Larkin carried stones for each of the graves, then a fourth for the young girl he couldn’t bury.

When it was done, Blair leaned on the shovel. “Do you want to, I don’t know, say some words?”

He spoke in Gaelic, taking her hand as he said the words, then saying them again in English so she could understand.

“They were strangers to us, but to each other they were family. They died a hard death, and now we give them back to the earth and the gods where they will have peace. They will not be forgotten.”

He stepped back, drawing her with him. “I’ll pull the wagon into the field, away from the trees. We’ll burn it.”

Everything they’d owned, she thought as they set the wagon to light. Everything they’d had, these people who had no name for her. The idea of it was so sad, as the wagon burned and the smoke rose, that when she climbed onto the dragon’s back again, she laid her head on his neck, closed her eyes and dozed as they flew over the ashes.

Chapter 16

S he heard thunder, and thought groggily that they’d have to outrace a storm. Straightening, more than a little amazed she’d dozed off on the back of a dragon, she opened her eyes. Shook her head to clear it.

Not thunder, she realized and gaped at the towering fall of water that gushed over twin spires of rock into a wide blue pool.

There were trees here, still leafy and green, and the surprising tropical touch of palms. Lilies floated on the pool, pink and white, as if they’d been painted there. Beneath the surface of blue, she could see the dart of fish, bright and elegant as jewels.

The air smelled of flowers and clear water.

She was so stunned she stayed where she was when he landed. The dragon’s head bent down so the strap of the bag slid off. And she was sitting piggyback on Larkin.

“What? We take a wrong turn?”

He turned his head to smile into her dazzled eyes. “I told you I would bring you here. Faerie Falls, it is. There’s no picnic this time, but I thought…I wanted an hour, alone with you, somewhere there’s only beauty.”

“I’ll take it.” She jumped off his back, turned a circle.

There were starry little flowers in the grass, and a tangle of vines, blooming purple, winding right up the rocks, almost like frames for that plunge of water. The pool itself was clear as a mirror, blue as a pansy while the cups of lilies floated over it, and overhead the falls spilled fifty feet down.

“It’s incredible, Larkin, a little slice of paradise. And I don’t care how cold that water is, I’m having a swim.”

She yanked off her boots, started on her shirt. “Aren’t you?”

“Sure.” He kept grinning at her. “I’ll be right behind you.”

She stripped, tossing her clothes carelessly on the soft ground. Poised on the bank, she sucked in her breath, braced for the shock. And dived.

When she surfaced, she let out a joyful yell. “Oh my God, it’s warm! It’s warm and it’s silky and it’s wonderful.” She did a surface dive, came up again. “If I were a fish, I’d live here.”

“Some say the faeries warm it every morning with their breath.” Larkin sat, pulled off his own boots. “Others less fanciful talk of hot springs under the ground.”

“Faeries, science, I don’t care. It feels so damn good.”

He jumped in, and as men were prone to do, hit the water hard so it would splash her as much as possible. She only laughed and splashed him back.

They went under together, tugging each other deeper or pinching bare flesh, playing like seals. She swam under, cutting through with strong strokes until she felt the vibration of water striking water. She sprang off the bottom and into the tumble.

It beat on her shoulders, the back of her neck, the base of her spine. She shouted out with a combination of relief and joy as it pummeled away the aches and fatigue. When he joined her, wrapped his arms around her, they laughed as the water plunged over them. The force pushed them back toward the heart of the pool where she could simply float with him.

“I was thinking earlier how much I’d like a couple days at a good spa. This is better.” She sighed and let her head rest on his shoulder. “An hour here is better than anything.”

“I wanted you to have something unspoiled. I needed, I think, to remind myself there are such places.” Not only graves to be dug, he thought. Not only battles to be fought. “There isn’t another woman I know, but Moira, who would have done what you did with me today. For me today.”

“There aren’t many men I know who would have done what you did today. So we’re even.”

He brushed his lips over her temple, her cheek, found her mouth. The kiss was soft and warm as the water. His hand that stroked over her as gentle as the air.

It seemed that nothing beyond this place, beyond this precious time existed. Here, for now, they could just be. While they drifted, she saw a white dove soar overhead, and circle. She saw the sparkle of its green eyes.

So the gods do watch, she thought, remembering the white owl. In the good times, and in the bad.

Then she turned her lips to his. What did she care for gods now? This was their time, this was their place. She sank into the kiss, letting the water and his arms carry her.

“I need you.” His eyes were on hers as he took her mouth again. “Do you, can you know how much it is I need you? Take me in.” He murmured it as he cupped her hips, slid into her.

They watched each other as they joined, fingers stroking faces, lips brushing lips.

It was more than pleasure that moved through her, more even than the joy of life. If it was truth, she thought, this need, this sharing, then she could live on it the rest of her life.

She wrapped herself around him, gave herself to that truth.

And knew the name of that truth was love.

I t was probably possible to be more tired, to be more frustrated, but Glenna hoped she never found out. She’d done what Moira had asked and taken a group of women to one end of the gaming fields to try to give them the first basic lesson of self-defense.

They were more interested in gossiping and giggling, or trying to flirt with the men Hoyt worked with across the field than moving their asses.

She’d taken some twenty of the younger ones assuming they’d be more enthusiastic and in better physical shape. And that, she decided, might have been her first mistake.

Time, she thought, to get mean.