I gave his chest a gentle shove. “You need to slow down whatever biological clock started ticking when you met me. Pretty sure you want to make it to your two hundredth birthday.”
“And you don’t?”
I looked out the window, where the golden tips of overgrown grass waved in the sea breeze. “Would I be crazy to say I’m not sure?”
Caomhán’s words kept circling back to me. Despite the constant warnings from the seers and sorcerers that I could not, under any circumstances, sacrifice my longevity, I had the sneaking suspicion that fighting this bond was tantamount to not really living at all. After spending the first twenty-nine years of my life living in black and white, Jonathan’s touch made me feel like I was seeing color for the first time.
I considered Kilronan, the big house with the jumbled family, full of shouts and laughter and everything in between.Perhaps they didn’t live as long as their potential, but they certainly seemed to live the lives they had to the fullest.
“I would go,” Jonathan interrupted my music, though it was clear he’d felt it all. “If you want me to leave, I would do it. It should beyourchoice, Cass. Not just mine.”
I looked up to find those large green eyes the color of moss, begging me to fall into them, but just as scared that I might heed their call.
I reached up to stroke his cheek, and he turned his face into the touch, an uncharacteristically sweet nuzzle. “No, I don’t want you to leave. It’s hard when you’re here, but somehow it’s worse when we’re apart, I think.”
Much worse, his thoughts echoed.
We stood like that a moment more, gestating in that difficult truth until finally, Jonathan stepped out of reach.
“The least I can do is let you pack,” he said. “I’ll be outside if you need me.”
“Just what doyou think you’re playing at, Jon?” Robbie’s voice floated through one of the windows from outside the house when I closed my bedroom door, backpack slung over one shoulder. “You know you shouldn’t go with us.”
A glance through the glass told me they were standing in the yard while Robbie idly pulled weeds from the kitchen garden. Jonathan’s voice murmured something incomprehensible, but the tone suggested feigned ignorance.
“Jonny, come now. Any sorcerer will know what Cassie means to you. You’re half a bleedin’ tapestry when she walks into a room, the threads fair cryin’ out for her, and hers for you as well. The Council will notice in a moment.”
“I can shield the bond,” Jonathan protested. “Secrets are my trade, as you well know.”
“That may be, but your mate’s an oracle, lad. It’shertrade to filter those secrets like water. I think you’ll find your magic changes when she’s around too. Even now, her power challenges all of ours. You’ll not be able to protect her once she’s fully manifested.”
They argued in a different language then—one that sounded like Latin but didn’t quite match the dead language I’d learned to read as an undergrad.
“I’m not goinganywhere,” Jonathan snapped, suddenly back in English. “I’ve got it under control. It’s final.”
I could easily imagine Robbie shaking his head. “You were assigned only to bring her here and find more information about your father’s whereabouts. Now you’re back and going to the Brigantian too? What does the Order say about that?”
Order? I thought, my eyes now wide open as I listened. This was the second time I’d heard something about the mysterious Order. First in Dublin, nearly two months ago. Now today.
“The Order is finished,” Jonathan hissed. “Has been since Beatty’s death. Or haven’t you forgotten?”
“The Order doesn’t depend on a drunkmurúch’slife, Jon. If it did, it wouldn’t have survived two thousand years.”
“The Council made sure of that, didn’t they?” Jonathan snarked back. “And now there’s only us and Caomhán left on the Isles, and he’s a loose cannon at best.”
“He’s also her family, and you know themurúcha. Kin is the only thing they care about. He and Aoife won’t forsake her, not knowing she’s Ciarán’s blood.”
“A fact that may cost her life in the end if we don’t manage it correctly.” Jonathan snorted. “At any rate, this bond allows me to do my job better. How many other sorcerers can read a seer’s mind? I can shield her thoughts from the other mind witches if it comes to that.”
“I hope so.” Robbie’s voice was laced with doubt. “The connection you share is rare, but you can’t control it either. Youcan’t stay away from her, nor she from you. A babe will come of it, to be sure. I hate to think what else.”
“That willnothappen.”
They spoke a bit lower, mostly in Irish, but too low and fast for me to understand. Robbie’s soft voice was suddenly overlaid with an unfamiliar urgency, even with its hushed cadence.
There was no immediate response for a long time, to the point where the din of the train car and the wheels on the tracks began to roar. I was also holding my breath, trying not to be heard as I waited for a response that would clarify the parts of this conversation I couldn’t understand.
“I can’t leave her, Rob.” Jonathan’s voice was hollow as if the words came reluctantly. “I know it’s hard to understand. But everything—everything—in me says I belong with her.”