Was it possible that she actually hoped for the latter?
“I cannot abide any but my parents and the very young in close proximity.”
“Why?”
“It is not something I would speak of here.” The ugliness of her past and her ongoing pain did not belong in this beautiful place.
“One day you will tell me.”
She laughed then, as she so rarely did—and only then around the children. “You assume we will see one another again.”
“I am living among your people now. If I do not see you in this miraculous place again, I will see you in your village.”
She simply shook her head, knowing differently. “I do not go to the village.”
At least right now. Her father had forbidden her.
“As time goes on, we will be allowed into the trees.”
“I doubt that.” Some of the humans living among their tribe had never even received an invitation to do so.
His smile was knowing, but he did not argue with her. Instead, he lowered his head further and whispered against her lips. “I wonder.”
“What do you wonder?” she asked breathlessly.
“If you taste as delectable as you smell to my wolf.”
She would have answered. She might even have denied him, though she did not think so, not when this was the only taste of intimacy she was likely to ever have.
But he gave her no chance to do either. He simply pressed his lips to hers, kissing her.
It was the most amazing sensation Una had ever known. Her lips did not merely tingle against his, they felt so much more. Pleasure. Fire. And the need for more and more and more.
She gasped her shock at the delight of it and felt his tongue tickle her own through her parted lips.
Her entire body pressed to his, an ache growing inside her for something she had no name for. She moved restlessly against him, the damp shift no barrier between his warm skin and her own.
One large warrior’s hand moved down to cup her bottom in a gesture so intimate, Una cried out from it.
And then he was gone.
FOUR
Nothing else had changed around her, but Bryant and the big brown horse had disappeared, as if they’d never been.
Una’s hand came up to press against kiss-swollen lips. He had been here. He had kissed her.
And then he’d been taken away? To go to whomever he was actually supposed to meet? The thought saddened her so greatly, tears burned her eyes.
“Why am I here?” she called out brokenly to the empty forest.
“This is a place the Chrechte come for answers,” a voice said from her left.
Una did not want to turn to face the other woman, but manners dictated she had no choice.
She turned to find a woman with similar features to Anya Gra, only much younger and without the sadness shadowing her cerulean gaze that was so much a part of the Éan’s celi di. Had she seen Una’s shameless display with Bryant?
The other woman shook her head as if answering the unspoken question. “This is a place of healing for some, a place for answers for others, some come here simply to find peace.”
“I see no one else.”
“That is often the way.”
“But earlier . . .”
“There is always a purpose in the meetings you have with others here. Remember that, little Una, braveheart.”
“I am not brave,” Una denied. “Not anymore.”
“The spirit of the girl still lives in the heart of the woman.”
“I do not think so,” Una said apologetically, sorry she had to disappoint the beautiful and clearly kind lady.
“I know your heart as you do not.”
“But it’s my heart?” Somehow the words came out a question rather than the statement Una had intended.
“Is it?”
Before Una could answer, the woman was gone, too, and then Una felt herself falling, air whooshing by as if she’d jumped backward off the highest waterfall in the forest. Not something she was ever likely to do.
She did not land with a jar, or a thump. She didn’t actually feel the landing at all, but suddenly she was on her sleeping furs, inside her own humble home and fully awake, the first rays of morning chasing the night shadows from the room.
Una dressed carefully for the feast to welcome the Faol warriors being held in the royal abode among the trees.
She’d been able to miss the last one held in the village immediately after the men’s arrival, not least because her father had forbidden her to go. But none who had been invited to the home of Anya Gra and her grandson, Prince of the Éan, were allowed to say nay.
Not without seriously offending the royal family of the Éan. And that neither Una, nor even her irascible father, was willing to do.
Rope ladders had been dropped to the village below so leaders in the village along with the soldiers could come into the trees. Those who could not climb the ropes, like her father, would be lifted on a pallet hefted with pulley ropes by the strongest among them.
It was no small task and Una could not conceive of ignoring its significance or effort by not attending herself.
And, well . . . she actually wanted to go.
A month ago, Una would have said with absolute certainty that the anticipation she felt now at the thought of attending the feast was impossible to contemplate. But that was before four sennights of visits to the Chrechte land of the spirits.
She’d been back on three different occasions and each time he had been there as well. The Faol warrior, Bryant.
He had apologized for leaving her so abruptly the first time and then said he was sorry he’d kissed her without leave. She’d admitted she probably never would have had the courage to give it. So, he’d said perhaps he would have to kiss her again without asking.
She’d replied that might be best.
It hadn’t been stilted, or awkward, but funny and light. And he had kissed her. Marvelously.
Though he’d never let his hand roam to her bottom again. She wanted to ask why, but never got the gumption to do so. She had so much more temerity in the spirit realm, but still . . . she was herself.
They talked of many things though. His annoyingly protective older brother, and irritatingly spoiled younger sisters. He told her stories of growing up in a big family and she told him of life among the Éan, daughter to one of the tribe’s greatest warriors.
She didn’t speak of her horror five years past and he didn’t mention his purpose in the village.
Their time always ended too quickly and she feared each sojourn into the spirit world would be their last, or on the next occasion she would not see him. For as much as the spirit celi di had claimed all meetings were with purpose, Una was convinced she saw Bryant by happenstance when he was there by some other greater motive.
And tonight she would see him in the flesh.
Would he remember visiting with her in the spirit realm? Would he seek out her company?
Or had her sojourns there merely been the conjuring of an excessively lonely mind fixated on a brief glimpse of a man whose very nature sent Una into a panic.
They could not be friends in the physical realm. Could they?
The very idea was absurd. He was Faol and should he approach her in person, in this place, she was most likely to fall in a faint of panic at his feet.
Sighing at her own shortcomings she had no idea how to overcome, though for the first time perhaps she wanted to, Una straightened her long-sleeved shift. The bodice she pulled on over it was made of supple leather her mother had painstakingly tanned for her. Mòrag had also dyed it heather green, the exact shade of the Éan’s plaid, and fitted it to Una’s figure with careful stitches that would last many years to come.