Page 120 of First Light

“It’s beautiful.”

“Aye.” He put his warm hand over hers. “It is. Maybe someday you can come to Scotland and see the country the way you should have.”

Her normal life seemed so distant that it was hard to respond. She swallowed the lump in her throat and nodded. “I’d like that.”

Duncan didn’t speak for some time.

“Do you still hate me?”

“What?” She looked at the back of his head. “When did I hate you?”

“You know when.”

She reached back in her memory to the moment she discovered that Lachlan’s dead wife was her mirror image. The moment she realized that her boyfriend’s love might have all been an illusion.

“I did hate you a little.”

“Am I lucky enough to hear a ‘but’ in that statement?”

She took a deep breath. “I’m glad I found out.” Was she? Yes. She closed her eyes. She hated not knowing things. “I am.”

“Are you convincing me or yourself?”

“Do you wish you didn’t know about this place?”

Duncan’s great shoulders shrugged. “I hardly remembernotknowing Lachlan. It’s not the same.”

“I wish I’d knownSeren.”

“She was a handful.” Duncan chuckled. “A firecracker. Bold as brass and unapologetic about it.”

“So basically my complete opposite.”

Duncan glanced over his shoulder. “I don’t know you well, but I don’t think I agree. I think you’ve absorbed some of Seren just by coming here. There’s more bold in you than you admit, Carys Morgan.”

“Caw!”

Carys looked to her right and saw an iridescent black crow perched on the low-hanging branch of a pine. It peered at their party a moment before it flapped its wings and flew away.

“She knows we’re here.” Duncan looked up. “Cadell is near.”

Carys followed his eyes and saw the magnificent profile of her dragon on the hill above them. He took to the sky, circling the mist-covered hill before he swooped back over the river valley below.

The rumble sounded again, and Carys realized that it wasn’t thunder at all but the burgeoning glow of fire in her dragon’s belly.

Darius spoke up. “Cadell is giving the Crow Mother a display of his power to let her know that you are his nêrys.”

Cadell’s brilliant green wings spread as he cut through the clouds, and then he arrowed down toward the valley, his neck stretching out and his mouth opening wide as he blasted a column of fire across the tops of the trees, banishing the fog from the sky and sending a blast of heat up the mountain.

As high as they were, even Carys felt the heat on her cheeks.

For a brief moment, the fog on the mountain in front of them cleared and Carys saw a hint of an old stone castle, its towers jutting out of the rock like craggy fangs. A second later, the fog was back, swirling around the castle and the hill it sat on.

Cadell came to rest on the hill across the valley as Carys looked up, hoping to catch his attention.

“I’m doing what I think is right,” she murmured.

I am here, Nêrys.