“If I remember correctly, you poked me with a needle when I mentioned it later.”
“It was an accident,” I laughed, embarrassed by the memory. “You would understand better if your ancestors had been repeatedly mistaken for witches and burned at the stake.”
“But I thought the priests considered your kind to be angels.”
“They did for the first five hundred years, until superstition replaced their better judgment. My mother told me that after living together in peace for so long, the Goddess Born fell from angels to demons practically overnight.”
There was still so much to talk about—including whether we were really married, or at the very least, betrothed. But, that discussion would have to wait for another time. “Tomorrow I need to go into the Otherworld to renew my power.”
He gave me an odd look. “So that’s a real place? Apart from this world?”
“Of course it is. Where else would the Tuatha dé live?”
“I don’t know. I thought they were driven underground or something by another invading force. Isn’t that what the legend says?”
“You’re getting confused with faeries again,” I laughed. “No one lives in the earthen mounds, they’re just used as passageways between our worlds. The night you found me in the woods, I’d just come back.”
He gave me a slow smile. “You did have an otherworldly look about you, dressed in that strange shift with your hair unbound.”
“Brigid requires certain attire when her descendants visit.” I yawned again and my eyelids drooped with sleep.
“You’re tired,” Henry said. “I have been selfish to keep you up so long.”
I’d begun to nod my head when Henry reached down and scooped me into his arms. Carrying me over to the bed, he set me down and pulled the quilt up to my chin. I was already missing his touch when I felt him lie down beside me.
“Sleep well, Selah,” he whispered, drawing me closer with only the quilt between us. “I love you...”
With these three words, I drifted off to sleep.
*
The dream started in the same way. I was floating peacefully on my back in a pool of dark water when a hand suddenly grabbed me from below, pulling me beneath the surface. The hand tightened as I struggled to break free, dragging me further down where I became entangled in the long grass growing up from the muddy floor. For the past four years, the dream had always ended at this point, just when I was on the verge of drowning. But this morning it lingered, shifting into my most dreaded memory. No longer in the water, I stood on the bank of the pond, staring down at my mother’s dead face just below the water’s surface.
“No!” I screamed, thrashing about wildly. Strong arms closed around me, and I screamed again, fighting to get away.
“Selah!” Henry said, pulling me too him. “Wake up!”
His deep voice broke through the darkness, and I fell against him, sobbing.
“You’re safe,” he said. “It was only a nightmare.”
“I was back in the pond,” I sobbed. “I was drowning again. But then everything changed, and I was standing on the bank. My mother was there. Her face looked just the same as when she died.”
“Oh, Selah.” He pulled me closer. “You didn’t tell me it was you who found her.”
“She had gone into the Otherworld the night before and hadn’t returned by the morning. The family went out searching for her. My father and brother started in the forest, and I was told to search the grounds near the house.” Fresh sobs rose up inside me.
“There, there,” Henry said, gently stroking my hair.
“Ever since she died, I’ve had nightmares about drowning, but this is the first time she’s appeared. Why do you think it changed?”
“I don’t know, unless Nathan’s attack last night affected it somehow.”
The idea came to me like a flash of lightening. Twisting out of Henry’s arms, I scrambled from the bed.
“What are you doing?” he asked, startled by my actions.
“I have to ask him,” I said, frantically pulling a robe over my nightgown. “I have to know if he killed my mother.”
Henry swung his legs over the side of the bed and followed me across the hall.
Too angry to think straight, I threw the door open. In one fluid motion, Teme sprang to his feet, a long blade in his hand, ready to strike. Seeing Henry and me, he relaxed and re-sheathed the knife. He looked tired from sitting up all night guarding Nathan.
Gray light filled the room from the quickly approaching dawn. Omitting any wishes for a good morning, I marched right over to the bed. Nathan was wide awake, propped up by several pillows.
I wanted to strike him, to wrap my fingers around his neck and strangle away every last bit of life. Instead, I stared at him, my hands fisted at my side. “Did you kill her?” I demanded.
Nathan looked at me, clearly distressed. “I’ve never killed anyone.”
“A year after you arrived in Hopewell, my mother was found dead in the same pond where you tried to drown me last night.”