Tir Alainn - The House Of Gaian - Tir Alainn - The House of Gaian Part 3
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Tir Alainn - The House of Gaian Part 3

hers any day, so what was the point of hot tempers now and hotter tears later when it was love holding the torch to the kindling?

"I promise the same."

Rhyann stared at her in surprise. Then she exhaled gustily and stood up.

"Let's finish packing your saddlebags so I can take care of mine. We'll need to get an early start tomorrow."

Selena stared at the ceiling, seeing nothing in the night-dark room, her heart

pounding too hard, too fast.Just a dream, she thought as she crawled out of bed and stumbled toward the wash basin. Her hands shook as she poured water from the pitcher into the basin. Just a dream, brought on because I know Rhyann isn't going to stay home where it's safe. Or as safe as any place can be these days.

She stripped off her sweat-soaked nightgown, then twisted her hair to hold it back long enough to splash some water on her face. She dunked a washcloth in the basin, rung it out, and rubbed it over her body. The water didn't make her feel as chilly as the sweat drying on her skin, and she imagined washing off the scum of the dream along with the sweat.

Then she focused her thoughts and sent a flicker of the Mother's branch of fire to the candle sitting on the dressing table. The wick lit, and the single flame softened the dark into varying shades of gray.

Moving slowly, she went to the dressing table, sank down on the stool, and

stared into the mirror.

The face that stared back at her wasn't human. Had never looked human.

Her hair was a pure black, not the dark brown that was common, and her

eyes were a gray-green instead of the brown-flecked green that was the dominant color among the people who came from the House of Gaian. Neither of those things would have drawn much attention to her, but the face ... People looked at her and saw one of the Fae. And she was. May the Mother help her, she was as much Fae as she was witch, the product of an affair between a Fae lady and a feckless young man. The Fae lady hadn't wanted a child with a mixed heritage, and the feckless young man had turned to his married older brother for help with the babe the lady had left with him before disappearing from all of their lives. Just like the young man, who asked his brother's wife to watch the babe one afternoon and never came back. A year later, he sent a brief letter, letting his brother know he was well. He didn't ask about or mention the child, and they never heard from him again.

There had been times when other children had teased her unkindly about her pointed ears or the shape of her face, when she'd wanted to see the two people whose mating had produced her-to shout and rage and scream at them for being so careless and uncaring. In the end, it hadn't mattered. Not because of the man, her uncle by blood and father by heart, who had taught her to ride as well as to dance. Not because of the woman he'd married, who had shown her with hugs and scolds that she was a beloved daughter-and taught her what it meant to be a witch. In the end, it hadn't mattered because of Rhyann, the little sister who adored her. Rhyann, who had proudly come into her room one day to show her the triangle caps she'd made out of scraps of material and sewed together with clumsy, childish stitches so that she could have pointy ears, too. Rhyann who, the first time Selena had inadvertently changed into her other form, had carried her terrified, furry sister home-and then stayed with Selena for all the hours it had taken their parents to calm her down enough to find the key inside herself that changed her back into a child. And it was Rhyann, when needs seemed to tangle her up until she wasn't sure anymore who she was, who would always tell her fiercely, "You're a witch. You're always a witch, one of the Mother's Daughters."

Always, forever a witch. A rare and powerful witch, who could wield the power of the Mother's branches-earth, air, water, and fire-in equal measure. There were many in the Mother's Hills who were gifted with all four branches, but most of them had one primary branch and a lesser ability with the other three. But for her, all four were primary and flowed from her as easily as she breathed. In that, she and Rhyann were true sisters.

But she was also a Lady of the Moon, something she hadn't known until eight years ago. The Crone who had taught her and Rhyann some of the oldest magic known to the House of Gaian had recognized that part of her. The old woman had refused to say how she knew what she did about the Fae-and the Ladies of the Moon and the Lady of the Moon in particular-but that knowledge helped Selena understand the part of herself that had felt like a stranger living inside her skin.

Now that part of her heritage was rising, calling, commanding her to answer. So she would follow the call to the place where the other Ladies of the Moon would gather, and she would stand as a challenger to find out if she was strong enough to ascend and become the Lady of the Moon-and the Huntress.

She stood up, stepped away from the dressing table, and shifted into her other form. Then she put her front paws on the stool in order to look into the mirror again.

Shadow hound. A deadly predator the Ladies of the Moon used for their Wild Hunts.

Selena shifted again, stared into the mirror, her hands braced on the stool.

Two shadow hound bitches racing through moon-bathed woods, racing toward a common enemy.

Who was the second bitch? Was one of the Sleep Sisters just playing with her, haunting her with dreams to weaken her for the challenge ahead, or was this a gift from the Lady of Dreams herself, showing her an ally against a common foe? She would need an ally, especially if she won this challenge. Who was the second bitch?

Cold again, despite the warm summer night, Selena blew out the candle and returned to bed to huddle under the covers.

A shadowy male figure standing in the center of a high, wide circle of female corpses.

Yes, she needed an ally, because tonight, in that circle of corpses, she'd seen her mother-and Rhyann.

Chapter 3.

waning moon Breanna grumbled as she gathered up her bow and quiver of arrows from the corner of her wardrobe. She continued to grumble as she walked the corridors of her family's manor house to reach the kitchen door.

