Page 69 of A Celtic Memory
She kept sensing more. Seeing the bigger picture.
“A tree connected to so very much,” she murmured. “And now that the spell’s broken, it begins....”
“What begins?” Cian asked only for Oran to answer and reveal the real reason they had found each other.
And it was the last thing either of them saw coming.
Chapter Eighteen
“AS I TOLD ye before, ‘twas unheard of for Unnamed Ones to love beyond nature and our gods,” Oran said. “Forbidden, actually.”
“Forbidden?” Madison frowned. “You didn’t mention that before.”
“’Twas not worth mentioning at the time,” he replied. “Not until ye remembered how ye met. What brought ye together.” He flickered through the branches above them. “The story beyond a spell within a spell. A life before this life.”
Cian could hardly believe everything flooding back to him. The forgotten years. The immense love they had shared. The heartache he felt every time Madison returned to the future. He had long wanted to tell his brothers that the prophecy was surely upon them but couldn't so long as he was under Raven's spell. Odd knowing that the love he'd felt for her was essentially only ever on the surface. Nothing as deep as what he felt for Madison.
“Cian and I knew each other before, didn’t we?” Madison murmured, feeling out what Oran wasn't saying. “We loved when we shouldn’t have.”
“Ta,” Oran confirmed. “As did a few others a long time ago.”
“My sisters,” she whispered.
“That’s right.” Oran flickered a little lower. “Not biological sisters at the time but druid sisters. Those whose hearts blossomed beyond the barriers of what was natural for your kind.”
“But became natural for other druidesses eventually.”
“Taand ‘twas those who went on to become the druidesses of today when the Unnamed Ones died off.”
Cian felt Madison’s heartache at that, for she still loved them no matter what happened.
“Yet long before yer kind became extinct,” Oran went on, “ye were lost to them, m'Lady.”
“You mean banished by them,” she said, figuring it out. “Punished.”
“Ta,but in the end ‘twas yer choice.” Oran sighed. “For the prophecy was upon them, and warriors were needed.”
