Page 133 (1/2)

It will have blood; they say,

blood will have blood

—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE

1

Summer 1276

ON A BRIGHT DAY AS SUMMER FADED, BRANNAUGH gathered herbs, flowers, foliage, all for salves and potions and teas They cas They came to her, the Dark Witch, as once they’d come to her mother, with aches in body, in heart, in spirit, and paid with coin or service or trade

So she and her brother, her sister, had built their lives in Clare, so far from their home in Mayo Far from the cabin in the woods where they had lived, where their mother had died

So she had built her life, more contented, more joyful than she’d believed possible since that terrible day their s of her oer, had sent them away to be safe as she sacrificed herself

All grief, Brannaugh thought now, all duty and fear as she’d done as asked of her, as she’d led her younger brother and little sister away from home

They’d left love, childhood, and all innocence behind

Long years The first few spent, as their mother had bid, with their cousin and her man—safe, tended, welcomed But the time had come, as time does, to leave that nest, to embrace who and what they were, and would ever be

The Dark Witches three

Their duty, their purpose above all else? To destroy Cabhan, the dark sorcerer, the murderer of their father, Daithi the brave, of their mother, Sorcha Cabhan, who had so Sorcha had cast