“You’re alive. You’re well.” She got to her feet, held out her arms to him. “I’ve lost my youngest son, but here is my firstborn, home again. You’ll want food and drink after your journey.”

“I have much to tell you.”

“And so you will.”

“All of you, if you please, madam. I cannot stay long. I’m sorry.” He kissed her brow. “I’m sorry to leave you.”

There was food and there was drink, and the whole of his family—save Cian—around the table. But it was not a meal like so many he remembered, with laughter and shouted arguments, with joy or petty disagreements. Hoyt studied their faces, the beauties, the strengths and the sorrows as he told them what had passed.

“If there is to be a battle, I will come with you. Fight with you.”

Hoyt looked at his brother-in-law Fearghus. His shoulders were broad, his fists ready.

“Where I go, you can’t follow. You’re not charged with this fight. It’s for you and Eoin to stay here, to protect with my father, the family, the land. I would go with a heavier heart if I didn’t know you and Eoin stand in my stead. You must wear these.”

He took out the crosses. “Each of you, and all the children who come after. Day and night, night and day. This,” he said and lifted one, “is Morrigan’s Cross, forged by the gods in magic fire. The vampyre cannot turn any who wear it into its kind. This must be passed on to those who come after you, in song and story. You will swear an oath, each of you, that you will wear this cross until death.”

He rose, draping a cross over each neck, waiting for the sworn oath before moving on.

Then he knelt by his father. His father’s hands were old, Hoyt noted with a jolt. He was more farmer than warrior, and in a flash, he knew his father’s death would come first, and before the Yule. Just as he knew he would never again look in the eyes of the man who’d given him life.

And his heart bled a little.

“I take my leave of you, sir. I ask your blessing.”

“Avenge your brother, and come back to us.”

“I will.” Hoyt rose. “I must gather what I need.”

He went up to the room he kept in the topmost tower, and there began to pack herbs and potions without any real sense what would be needed.

“Where is your cross?”

He looked toward the doorway where Nola stood, her dark hair hanging to her waist. She was but eight, he thought, and held the softest spot in his heart.

“She didn’t make me one,” he said, briskly. “I have another sort of shield, and there’s no need for you to be worrying. I know what I’m about.”

“I won’t cry when you go.”

“Why would you? I’ve gone before, haven’t I, and come back handily enough?”

“You’ll come back. To the tower. She’ll come with you.”

He nestled bottles carefully in his case, then paused to study his sister. “Who will?”

“The woman with red hair. Not the goddess, but a mortal woman, one who wears the sign of the witch. I can’t see Cian, and I can’t see if you’ll win. But I can see you, here with the witch. And you’re afraid.”

“Should a man go into battle without fear? Isn’t fear something that helps keep him alive?”

“I don’t know of battles. I wish I were a man, and a warrior.” Her mouth, so young, so soft, went grim. “You wouldn’t be stopping me from going with you the way you stopped Fearghus.”

“How would I dare?” He closed his case, moved to her. “I am afraid. Don’t tell the others.”

“I won’t.”

Aye, the softest place in his heart, he thought, and lifting her cross, used his magic to scribe her name on the back in ogham script. “It makes it only yours,” he told her.

“Mine, and the ones who’ll have my name after me.” Her eyes glimmered, but the tears didn’t fall. “You’ll see me again.”

“I will, of course.”

“When you do, the circle will be complete. I don’t know how, or why.”

“What else do you see, Nola?”

She only shook her head. “It’s dark. I can’t see. I’ll light a candle for you, every night, until you return.”

“I’ll ride home by its light.” He bent down to embrace her. “I’ll miss you most of all.” He kissed her gently, then set her aside. “Be safe.”

“I will have daughters,” she called after him.

It made him turn, and smile. So slight, he mused, and so fierce. “Will you now?”

“It is my lot,” she told him with a resignation that made his lips twitch. “But they will not be weak. They will not sit and spin and knead and bake all the damn day.”

Now he grinned fully, and knew this was a memory he would take with him happily. “Oh won’t they? What then, young mother, will your daughters do?”

“They will be warriors. And the vampyre who fancies herself a queen will tremble before them.”

She folded her hands, much as their mother was wont to do, but with none of that meekness. “Go with the gods, brother.”

“Stay in the light, sister.”

They watched him go—three sisters, the men who loved them, the children they’d already made. His parents, even the servants and stable boys. He took one last long look at the house his grandfather, and his father before, had built of stone in this glade, by this stream, in this land he loved with the whole of his heart.

Then he raised his hand in farewell, and rode away from them and toward the Dance of the Gods.

It stood on a rise of rough grass that was thick with the sunny yellow of buttercups. Clouds had rolled to layer the sky so that light forced its way through in thin beams. The world was so still, so silent, he felt as though he rode through a painting. The gray of the sky, the green of the grass, the yellow flowers and the ancient circle of stones that had risen in its dance since beyond time.

He felt its power, the hum of it, in the air, along his skin. Hoyt walked his horse around them, paused to read the ogham script carved into the king stone.

“Worlds wait,” he translated. “Time flows. Gods watch.”

He started to dismount when a shimmer of gold across the field caught his eye. There at the edge of it was a hind. The green of her eyes sparkled like the jeweled collar she wore. She walked toward him regally, and changed to the female form of the goddess.