Shadow Spell by Nora Roberts

it?”
    â€œAs sure as I know my sister. I only thought him a boy at first, and in Cabhan’s path, but when I took his hand . . . I’ve never felt the like, never. Not even with you, Branna, or you and Iona together. Even on the solstice when the power was a scream, it wasn’t so big, so bright, so full. I couldn’t hold it, couldn’t control it. It just blew through me like a comet. Through the boy as well, but he held on to me, on to it. He’s a rare one.”
    â€œWhat about Cabhan?” Iona demanded.
    â€œIt ripped through him,” Fin said. “I felt it.” Absently, he lifted a hand to his shoulder, where the mark of his blood, of Cabhan’s blood scarred his flesh. His heart. “It stunned him, left him, I promise you, as shaken as you were.”
    â€œSo he slithered away?” Boyle dug into eggs. “Like the snake he is.”
    â€œThat he did,” Connor confirmed. “He was gone, and with him the fog, and there was only myself and the boy. Then only myself. But . . . He was me, and I was he—parts of one. That I knew when we joined hands. More than blood. Not the same, but . . . more than blood. For a moment, I could see into him—like a mirror.”
    â€œWhat did you see?” Meara asked.
    â€œLove and grief and courage. The fear, but the heart to face it, for his sisters, for his parents. For us, come to that. Just a lad, no more than ten, I’d venture. But in that moment, shining with a power he hasn’t yet learned to ride smooth.”
    â€œIs it like me going to visit Nan?” Iona wondered, thinking of her grandmother in America. “A kind of astral projection? But it’s not exactly, is it? It’s like that, but with the time shift, much more than that. The time shift that can happen by Sorcha’s cabin. You weren’t by Sorcha’s cabin, were you, Connor?”
    â€œNo, still outside the clearing. Near though.” Connor considered. “Maybe near enough. All this is new. But I know for certain it wasn’t what Cabhan expected.”
    â€œIt may be he brought the boy, brought Eamon,” Meara suggested. “Pulled him from his own time into ours, trying to separate him from his sisters, to take on a boy rather than a man like the sodding coward he is. The way you said it happened, Connor, if you hadn’t come along, he might have killed the boy, or certainly harmed him.”
    â€œTrue enough. Eamon was game, by God, he was game—wouldn’t run when I told him to run, but still confused, afraid, not yet able to draw up enough to fight on his own.”
    â€œSo you woke and went out,” Branna said, “you who never step a foot out of a morning without something in your belly, and called up your hawk. Barely dawn?” She shook her head. “Something called you there. The connection between you and Eamon, or Sorcha herself. A mother still protecting her child.”
    â€œI dreamed of Teagan,” Iona reminded them. “Of her riding Alastar to the cabin, to her mother’s grave, and facing Cabhan there—drawing his blood. She’s mine, the way Eamon is Connor’s.”
    Branna nodded as Iona looked at her. “Brannaugh to Branna, yes. I dream of her often. But nothing like this. It’s useful, it must be useful. We’ll find a way to use what happened here, what we know. He hid away since the solstice.”
    â€œWe hurt him,” Boyle said, scanning the others with tawny eyes. “That night he bled and burned as we did. More, I’m thinking.”
    â€œHe took the rest of the summer to heal, to gather. And this morning tried for the boy, to take that power, and—”
    â€œTo end you,” Fin interrupted Branna. “Kill the boy, Connor never exists? Or it’s very possible that’s the case. Change what was, change what is.”
    â€œWell now, he failed brilliantly.”