Marco stopped along the way to call greetings to the woman pegging clothes on a line with a toddler at her feet, to the old man walking with his long-eared dog along the roadside, to a couple harvesting fall vegetables from their garden.
He, like Keegan, knew the names, matched them to faces, so she could follow his lead.
At the turn, she gestured. “We’re this way. Did you ride here with Morena?”
“Not this road. We rode down there, and through those woods and all the way to the coastline.”
“I haven’t seen the coastline. Well, I did from a spot on that mountain. It looked amazing.”
“It’s not that far, and we’ve got time if you want to see it. It slays, let me tell you.”
“I do want to see it. We can do that before we go back, stop at Nan’s.” She gestured up at the pair of dragons. “The Magee twins. Ah, Bria and …”
“Deaglan. We met them last night. They live near the Capital,” Marco remembered. “Came in yesterday.”
“Right. They’re scouting, or patrolling, I guess.”
As they crested the rise, Marco pulled up again. “Just wow. I know we saw stuff like this in Ireland, and that was wow. Here’s another. Damn, I wish I could take a picture, you know? The round tower deal, that stone circle up there on the hill, that seriously spooky stone ruin. Big-ass one, too. The graveyard, the woods, the fields. And nobody around right now but the sheep.”
From the saddle, he scanned everything. “It’s eerie, right? It’s like the sky shouldn’t be all blue and pretty over that creepy place. It should always be heavy and gray.”
“Inside, the air is.”
“You’ve been in there?”
“No.” Breen felt the tingle over her skin, like spider legs crawling. “But I can feel it. I didn’t before, not like this. It’s almost Samhain, so I think that’s why.
“The stone dance hums. I can hear it, feel it, too. It’s like a balance. Light against dark. Don’t go in the ruin, Marco, and don’t get too close to it today.”
“Trust me, I’m convinced. Is it safe to go to the graveyard?”
“Yes. It’s sanctified.” She gestured to where Bollocks already sat quietly by the spread of flowers over her father’s grave. “See, he knows. He’ll stay close today. He’s waiting by Dad’s grave.”
“He’s a good dog,” Marco managed, though his throat had already started to close with grief. “They’re really beautiful, the flowers you planted there. I hate he’s gone, Breen. I hate he’s really gone.”
“I know.” When they reached the grave, she dismounted, then took the horses to secure them across the road, where they could snack on the high grass. And to give Marco a few minutes alone.
When she walked back, Marco turned to her, pressed his face to her shoulder for comfort.
“He loved you,” she murmured. “You made him laugh. You made him proud whenever you played music.”
“He gave me music, and he gave me so much else. He was the first grown-up I came out to.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“It was right before he left that last time. I was afraid to tell him, afraid of what he’d think of me. After he took you back to your mom’s that last time, he walked me home. You know it was a couple miles after your mom moved, and I thought we’d take the bus, but he started walking. He said how much he depended on me to help look after you while he was away.”
Steadying his breath, swiping at his eyes, Marco eased back to look down at Eian’s stone. “How blessed he was to have me in your life and his.
“When he looked at me, I started to cry because I could tell he knew. He put his arm around my shoulders, and kept walking. He said he’d only be disappointed in me if I felt shame for what I was, who I was. I blurted it out, like a big announcement. ‘I’m gay!’”
She laughed a little, stroked Marco’s cheek. “What did he say?”
“He said he hoped one day, when I was grown and ready, I’d find a man worthy of me, and not to settle for less. ‘Be true to yourself, Marco,’ he said, ‘and anyone who tries to make your truth a lie or shameful isn’t worth a single one of your thoughts.’”
Now, in turn, Breen pressed her face to Marco’s shoulder as her eyes filled.
“It sounds like him. For so long I nearly forgot what he sounded like, what he was like.”
Breathing out, she drew back. “Coming here, coming back, it’s helped me remember.”
“It meant everything to me, that walk home with him.” Sitting, Marco brushed his hands over the flowers. “It meant everything to me, Eian.”
Breen sat with him. “Why didn’t you ever tell me?”
“I couldn’t really thank him because I got all choked up. I wanted to thank him, talk to him again when he got back. But …”
“He died. We didn’t know he died, didn’t know about Talamh. But he never came back.”
“I didn’t want to tell you, baby, because you were so sad. You waited and waited, got sadder and sadder. So I get to tell you now, and thank him now. It’s beautiful here, and he’s home, right? It’s beautiful even with that place hulking over there.”
“He’s home, and it is beautiful. When it was first built,” Breen continued, as she shifted to study the ruins, “when they first lived and worked and worshipped there, it was a holy place. A place for good works, for art and prayer and healings. It was some who lived and worked and worshipped there that changed it. Corrupted it, turned it into a place to be feared. A place of intolerance and persecution and torture.”
