“Ha!”

They split off, Morena toward the fields, Breen toward the stables. She didn’t get far before Keegan walked the two horses in her direction.

“You need more riding practice.”

“Hello to you, too, and I’m happy to take a ride.” She greeted her usual gelding with a rub as Bollocks joined them. “I’ve missed riding.”

“We’ll see if you say the same after today.” He held out a sword belt. “You have to learn to fight and defend on horseback as well.”

“Oh.” The anticipated pleasure took a dive, but she started to strap on the sword.

“What’s this?” He tapped the sheath.

“The reason you can’t possibly spoil my day. I made my athame this afternoon.”

At the crook of his finger, she took it out. Like Morena, he didn’t touch it but took her wrist to turn it, study all sides.

“You did the spell yourself?”

“Not the sketch. I can’t draw worth crap, so Sedric did most of that, but the rest, yeah. Except the dragon. That wasn’t on the sketch, but it’s on the blade.”

“Then it’s meant to be.” He shifted his gaze from it to her face. “It’s good work, more than good. You chose your symbols well.”

He mounted, waited for her to sheath her knife and do the same.

“If you don’t have anywhere really specific, could we ride to the ruins—the Pious? My father’s grave. I haven’t been back since that first day.”

“It’s as good a ride as any.”

“If we’re going to work with a wraith, I’d like to try to conjure one myself. I feel like I’m on a streak.”

“We’ll see about it.”

“I saw the dragons and riders,” she continued as they walked the horses to the road. “Morena said they were scouts.”

“So they were.” He’d had a talk with them before they’d headed east. He’d have to do the same himself, and Mahon with him, before much longer.

That not only took Aisling’s man, the father of the children, away, and while she carried another, but left the work of the farm solid on her and Harken’s shoulders.

It troubled him, and always did. Always would.

“Morena’s helping Harken shear sheep. Do you—”

“Less talk, more riding.” Merlin leaped into a gallop.

She rolled her eyes, but followed.

A lot different from bumping along in a cart behind a plodding horse, she thought. While speed held its thrill, he gave her no time to enjoy the scenery, and she worried Bollocks would fall too far behind.

“We have to slow down. The dog’s following, and we’re too fast for him.”

“Tell him where we’re going.”

“I don’t remember how to get there.”

“Bloody hell, woman.” He slowed, but only to a canter. “Put the image of the place in his mind. He’s been there with Marg, he’ll find his way.”

“I don’t know how you expect me to do so much at once.” She put the dog and his welfare first, slowed to a walk. When he caught up, she brought her memory of the graveyard, the big stone ruin, the field of sheep, all she could bring back into her mind, then pushed it toward Bollocks.

He wagged that skinny whip of a tail, and trotted off in his happy way ahead of her.

“It might be too far for him to walk. I should’ve stopped at Nan’s, left him with her.”

“Gods, woman, he’s descended from demon dogs. There’s no need to coddle him. And there, you see, he’s cutting time and distance by leaving the road. No fool is he. Now use your knees, take the reins in one hand, and draw your sword.”

When Keegan drew his, she came perilously close to one of her old panic attacks. “No, wait.”

“An enemy doesn’t wait, but looks for weakness. And that’s what you’re showing. Defend!”

He killed her before she unsheathed her sword.

“Reins with your left, sword in your right. Again.”

She got the sword free, but dropped the reins. Keegan had them back in her hand with a flick of his.

“I want to learn how to do that. How did you toss them back up?”

“I willed it. Stop talking and defend. Use your knees to guide the horse.”

She tried, even managed a weak block, but the strike skewed her balance, and nearly dumped her off the horse. But she felt the push of air, like a shove of a hand, right her again.

She wanted to ask how he’d done it, but she couldn’t catch her breath. And he killed her again.

She sat, winded, under a pretty summer sky, trying to shake her hair out of her eyes while Keegan scowled at her.

“Pitiful. Your seat, your sword arm, your focus. Your horse is a weapon as well, but you don’t use him. Ah well, we’ve given the dog a bit of a lead, so we’ll go on.”

Sheathing his sword, he turned his horse, then left her in his dust.