The trouble with men was that they saw the world in a way that was too rational to be wrong ... but also just wasn't quite right. And a man who was a baron as well as an older brother was the most stubborn, ornery creature in the world-especially when his argument that she should know how to handle weapons was supported by a Fae Lord who was the Lord of the Hawks.

"The featherheads," Breanna muttered as she opened the kitchen door and stood on the threshold. She looked down at Idjit, who was laying to one side of the doorway, busily gnawing on a soup bone Glynis, their housekeeper, must have given him. "They're both featherheads, even if only one of them has the ability to change into a form with actual feathers. And where are they? Tell me that. They're both so keen for me to interrupt my day, and then they don't even show up. They're probably off doing important man things-like molting in the case of the Fae featherhead. Or doing whatever barons do as an excuse for being late to an appointment they made."

The small black dog rolled his eyes, waved his tail, and kept gnawing on the

soup bone.

"You're no help," Breanna said sourly. "Of course you're not. You're male, too."

She closed the kitchen door and headed across the extensive sweep of grass that was the manor house's back lawn. Since the cousins who had escaped from the eastern part of Sylvalan had arrived earlier that summer to stay with her family at Willows-brook's Old Place, there were too many animals around the stables and paddocks and too many children running and playing on the back lawn to set up practice targets in those areas. So Clay, who was in charge of the horses, had set up bales of hay near the kitchen garden.

It wasn't that she objected to target practice. In truth, she often did it as a way to settle her thoughts and regain the balance between mind and body. What she objected to was the assumption that she needed target practice. Mother's tits! She could shoot as well as most men, had been bringing home game for several years now. Even Clay had told Liam and Falco that she didn't need to learn how to hit a target. Had the Baron of Willowsbrook and the Lord of the Hawks listened? No, they had not. The featherheads.

Breanna stopped and looked at the men and older boys who were cleaning out stables or grooming horses, looked at the women hanging wash on the lines, looked at the youngsters playing some kind of game on the lawn, looked beyond her kin to the woods that bordered the lawn and thought of

the Small Folk who lived there. She pulled her shoulders back, trying to ease the tension in her chest.

"A copper for your thoughts."

Breanna turned toward the voice. Her cousin Fiona stood a few feet away,

her hands filled with another bow and quiver of arrows.

"You're doing target practice too?" Breanna asked.

Fiona shrugged.

Breanna turned away, focusing on the woods again. "Do no harm," she said

quietly. "That's the witch's creed. There are good reasons for that creed, good reasons why we should use the power within us only to help, to heal, to maintain the balance between the Great Mother and all the creatures who live on her bounty."

"And to protect?" Fiona suggested softly.

"And to protect." Breanna sighed. "I keep thinking that I don't need to learn to use weapons against other people, that I already have a weapon inside me more destructive than anything a man could create. Then I wonder if all the witches who have died at the hands of the Inquisitors had thought the same

way and learned their error too late. Or had they been so hobbled by our creed that they hadn't even tried?"

"Could you kill a man, Breanna?"

She felt something settle inside her, something that had been haunting her

sleep lately. She turned to face her cousin. "Yes, I could. If that's what it took to protect my family or the Old Place or the Small Folk . .. yes, I could." She lifted the hand that held the bow. "It would be easier to do that using a weapon made by human hands than break the creed I live by and use the power inside me to do harm. But I would do that, too, if there was no other choice."

"We're of one mind about this," Fiona said. "I've lost my mother and my grandmother. My father, too. And too many aunts and uncles. We're a large, sprawling family. Or we were. Sometimes I think we should have fought back, should have stood up to the baron when he started making decrees that took away so much. But we couldn't have done that without doing harm, and

the elders held by the creed-and didn't understand the cost until it was too late for them to do anything but save those they could by sacrificing themselves."

"It was more complicated than that," Breanna said gently.

Fiona sighed. "I know. But some days it's easier to blame those I loved for dying to save the rest of us than to admit that breaking the creed wouldn't have made any difference. Not then. Not there. The Inquisitors already controlled the baron, and the baron controlled the people. What good would it have done to wither the crops in the fields or make the wells dry? All that

would have done is hurt the common folk and prove witches are the evil creatures the Black Coats accuse us of being."

"You don't know the elders are dead."

"Breanna."

Fiona's voice held so much knowledge and pain. But not acceptance. If the

Inquisitors rode into this Old Place, at least some of the witches here would use everything they could summon to fight back.

Breanna took a deep breath, let it out slowly. "My primary branch of the Great Mother is air. Yours is earth. It would help to have fire and water as well if it comes down to a fight here."

"Not everyone will break the creed. Even with what they know, with what

they've seen."

"I know." Breanna tucked some strands of dark hair back into her loose braid. She looked at the bow in her hand. Even if they didn't use their power as a weapon, there were still ways for the witches to fight back. "Do you know how to use a bow?"

Fiona made a rude noise. "Of course I do."

"We might as well get some practice in before our 'instructors' show up to give us some practice."

Fiona laughed, but there was an edge to it. "I imagine Baron Liam and Lord

Falco just want to be sure you're available and waiting so that you can