“Thanks aren’t necessary, but you’re welcome in any case.”

She searched for something polite to say, and glanced toward the farmhouse, with all its windows lit like sunshine. “Sounds like a party.”

He glanced back toward the music, the voices. “It is that, a welcoming home sort of thing. You and Marg and Sedric were invited, as was most of the bloody valley, but Marg felt you might want something a bit less . . . lively for your first night. Still, if you want to go in, you’ll be welcome.”

“No, it would be awkward yet. I don’t really know anyone—or enough of . . . anything.”

“Well, you’ll need to learn, won’t you?”

Though his voice struck her as another kind of music—what she still thought of as an Irish lilt—her hackles rose.

“I’ve learned enough to know I have some sort of crazed god for a grandfather who’d like to suck me dry of what I don’t even know I have. And up until five damn minutes ago, I didn’t even believe in gods.”

He looked genuinely curious. “Why not?”

“Because they’re supposed to be myths. Like worlds with two moons where dragons fly overhead and my grandmother’s lover turns into a cat. Now I’ve got a pen that writes down my thoughts, a pitcher that never runs out of hot water. I can’t use my stupid phone, but I looked into the fire with Nan and saw my father waging war. I saw it as if I’d been there.”

He watched her as she spoke, still leaning back against the post, his hands casually in his pockets.

And a sword at his side.

“You were there, at least for the start of it. I was too young, though I begged my father to take me with him when they went after you.”

And he’d died, Breen remembered. He’d died in that horrible place protecting her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry you lost your father, sorry he died helping to save me.”

“Wasn’t a fault of yours, was it, as you were hardly more than a baby. And you fought, didn’t you? A child of three pitting her power against the god’s. There are songs and stories of the young one breaking down the god’s walls with her will.”

The idea of that burned the back of her throat. “I don’t know how I did it.”

“You’ll have to remember.” He said it as if nothing could be simpler. And kept watching her. “You stopped your practice and training far too soon, but that can be mended now that you’re here.”

Instinctively, she took a step back. “I’m not here. I’m visiting.”

He pushed off the post. “This is your world as much as it’s mine. Will you give it nothing?”

“What am I supposed to give?” she tossed back. “I’m trying to adjust, and it’s huge for me. I’m just starting to figure out what I want to do with my life, then bam, I find out that most of my life, if not a lie, was full of half-truths.”

“Want and need, again, are different matters. You need to hone your gifts, and there Marg will show you. You need to train, and there, bad luck for us both, you’ll have me for instructor.”

“Training for what?”

“To fight, of course, to protect yourself and others. To stand for Talamh.”

“Fight? Like with one of those?” Appalled, she pointed at the sword at his side. “I’m not a soldier.”

“You’ll learn unless you expect to be rescued at every turn.” Now that musical voice turned just a little snide. “Is that how you see things in your world? A woman such as yourself just cowers and screams?”

“I took a self-defense class,” she began, then let her temper rise. “You know what, I don’t have to explain myself to you, or anyone. All my life I’ve had people like you criticizing, bullying, making me feel less. And I’m done with it. I’m done standing back and apologizing.”

“That’s fine then. You’ll need to step up instead. He’ll try for you, believe that, Breen Siobhan, and I’ll give my life to stop him. So will every man and woman in this world. You are the daughter of Eian O’Ceallaigh, the taoiseach before me, the one who, when mine fell, stood as a father to me. In his name, I’m pledged to protect you. But by all the gods, you’ll learn to fight.”

She did step back again, but not in fear this time. “You loved him. My father.”

“Aye, he was a great man and a good one. Much of what I am, I am because he taught me. And so in turn I’ll teach you. He would expect no less of me. Or of you.”

“I don’t know what he’d expect of me.”

“You do, aye, you do, or will when you stop pretending otherwise. But for now, I’ll see you home. I want my own bed.”

“I can see myself back.”

“You don’t have to speak to me. I like the quiet when I can get it. But I’ll see you safe to Marg’s cottage, as she’d wish it.”

“One question, then we’ll have that quiet. Did I know you? Before, when I lived here before?”