She started to complain. She’d only learned to ride—at all—a few weeks before. And she’d first picked up a sword after that.

But it reminded her time was running out. The summer wouldn’t last forever.

Incensed, she stretched her mount into a gallop. She’d never have caught the stallion, but Keegan slowed his pace just enough.

See how you like it, she thought.

She gathered the reins, drew her sword.

“Defend!” she shouted.

Later, she’d admit she caught him completely off guard, and still his sword all but leapt into his hand. With the reins in her hand she punched out—but with power.

It knocked his sword back just enough for her to follow through with her own.

He had a hell of a grin for a dead man, she thought, and wanted to curse him for it as he made her want to grin back.

She liked the power of being pissed off.

“Much less pitiful,” he told her.

Far from mollified, she shot her sword home, and rode ahead.

“You’ve gone beyond the turn!” he called out, and she heard the laughter in his voice.

“Bollocks, bugger it, bloody hell,” she muttered. And with her exit spoiled, turned her horse around and followed him.

She died three more times on the journey, once to the cheerful applause of a towheaded toddler bouncing on his mother’s hip.

It touched her to see the dog lying beside the garden she’d helped plant over her father’s grave. He sat up as they approached, but stayed beside it.

“I’ll take the horses to the stream. They’ll want water, and you’ll want some moments alone with your father.”

First the grin, now simple kindness. Any hope of rebuilding her temper faded.

“Thanks.” She dismounted, handed him the reins.

“This area’s well patrolled now, so you should have no worries.”

“All right.”

“But don’t be pitiful. Come with me then.” He snapped his fingers at the dog. “And you’ll have yourself a swim.”

So he left her by the grave with the flowers blooming, a lovely carpet spread in front of the stone.

For a moment she stood in the light breeze gathering herself, and her thoughts.

“I know more of what you did and why. A lot more. I’m learning from Nan, and I won’t give up that part of me ever again. The part you gave to me. I wish I could talk to you, really talk to you the way we used to. I understand why you didn’t tell me, but now that I know . . .”

Crouching down, she traced her fingers over his name.

“You had your heart in two worlds. I think—no, I know it’s the same for me now. And duty, on both sides.”

Straightening, she looked up, the stones in the grass, the hills rising. She could hear the wind whisper through the grass, rumble through the ruin where the Pious had once walked.

She heard sheep bleating, and Bollocks’s happy bark.

“You would never have left here if not for me. Your heart was never on the other side, but I was. God, I don’t want to let you down. I’m going to try with all I am not to let you down.

“I love you,” she whispered. “I miss you. I’m not the only one,” she said as she looked over toward the stream where Keegan stood, his back to her while the horses drank.

She walked through the grass, around the graves, past the ruin that made her spine tingle.

She glanced toward the old building, toward the opening. A wide one, she noted, and imagined the two thick doors that had once closed it off.

Closed what walked there in.

Something still walked there—she felt that in her bones.

She kept her distance as she made her way to Keegan.

“I’ll take the horses now. You’ll want some moments, too.”

He said nothing at first, just looked at her in that way he had. Straight on and searching. “I do, aye. Thanks for that.”

He handed her the reins. “There’s a buck, a big one, twelve-pointer, through the trees there toward the south a bit. He might move enough for you to spot him. He’s a beauty.”

He knew that tingle in the spine near the ruin, as he’d felt it many times before. As he knew the whispers that sounded through the archways, along the curve of stairs.

He knew the pulse, like a thick heartbeat, in the air.

And sometimes, some trembling times, through that pulse came the screams of the tortured, and the unanswered pleas for mercy.

Another day he might have gone in, taken Breen with him. To see what she felt, what she heard.

But not this day.

He saw though the sky held clear, clouds and gray gathered up in the north. There’d be a storm that night.

He wouldn’t mind it.

He sighed as he looked down at Eian’s grave.

“She’s doing better than I believed she would. A ways to go, for certain, but she’s doing better. Better yet when she remembers she has a spine and a spirit. I remember her mother, but I think the one who reared her on the other side became a different sort. I’m sorry for that—for you, for Breen, but that’s what we have, isn’t it?