Irish Moon by Amber Scott Read Free Book Online Page A

to hear the
gloating. She could see it in the slit of his eyes, the swish of
his tail, that he thought her a self-centered coward.
    Mayhap he was right. Was she here only to get
in her long awaited lesson? Was her concern for Heremon truly
because of his strange behavior or in fact a result of her
discontent at missing out on five new herbals and praise for her
Grimoire? Was he acting strange at all or had she conjured it all
as a convenience?
    “I don’t know where his home is,” she ground
out, knowing full well that she had just taken his bait. “I need
you with me.”
    Swish. Blink.
    “Please.” She’d look in a window, mayhap
knock, say hello, farewell and be warm in her bed within the hour.
And if he chose to stay, then she’d be there all the sooner.
    After staring at her at length, eyes
squinted, Finn leapt to his feet, stretched and pounced in a
westerly direction toward the sea.
    Breanne clamped her jaw and trudged after
him, letting her cape drag and catch as it pleased along the
way.
    The trees grew sparse as
they neared the edge of the forest. The piney scent of it mingled with the
salty sea air pushing up the Slieve League cliffs. When the crisp
blue of ocean came into view, Breanne stopped. She didn’t have to
peer over the dizzying three-furlong drop to sense its danger. She
could hear it in the quality of the waves hissing against the rocky
walls.
    “How much further?” she asked Finn, her voice
quaking.
    He ignored her and inched to the edge.
Breanne’s breath caught, her belly clenched watching him. Terrible
by day, the stony precipice felt horrific and cavernous by night.
She could almost see his small, fat body plummeting to the bottom
to his death and it made her ears ache and skin crawl.
    Right as she readied to
call him back, he stopped. Breanne looked up and down the coast for
a dwelling of any size or shape , but saw none. The cliffs made her feel naked and
she turned around for escape into the cover of trees. Then she saw
it.
    The home was modest and
exactly what she’d expect of a man such as Heremon. She went to the
stone house and resigned to knock. With no light inside, it was her
only option. Breanne rapped her knuckles on the splintering wood
door. It sounded hollow. She glanced to verify Finn hadn’t
plunged , then
knocked again, harder. The skin on her knuckles protested the
combination of cold and hard colliding.
    “He’s not answering,” she called to Finn.
    He eyed her over his shoulder for a moment
and finally joined her. A wind picked up and whipped at loose
tendrils from her braid. “Could we have missed him?” she asked.
“Mayhap he came as we went?”
    Either way, she’d come and could now go. All
she needed was certainty that Finn knew she’d tried.
    “Is it locked?” Finn asked, his tone strange,
almost caring.
    Of course, he had known Heremon much longer
than she. Longer than she’d fathom a guess at. Though Heremon never
gave her such detail, she gathered that Finn’s curse began some
time ago, long enough ago for him to have been through five other
priestess hopefuls only to have them fail him.
    Breanne tried the door. The dark wood slab
fell open. Silence. Finn looked at her in agitation and Breanne
stepped inside. Warmth enclosed her body and she understood how
chilled she had become. Her skin prickled gloriously and she
stepped further in. She could hear Finn follow and suspected that
he might actually be uneasy.
    They left the door ajar and Breanne lit a
candle off the remaining, almost ashen embers. Four additional
candles made the room fill with enough light to see two things
clearly. Heremon was not present, which they confirmed after
searching the adjoining rooms, and something was wrong. Breanne
didn’t know if wrong was the right word to define the gut feeling
she had. Amiss might be more suitable, or different, but nothing
appeared to be out of the ordinary, no fallen chairs, no signs of
departure.
    Neither spoke the
words , but
Breanne knew