“You’re not the only man to have ever lost a loved one. Grief isn’t exclusive to you, Cuchulainn!” She quickly considered telling him her own story. But her gut told her not to make this about her. She was decidedly out of her element, so all she could do was follow her gut. “Look around you. How many of the hybrids have lost lovers or parents or children to suicide and madness? How is Brenna’s death more tragic than that? For the passing of two moons you have been surrounded by a people who have overcome losses that would have decimated any other race, yet they have done more than survive. They still find joy in life. You’ve seen it yourself. How has that not reached you? Maybe Brenna was right when she called you self-absorbed.”
With the lightning reflexes of a well-trained warrior, Cuchulainn’s dagger was unsheathed and pressed against the centaur’s neck. But she did not flinch from him. She held his wide, pain-filled gaze with her own.
“This is not you, Cuchulainn. The man I know would never take arms against a member of his Clan.”
Cuchulainn blinked twice, and then stumbled back. “What am I doing?” With a growl he hurled his dagger to the ground and wiped both hands across his thighs as if he were trying to eradicate a stain. “I’ve lost who I am,” he said in an emotionless voice. “Sometimes I think I died with Brenna.”
A chill of warning shivered through the centaur’s body. “You aren’t dead, Cu. You’re shattered.”
Cu bent wearily and retrieved his dagger. “Aren’t the two really one and the same?”
“No, my friend. One involves the body, the other the spirit. And I’m afraid your trouble rests within the spirit realm.”
His bark of laughter was humorless. “That is something I’ve known for most of my life.”
“This is different.” Brighid sighed in frustration. “Damn, I’m doing a poor job of this!” She rubbed a hand across her brow, wishing her head wasn’t pounding in time with the beat of her heart. “I think you have a shattered soul, Cu. That’s why you don’t feel like yourself and why you’re not able to heal from Brenna’s death.”
Cuchulainn narrowed his eyes. “Is this more of that Shaman affinity nonsense you say you inherited from your mother?”
“No! Yes…I don’t know!” She rubbed her forehead again. “By the Goddess, you make my head hurt, Cu. The truth is I don’t know much more about Shamanistic dealings than you do! But I do trust my instincts. As a Huntress they have never failed me. Now they’re telling me that Brenna’s death damaged your spirit, so it is your spirit that must be healed if you are to recover.”
“What if I don’t want to recover?” he said slowly. “Maybe I should have died with her, Brighid.”
Everything within the centaur became still. How she answered Cuchulainn might change whether the warrior lived or died. Epona, help me to say the right thing, she beseeched silently. And, like a candle flaring to light in an unused room, she suddenly understood what to say.
“Maybe you should be dead—maybe you shouldn’t. I don’t know, but I do think I know how you can decide for sure.” Brighid was careful to sound calm and matter-of-fact, like she was discussing whether they should hunt deer or boar.
“How?” His voice was ragged.
“Well, it’s really simple. You’re not yourself. So, as you already admitted, you don’t trust your own judgment. But if you fix your shattered soul, you’ll be able to rely on your own instincts again. Then if you choose death, you’ll know your choice is valid.”
“You make it sound simple, but I have no idea how to go about fixing something I didn’t even realize was broken.”
“Neither do I. All I know is what I’ve observed from my mother, and that was too many years ago to count.” She didn’t need her Shaman-inherited instinct to know that it was best not to mention that she and Ciara had been discussing the state of his spirit that very day. “But I do remember that she helped those whose souls had been shattered to become whole again.”
“I don’t want any Shaman meddling with my spirit, shattered or not.”
“Then how about me?”
“You?”
Brighid shrugged. “As you said, I do have ‘that Shaman affinity nonsense,’ which I inherited from my mother. But I’m decidedly not a Shaman. So how much meddling could I actually do?”
A bark of real laughter escaped from him, and for an instant he sounded like the young, rakish warrior she had once known. “Shouldn’t the question be how much fixing could you actually do?”
“I think the question should be how much do you trust me?” Brighid retorted.
“You’ve proven yourself trustworthy many times, Huntress. If I have made you believe otherwise, it is due to my failing, not your own.”
“Then will you trust me to try to fix your soul?”
The warrior hesitated. His face was no longer devoid of expression, and Brighid could clearly see the emotions that warred within him. Finally he met her gaze. “Yes.”
Brighid didn’t think that hearing any one word had ever made her feel quite so much like she wanted to run in the opposite direction. Instead she jerked her head in a quick, acknowledging nod.
“Now what do I do?” Cu asked leerily.
“You give me your oath that you won’t do anything to harm yourself until your spirit is whole again.”
“What if you can’t fix it?”
Brighid drew a tight breath. “If I can’t fix it, then your oath would not be binding. You’d be free to do as you will.”
“Then you have my oath.”
Cuchulainn held out his arm and Brighid grasped his forearm in the warrior’s way of binding an oath. His grip was strong and he felt so alive. She hoped desperately that her instincts hadn’t just blundered her into a suicide pact with the brother of her best friend.
“Where do we go from here?” Cuchulainn asked.
“Back to camp. I’ll take the first watch over the fire. You get some sleep. I’ll wake you when the moon is at half point.”
“What does that have to do with fixing my shattered soul?”
“Not a damn thing,” she muttered. “But it’ll give me time to think about the mess I’ve gotten us into.”
As they walked side by side back to the camp, Brighid heard Cu chuckling. She might very well be helping his suicide, but at least she was amusing him.
Her family had been right about one thing. Humans certainly were odd creatures.
Chapter 11
Brighid fed the fire another compacted log of moss and goat dung and grunted in wordless approval at the heat that radiated from the flame. The night was cold and the wind was brutal, but within the tight circle of tents there was warmth and light and a more than adequate measure of comfort. The Huntress wondered silently whether the strength of the fire was because of Ciara’s affinity for the spirit of flame or the right mixture of goat dung.
“A little of both,” Ciara said, joining the Huntress.
“Are you practicing Shaman mind reading on me?”
The winged woman smiled. “No, of course not, but I have always been good at reading expressions. Your face did not hide the question on your mind.” She gestured at the neat pile of fuel. “It burns well, and it lasts long. But the truth is that my presence intensifies its natural attributes. Were I not with the camp, it would still be good fuel.” Her dark eyes sparkled. “But because I am with the camp it is excellent fuel.”
“You’d