Gwenn just grunted. “Then, when I tell him to go on since Liam’s waiting for him, he waits for me and carries me down the stairs.”

“It would have been difficult to get down the stairs otherwise,” Selena said.

“No, it wouldn’t. I could have slid down the banister most of the way.”

Selena made a strangled, gurgly sound. “Oh…Gwenn. You’re not still doing that, are you? You’re a baron’s wife. When the Grandmothers caught you at it, you used to tell them you were checking for dust.”

“Which is exactly what I tell the servants if they catch me at it,” Gwenn said. She sniffed primly. “Besides, how am I going to teach my daughters how to do it if I don’t practice once in a while?”

Breanna choked on her tea.

Selena’s face was turning red with the effort not to laugh.

Gwenn gave Breanna a helping swat on the back that almost shoved her nose into the teacup, then said, “Breathe, Selena. You’re starting to look like a holly bush.”

Maybe it wasn’t right to fill the room with laughter when there was so much death just beyond the door.

And maybe, Breanna thought as she wiped her streaming eyes with the napkin Gwenn handed her, laughter was exactly what she needed to see Selena as a woman who could be a friend instead of a power to be feared.

Liam noticed the tremor in Donovan’s hand as his friend raised the glass of whiskey and downed its contents in one swallow.

“Do not wake the Mother’s Hills,” Donovan said softly, staring into his glass. “Well, they’re awake now, aren’t they? Mother’s mercy, Liam. Gwenny said Selena was powerful, and I hadn’t doubted her word, especially after seeing the storm that passed over Willowsbrook, but I’d never imagined a witch could do…that. And I’ve met some of the women who come from the Mother’s Hills.”

“Nobody imagined they could do that,” Liam said wearily. But he looked toward the closed study door and shivered, remembering the whirl of wind Breanna had created when he met her. She’d captured the earth Keely was flinging at him in a misguided effort to protect Breanna from the baron. If she could create a small whirling of wind and earth, could Breanna create something larger, something more destructive? If she needed to protect her family, would she create a funnel of earth and air that could be used as a weapon?