“Why did you kiss me?”
She hadn’t meant to ask, and hadn’t been able to stop the thought from forming into words.
“Well, the usual reasons apply.”
She told herself to leave it there, leave it alone. Then thought the hell with it. “You could have kissed Riley or Annika, for the usual reasons.”
“That’s true enough, isn’t it? They’re both appealing, attractive, interesting women in their own ways. But I wasn’t inclined to kiss them. And now that you’ve got me thinking about it, I can tell you there’s no doubt I’ll be inclined again where you’re concerned.”
He said it so matter-of-factly, she wasn’t sure whether to be amused, insulted, or a little afraid.
“Don’t you have someone back in Ireland, or New York?”
“I do, of course. But not the way you mean. I’ve friends on both sides of the ocean, and family as well. But no woman waiting for me to sail home again. If there were, I’d never have put my hands on you, and certainly wouldn’t take you to bed.”
“I never said I—”
“When you do,” he said easily. “There’s more here than a hike in the hills, than a quest. Don’t you wonder, fáidh, what it is?”
She didn’t know how to do this, Sasha decided, didn’t know how to hold up her end of flirty, sexy conversation. And she quit while she was behind.
“I wonder why Riley’s taking the left fork when the cave’s to the right.”
“Is it then?” Bran asked.
“Riley! It’s that way.”
Up ahead, Riley stopped and turned. “Map says left.”
“But it’s right. You can see—” She broke off, stared ahead where she’d clearly seen the dark mouth of the cave under a stone ledge. It simply wasn’t there.
“I thought I saw . . .”
“Maybe you did. The seer or the map?” Bran asked the others.
After a moment’s hesitation, Riley nodded. “We’ll take the right fork.”
It offered a harder climb, and didn’t that just figure. The grade went steep, and the track rutted and rocky. Yet flowers bloomed, sturdy and stubborn, and a narrow stream, barely a handspan wide, cut its way down through springing green and dusty rock.
A Judas tree bloomed gloriously where the rutted track forked yet again.
“Which way?” Riley asked her.
“I don’t—”
“Don’t think.” Bran laid a hand on her shoulder, featherlight. “Know.”
“The left this time. They missed the first fork when they told you. It’s to the left, but they didn’t see . . .”
What lived inside her spread—arms lifted to pull away a veil.
Sasha’s own arms dropped to her sides; her eyes went to cobalt.
“The devil’s breath comes through its dripping jaws. In its belly lie the bones of murdered men who scream in the dark, of women who weep for lost children. Only light from fire, from water, from ice, will free them.
“Sorry.” She braced against the trunk of the tree while her head spun with visions, with the echo of her own words. “I’m a little dizzy. It came on so fast, like a shove off a cliff.”
“Here.” Annika offered a bottle. “It’s water. It’s good.”
“Thanks.”
“My boots aren’t pretty.”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake—” Riley began.
“But Riley was right. You were right,” she said to Riley. “They aren’t pretty, but they are strong. And strong is important.”
“Yes.” Sasha took a steadying breath. “Yes, it is.” She handed Annika the bottle. “Thank you.” To the left, fear pricked at her skin, tiny little thorns, but she couldn’t turn away.
“We’re close now.”
She followed the track, and her instincts. Her legs ached from the hike, but she ignored the pain. Her lungs labored, but she pushed up the track toward what she feared.
When the sun flashed in her eyes, she blinked the glare away.
Then stood staring at the dark mouth under its wide stone ledge.
“Does everyone see it?” she asked.
“Straight ahead. Good work, Sash.” Riley gave her a light punch on the arm. “We’d have gone the wrong way.”
“Maybe someone wanted us to,” Sawyer suggested. “Bran and I should go in first, get the lay of it.”
“You get one really stupid man remark,” Riley commented, and made a check mark in the air. “Make another, and I punch your pretty face.”
“Then I’ll take mine as well, and say he has a point. All five of us go in straightaway,” Bran continued, “there’s no one out here to get help should something go wrong.”
“You’ve got two minutes.” Riley held up her arm, tapped her watch. “On my mark.”
“Into the belly then.” Bran moved forward with Sawyer.
Not the belly, Sasha thought. The mouth.
The belly lay deeper.
They stepped under the ledge and in. Dark spread ahead, light shone behind, as if they walked out of day into night.
Each pulled out a flashlight, swept the beam.
“Got your dripping jaws right here.”