sauce they had with dinner earlier that evening.
The surrounding air shifted.
Her heart stuttered. Her breath hitched, and she closed her eyes, letting that familiar lavender scent wrap around her like a hug.
“My sweet rose,” Brenna whispered.
Slowly, Róisín turned, taking in the figure of her mother before her. Just as she’d been the last time Róisín had seen her. Her red hair, a wild flame around her porcelain skin, emerald eyes sharp on her, watching her back.
“How?” Róisín finally managed.
“One last act from the Goddess, perhaps.” She took a cautious step forward.
When Brenna was near enough, Róisín lifted a hand, reaching out. The solidness of her skin met Róisín’s touch, and both women sucked in a pained breath before embracing.
“I miss you,” Róisín whispered finally, breaking their silence.
“I miss you, too. We don’t have long, and there’s much I need to tell you.”
“About Aoife.”
“You’ve discovered all about Aoife that I knew. What the Sisters told me.”
“How’d she do it? How did she live so on the outside but still on the inside at the same time? What did she want with me?”
Brenna smoothed Róisín’s hair from her face, a sad smile lifted the corners of her mouth. “Aoife always believed that the world owed her. She never had love in her heart for anything or anyone other than herself. I did what I could to protect you from that.”
Róisín’s heart began to beat, front and center, in her throat. She placed a hand there in an attempt to calm it so that she could swallow, try to stop the walls from closing in on her. The words her mother was speaking were the confirmation that Róisín’s thoughts of Aoife were right. Aoife wanted Róisín’s magic.
“She couldn’t have my magic, and she was desperate. I was her prey for centuries until I got away. I was feeling her against that wall. That was when I knew she would find me. I wasn’t ready. Then again, I never could have been ready to leave you.” She reached her hands out to cup Róisín’s face. “I wanted to watch you grow old, find love, start a family, but sixty-three years was all we were to have. You needed my magic. It needed to be yours, and she was getting closer. The only way for you to have that life I wanted you to have, was for me to go.”
“I was so mad at you for so long. I thought… before I knew what had really happened, I thought you didn’t love me enough to want to stay.”
She thumbed away the tears on Róisín’s cheeks. “I’m sorry for that. I wish there had been a way to prepare you. The less you knew, the better. Especially knowing that Aoife would have her hands on you for a time. The less she knew about what was happening around her, the better.” Brenna stepped back, scanning her from head to toe and back. She clasped her hands together, holding them at her chest. Her face brightening. “He’s good for you.”
“Madigan?!”
Brenna chuckled. “Oh, no, my little rose, not him. Although he is a truly handsome devil. To be frank, I believe that’s how he’s gotten all that he has. I was, however, talking about the boy currently asleep in your bed. Kincaid James McGrath.”
Róisín took a step away from her . “What do you know about Caid?”
“That without knowing where exactly Madigan was going to settle, it was nearly impossible to get the McGrath family to migrate to an area close enough that you two would be put in one another’s paths.” Brenna spoke it so casually, Róisín had been sure that she had misheard.
“Wh-what are you talking about?” A wide smile bloomed on Brenna’s face. Her eyes sparkled. “No.”
“Oh, yes.” She nodded. “I know you thought it was Alexandria. That was why it felt the way it did during. How much it hurt even decades past what happened that night. It never was her, it’s always been him.”
“He’s human.”
“Your father was human.”
“You two weren’t bound, though.”
“There has never been a written rule that binding was meant for witch to witch,” Brenna noted.
“That may be true, but there’s never been a witch-human bind in our history.”
“Mm,” Brenna replied absentmindedly.
“Mother,” she said.
“I only know what the Sisters dangled before me. Those things were that I would lose your father, that I would lose you, too, if I did not walk away from my life to allow my power to pass to you. I had an idea of what would happen with Aoife, because I knew her well enough to know which choices she would make. I only knew about you and Kincaid because, well, things came into play that caused the need to intervene.”
Róisín reached behind herself, feeling for the countertop, then moving back the steps she needed to lean against it before her legs collapsed from underneath her. When she brought her focus back to her mother, she no longer appeared solid.
“What do I do now?”
“You love him, and let him love you,” she replied simply.
“That’s it? Is he…” Her throat became constricted, afraid to voice her deepest fear. She shifted on her feet, the room growing hot around her, smothering.
“Even if I did know that, I wouldn’t tell you. I could never. Not after knowing long before I had even met your father that I was going to lose him. It taints everything.” She reached a fading hand out toward Róisín. “Trust yourself. Trust him. The others will be by your side. Trust them. I love you, my little rose.”
“What comes next? Don’t go, please!”
Róisín thrashed awake in her dark bedroom. The bed shifted next to her before Caid’s arms came tightly around her.
“It was just a dream.” He pressed a kiss to her head. “Just a dream.”
Gasping for air, she clung to him like he was a lifeline. Her mother said that they were bound. Instinct told her to fight it, to protect him. A bind snapping into place would put a beacon over him for all witches, good and bad. However, the conversation with her mother, the message she brought her, had her pulling back to look at him.
His sandy hair was still mussed from sleep, but his hazel eyes were alert, watching her.
“I love you,” she said. “I’m sorry for trying to push you away earlier. I had been so worried that you would leave me when you found out the truth, that I never thought to consider what would happen if you stayed.” Her chest rose and fell with her gasping breaths. “When you did, I tried to push you away again. I panicked. I’m still panicking. I’m sorry now for the things that will come, what can, what may, what probably will happen to you. I love you.”
He cupped her jaw. The feel of his thumb as it stroked her cheek soothed her. “I get why you did it. Don’t apologize. For that, or anything else. Okay?”
She nodded, covering the hand on her face with hers.
“I’m here for it all, for as long as I’ve got.” He brought her closer, laying his lips on hers.
Chapter 48
Róisín laid curled against his chest, her breaths soft against his skin as she slept. The past twenty-four hours of his life had shifted him off course into uncharted territory.
Magic was real.
And it wasn’t books, potions, and words. It was something utterly different from what his childhood imagination had conjured up all of those years ago.
She had simply opened her hand, then grew a flower in her palm. She had spoken with the trees in the forest. There had been no other way she would’ve known about the time he had snuck out there with Stacy Freeman, who had, in those days, lived next to Kitty Lagree. Max, nor Wyatt hadn’t even known about it. That moment had not been one of his proudest. Driven by his hormones, he had been all teeth and hands, nearly coming in his pants two seconds after his tongue had touched hers.
Magic.
Something else from her confessions had hung with him like a black cloud. That one thing out of all of it had set him seething. Stewart Munson.
“Does he—” He cleared away the thickness that had risen in his throat with the rage that burned like an inferno inside. “Does he know who you are?”
Róisín stirred, the flutter of her lashes kissing his skin as she opened her eyes. “No.”
Relief should have come at her simple, firm statement, but it didn’t.
