He kept shaking his head back and forth. “No…”
He took a step away from her, but she moved quickly, covering the space between them, and put a restraining hand on his shoulder, surprised that he felt so real, so solid and warm.
“Not this time,” she told him. Brighid reached into her pocket and brought out the turquoise stone. She held it out to him on her open palm. “Whose is this, Cu?”
His face drained of the last of its color. He stared at the stone.
“Whose is this?” she repeated.
“It’s Brenna’s stone.” His voice had lost all of its youthful exuberance and he sounded like the warrior back at MacCallan Castle. “She said it was a gift from Epona.” He looked up at Brighid, his expression that of a lost boy. “She said it’s the same color as my eyes.”
“It is, my friend,” Brighid said.
“I loved Brenna,” he said slowly.
Brighid nodded. “Yes, and she loved you.”
“Brenna is dead.”
“Yes.” Brighid wasn’t sure what she had expected, but the calm resignation that settled over Cuchulainn’s face surprised her.
He was staring at the stone again. “I remember.”
“I knew you would.” She squeezed his shoulder. “Are you ready to come home now?”
He lifted haunted eyes to hers. “Why should I?”
“He needs you. You need him. And it’s the right thing to do, Cuchulainn.”
“Why doesn’t he come here? It’s nice here. There’s no pain. No death. No-”
“Have you seen Brenna here?” she interrupted him.
His body jerked. “No. Not yet. But maybe if I were whole again, then she’d come.”
“She wouldn’t come, Cu. This place isn’t real-not even by the Otherworld’s standards. It’s flawed, fake, pretend. Nothing here really exists.”
“How do you know?” His voice edged on desperation.
“You’ll just have to trust me, Cuchulainn. I would never deceive you. The man whose body lies beside me at MacCallan Castle knows that. Don’t you, too?”
His gaze stayed on hers, and she could see him considering. Slowly, he nodded his head. “I do trust you. Enough that I believe you’ll give me an honest answer to one last question. What is there for me to return to other than grief and pain and the pieces of a broken life?”
The importance of her answer pressed down upon her soul. Oh, help me…Etain…Epona…someone. Frantically her mind struggled for a well-worded, logical answer that would make her friend whole again. Should she mention his sister? The people of Clan MacCallan? How about the children he had obviously grown fond of?
Stop thinking, child, and Feel. You’ll find the right answer.
The words in her head were unmistakably Etain’s. Blindly, like a drowning man, she clung to them, plunging through the flotsam in her mind. When she spoke, the answer came from her heart.
“You will love again. That’s why you have to return. I think you might already be a little in love.” Brighid’s eyes filled with tears as her emotions overwhelmed her. “It’s not going to be easy, and it’s come from an unexpected place…” She thought of the beautiful winged Ciara and realized that “unexpected” was a definite understatement, but she took a breath and kept talking to the stricken warrior. “I don’t claim to know much about love, but I do know that it can make life worth living. Trust me, Cuchulainn. Your life will soon be filled with love and it will be well worth living again.”
As she spoke a change came over the warrior. The sadness in his turquoise eyes remained, but the despair lifted from them, and when he smiled his whole face warmed.
By the Goddess, he was handsome!
Her hand still rested on his shoulder. Not taking his eyes from hers, he covered her hand with his own and raised it to his lips. Shocked beyond words, Brighid could only stare at him. His gaze was intense, and it seemed the blue in his eyes had darkened. When he spoke his voice had deepened.
“Have you become a High Shaman, Brighid?”
She shook her head, wondering how she could feel numb and hot at the same time.
Cuchulainn laughed softly, a sublimely male sound that reverberated low in Brighid’s gut.
“I would say that a human man loving a centaur who cannot shapeshift is perhaps a little more than unexpected, but I do trust you, my beautiful Huntress. And I am now ready to come home.”
He believed that she was the woman he was falling in love with! Brighid opened her mouth to deny it-to explain-to correct his misconception and-
Bring him home, child.
Etain’s voice in her mind caused her mouth to clamp shut and her cheeks to warm. The priestess was right, of course. Now was not the time to explain to Cu that he was mistaken. Now was the time to get him home. Explanations wouldn’t be needed once he joined his body. Cuchulainn might not be ready to admit that he could love Ciara, but he knew the attraction was there. Just as he knew there was none between the two of them.
“Are we going, Brighid?”
She blinked and reordered her thoughts. Cuchulainn was standing very close to her, and he was still holding her hand in his. He smiled, looking suddenly shy. Oh, Goddess! He actually believed they were falling in love. She felt her heart compress and her stomach tighten, and for just a moment she let herself wonder what it would be like to have this warrior as her own, to forget that he was an unattainable man. She found that it wasn’t very difficult for her to do. Maybe it was because of his centaur father, maybe it was the fact that his mother was Epona’s Chosen, for whatever reason this man called alive feelings within her that no other male, be he human or centaur, had ever stirred.
It was just a dream-fleeting and impossible-but it tempted her…intrigued her… And she let it. For a moment, she let it.
Breathe him in, and bring him home, child.
Etain’s voice jolted her, and she felt her face heat again. She was supposed to be retrieving his soul, and instead she was indulging in ridiculous childlike fantasies. All while his mother was watching.
Cuchulainn laughed softly and laced his fingers with hers. “What is it? You look terrified.”
“I-I have to bring you home,” she blurted.
He nodded. “I’m ready. What’s next?” he asked, sounding eerily like the Cuchulainn who had burst into her bed chamber.
“I’m supposed to breathe you in.” Her voice was almost inaudible.
He cleared his throat and his hand tightened on hers. She thought that he looked suddenly, obviously, nervous. “I think there’s only one way to do that.”
“How?” she asked, but she already knew.
“Kiss me, Brighid. Breathe in my soul. Take me back to the land of the living.”
Her stomach clenched and she felt like her heart would explode from her chest.
Cuchulainn smiled. “Now you look like you’d like to run away.”
“No, I’m just… It’s just…” she sputtered.
His brows went up. “We haven’t kissed? Ever?”
She shook her head.
He sighed. “Of course we haven’t. Part of me is here-part’s there. And I’m still in mourning for Brenna…” He passed the hand that wasn’t holding hers through his hair. “I don’t imagine this thing between us has been easy for you.” Then he moved even closer to her and touched her cheek. “I apologize for being so broken. For making things even more complicated than they already are. Kiss me, Brighid, so that I can heal for both of us.”
He was a tall man, with a warrior’s honed muscles and breadth of shoulder. She only had to bend a little to meet his lips. Brighid stopped thinking. Cuchulainn’s golden light was back, and even when she closed her eyes she could see the brilliance of it, bright and burning. The kiss started as tentative. His lips were warm, and the taste of him reminded her of the grasslands that surrounded them-welcoming and sensuous. She opened her mouth and let her arms go around him as the kiss deepened. His body was hard and he seemed to fill not just the space around her and within her arms, but his aura enfolded her, just as his hands cradled her face. His tongue met hers and she felt an indescribable shiver of need ripple across her skin and lodge deep within her. His hands left her face to splay into her hair. When he moaned against her lips she felt the breathless, masculine sound like it was a caress.