Page 65 of A Celtic Longing
“Rest, druidess,” Adlin said softly, covering her and her son with a fur. “Take this time with yer wee bairn.”
She barely heard what he said or the sadness in his voice as he melted away into the darkness. As she smiled and lost herselfin her son’s eyes. The fresh wonder in his gaze. The sweet smell of him. How he felt against her chest.
They must have drifted off to sleep together because she felt Adlin’s presence like a dagger to the soul when he returned. She looked up at him one moment, then the next, she was standing outside herself looking back. Watching the tears fall on her incarnate’s face as Adlin sat beside her.
“Ye knew this time would come, lass.”
He sighed and looked at her with a tenderness that bespoke how good of friends they had become over the past nine months as he kept her company and saw to her needs.
How that was coming to an end now.
“Ye must see this all the way through if ye mean to protect yer wee one,” Adlin advised gently. “If ye mean for him to have a life with his da, such as ‘twill be.”
“Not me,” her other self managed in a strangled whisper. Tears rolled down her cheeks. “Not in this life.”
“Nay.” Adlin cupped her cheek, his voice gentler still. “But mayhap in the next.” He nodded once. “’Tis finally time to use yer magic, lass. Use it alongside mine so we might see him free of yer coven.”
“Oh, please,no,” Shannon gasped, bolting awake.
She blinked at the random drifting snowflakes lit by early morning light. The fire was down to embers, and the wind howled somewhere deeper in King’s End.
A mournful sound that matched how she had just felt.
“Where is he?” Liam exclaimed, bolting awake as well. He leapt up and went to where she had just lain in another life. Where their child had just been. “Where’s our son?” He shook his head and looked back at her with the same confusion and heartache she felt. “What happened to him, lass? What did Adlin do?”
“The only thing he could,” she whispered. Her chest tightened, and Liam blurred when her eyes filled with fresh tears. “He helped me save him the only way we could....” She closed her eyes when bits and pieces flashed through her mind. Horrible heartache. A sad goodbye. “He helped hide our son, so he had a chance at life...such as it was.”
Chapter Twenty-Two
“WE NEED TO go.” Shannon chanted herself into her dress as though she had been doing it all her life. “Right now.”
Still caught off guard by everything he had just witnessed, more so needing to understand what happened to his son, Liam shook his head. “Why, Shannon? What happened? Where is he?”
“We just need to go.” She didn’t wait to see if he listened but swung a fur cloak around her shoulders and strode down the tunnel that led to the ocean. “Come on!”
More baffled than ever, he frowned, grabbed a torch, and trailed after her. Shannon's thoughts were hazy. Emotional. Hard to follow.
How she’d felt about their son, however, came through clearly.
The extraordinary love she had felt.
