“As sure as I can be. I’ll need some time for it. And need some time to call a storm. One that will knock her back, give us a clear path to go. Wherever we need to go.”

“When you’re ready, we’ll hold them off for you.”

“Us,” Sasha corrected. “I’ll be with him. I saw it,” she said before Bran could argue. “I painted it. I lived it.”

She turned toward the terrace steps. “It’s not negotiable.”

Rather than argue, he took the star inside. He’d do what he needed to do when the time came to do it.

Alone.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Sasha wondered if tending wounds would ever become routine. Would she become so used to blood and gouged flesh that the sight, the smell, the feel of it would no longer cause her stomach to tighten, her pulse to quicken?

She knew what to do—some was simply instinct, but Bran was a good teacher. She cleaned the gash on Riley’s arm first, judged under normal circumstances the wound would require at least a dozen stitches. Calmly she coated the gash with Bran’s salve while Bran worked on Sawyer, and Doyle kept watch, sword at the ready now, at the doorway.

“She won’t send them yet, or come.” As she spoke, Sasha added drops to a glass of water, handed it to Riley. “Drink it all.”

“Coming at us when we’re bleeding gives her an advantage.”

“Expecting her to come at us when we’re bleeding negates the advantage. And we confused her,” Sasha added. “Or Sawyer did. We vanished, boat and all. She has to think about that. And she’s very angry. We have the star. Our finding it was one thing, but she wasn’t able to snatch it right out of our hands as she thought she would.”

She began to tend to Riley’s other wounds—all minor when compared to the gash—and realized everyone had stopped to look at her.

“How do you know?” Doyle demanded.

“I don’t know, but I do. I can feel her rage. And . . . she hasn’t been able, yet, to break through the shield Bran put around the house. I think she will, but not when she’s blind with anger. We have a little time.”

“You’ve connected with her. You’ve opened enough to make that connection. Be careful, fáidh,” Bran warned. “As she may feel, as you do, and do the same with you.”

“There’s only hate and anger and this terrible need. She’s mad with it.”

“Madness can still be canny,” Bran reminded her.

“She’ll come harder now.” Sawyer winced as Bran tended the gouges that scored his side. “Once she regroups. We have something she wants. She was just playing around before, giving us grief. She wanted us to find the star, because she couldn’t.”

“I’d say that’s a bull’s-eye.” Riley rose, rolled the shoulder of her injured arm, flexed her biceps. “Good job. I barely feel it.”