Shadow Spell by Nora Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

he might walk over to Ashford Castle, let Roibeard soar in the open, over the greens there—and that would give any early-rising guests at the hotel a thrill.
    Thrills often drummed up business, and he had one to run with the falconry school.
    He’d aimed for that exactly, until he’d felt it—the stir of power, within and without. His own rising without his asking it, the dark stain of what was Cabhan, smudging the sweetness of the dewy pines.
    And something more, something more.
    He should have called his circle—his sister, his cousin, his friends, but something pushed him on, down the path, through the trees, near the wall of vines and uprooted tree where beyond lay the ruins of the cabin that had been Sorcha’s. Beyond where he and his circle had battled Cabhan on the night of the summer solstice.
    There the fog spread, the power thrummed, dark against white. He saw the boy, thought first and only to protect. He would not, could not, allow harm to an innocent.
    But the boy, while innocent enough, had more. The something more.
    Now, the fog gone and Cabhan with it, the boy gone back to his own time, his own place, Connor stayed as he was—on his knees on the damp ground, fighting to get his breath fully back into his lungs.
    His ears still rang from what had sounded like worlds exploding. His eyes still burned from a light brighter than a dozen suns.
    And the power merged with joined hands sang through him.
    He got slowly to his feet, a tall, lean man with a thick mop of curling brown hair, his face pale yet, and his eyes deep and green as the moss with what still stirred inside him.
    Best to get home, he thought. To get back. For what had come through the solstice, and hidden away till the equinox lurked still.
    A bit wobbly in the legs yet, he realized, unsure if he should be amused or embarrassed. His hawk swooped by, landed with a flutter of wings on a branch. Sat, watched, waited.
    â€œWe’ll go,” he said. “I think we’ve done what we were meant to do this morning. And now, Jesus, I’m starving.”
    The power, he thought as he began to walk. The sheer force of it had hulled him out. Turning toward home, he sensed his sister’s hound seconds before Kathel ran toward him.
    â€œYou felt it as well, did you now?” He gave Kathel’s great black head a stroke, continued on. “I’d be surprised if all of Mayo didn’t feel a jolt from it. My skin’s still buzzing like my bones are covered with bees.”
    Steadier yet with hound and hawk, he walked out of the shadows of the woods into the pearly morning. Roibeard circled overhead as he walked the road with Kathel to the cottage. A second hawk cried, and Connor spotted his friend Fin’s Merlin.
    Then the thunder of hoofbeats broke through the quiet, so he paused, waited—felt a fresh stirring as he saw his cousin Iona, his friend Boyle astride the big gray Alastar. And Fin as well, racing with them on his gleaming black Baru.
    â€œWe’ll need more eggs,” he called out, smiling now. “And another rasher or two of bacon.”
    â€œWhat happened?” Iona, her short cap of hair tousled from sleep, leaned down to touch his cheek. “I knew you were safe, or we’d have come even faster.”
    â€œYou all but flew as it is—and not a saddle between the three of you. I’ll tell you inside. I could eat three pigs and top it off with a cow.”
    â€œCabhan.” Fin, his hair dark as his mount’s, his eyes the dark green of Connor’s when the power had taken him, turned to stare into the trees.
    â€œHim and more. But Iona has the right of it. I’m fine and well, just starving half to death while we stand here on the road. You felt it,” he added when he began to walk again.
    â€œFelt it?” Boyle stared down at Connor. “It woke me from a sound sleep, and I don’t have what the three of you do. I’ve no magick in me,