“Sure you knew me, and I you, though you were well beneath my notice as a girl child.”

He smiled, really smiled, and everything about him radiated charm. “You were after calling birds and butterflies and the like and whispering secrets with Morena. I was more interested in wooden swords and battles to come, and searching for the dragon that would be mine.

“One day,” he added, “that’s not this one, I’ll tell you of another time we met, and how that sealed my blood destiny. Now the quiet.”

She didn’t speak as he walked beside her with those two half-moons bright in a star-washed sky.

She had plenty to think about, and she would. But for that, she wanted not just quiet but alone.

So she said nothing as he waited halfway down the path until she went inside the cottage. The fire burned low, and the quiet soothed.

Still, she glanced out the window, saw him walking back down the path.

She’d try out the tub, she decided, then the pen, then the bed. And with all of them, she’d think about her first day in Talamh. And what tomorrow might bring.

She slept deep and dreamless, as if cocooned. Part of that, she imagined, came from a long, hot, fragrant bath, then a full hour of writing with the magick fountain pen.

And not enough, she thought, could possibly be said about the entertainment of filling a huge copper tub with a bottomless pitcher.

Since she couldn’t put that in her blog, she decided it was just as well she’d written the blog before her bath. And that she’d filled it with her thoughts on finding self—and learning to live with what was found, descriptions of the pretty, misty morning she’d enjoyed with Bollocks rather than actual activities and events.

Those went into her personal journal.

Pleased her night work left her clear to work on her book, she thought of coffee.

Obviously with no coffee machine—that was off the menu—but she thought she could handle brewing up some strong tea to get her brain cells working.

As she made her way to the kitchen, she wondered if she’d have to figure out how to light a fire in the stove, then found the kitchen warm, the stove hot.

Either someone rose earlier than she, or the fire was like the pen, and just never ran out.

In the dim dawn light, she studied the jars. No tea bags—of course—but loose tea. Since they had no labels, she calculated the process could take awhile, so opened the door for Bollocks.

“I’ll come out as soon as I figure out how to make tea.”

When he ran out, she walked over, took one of the jars, sniffed the contents. Floral, she decided, light and sweet, and not an eye-opener.

She went down the line—herbal, woodsy, kind of lemony, spicy.

She tried another, decided it smelled very like the Irish breakfast tea she’d bought (in bags). Of course, she couldn’t be sure, and it might be something that would turn her into a toad.

It wouldn’t surprise her at this point.

But it seemed careless to keep something that would turn someone into a toad on a kitchen shelf with herbs and spices.

Willing to risk it, she used what she thought had to be a tea strainer, poured hot water from the kettle on the stove over it and into a mug.

She studied the dark brown—nearly black—liquid. Sniffed it. Risked a tiny sip. It tasted like tea—brutally strong—and since it didn’t turn her into anything, she considered the entire process a success.

In her pajama pants and T-shirt and bare feet, she walked out into the morning.

Not so different, she decided, from a morning at her cottage. The view of woods and garden rather than bay and garden, but that same soft air, the thin mists, the wild green of it all.

She’d walk the dog over to the bay here later, she thought, then heard splashing. Walking beyond the flowers, the herbs—a thriving vegetable patch toward the trees—she saw the busy little stream—and Bollocks making the most of it.

“Good enough then.”

She turned to take in her grandmother’s cottage from this new vantage point.

She spotted a stone well—simply picture-perfect—a tree with orange-red berries, and another with what she thought were tiny green apples.

Sea glass, crystal, polished half bottles hung from branches, and when she touched them, had music tinkling into the air.

Something white and gold and druggingly fragrant smothered some sort of trellis. Honeysuckle, she realized, and near it something else climbing with pink and purple blooms.

As for the cottage, it fit the nook of land as if it had grown there—maybe it had.

She thought it all beautiful and, despite the lack of coffee, idyllic.

She found the dog’s bowls, his feed—added a brown egg. Because he carried the wet of the stream with him, she set his bowls outside.

“Let me know when you want in—and don’t go wandering too far.”

She gave his topknot a rub, then went back in.

In the quiet, sleeping house, she sat down at her desk, picked up the pen.